Where is the citation for your allegation about atheists?
Why do so many atheists oppose the death penalty...
- Thread starter K9Buck
- Start date
Where is the citation for your allegation about atheists?
- Banned
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Capital Punishment in the United States
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VS. LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE:
Abolitionists claim that there are alternatives to the death penalty. They say that life in prison without parole serves just as well. Certainly, if you ignore all the murders criminals commit within prison when they kill prison guards and other inmates, and also when they kill decent citizens upon escape, like Dawud Mu'Min who was serving a 48-year sentence for the 1973 murder of a cab driver when he escaped a road work gang and stabbed to death a storekeeper named Gadys Nopwasky in a 1988 robbery that netted $4.00. Fortunately, there is now no chance of Mu'Min commiting murder again. He was executed by the state of Virginia on November 14, 1997.
Another flaw is that life imprisonment tends to deteriorate with the passing of time. Take the Moore case in New York State for example.
In 1962, James Moore raped and strangled 14-year-old Pamela Moss. Her parents decided to spare Moore the death penalty on the condition that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Later on, thanks to a change in sentencing laws in 1982, James Moore is eligible for parole every two years!
If Pamela's parents knew that they couldn't trust the state, Moore could have been executed long ago and they could have put the whole horrible incident behind them forever. Instead they have a nightmare to deal with biannually. I'll bet not a day goes by that they don't kick themselves for being foolish enough to trust the liberal sham that is life imprisonment and rehabilitation. (According to the US Department of Justice, the average prison sentence served for murder is five years and eleven months.)
Putting a murderer away for life just isn't good enough. Laws change, so do parole boards, and people forget the past. Those are things that cause life imprisonment to weather away. As long as the murderer lives, there is always a chance, no matter how small, that he will strike again. And there are people who run the criminal justice system who are naive enough to allow him to repeat his crime.
Kenneth McDuff, for instance, was convicted of the 1966 shooting deaths of two boys and the vicious rape-strangulation of their 16-year-old female companion. A Fort Worth jury ruled that McDuff should die in the electric chair, a sentence commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as then imposed. In 1989, with Texas prisons overflowing and state officials under fire from the federal judiciary, McDuff was quietly turned loose on an unsuspecting citizenry.
Within days, a naked body of a woman turned up. Prostitute Sarafia Parker, 31, had been beaten, strangled and dumped in a field near Temple. McDuff's freedom in 1989 was interrupted briefly. Jailed after a minor racial incident, he slithered through the system and was out again in 1990.
In early 1991, McDuff enrolled at Texas State Technical College in Waco. Soon, Central Texas prostitutes began disappearing. One, Valencia Joshua, 22, was last seen alive Feb. 24, 1991. Her naked, decomposed body later was discovered in a shallow grave in woods behind the college. Another of the missing women, Regenia Moore, was last seen kicking and screaming in the cab of McDuff's pickup truck. During the Christmas holidays of 1991, Colleen Reed disappeared from an Austin car wash. Witnesses reported hearing a woman scream that night and seeing two men speeding away in a yellow or tan Thunderbird. Little more than two months later, on March 1, 1992, Melissa Northrup, pregnant with a third child, vanished from the Waco convenience store where she worked. McDuff's beige Thunderbird, broken down, was discovered a block from the store.
Fifty-seven days later, a fisherman found the young woman's nearly nude body floating in a gravel pit in Dallas County, 90 miles north of Waco. By then, McDuff was the target of a nationwide manhunt. Just days after Mrs. Northrup's funeral, McDuff was recognized on television's "America's Most Wanted'' and arrested May 4 in Kansas City.
In 1993, a Houston jury ordered him executed for the kidnap-slaying of 22-year-old Melissa Northrup, a Waco mother of two. In 1994, a Seguin jury assessed him the death penalty for the abduction-rape-murder of 28-year-old Colleen Reed, an Austin accountant. Pamplin's son Larry, the current sheriff of Falls County, appeared at McDuff's Houston trial for the 1992 abduction and murder of Melissa Northrup.
