Justice Denied

As I wrote in January of this year, the continuing appeals of those on Death Row makes a mockery of justice.  Is it any wonder that killers believe they can get away with murder when they learn of the case of Thomas Francis Edwards?  He died in prison after spending 22 years fighting his execution. 

Edwards was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of a 12-year-old Orange County, California girl.  This case was the subject of a Los Angeles Times November 2008 article.  That aricle quoted state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George, “The leading cause of death on California’s death row is old age.”

You Murder You Die!

If Americans were serious about stopping the killings reported on the 6 o’clock news we would have already put laws into place that tell everyone “we mean business.”  Swiftly carrying out the death penalty every single time would deliver the message.

The arguments about the use of the death penalty will never go away.  Those who view the penalty as inappropriate for a moral and just society continue to offer the same worn out words that have always been used.

Hugo Adam Bedau in his excellent on-line article The Case Against The Death Penalty sums up all the arguments.  “The American Civil Liberties Union holds that the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantee of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws.”  Bedau goes on to question the idea that the death penalty is not a deterrent, that there is an inherent unfairness because the penalty has been applied to Black people more often than White people, inevitability of errors, and offers contention of barbarity and retribution.     

 

The problem with all these arguments is that most of those standing for those views have not been part of the devastated families that have lost family members to violence.  It’s a loss of life that cannot ever be forgotten.  Gangster killings are the most painful because they result in the loss of totally innocent lives.  4-year-old Roberto Lopez Jr. was shot and killed near his Los Angeles home in what police believe was gang violence.  These are not just events that happen in Los Angeles.  The husband of U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York was killed in the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting massacre.     The killer was Colin Ferguson.  He was sentenced to 200 years in prison, on February 17, 1995.   The death penalty was established in New York State following the massacre.

 

Clearly I can kill in California without fear of actually being put to death.  That is the problem with the death penalty.  The process of actually going into a gas chamber takes a life time and many people have died of natural causes while awaiting the actual penalty.  ACLU’s web site tells us why the death penalty has failed to deter murder.

 

My view is if you premeditate a murder the penalty is death.  The only exceptions are self defense or the murderer is insane.  The determination of appeals should not take 20 years.