12-09-2005, 01:37 PM
12-09-2005, 02:40 PM
they just executed somebody up here in MD - the witnesses were on the tv telling what they saw. So now this guy is dead after a decade or so in prison. He didn't murder anybody in prison. Now the state killed him.
I don't feel any safer or any less threatened.
It seems kind of an old fashioned method of solving a problem, to eliminate the threat after the event. I know its a punishment, but surely when one is punished it is to serve as a lesson, not as a method of stopping you offending, or doing anything, ever again.
if we can't learn from our mistakes, what can we do?
?
I don't feel any safer or any less threatened.
It seems kind of an old fashioned method of solving a problem, to eliminate the threat after the event. I know its a punishment, but surely when one is punished it is to serve as a lesson, not as a method of stopping you offending, or doing anything, ever again.
if we can't learn from our mistakes, what can we do?
?
12-09-2005, 04:28 PM
servalan @ 2005-12-09, 2:40 pm Wrote:
they just executed somebody up here in MD - the witnesses were on the tv telling what they saw. So now this guy is dead after a decade or so in prison. He didn't murder anybody in prison. Now the state killed him.
I don't feel any safer or any less threatened.
It seems kind of an old fashioned method of solving a problem, to eliminate the threat after the event. I know its a punishment, but surely when one is punished it is to serve as a lesson, not as a method of stopping you offending, or doing anything, ever again.
if we can't learn from our mistakes, what can we do?
:?:
I don't feel any safer or any less threatened.
It seems kind of an old fashioned method of solving a problem, to eliminate the threat after the event. I know its a punishment, but surely when one is punished it is to serve as a lesson, not as a method of stopping you offending, or doing anything, ever again.
if we can't learn from our mistakes, what can we do?
:?:
I'll say bring back public flogging, to be done by a burly Russian called IGOR :wink:
12-09-2005, 06:05 PM
servalan @ Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:40 pm Wrote:
they just executed somebody up here in MD - the witnesses were on the tv telling what they saw. So now this guy is dead after a decade or so in prison. He didn't murder anybody in prison. Now the state killed him.
I don't feel any safer or any less threatened.
It seems kind of an old fashioned method of solving a problem, to eliminate the threat after the event. I know its a punishment, but surely when one is punished it is to serve as a lesson, not as a method of stopping you offending, or doing anything, ever again.
if we can't learn from our mistakes, what can we do?
:?:
I don't feel any safer or any less threatened.
It seems kind of an old fashioned method of solving a problem, to eliminate the threat after the event. I know its a punishment, but surely when one is punished it is to serve as a lesson, not as a method of stopping you offending, or doing anything, ever again.
if we can't learn from our mistakes, what can we do?
:?:
I whole heartidly agree, but the law as it stands....stands, and should be carried out as handed down if there is no question of guilt.
It is barbaric and a 100 years behind the times. But so is making everyone pay through their taxes to support these people.
While I was in Saudi, I was unfortunate enough to witness an Indian man having his hand "lopped" off for stealing, certainly acted as a deterant! I never went above the speed limit again!
I think if the sentance was carried out as swiftly here, it too would be a deterent, but as it stands, a death sentance here, means your very likely to die of natural couses first.
12-10-2005, 08:13 PM
I think an execution actually solves nothing. It only deals revenge and creates more victims (inmate's family). Like someone else said, there is no proven deterrent effect. This is supported by Albert Pierrepoint, the UK's leading executioner, in his book "executioner". He was convinced that none of his hangings saved a single life.
12-12-2005, 04:11 PM
30 MINS AGO MY TIME
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago
SAN FRANCISCO - Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday refused to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who awaited execution after midnight in a case that stirred debate over capital punishment and the possibility of redemption on death row.
Schwarzenegger was unswayed by pleas from Hollywood stars and petitions from more than 50,000 people who said that Williams had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.
"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency," Schwarzenegger said, less than 12 hours before the execution. "The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."
Schwarzenegger could have commuted the death sentence to life in prison without parole.
With a reprieve from the federal courts considered unlikely, Williams, 51, was set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison early Tuesday for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.
Williams' fate became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades.
Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.
Williams stood to become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.
Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.
The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when
Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm killer. Schwarzenegger — a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals — rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.
Just before the governor announced his decision on clemency, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals denied Williams' request for a reprieve, saying among other things that there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."
In his last-ditch appeal, Williams claimed that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else killed one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other killings.
Williams was convicted of killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.
Among the celebrities who took up Williams' cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in "Dead Man Walking"; Bianca Jagger; and former "M A S H" star Mike Farrell. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.