"Kenneth McDuff is absolutely the most vicious and savage individual I know,'' he told reporters. "He has absolutely no conscience, and I think he enjoys killing.'' If McDuff had been executed as scheduled, he said, "no telling how many lives would have been saved.''
At least nine, probably more, Texas authorities suspect.
His reign of terror finally ended on November 17, 1998 when Kenneth McDuff was put to death by the state of Texas by Lethal Injection. May his victims rest in peace.
There has also been major political hay made out of a nasty scandal involving a prisoner named Willie Horton and Massachusetts' controversial "Prison Furlough Program." Massachusets governor Mike Dukakis was genuinely committed to the program, and had worked hard to bolster it, despite serious public concerns. In 1976, he'd actually vetoed legislation that would have banned furloughs for first-degree murderers, defending the practice as an essential "management tool."
Thus, a decade later, in June of 1986, there was nothing in the law to deny convicted murderer Horton what was supposed to be a routine 48-hour leave.
Predictably, Horton didn't play by the rules. He fled, eventually arriving in Maryland, where, in April of 1987, he had pistol-whipped and knifed Clifford Barnes, then bound and gagged him and twice raped his fiancee, Angela. When the story of the furlough became known, Horton's brutality created a public uproar.
The Maryland judge who subsequently sentenced Horton to two consecutive life terms refused to extradite him to Massachusetts. "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed . . . This man should never draw a breath of free air again," said the judge.
The scandal heated to a rolling boil. In April of 1988, embattled Massachusetts legislators finally killed the 16-year-old program -- without further resistance from Dukakis. Thank God!
Lastly, there is the case of Clarence Ray Allen, who had been tried and convicted for burglary and the the murder of Mary Sue Kitts and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
While in Folsom Prison, Allen conspired with fellow inmate Billy Ray Hamilton to murder witnesses who had testified against him, including Bryon Schletewitz. Allen intended to gain a new trial, where there would be no witnesses to testify to his acts. When Hamilton was paroled from Folsom Prison, he went to Fran�s Market, where Bryon Schletewitz worked. There, Hamilton murdered Schletewitz and fellow employees Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18, with a sawed-off shotgun and wounded two other people, Joe Rios and Jack Abbott. Hamilton shot Schletewitz at near point-blank range in the forehead and murdered Rocha and White after forcing them to lie on the ground within the store. A neighbor who heard the shotgun blasts came to investigate and was shot by Hamilton. The neighbor returned fire and wounded Hamilton, who escaped from the scene.
Five days after the events at Fran's Market, Hamilton was arrested while attempting to rob a liquor store. On his person was found a �hit list� with the names and addresses of the witnesses who testified against Allen at the Kitts trial, including the name of Schletewitz.
Fortunately, Allen not be ordering any more murders. He was executed by lethal injection on January 17, 2006 at San Quentin State Prison in California.
This is why for people who truly value public safety, there is no substitute for the best in its defense which is capital punishment. It not only forever bars the murderer from killing again, it also prevents parole boards and criminal rights activists from giving him the chance to repeat his crime.
A Short List of Murderers Released to Murder Again!
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT VS. LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE:
Abolitionists claim that there are alternatives to the death penalty. They say that life in prison without parole serves just as well. Certainly, if you ignore all the murders criminals commit within prison when they kill prison guards and other inmates, and also when they kill decent citizens upon escape, like Dawud Mu'Min who was serving a 48-year sentence for the 1973 murder of a cab driver when he escaped a road work gang and stabbed to death a storekeeper named Gadys Nopwasky in a 1988 robbery that netted $4.00. Fortunately, there is now no chance of Mu'Min commiting murder again. He was executed by the state of Virginia on November 14, 1997.
Another flaw is that life imprisonment tends to deteriorate with the passing of time. Take the Moore case in New York State for example.
In 1962, James Moore raped and strangled 14-year-old Pamela Moss. Her parents decided to spare Moore the death penalty on the condition that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole. Later on, thanks to a change in sentencing laws in 1982, James Moore is eligible for parole every two years!
