Peterson "Death Penalty, OT. Options

[914helo]

Well, look on the bright side. At least with him being a small, neat little guy he'll be very popular with the other prisoners in his cell block for the next 20 years. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grouphug.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[Curvie Roadlover]

Well, look on the bright side. At least with him being a small, neat little guy he'll be very popular with the other prisoners in his cell block for the next 20 years. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grouphug.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

A few years of some prison (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smlove2.gif) then (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hanged.gif)

[bongo monkey]

He won't last a year.

Child killers are the lowest of the low in prison. He'll get shivved soon enough.

[URY914]

He won't be playin' much golf now. But his cell mate sure will be (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Actually he'll be in his cell 23 hours a day. Not much interaction with his fellow inmates when your on the ROW.

[Howard]

Why bother? Just don't believe he will ever be executed. Automatic appeals will go for at least 20 years, and prosecution never really proved the case. He's just such a slime bag he was convicted. Far less on him than they had on OJ. Sooner or later sentence will be commuted, but I believe death row inmates now get 6 hours per day in the yard and no cellmate. That will probabaly take care of things.

Death penalty doesn't really play in CA. Manson and several serial killers are still alive and well.

[wheelo]

He's a Baaaad Man !.... Natural selection ..... I say just dump him in SF Bay ..... with some of those cement slippers.... Crabs will fix him! .... AAArrrrrGGGGG ! ... Oh,.... Richard Allen Davis ...he's still on death row .... Remember Polly Klas ? Waste of freak'n flesh ... These girley-men.... Solution = Calif. National Guard Firing Squad, make-it all volunteer duty (no prob.) save major time and $$$$$$$$$$$$ ..... just -do-it !

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool_shades.gif)

[Rgreen914]

Allow me to share some information taken from the pages of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and also some from my career with the California Department of Corrections. San Quentin is currently home to 630 inmates living on "Condemned Row"; CCWF at Chowchilla (Central California Women's Facility) is the home for the 11 female inmates currently under death sentence. The paper claims, "the state has executed just 10 inmates since it resumed capital punishment in 1978, a period in which 38 condemned inmates have died of other means." Of these, "three were killed by other inmates, a dozen committed suicide and the rest died of natural causes." The paper goes on to say, "of the 38 states with the death penalty, California has the greatest number of prisoners on Death Row and moves the slowest toward executions. None of ...(the) Death Row inmates has (yet) finished the mandatory court challenges." Once Peterson is sentenced to death, "he will sit on Death Row for more than five years before being appointed an attorney for his first and mandatory appeal to the California Supreme Court." He would then "join more than 200 others who do not yet have lawyers." ("There are too many inmates with too few lawyers willing to volunteer for the relatively low-paying job. Unlike in many states, California requires the lawyers to have rigorous capital litigation training.") Once his state appeals are exhausted, his case "would move to the federal courts, usually with a new appelate attorney." The case would then go to the district court and then to the infamous, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco. Eventually, it might end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
He will be housed in San Mateo County Jail while the Probation Department prepares a "Probation and Sentencing Report", though I can't imagine what they could possibly include in their report that hasn't been brought out in the trial. He will return to court for sentencing in February and will then be transported to San Quentin by San Mateo County deputies [assuming the Judge doesn't reduce the sentence to Life With Out (Parole) LWO]. Once he arrives in Quentin, he will then become the "property" of the Department of Corrections and be assigned a prison number. Assume that Peterson will be on "suicide watch" for most of his first few months at Quentin; he will most likely be totally isolated from the other condemned inmates due to his notoriety. The normal ratio of inmates to correctional officers is about 200 to 1 but I don't know if that holds true on Condemned Row. Nevertheless, I doubt Peterson's life would be worth much among his condemned neighbors, after all, they can only execute you once! And trust me...in his worst nightmares, he has never seen the kind of neighbors he will have at Q!!!

Ron Balderrama

[ablose58]

Give him what he rightfully deserves, a very slow and very painful DEATH (IMG:style_emoticons/default/chair.gif)

[Alison Baker]

Peterson is being sent to CMF in Vacaville till the 25th February when he gets his sentenced served...

I have been watching the case from day one...what made the jurors pick death someone asked....3 jurors that spoke

yesterday all said it was his lies, and if Peterson did testify they may have had a different verdict...In my point of view and

many others.

