Petersen headed for death row
 

no comment from Suge Knight.

ok, so scott P will spend the rest of his miserable life on death row. it is decided. wouldn't it be better to just spend the $.02 on lead now, rather than pay to keep him there for the next 30-40 years?

i understand he has the right to appeal, but if he doesn't file an appeal, what are we waiting for? inject him, gas him, hang him, shoot him, hell i don't care, club him with a blunt object - just don't leave him sitting on death row.

this rant isn't really about this particular case, but about all the folks sitting on death row. if they don't have an appeal in process, why are they still breathing?

I say cut his head off and throw him in the San Francisco Bay. And I'm not a violent person...really.

i think he is a scumbag, but my rant really is more general. i've been listening to the talking heads go on and on about life on death row, and i have to say that maybe this should be in the "when you don't get it thread" because i really don't get it. they've been found guilty of their crime, the jury wen tback and decided they deserved the death penalty, so barring an appeal why is anyone sitting on death row.

my mental image of death row is 8 guys sitting around waiting for their appeal to be heard... oops, they heard Larry's appeal today, so there will only be 7 of us tomorrow.

then i heard someone say that death row is a horrible place to be (awww) because they are in complete isolation without any human contact. well, let's fix that. why are we paying for separate rooms? are we afraid that if we put them in one big room they might kill each other? if so, i don't see that as a problem. mo and curly get in a scrap on death row and mo doesn't live... i don't see a problem, i see an opportunity for savings.

let's throw them all in one room tell them that the last survivor gets some mysterious prize and they will get the chance to be on a reality tv show. i'm sure there is a market for dvd sales here.

CELL BLOCK 2005!! *announcer voice* who will live? who will die? who will collect the prize. welcome to Cell Block 2005 - this week we will watch 127 convicted felons compete for their lives AND a chance to win the grand prize - an evening with MICHAEL JACKSON!!! 127 men and women with the knowledge that there Can be only One! *cue the music, fade to an Isuzu commercial*

it is income for the state and it eliminates the cost of caring for the walking dead.

I have to admit, from the very beginning of this debacle, a little voice in the back of my mind has been saying, "Dude, you never know, she could have been a total bitch."

Not that it would have been ok for him to murder her even if she had been... but I find that for some reason, in this particular case, I am completely unable to judge him--that part of me keeps picturing her throwing dishes and says, well, maybe he had a good reason to cut her head off and throw her body in the bay.

Maybe there's something about that one picture of her (the one all the news agencies are using) that sets off my bitch-alarm, or maybe she subconsciously reminds me of someone I hated as a child. Or maybe I'm just subtly misogynistic to begin with.

well for me personally, i don't care how big of a wench she was, you always have the ability to walk away. you just don't murder the ones that you vowed to love, honor, and protect. and then when you add in the fact that, wench that she may be, you don't kill a woman preparing to give birth to your child. from my perspective, there is just something inhuman about the thought process needed for that process.

I lean toward thinking he did it, but I don't think he should have been convicted using the evidence they did. I'm amazed they found him guilty and very surprised they gave him the death penalty on such weak and circumstantial evidence.

Why is it you see women cheering when this guy gets the death penalty, yet making excuses for someone like Andrea Yates who makes Scott Peterson look like a boyscout? Why is it they think she needs help after murdering 5 of her children when Scott Peterson should be killed? One of her kids saw what she was did to the others and ran away. She chased him down and dragged him kicking and screaming to the bathtub where she drowned him in the same tub as his baby sister.

In her case the evidence was clear and indisputable. In his it was flimsy at best. It's ridiculous.

Also, the only person who was killed was the mother. A fetus is not a person and has no rights and can no more be murdered than you can murder a brick.

Ya know, I agree with you there. I've always had the feeling that she wasn't quite as likable as everyone said. But Scott Petersen is still a major sleazeball.

That was part of the defense in the Robert Blake murder case.

