This Liberals Opinion on Death Sentences
I am of the firm belief that the worst sentence you can give out is a full term of life in prison. Depending on your crime, solitary confinement for life is not a problem for me. Hard labor for the worst of crimes is not a problem for me. If you kill someone under any circumstance, under any mental state of mind it is murder and inserting a needle into the convicted persons vein’s does not solve the problem. Hanging them till dead or death by lethal gas is the easy road out for the convicted and the state. It perpetuates the problem onto the families of the victims whether we like it or not.
Mothers of murder victims are no different than mothers of the ones that murdered the actual person. They both gave birth to a life and did their best to raise the child with what values they knew. Same school but not all students learn the lessons of life they truly need. Some kids hear the Charlie Brown version of the teacher and other kids hear what they need to hear. The what and the how of those same two children and how they live their lives after they leave the mothers apron strings is anyone’s guess?
Killing one mothers child because another mothers child murdered someone is psychologically wrong to the human spirit. Punishing the child for life for murder by spending the wasted life is the only answer that makes sense.
This leads me to this piece in the Houston Chronicle, I’ve never been to Texas but I love this paper! Governor Rick Perry pulled the plug on an execution today and this is what they have to say about that…
Aug. 30, 2007, 7:01PM
Perry spares inmate set to die today
By LISA SANDBERG
Austin Bureau
AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry offered a rare reprieve today to a death row inmate who was sentenced to die for a killing he did not personally carry out.
Six hours before Kenneth Foster was scheduled to die, Perry accepted a recommendation from the state board of pardon and paroles and commuted Foster's death sentence to life in prison.
In a statement, Perry said he arrived at "the right and just decision" after carefully reviewing the facts and after considering the board's 6-1 recommendation, which was issued earlier this morning.
Foster, a former gang member from San Antonio, was sentenced to die for being an accessory to the murder of 25-year-old law student Michael LaHood Jr., who was killed in 1996 at age 25. Foster, who was then 19, was the getaway driver in a car some 80 feet away from where one of his buddies shot and killed LaHood during a botched robbery. - Houston Chronicle
Some people are of the opinion that an eye for an eye is the bible way but it is not the way of the human spirit. An ideology has risen in this country from the bible thumpers that God is a just God and he demands an eye for an eye. Wasn’t that thought written by just a man?
Anger is a very strong emotion and with the murder or death of a child I can comprehend and understand the emotion any parent could go through. Hate, despair, as a parent can send your mind down the road of revenge but revenge comes with a very heavy price. The short term gain in human spirit will not last and the mind is a funny device with many buttons to push and some of them it is best not to even dare push.
What about the emotion after the sentence is fulfilled and the trap door to the hanging is released for the murderer in the mind of the mother of the victim? Somewhere in her mind is the thought that she just killed another mothers child and she is no better than the murderer of her own child then. It can happen and then what? Glory for seeing the scales of justice balanced only makes the weights of justice balance for the moment. Down the road regret and compassion are all that is left for two mothers with one another each having a child in the grave.
Does that make any sense? In my mind it does not!
My main point is that our nation and our states need to look at the death penalty and re-think it. If we can spend a billion dollars a day to fight a war thousands of miles away from our shores can we not build the largest rock busting prison colony? I firmly believe that a life at hard labor is more justice than putting the even remote possibility of the thought on the victims families mind even if it is ten or twenty years down the road that they could have been or were remotely responsible for a state sanctioned murder.
I have to offer my thanks to Governor Rick Perry of Texas for commuting this sentence to life in jail. In doing so he did not save one life, he saved two mothers lives as well. Nobody else will no how many other lives he saved by this one simple stay of execution.
Having the death sentence is not a deterrent to crime of the worst kind it is a continuance of the crime beyond the actual event for both families effected by the actual crime. It’s just okayed by the state? If we can't trust them with our tax dollars can we trust them with sanctioned by murder?
Papamoka
Mothers of murder victims are no different than mothers of the ones that murdered the actual person. They both gave birth to a life and did their best to raise the child with what values they knew. Same school but not all students learn the lessons of life they truly need. Some kids hear the Charlie Brown version of the teacher and other kids hear what they need to hear. The what and the how of those same two children and how they live their lives after they leave the mothers apron strings is anyone’s guess?
Killing one mothers child because another mothers child murdered someone is psychologically wrong to the human spirit. Punishing the child for life for murder by spending the wasted life is the only answer that makes sense.
This leads me to this piece in the Houston Chronicle, I’ve never been to Texas but I love this paper! Governor Rick Perry pulled the plug on an execution today and this is what they have to say about that…
Aug. 30, 2007, 7:01PM
Perry spares inmate set to die today
By LISA SANDBERG
Austin Bureau
AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry offered a rare reprieve today to a death row inmate who was sentenced to die for a killing he did not personally carry out.
Six hours before Kenneth Foster was scheduled to die, Perry accepted a recommendation from the state board of pardon and paroles and commuted Foster's death sentence to life in prison.
In a statement, Perry said he arrived at "the right and just decision" after carefully reviewing the facts and after considering the board's 6-1 recommendation, which was issued earlier this morning.
Foster, a former gang member from San Antonio, was sentenced to die for being an accessory to the murder of 25-year-old law student Michael LaHood Jr., who was killed in 1996 at age 25. Foster, who was then 19, was the getaway driver in a car some 80 feet away from where one of his buddies shot and killed LaHood during a botched robbery. - Houston Chronicle
Some people are of the opinion that an eye for an eye is the bible way but it is not the way of the human spirit. An ideology has risen in this country from the bible thumpers that God is a just God and he demands an eye for an eye. Wasn’t that thought written by just a man?
Anger is a very strong emotion and with the murder or death of a child I can comprehend and understand the emotion any parent could go through. Hate, despair, as a parent can send your mind down the road of revenge but revenge comes with a very heavy price. The short term gain in human spirit will not last and the mind is a funny device with many buttons to push and some of them it is best not to even dare push.
What about the emotion after the sentence is fulfilled and the trap door to the hanging is released for the murderer in the mind of the mother of the victim? Somewhere in her mind is the thought that she just killed another mothers child and she is no better than the murderer of her own child then. It can happen and then what? Glory for seeing the scales of justice balanced only makes the weights of justice balance for the moment. Down the road regret and compassion are all that is left for two mothers with one another each having a child in the grave.
Does that make any sense? In my mind it does not!
My main point is that our nation and our states need to look at the death penalty and re-think it. If we can spend a billion dollars a day to fight a war thousands of miles away from our shores can we not build the largest rock busting prison colony? I firmly believe that a life at hard labor is more justice than putting the even remote possibility of the thought on the victims families mind even if it is ten or twenty years down the road that they could have been or were remotely responsible for a state sanctioned murder.
I have to offer my thanks to Governor Rick Perry of Texas for commuting this sentence to life in jail. In doing so he did not save one life, he saved two mothers lives as well. Nobody else will no how many other lives he saved by this one simple stay of execution.
Having the death sentence is not a deterrent to crime of the worst kind it is a continuance of the crime beyond the actual event for both families effected by the actual crime. It’s just okayed by the state? If we can't trust them with our tax dollars can we trust them with sanctioned by murder?
Papamoka
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Labels: Commutation, Death Sentence, Rick Perry, Texas Law, Texas Prisons
posted by Papamoka at
10:14 PM
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4 Comments