If Pamela's parents knew that they couldn't trust the state, Moore could have been executed long ago and they could have put the whole horrible incident behind them forever. Instead they have a nightmare to deal with biannually. I'll bet not a day goes by that they don't kick themselves for being foolish enough to trust the liberal sham that is life imprisonment and rehabilitation. (According to the US Department of Justice, the average prison sentence served for murder is five years and eleven months.)
Putting a murderer away for life just isn't good enough. Laws change, so do parole boards, and people forget the past. Those are things that cause life imprisonment to weather away. As long as the murderer lives, there is always a chance, no matter how small, that he will strike again. And there are people who run the criminal justice system who are naive enough to allow him to repeat his crime.
Kenneth McDuff, for instance, was convicted of the 1966 shooting deaths of two boys and the vicious rape-strangulation of their 16-year-old female companion. A Fort Worth jury ruled that McDuff should die in the electric chair, a sentence commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as then imposed. In 1989, with Texas prisons overflowing and state officials under fire from the federal judiciary, McDuff was quietly turned loose on an unsuspecting citizenry.
Within days, a naked body of a woman turned up. Prostitute Sarafia Parker, 31, had been beaten, strangled and dumped in a field near Temple. McDuff's freedom in 1989 was interrupted briefly. Jailed after a minor racial incident, he slithered through the system and was out again in 1990.
In early 1991, McDuff enrolled at Texas State Technical College in Waco. Soon, Central Texas prostitutes began disappearing. One, Valencia Joshua, 22, was last seen alive Feb. 24, 1991. Her naked, decomposed body later was discovered in a shallow grave in woods behind the college. Another of the missing women, Regenia Moore, was last seen kicking and screaming in the cab of McDuff's pickup truck. During the Christmas holidays of 1991, Colleen Reed disappeared from an Austin car wash. Witnesses reported hearing a woman scream that night and seeing two men speeding away in a yellow or tan Thunderbird. Little more than two months later, on March 1, 1992, Melissa Northrup, pregnant with a third child, vanished from the Waco convenience store where she worked. McDuff's beige Thunderbird, broken down, was discovered a block from the store.
Fifty-seven days later, a fisherman found the young woman's nearly nude body floating in a gravel pit in Dallas County, 90 miles north of Waco. By then, McDuff was the target of a nationwide manhunt. Just days after Mrs. Northrup's funeral, McDuff was recognized on television's "America's Most Wanted'' and arrested May 4 in Kansas City.
In 1993, a Houston jury ordered him executed for the kidnap-slaying of 22-year-old Melissa Northrup, a Waco mother of two. In 1994, a Seguin jury assessed him the death penalty for the abduction-rape-murder of 28-year-old Colleen Reed, an Austin accountant. Pamplin's son Larry, the current sheriff of Falls County, appeared at McDuff's Houston trial for the 1992 abduction and murder of Melissa Northrup.
"Kenneth McDuff is absolutely the most vicious and savage individual I know,'' he told reporters. "He has absolutely no conscience, and I think he enjoys killing.'' If McDuff had been executed as scheduled, he said, "no telling how many lives would have been saved.''
At least nine, probably more, Texas authorities suspect.
His reign of terror finally ended on November 17, 1998 when Kenneth McDuff was put to death by the state of Texas by Lethal Injection. May his victims rest in peace.
There has also been major political hay made out of a nasty scandal involving a prisoner named Willie Horton and Massachusetts' controversial "Prison Furlough Program." Massachusets governor Mike Dukakis was genuinely committed to the program, and had worked hard to bolster it, despite serious public concerns. In 1976, he'd actually vetoed legislation that would have banned furloughs for first-degree murderers, defending the practice as an essential "management tool."
Thus, a decade later, in June of 1986, there was nothing in the law to deny convicted murderer Horton what was supposed to be a routine 48-hour leave.
Predictably, Horton didn't play by the rules. He fled, eventually arriving in Maryland, where, in April of 1987, he had pistol-whipped and knifed Clifford Barnes, then bound and gagged him and twice raped his fiancee, Angela. When the story of the furlough became known, Horton's brutality created a public uproar.
The Maryland judge who subsequently sentenced Horton to two consecutive life terms refused to extradite him to Massachusetts. "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed . . . This man should never draw a breath of free air again," said the judge.