As far as appeals go, one reason is that since the state intends to deliberately take a human life, the process has to be as fair and above board as possible.

Just looking at some of the death row exonerations , I am glad that the state took its time. Statistically speaking, considering the number of exonerations of death row inmates, the odds are that innocent people have been executed.

The Innocence Project has claimed 153 exonerations. Many of the people on death row are guilty, just not of murder. Vagrancy, drug possesion, and any number of lesser crimes can make a person the target of police and prosecutors trying to close a case.

In some cases the defense was inadequate. In others, the defendent was too mentally handicapped to effectively participate in his defense or pass interrogation.

So I am very happy that there is a cooling off period, expecially in cases relying on circumstantial or even single eyewitness testimony.

Meh--California's executed a mere ten people since 1978. Currently there are 650 people awaiting executions in that state. Scott Peterson will die of old age on death row.

i agree clod. however, radar has a significant point. andrea is allowed her life while scott will, like you say, die of old age on death row. my answer is plain and simple. give one appeal, you loose? you loose. end of chapter, end of book. so long fair well, yadayada. i'll betcha i could save the state a BUNCH of money. hell, i'm all for public execution. hang'em all! (after their appeal of course)

Clod, If California is anything like Connecticut you're probably right. Michael Ross has been on CT's death row for nearly 20 years now, he's been through all the appeals processes, his execution date has come and gone several times and now he's telling the state he wants to die for his crimes and they still wont fry his ass. In this case there is no question of his guilt or innocence, he freely confessed to the murders and rapes, found guilty and sentenced to death. He's in no way mentally impaired yet because he wants to die, the state's contention is that he must be crazy.

I like Lookout's idea but we all know it'll never happen.

Michael Ross tells judge he wants to die

Is wanting to die, but not being allowed to die worse than wanting to live but not being allowed to live? I guess as long as you're alive there's hope. But hope can hurt you every bit as much as it can help you. I'd never die of old age in prison. I'd kill myself.

I wonder if they have Ross on suicide watch for that very reason...he's likely figured he'll die in prison waiting to be killed before he actually gets his turn. And if the people in charge of keeping death row inmates alive long enough are bright enough, they'll figure that would be his next move.

Unless Ross has personal opposition to doing himself in...

Actually, he's not on a watch right now but he did try to do himself in a few years ago. Saved up his daily restricted medications and overdosed. After that they made him promise to be a good boy and wait for the state to get their collective shit together to do it the right way. Obviously he's still waiting. :eyebrow:

When Ross was first sentenced and put on death row back in 1985, we had no 'death row' per se, he was the first since the 1960's. They put him in the cell reserved for the next *dead man* and set up a desk in front of it so we could have a guard posted there 24/7. I spent many a long, boring 2nd shift nights watching Ross sleep, eat, taking a crap, and even talking to him on occasion. It was well over a year before a CC tv was put in place so we could watch him from the officer's desk at the front of the cell block.

i understand due process and all but the fact that it takes sooooooo long is absolutely mind boggling. The fact that there are 650 in front of Peterson is also mid boggling...what's the point. He will just end up dying in prison anyway - he should be shot. Just end it.

The 'Quotation Of The Day' in todays NYTimes:

Uh, ya think?

I wonder how much more costly it is to keep someone on death row over the general prison population? :confused:

Hide the children. Looks Andrea will now go free. Since she has no more children to murder (to prevent them from going to hell), she will have lots of free time that she can use to "save" the children of the neighbors or the local day care center or the mall. They should have buried her with her kids. Alive.

Oh geez. I certainly hope they're going to retry her. I believe the woman is seriously messed up in the head, but she definitely needs to locked up somewhere. :yelsick:

It's not like she just snapped and killed her kids one day, she had a long history of being a psycho and not taking good care of them - so why did Rusty leave the kids alone with her? Yes, she should be locked up or put to death, but why does Rusty get to walk away?