" Justice has been served "

[URY914]

The POS won't take the stand because he really has no excuse for his actions.

He just sat there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

P

[DNHunt]

I hope he rots in prison so long that his bung hole is so big there won't be any question he's empty before he meets the Devil.

Go get him boys.

Dave

[larryp]

Without bothering to address why there is not supposed to be a role of revenge in the justice department, let alone the fact that the criminal justice system is not even intended to punish or warehouse convicts but to rehabilitate them, or for that matter, that execution does not deter others from comitting heinous crimes, let's just look at this one particular matter.

Scott P might have killed his wife. He very likely did, for all the little facts I know (I sure as hell did not follow the case because I did not know the family and the media circus was unattractive when we are embroiled in two wars); but then lots of peoples' behavior looks bad and there are now literally hundreds of people convicted to die who were later found to be factually innocent of their crimes. (Many of them even confessed; educated people do amazing things under duress.) So if you think that the trial proved it, you are kidding yourselves. He is, as we say, "guilty" of killing his wife but that is just a finding from the jury. It does not mean he did so.

When it is the state versus you, the playing field is anything but level and the state typically does a very, very poor job; it is only their resources that permit them to win. OJ had resources to match and you saw what happened.

[dflesburg]

I say let him play golf with OJ...

This country has become ancient Rome...

Jerry Springer rejects are everywhere....

If he was OJ he would be free....

I think I am moving to the other side of the moon.

[Jeff Bonanno]

i won't be drawn into a political argument! (repeat as necessary)

CA has an alarming felon recidivism rate:

CA stats

[dmenche914]

LarryP I do not think you are correcting in stating execution does not deter others. I think it does reduce crime. If only we actually carried it out, rather than let them sit for years in jail, it would likely have a greater effect in detering crime.

Of course If there is any doubt in guilt, life in prison is better. But hell, we can't even execute killers caught redhanded in a timely fashion these days.

I recall vividly a radio interview many years ago. A store was robbed, and the two crooks were ready to leave, and one said to the other "lets kill the two witnesses", the other said "no way, I am no going to the chair (electric chair) over this" and they ended up fleeing without killing the robbed store owners.

Assuming that is all true, it appears that the potential death penalty prevented a double murder.

Petersons case, well We didn't hear all the evidence, but from what i did hear, there was no direct evidence, but tons of circumstantail evidence. In a case like that, with any doubt, life would be a better punishment, just in case a mistake is made. But if you got them redhanded, I fail to see any reason not to execute a killer, ecspecially a double or child murder case.

If someone breaks into my house, and captures me, I would prefer the threat of death over that robber if he kills me, than a threat of prison. Figure my odds of living are a bit better under that way, that is one reason the folks out here voted to re-instate the death penalty, and dump the liberal supreme court (california) Judge Birde that over turned every death penalty she came across.


Also, fire the prison guards, and their cushy pension plans, and get some real prisons, tents in the Mojave desert, sorrounded by rings of barbed wire with land mines in between. Have one water pipe go into the tent prison, any problems, shut off the water. Few gaurds needed, low cost, and they arent getting anything worse than our soilders. We spend too god damn much housing these crooks.

[ClayPerrine]

In prison they have cable TV, internet access, heat, AC, porno mags, conjugal visits (i.E. Nookie), weight rooms, libraries, just about any DAMN thing you could want. And they don't HAVE to work if they don't want to. Plus they don't have to pay taxes during their stay. Other than the threat of anal rape, it sounds like a country club..... The "people (and I use that term loosely)" that are incarcerated have it better than they do on the outside. Why should they want to leave? Prison should be someplace that you DO NOT want to go to.


Prison should be PUNISHMENT. Build a prison with 1 person cells. If they don't work, they sit in their cell all day. Work should be a chain gang. Why should we pay road contractors to repair the roads, and still pay to feed and house prisoners. WE can get some of the money back by putting them to work fixing roads for the state.

My basic proposal is that upon conviction, a felon should not have any rights except the right to appeal the conviction. For that they should be able to consult with their attorney, who works the appeal for them. Otherwise they are the property of the state, with NO RIGHTS. For that, all we should have to do for them is to feed them, clothe them, and provide them with a bed to sleep in. If they don't want to work, they sit in their cell at all times. Maybe that would keep people from convicting crimes. They get out and tell their friends that prison is a hard assed place word will get around that they dont' want to go there.

