Texas man just executed (lethal injection) 2.5 hrs ago

Neil wrote:

1)Don't care what it costs.

2)If you're dead, you're deterred.

3)Murder does that, too.

Hold people responsible for their actions.

What he said!

Here's a question for people on this thread: if you had a choice between a painless death and rotting in a maximum security prison for the rest of your natural life, which would you choose? (From the way I framed the question you can probably guess I'd choose the former).

You have to look at per capita. In 2009, it seems that Texas executed more people "per capita" than China.

"In 2009, China executed 1 person for every 1,325,082 citizens.

In 2009, Texas executed 1 person for every 1,032,595 citizens."

Wow, Texas is right up there with North Korea, China, and Iran!!

Neil wrote:

1)Don't care what it costs.

2)If you're dead, you're deterred.

3)Murder does that, too.

Hold people responsible for their actions.

But as it stands, the death penalty in the US (or anywhere for that matter) is absolutely nothing to do with 'holding people responsible for their actions'. It's nothing more than a political tool.

I guess people feel that executing people in such a public manner (obviously the death itself isn't public, but the rest of the show always is) makes the less intelligent members of society somehow protected by the state.

People look at the victims of these crimes and get emotional. It's a fairly natural thing to do, I accept that. The key is not to get emotional and see that if there is a chance that someone gets strapped to that gurney or that chair having not committed the crime, the whole system is fatally flawed.

kirkaz yo wrote:

He didn't actually kill anyone. His codefendant did with a 22 caliber rifle(I think). The guy just executed was with him and only shot the girl with a pellet gun and watched her cry

Plus the guy just executed has an IQ from 67-72. in most states that have death penalty execution is not allowed for retarded (under 70). This guy apparently just made the cut. According to his TX death row info chart, his highest grade/education level completed was grade 9. So looks like he dropped out of high school after 9th grade. Probably a complete idiot from rural republican redneck Texas, yes, but I don't know if he could comprehend what he did.

Ah, my mistake. I didn't realize it was acceptable behavior for total idiots. I'll have to remember to only get upset in the future when I hear about smart people committing crimes.

Prove It wrote:

I'm willing to bet that you have never had a family member taken from you as a result of a totally senseless murder. I have. Therefore I will look at this as emotionally as I want to. I believe it is my right.

Please list for me the people who you know of that have been unjustly executed for crimes they didn't commit. Tell you what, just give me the most recent example of an innocent person who died at the hands of the state. Can you?

That was the exact point I was making. If someone murdered someone close to me, I would be angry enough to want them to die. At least I think I would, I don't really know as it hasn't happened.

My personal anger and desire for retribution wouldn't necessarily mean that the death penalty was the correct sentence to pass though.

Who knows who's been wrongly convicted, obviously most haven't. But can you be certain that every person executed deserved to be? It's not really possible. That doubt should be enough.

prove it be quiet, unless you have a reasonable argument shut up, no one cares about your whining

I'm actually pretty surprised by how few people become vigilantes after losing somebody close to them. I'm not sure a strongly worded letter would cut it for me. I think I'd want to become Batman.

kirkaz yo wrote:

Plus the guy just executed has an IQ from 67-72. in most states that have death penalty execution is not allowed for retarded (under 70). This guy apparently just made the cut. According to his TX death row info chart, his highest grade/education level completed was grade 9. So looks like he dropped out of high school after 9th grade. Probably a complete idiot from rural republican redneck Texas, yes, but I don't know if he could comprehend what he did.

The Supreme Court decided that the death penalty is no longer applicable to people with mental retardation. The decision on whether the person has mental retardation or not was determined to be a matter for the jury to determine. IQ tests are not definitive. I think this decision of the supreme court was reached long after this particular inmate was sentenced to death.

If my 7 year old daughter is raped and killed by a man with a low IQ, is she any less dead because he was not a genius?

What is wrong with people who think murderers and rapists should get sympathy because they are stupid?

Prove It wrote:

I was trying to prove that you people that claim so many innocents are executed are quite ridiculous.