For the same reason that the girl who got her boyfriend to beat her in the abdomen with a baseball bat until she miscarried gets to walk away, I guess.

A source other than WND.

The legislators who passed the law preventing those under-18 from getting a legal abortion without their parent's permission should be on trial for that one. This was a predictable (and likely predicted) result.

I'm pretty sure that Andrea Yates isn't 'going free' anywhere. . . I thought it was just a decision as to whether she will do her time in a jail cell or on a mental ward unit. . . no? Criminally insane, that sort of thing?

Under the age of 18 individuals aren't free to do a lot of things without parental notification and consent. A 17 year old girl can't go in and get a breast augmentation or reduction, oral surgery, or even lasic surgery done without parental notification. if they can't do those things, why would it be acceptable for them to go in and have an abortion without notifying the parents?

Under 18, in most states, a female can't even give consent to sexual relations with someone over 18. She can't even sign up for extra curricular activities at the school without parental consent. The reasoning is that she is too young to know what is, and isn't in her best interests. Hell, intheory she can't even go to some movies.

I'm not preaching to ban abortion, but I think parental consent is reasonable to expect before performing a surgical procedure on a child. Even though they may not look like kids on the outside, they still are children.

I'm pretty sure that Andrea Yates isn't 'going free' anywhere. . . I thought it was just a decision as to whether she will do her time in a jail cell or on a mental ward unit. . . no? Criminally insane, that sort of thing?

She's getting a new trial. I'm sure the second jury will find her just as guilty as the first one.

yeah, more tax payer money for someone they should have just shot the day they found her.

This one falls in my "why doesn't matter" category.

i hear you. i don't think there could possibly be any acceptable or understandable reason for this behaviour. the world would be better served if the cops walked over to Ms Yates, she confessed, the cops brought in an unbiased third party to witness the confession again. everybody nods at each other before putting two holes in her forehead. insane or not, she's just a waste of oxygen at this point.

Not to nitpick or anything, but isn't she innocent until proven guilty? I think she's a wacko who deserves what she gets, but they still gotta give her a "legitimate" trial, like it or not.

And BTW, what about the taxpayer money being used to support the babies of teenage girls who are too scared to tell their parents they're pregnant? I don't want to pay for those kids--maybe people who support parental notification should. :yelgreedy

Speaking of Peterson (I am), The other day I saw a website claiming that he was railroaded and asked for donations to secure his release and find the real culprit. :eek:
I won't bother to go look for it because I know you don't want to donate.

yeah, i know, just being facetious. i support innocent til proven guilty but get frustrated when it all devolves into stupid twists of the law. she's guilty. it was proven. pop her. move on.
or how about just having the family pay for themselves? there is an idea, don't turn to the government every time there is a problem.

but Bruce is right, these arguments are for different threads.

That's the problem with some aspects of the criminal process. It's a given that she is guilty of killing her kids. In a situation like this it is a case of determining which specific crime, by the letter of the law, that she has commited.

That's the parent's and the media's fault.

I agree dude--I'm being facetious too :biggrin:

Don't mind me, I just wanted to stick that Peterson thing in. Carry on. :)

yeah, whatever. Bruce, you are totally the thread police. always busting our chops to prevent thread hijacking... :D

Because the possibility of an abortion is irrefutable proof that the person is old enough to have one. And because unlike any of those other operation, an abortion has to be done SOON. Because it should not be a parent's choice about whether her teenaged daughter has a child.

I disagree with many other ages of consent, but even if we must have them, we should not have one for abortion.

They are NOT children. They are adolescents. There's a big difference, that difference being the one which makes abortion an issue at all.

It's not about her. It's about a witness for the prosecution lying. A tainted conviction is a stain on the whole system, whether the person was guilty or not.

HM are there any doubts in anyone's mind that she killed her children? If they were talking about the only piece of evidence that was used to convict being tainted, that is one thing. that isn't the case here. she did it, everyone knows it. quit screwing around with the legal wrangling and be done with it.