The scandal heated to a rolling boil. In April of 1988, embattled Massachusetts legislators finally killed the 16-year-old program -- without further resistance from Dukakis. Thank God!
Lastly, there is the case of Clarence Ray Allen, who had been tried and convicted for burglary and the the murder of Mary Sue Kitts and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
While in Folsom Prison, Allen conspired with fellow inmate Billy Ray Hamilton to murder witnesses who had testified against him, including Bryon Schletewitz. Allen intended to gain a new trial, where there would be no witnesses to testify to his acts. When Hamilton was paroled from Folsom Prison, he went to Fran�s Market, where Bryon Schletewitz worked. There, Hamilton murdered Schletewitz and fellow employees Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18, with a sawed-off shotgun and wounded two other people, Joe Rios and Jack Abbott. Hamilton shot Schletewitz at near point-blank range in the forehead and murdered Rocha and White after forcing them to lie on the ground within the store. A neighbor who heard the shotgun blasts came to investigate and was shot by Hamilton. The neighbor returned fire and wounded Hamilton, who escaped from the scene.
Five days after the events at Fran's Market, Hamilton was arrested while attempting to rob a liquor store. On his person was found a �hit list� with the names and addresses of the witnesses who testified against Allen at the Kitts trial, including the name of Schletewitz.
Fortunately, Allen not be ordering any more murders. He was executed by lethal injection on January 17, 2006 at San Quentin State Prison in California.
This is why for people who truly value public safety, there is no substitute for the best in its defense which is capital punishment. It not only forever bars the murderer from killing again, it also prevents parole boards and criminal rights activists from giving him the chance to repeat his crime.
A Short List of Murderers Released to Murder Again!
WinterBorn
Diamond Member
12? 12 years ago I turned 46.
WinterBorn
Diamond Member
Smart enough to see facts. And certainly young at heart.
WinterBorn
Diamond Member
So the only options are execution or releasing them?
from: The Truth About Life Without Parole: Condemned to Die in Prison
"No one sentenced to life without parole has ever been released on parole, in California or in any other state. Prisoners sentenced to LWOP actually remain in prison for the rest of their lives and die in prison".
"Unlike death penalty cases, however, LWOP sentences receive no special consideration on appeal, which limits the possibility they will be reduced or reversed. A person sentenced to die in prison receives only one automatic appeal, not several, and is not provided any court-appointed attorneys after this appeal is complete, usually within two years of the initial sentence."
Weatherman2020
Diamond Member
Why don't you work in a prison and take care of Luther then?
WinterBorn
Diamond Member
I thought about doing corrections work when I got out of the Navy. I took another career path.
Not really relevant to the topic though.
Weatherman2020
Diamond Member
Totally relivant to the topic. You have to dangle a lot of money in front of desperate people to take care of these evil animals every day and some of them don't come home alive because of it.
WinterBorn
Diamond Member
Yep, it is a dangerous job.
rightwinger
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I oppose it because it is barbaric and most of the civilized world has abandoned it
Weatherman2020
Diamond Member
So you acknowledge your position ends up getting good people murdered, and you're fine with it.
Weatherman2020
Diamond Member
There are children in school today who were born prematurely before the legal abortion limit.
So you are fine with murdering babies and keeping murderers alive to murder again.
Typical leftist.
WinterBorn
Diamond Member
Not what I said at all. Are you saying that people convicted of capital crimes are the ONLY ones in a prison who would kill a guard?
Also, there are ways their jobs could be made more safe. But For Profit prisons won't spend the money.
Lysistrata
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The OP does not pose a valid question, since there is no way of knowing who among people who are against the death penalty are atheists. How can anyone know who is an atheist, regardless of opinion about the death penalty, unless they know an individual enough to know his/her views about the existence of a supreme being?
rightwinger
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<sob>. But.....but.....what about ABORTION????
Weatherman2020
Diamond Member
People serving life with no chance of parole have zero incentive for good behavior.
Weatherman2020
Diamond Member
Nailed you to the wall yet again.
rightwinger
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Their incentive is their living conditions for the rest of their lives
rightwinger
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But....but
What about ABORTION?
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