(gets down off soap box)

[larryp]

Gut feelings are nice, but the statistics do not bear it out. Even disregarding the studies, and there are many (and the fact that the overwhelming majority of capital crimes are committed in the heat of passion or in exigent circumstances, where cognitive thought is not exactly a prime factor), history alone tells us otherwise.

In Elizabethan England, when one was found guilty of treason against the Crown, you were hung for a while (but without sufficient fall to break your neck) and thereafter cut down while alive, then placed on a rack and broken (e.g., your joints were dislocated), then disembowled while alive, then quartered. Your limbs were sent to the corners of the empire and your head stuck on a spike, all to deter others from similarly plotting against the Crown. There was no appeal, it was agaonizing, and it was immediate. Worse than the pain was the belief that because of your act, and the manner of death, you would then spend eternity in hell. (I believe as well, but may be recalling incorrectly, that due to forfeit, your family would now be destitute.)

If that did not deter treason, and history plainly tells us it did not, what makes you think it would today?

[ClayPerrine]

Gut feelings are nice, but the statistics do not bear it out. Even disregarding the studies, and there are many (and the fact that the overwhelming majority of capital crimes are committed in the heat of passion or in exigent circumstances, where cognitive thought is not exactly a prime factor), history alone tells us otherwise.

In Elizabethan England, when one was found guilty of treason against the Crown, you were hung for a while (but without sufficient fall to break your neck) and thereafter cut down while alive, then placed on a rack and broken (e.g., your joints were dislocated), then disembowled while alive, then quartered. Your limbs were sent to the corners of the empire and your head stuck on a spike, all to deter others from similarly plotting against the Crown. There was no appeal, it was agaonizing, and it was immediate. Worse than the pain was the belief that because of your act, and the manner of death, you would then spend eternity in hell. (I believe as well, but may be recalling incorrectly, that due to forfeit, your family would now be destitute.)

If that did not deter treason, and history plainly tells us it did not, what makes you think it would today?

There is a big difference between a politically motivated crime, i.e. Treason to change the government, and a run of the mill street crime. Revolutinaries are usually educated people who feel that the government is wrong, and wants to change it for the better. Street crime is just simply done for the money or personal gratification. Different concept altogether. Make prison really punish the offenders, then we reduce street crime from the deterrent factor. It won't affect someone who commits crimes in the name of revolution. When they are motivated by the common good, even death is not a deterrent.

[larryp]

"Treason" then was street crime; it was simply against the govenrment. It was not for revolution.

We have a major dysfunction in this country as to the concept of crimes; do we want to rehabilitate people and make them useful or do we want retribution? (Remember that the reason we have the-not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity defense is that we believe (once believed?) that if you were not able to understand that what you did was wrong, or could not control yourself, there was no reason to punish you for your act since the act was not voluntary, or if voluntary, not subjectively wrong.) So we have as a country decided that rehabilitation is the answer ... AHA! ... except for certain crimes (and certain people -- overwhelmingly black and/or Southern and/or indigent), we want punishment, not rehab. So we look for ways to justify it; the Congress tells us it is for the "worst" crimes and the boys in blue tell us it deters crime. Whatever, but the inherent inconsistency makes for insane laws and an insane system.

That is why the concept of "victims' statements" and sentencing and parole hearings is illogical; we KNOW there were victims, that is why there was a trial in the first place. But the impact of the harm is not especially relevant to the disposition of the offender, especially at parole, if the offender is in fact reformed.

Further deponent sayeth not. I am out of here.

[Howard]

This is not political, nor racial, nor religious. Just a good debate.

Our distinguished colleagues from Texas and Connecticut make excellent arguments for each side of this coin. How about a compromise?

The death penalty has not proven to be a deterrent. Do you think someone crazy enough to kill his wife and unborn child worries about the punishment? How about the suicide bombers? How do we threaten them? And what if there's a one in a thousand chance the convict didn't do it? You want to explain that to his family? Economic arguments don't wash either, as the mandatory appeals cost the State far more than keeping the lifer.

The true purpose of incarceration (or worse) should be to protect society. Removal of freedom and being confined with others 'of his type' is, IMHO, punishment enough. Just keep them in a place where they cannot harm me or mine. Lock 'em up and throw away the key.Military style POW camps with Geneva convention guidelines seem ideal.