So clearly you didn't even look at the ACLU link posted above. Here's a couple more for you:

ONE wrongful execution is too many in a nation where we're innocent until proven guilty.

steves10 wrote:

If my 7 year old daughter is raped and killed by a man with a low IQ, is she any less dead because he was not a genius?

What is wrong with people who think murderers and rapists should get sympathy because they are stupid?

What about if a 7 year old was killed by her 8 year old brother? She's not any less dead.

I don't think that not executing someone based on their mental age is that crazy a concept. There's a difference between stupid and not being mentally advanced enough to know right and wrong. I'm not saying that's the case in this particular incidence.

I appreciate that when children are involved, the subject becomes very emotive.

steves10 wrote:

If my 7 year old daughter is raped and killed by a man with a low IQ, is she any less dead because he was not a genius?

What is wrong with people who think murderers and rapists should get sympathy because they are stupid?

We give you sympathy.

steves10 wrote:

If my 7 year old daughter is raped and killed by a man with a low IQ, is she any less dead because he was not a genius?

What is wrong with people who think murderers and rapists should get sympathy because they are stupid?

If this was posted at me then I think you need to go back and read my post again. I did not post anything for or against that standard, I just enumerated what the standard is that the Supreme Court has set.

So how many wrongful executions do YOU think is OK?

Alot of opinions here like "What if your daughter was raped and murdered?". But again, what if your son was executed then proved innocent after 10 years?

NEW HAVEN — A jury voted on Monday to impose the death penalty on a habitual criminal who took part in a home invasion in Cheshire, Conn., that left a woman and her two daughters dead, a crime of such inexplicable cruelty and randomness — the family was apparently chosen after being spotted in a shopping center parking lot — that it upended a debate about capital punishment.

For nearly two months, jurors learned every searing detail of the night and morning in July 2007, when two men armed only with a BB gun that looked like a real pistol burst into the Colonial-style home of a successful doctor.

The men put him and his family through an ordeal of beatings and sexual abuse that ended as flames tore through the house where the girls, still alive, had been strapped to their beds. Their mother had already been strangled.

Only the father — Dr. William A. Petit Jr., dazed and bloodied after being beaten with a baseball bat in his sleep — managed to escape.

He was in the front row of a courtroom here on Monday, slumped forward, as the defendant, Steven J. Hayes, sat motionless at the defense table. The court clerk announced, again and again, that jurors believed the crimes Mr. Hayes had committed required that he be put to death. In thanking jurors, Judge Jon C. Blue of State Superior Court said they had been “exposed to images of depravity and horror no human being should have to see.”

The verdict came at the beginning of the fourth day of deliberations in the trial’s penalty phase. Only one person has been executed in Connecticut since 1960.

“This is a verdict for justice,” Dr. Petit said afterward. “The defendant faces far more serious punishment from the Lord than he can ever face from mankind.”

One juror, Herbert R. Gram, of Madison, said the panel experienced little disagreement during deliberations.

“It was just so heinous, and just so over the top and so depraved,” he said of the crime. “Here’s a case where somebody doesn’t deserve to remain on the face of the earth.”

Another juror, Delores A. Carter, 67, a retired health care worker from Hamden, said, “Justice has prevailed.” She added that it was draining to reach the verdict.

“It’s not easy putting someone’s life on the line,” she said.

A second defendant, Joshua Komisarjevsky — whom Mr. Hayes’s defense lawyers portrayed as the leader to their client’s hapless, drug-addled follower — will be tried separately.

The home invasion on Sorghum Mill Drive was called one of the worst crimes in Connecticut history, and was compared to the 1959 murder of a family in Kansas that was the centerpiece of Truman Capote’s book “In Cold Blood.” The Cheshire crime has already been the subject of its own books.

Jurors found that all six of the capital felony counts of which Mr. Hayes had been convicted on Oct. 5 required a death sentence.

Does an advanced society "kill someone back"? Is it an eye for an eye?

That being said, if someone killed my daughter, I would kill them back also. It would be wrong to take a human life.