so long, you jerk

[Todd-'o'-Vision]

Napoleon Beazley is dead. He pumped bullets into the head of a 63 year-old man so that he could steal his car for a one-block joyride. Now the State of Texas has executed Beazley.

The anti-death penalty crowd is upset. Beazley was three months short of his 18th birthday when he did the deed. He was executed at the age of 25. Everywhere you look liberals are whining about Texas “executing a child.” Take international busybody Desmond Tutu, for instance. Tutu says Texas took a child from his family and executed him. The Amnesty-International crowd says that “the brutal practice of executing ‘children’ is in complete and utter defiance of international law.”

The big lie at work. Run this “children” nonsense up the flagpole enough times and folks are going to think it’s a real flag. Beazley was 25 when executed. An odd age for a child, don’t you think?

 

[Todd-'o'-Vision]

Executing 'children,' and other death-penalty myths

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | There were tears and sighs aplenty when Napoleon Beazley was put to death last week, eight years after he pumped two .45-caliber bullets into the head of a defenseless 63-year-old, rifled the dead man's pockets to get his keys, and then stole his car for a one-block joyride. But the tears and sighs weren't for Beazley's victim, John Luttig; or for Luttig's widow, who watched her husband die and was nearly killed herself; or for their children and grandchildren, whose lives sustained a wound that night that will never fully heal.


The tears and sighs were for Beazley. And why? Because at the time he committed what even he later called a "heinous" and "senseless" murder, his 18th birthday was still three months off. That was enough to send the anti-death penalty spin machine into overdrive.


"I am astounded," wrote Bishop Desmond Tutu, "that Texas [and other states] take children from their families and execute them."


"Texas must recognize," thundered Sue Gunawardena-Vaught of Amnesty International, "that the brutal practice of executing *children* is in complete and utter defiance of international law."


"Of those nations executing children," an aghast Jeannine Scott wrote in The New Abolitionist, "the United States is far in the lead."


It's hard to say which is more offensive -- the pretense that giving a lethal injection to a 25-year-old convicted murderer amounts to "executing children," or the spectacle of people who never shed a tear for the innocent John Luttig weeping so noisily for his killer.


In any case, the age issue is a red herring. No state allows the death sentence for anyone younger than 16, and no one younger than 23 has been executed in modern times. Anti-execution activists seized on Beazley's age for the same reason they seized on Karla Faye Tucker's death row conversion to Christianity and Ricky McGinn's last-minute plea for DNA testing: They'll seize on any excuse to keep a murderer alive, no matter how lame the excuse or how obvious the murderer's guilt.


That is their right, of course -- in a way, it is even part of the super-due process the US criminal justice system affords capital defendants -- but it would be nice if they sometimes acknowledged the truth: They aren't opposed to unjust or tainted executions, they are opposed to all executions, period. The Beazley brouhaha was simply one more skirmish in their ongoing (and very well-funded) campaign to wipe out capital punishment.


So is their call for a death-penalty moratorium.


Opponents of capital punishment loudly insist that death sentences are meted out unfairly and incompetently, that the criminal justice system is broken, and -- worst of all -- that scores of innocent defendants are being sent to death row. These are grotesque exaggerations, based mostly on a handful of anecdotes (didja hear the one about the lawyer who fell asleep?) or highly tortured statistics, like the phony claim that there is a 68 percent error rate in capital cases.


The truth is that capital punishment in America is the most accurate and carefully administered criminal sanction in the world, and the public has good reason to support it. The latest Gallup poll shows that 72 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for murderers, while only 25 percent oppose it. Indeed, nearly half of the public (47 percent) says that the death penalty isn't imposed often enough, more than double the 22 percent who think it is imposed too often.


Hence the call for a moratorium. Americans are being urged not to abolish executions but merely to suspend them long enough to identify and fix any problems. "Whether you support or oppose capital punishment," goes the ACLU's pitch, "we need a moratorium on executions to give us time to figure out why the system is not working."