"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"
The impending execution resulted in feverish preparations over the weekend by those on both sides of the debate, with the California Highway Patrol planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters were expected.
A group of about three dozen death penalty protesters were joined by the Rev.
Jesse Jackson as they marched across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday en route to the gates of San Quentin, where they were expected to rally with hundreds of people.
At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.
"Me fearing what I'm facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?" Williams said in a recent interview. "If it's my time to be executed, what's all the ranting and raving going to do?"
Bout time they fried this vicious gang leader who was convicted of killing 4 innocent people for a few bucks . THATS THE LEAST OF IT
He has found religion so he can go to the *happy and joyus gang * in the sky be with jesus and write his books there .
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago
SAN FRANCISCO - Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday refused to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who awaited execution after midnight in a case that stirred debate over capital punishment and the possibility of redemption on death row.
Schwarzenegger was unswayed by pleas from Hollywood stars and petitions from more than 50,000 people who said that Williams had made amends during more than two decades in prison by writing a memoir and children's books about the dangers of gangs.
"After studying the evidence, searching the history, listening to the arguments and wrestling with the profound consequences, I could find no justification for granting clemency," Schwarzenegger said, less than 12 hours before the execution. "The facts do not justify overturning the jury's verdict or the decisions of the courts in this case."
Schwarzenegger could have commuted the death sentence to life in prison without parole.
With a reprieve from the federal courts considered unlikely, Williams, 51, was set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison early Tuesday for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.
Williams' fate became one of the nation's biggest death-row cause celebres in decades.
Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.
Williams stood to become the 12th California condemned inmate executed since lawmakers reinstated the death penalty in 1977 after a brief hiatus.
Williams was condemned in 1981 for gunning down a clerk in a convenience store holdup and a mother, father and daughter in a motel robbery weeks later. Williams claimed he was innocent.
The last time a California governor granted clemency was in 1967, when
Ronald Reagan spared a mentally infirm killer. Schwarzenegger — a Republican who has come under fire from members of his own party as too accommodating to liberals — rejected clemency twice before during his two years in office.
Just before the governor announced his decision on clemency, the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals denied Williams' request for a reprieve, saying among other things that there was no "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence."
In his last-ditch appeal, Williams claimed that he should have been allowed to argue at his trial that someone else killed one of the four victims, and that shoddy forensics connected him to the other killings.
Williams was convicted of killing Yen-I Yang, 76, Tsai-Shai Chen Yang, 63, and Yu-Chin Yang Lin, 43, at a Los Angeles motel the family owned, and Albert Owens, 26, a 7-Eleven clerk gunned down in Whittier.
Among the celebrities who took up Williams' cause were Jamie Foxx, who played the gang leader in a cable movie about Williams; rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a former Crip; Sister Helen Prejean, the nun depicted in "Dead Man Walking"; Bianca Jagger; and former "M A S H" star Mike Farrell. During Williams' 24 years on death row, a Swiss legislator, college professors and others nominated him for the Nobel Prizes in peace and literature.
"If Stanley Williams does not merit clemency," defense attorney Peter Fleming Jr. asked, "what meaning does clemency retain in this state?"
The impending execution resulted in feverish preparations over the weekend by those on both sides of the debate, with the California Highway Patrol planning to tighten security outside the prison, where hundreds of protesters were expected.
A group of about three dozen death penalty protesters were joined by the Rev.
Jesse Jackson as they marched across the Golden Gate Bridge after dawn Monday en route to the gates of San Quentin, where they were expected to rally with hundreds of people.
At least publicly, the person apparently least occupied with his fate seemed to be Williams himself.
"Me fearing what I'm facing, what possible good is it going to do for me? How is that going to benefit me?" Williams said in a recent interview. "If it's my time to be executed, what's all the ranting and raving going to do?"
Bout time they fried this vicious gang leader who was convicted of killing 4 innocent people for a few bucks . THATS THE LEAST OF IT
He has found religion so he can go to the *happy and joyus gang * in the sky be with jesus and write his books there .
12-12-2005, 04:25 PM
I don't get why some of you guys talk about "frying" them. Only Nebraska is ever likely to fry someone again.
12-12-2005, 04:41 PM
Scramble @ Mon 12 Dec, 2005 Wrote:
I don't get why some of you guys talk about "frying" them. Only Nebraska is ever likely to fry someone again.
They're hungry. :o
12-12-2005, 04:41 PM
follow on question
Where was jesse jackson and his band of good doers when the white guys where executed . will he be there for the execution of
westerfield
peterson
both white
???