If the says they aren't old enough to decide who they want to have sex with without restriction, then they aren't old enough to decide. the physical ability to get pregnant doesn't say anything about decision making ability. By your reasoning that 9 year old that got pregnant last year should have been able to walk into the clinic and have an abortion without her parents knowing about it.
If a parent or guardian has to sign off on every other aspect of a minor's life, there shouldn't be an exception on one surgical procedure.

It's not a question of guilt really, it's a question of whether she was crazy or not. The guy testified that she got the idea to drown her kids and claim insanity from watching a tv show.
Really I don't know what difference it makes in the end, except that she was clearly nuts and her jackass husband left the kids alone with her and should bear some of the responsibilty for their murders.

It's not about her. It's about not letting corrupt prosecutions slide. If someone committed murder on national TV and signed a confession in Wrigley Field with 3000 witnesses, and the prosecution still felt the need to give false evidence in order to bump up the sentence - even though a conviction was guaranteed - then that prosecution deserves to lose, and the person deserves a new trial, with REAL evidence. If you can say "but that's a bad person, they don't deserve a fair trial", then you don't believe in fair trials at all.

I've always thought the husband should be held partially responsible, too. He knew his wife was severely messed up, but left her alone with the kids. He also knew that she had post-partum depression/psychosis after the third or fourth kid was born. Why didn't he use birth control until she got better? Andrea Yates is responsible for her own actions, but there should be some sort of neglect charges put on the husband.

A couple hundred years ago, the kid would have quietly been given some pennyroyal tea or some other herbal abortificent by the local midwife and no one else would have been the wiser. Yay progress.

believe me i do understand that jinx. but consider your own daughter. (just hypothetically - don't throw anything at me) if she was 15 and got pregnant, would you rather that she be able to just walk into a clinic and "take care of it" or would you prefer that she come to you and jim, face the music and you, as a family, can explore your options. she may still end up at the clinic, but at least it is with the support of the family. yes, you and jim would be upset, hurt, and angry, but your number one concern would be for her safety.

in a way you are right HM. i don't believe that fair trials exist. our justice system has very little justice in it. when criminals can get off because of technicalities, i don't see that as being fair to the victims - and i have more concern for them than the criminal.

If I don't have the kind of relationship with my daughter that would make her want to come to me in that situation, I wouldn't want a law in place that forced her to, absolutely not.

I just love multi-threaded threads...

In they eyes of the law there is no distinction between a child and an adolescent when it comes to responsibility of the parents, so it makes no sense to make it ok for the child to put the parents into the position of being responsible for the outcome of a risky medical procedure if they aren't responsible for the procedure in the first place.

Ultimately the letter of the law should govern because without some sort of framework to work within things would become too subjective. Ideally, when a law doesn't match the intent of its framers then it should be revamped to be more just. The woman is not going to get off due to a technicality, she is going to get a new trial that will be more fair as well as exposing the public to more of the truth about the government that they still trust for some reason.

Trials aren't for the victim. They are for society. It isn't the job of the court to make the victim feel better, but to make sure that laws are followed and the correct penalty is given, and in that endeavor the victim is nothing more than a primary witness.

A fundamental basis of the US legal system is that it is better for a hundred guilty people to go free than for one innocent person to be imprisoned, and that is why the laws governing prosecutions are so strict. If a law can be broken so an "obviously guilty" person gets a few more years, then it can also be broken so a "probably guilty" person seems "obviously guilty". If it becomes more important to find guilt than to determine guilt, that is a much larger injustice than a victim being disappointed that someone got life instead of death.

Also exposing the public to the cost. In some cases in the millions. :eyebrow:

unfortunately, it was the "public" (prosecutor's witness) that created the freakin' problem by confusing a Law And Order episode with an old news reel of Susan Smith. :unsure:

Park Dietz is usually more competent than that. He's provided expert witness testimony in a lot of trials.