It's a clever appeal, geared to Americans' sense of fair play, and there are signs it is having an impact. Illinois and Maryland have adopted moratoriums. The idea is under consideration in other states. Writing in The New Republic, Peter Beinart suggests that endorsing a national death-penalty moratorium could be a winning issue for a Democratic presidential candidate. With a largely anti-death penalty media cheering in the background, perhaps it could.


To be sure, some moratorium proponents are in fact death penalty supporters who sincerely believe that there are correctable problems with the way it is currently administered. That was the thinking behind the moratorium in Illinois, a state where judges and policemen have been convicted of corruption and where a number of capital defendants were wrongly convicted.


But most of those calling for a national moratorium see it as a prelude to ending executions for good. As usual, they are not being straightforward about their motives -- or about what we could expect if they get their way.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jeff/jacoby.html

 

[RhumbRunner13]

Todd O.....

...for all the crap you take for your religious posts I'm surprised to see you jump in on this subject so strongly! I couldn't agree more strongly with the posts though, let's see what crawls out of the woodwork on this one, huh?

Rhumb

 

[unclej]

well let me crawl out on the support for capital punishment side. and it's not really that i'm rabbidly in favor of killing people but the bottom line is that it's the law in texas and if you are willing to break the law you should pay the price.

the fact that this asshole was a "kid" is pretty ludicrous also. the age of consent in texas is 17. it's sad that 17, 16 even 15 year olds and younger kill so quickly but the fact that they are "kids" doesn't negate their action.

suck it up folks and quit yer fuckin' bellyachin'. he did it and he paid for it. case closed. karma paid.

 

[Todd-'o'-Vision]

Re: Todd O.....

...for all the crap you take for your religious posts I'm surprised to see you jump in on this subject so strongly! I couldn't agree more strongly with the posts though, let's see what crawls out of the woodwork on this one, huh?

Rhumb

God is pro-capital punishment, I figure I might as well follow the leaders example, though I generally prefer him to be the judge of things, but when the evidence is clear such as this case, I think there is authority for it.

Questionable cases I do observe a right to seek out further investigation. But for these cases, where every thing is laid out in the wide open, well no thought required.

Yeah its true, I am a fuckwad

 

[Ishmael]

A little off thread, but just to show how nuts it gets.

Maxine Waters (D. CA) slipped a little rider into the tax hike of '93. Basically it provided a monthly stipend for teenagers to get a haircut. The theory being that this would contribute to their 'self esteem'. OK, that's a done deal.

The kicker is that teenager is defined as anyone between the ages of 11 and 29.

Having fun yet?

Ishmael

 

[fgarvb1]

Todd,The afore said murder took place in Tyler, Texas which is famous for amoung other things its roses. I remember when it happened,around 1993, I think and i believe the man killed was a lawyer (i think) of some local renown.

I don't live in Tyler, Although the whole story has been carried in our local paper and on our TV news.

It was indeed a crime worthy of capital punishment. The amazing part of the whole thing it took less than ten years to carry out.

Only this year a man was put to death for a stabbing a woman to death while robbing a gas station here in my town. That only took twenty five or so years.

No..No, Here in Texas we don't give them the chop lightly or with out due process.

Do we wish we could be 100% certain of our decisions all the time and that the legal trials are 100% as they should be?

Damn right! The trouble is we are all human and must do the best we can.
What we are NOT willing to do is let people who have commited murder run around loose to kill again and again.

I have said it before and will say it again, I have yet to see a dead man kill anyone else or break out of prison or get their sentance changed.

Our laws here in texas are generous when it comes to using deadly force and cold blooded murder is not a defense.

 

[bored1]

Im sure he was really sorry for his "mistake".He probably had a a difficult childhood. If only he had signed up for midnight basketball.

 

[penguindance]

 

[CAROSI]

He was more than "adult" enough to know what he was doing.