Where was jesse jackson and his band of good doers when the white guys where executed . will he be there for the execution of
westerfield
peterson
both white
???
12-12-2005, 04:55 PM
JohnA @ Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:41 pm Wrote:
follow on question
Where was jesse jackson and his band of good doers when the white guys where executed . will he be there for the execution of
westerfield
peterson
both white
???
Where was jesse jackson and his band of good doers when the white guys where executed . will he be there for the execution of
westerfield
peterson
both white
???
I think its an unfair question, John. Williams is black and went through a system run by whites; a system shown to be biased against blacks in certain places and in certain times. I'm not saying this is one of those times, but there is a history.
12-12-2005, 05:34 PM
londonsquare @ Mon 12 Dec, 2005 Wrote:
JohnA @ Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:41 pm Wrote:
follow on question
Where was jesse jackson and his band of good doers when the white guys where executed . will he be there for the execution of
westerfield
peterson
both white
???
Where was jesse jackson and his band of good doers when the white guys where executed . will he be there for the execution of
westerfield
peterson
both white
???
I think its an unfair question, John. Williams is black and went through a system run by whites; a system shown to be biased against blacks in certain places and in certain times. I'm not saying this is one of those times, but there is a history.
Its not unfair at all most of those convicted due for execution now or soon where convicted at the same time as williams and those places you can show some evidence of bias is NOT california.
A small town in darkest alabama and id be more likely to agree with your statement
Dont get me wrong mate im not disrespecting thosw who are against the D/P thats there opinion and they are entitled to hold it , my beef is people like jackson came out from under there rock when they can make political advantage out of the situation .
im sure somebody like you are AGAINST all execution and would protest all of them black or white thats a position i dont agree with but can respect :-)
Jackson and his political hacks just USE the system to advance there own agenda . ive never see him protest against anything he protests to be wrong unless there is a A/A involved .
Didnt see him protest at executions which have taken place in the last few years of which most of the executed have been white one (wornes ) was a women
.
Its not personal beliefs im talking about its sincerity .
as far as guilt goes many years of appeals have been exhausted before any person is put to death if there was any slight doubt of his quilt some action as to communting his sentence would have been actioned before now , remember also all the poeple imprisioned shout there innocence to anybody who will listen .the system has so many checks and balances that a mistake is hightly unlikely.
Peterson says he is innocent along with many other white murderers is he wrongly inprisioned to???
And MANSON was convicted in the same time frame as cookee but for a act of congress ( abolishing the b/p ) he would have been executed years ago . is he innocent to ???
12-12-2005, 05:38 PM
vapochilled @ Fri 09 Dec, 2005 Wrote:
He killed...fry him!
But stop wasting my tax money keeping these bastards alive for 25 years after the conviction!
He's had appeals, and each one was a farce, this is not about black or white, it's about a man, who murdered.
I could not care less if he re-wrote the frigging bible..the man took lives in cold blood for greed! end of story, it pisses me off how many of these tosspots "find god" once convicted! which in itself is funny, cos the rest of the morons on the outside keep losing him,lol
I bet they have "christmas" trees in prision!
nope, guilty, murder one, throw the damn switch.
But stop wasting my tax money keeping these bastards alive for 25 years after the conviction!
He's had appeals, and each one was a farce, this is not about black or white, it's about a man, who murdered.
I could not care less if he re-wrote the frigging bible..the man took lives in cold blood for greed! end of story, it pisses me off how many of these tosspots "find god" once convicted! which in itself is funny, cos the rest of the morons on the outside keep losing him,lol
I bet they have "christmas" trees in prision!
nope, guilty, murder one, throw the damn switch.
YOU GOT THAT RIGHT
12-12-2005, 06:17 PM
JohnA @ Mon 12 Dec, 2005 2:34 pm Wrote:
And MANSON was convicted in the same time frame as cookee but for a act of congress ( abolishing the b/p ) he would have been executed years ago . is he innocent to ???
Well, he didn't actually kill anyone, did he?
[/devil's advocate]
12-12-2005, 06:42 PM
Yeah but he did kind of persuade others to do the deed for him. I suppose, in legal terms, that would be comparable to someone paying an assassin to kill their spouse.
12-12-2005, 06:56 PM
Scramble @ 2005-12-12, 6:42 pm Wrote:
Yeah but he did kind of persuade others to do the deed for him. I suppose, in legal terms, that would be comparable to someone paying an assassin to kill their spouse.
Kind of like OJ simpson, Robert Blake, Lacey Petterson?