A must-read aritcle from Sr. Prejean:

[XanaDUer]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040505L.shtml

The effects of the pope's leadership will be felt for years to come, both in the highest echelons of the Catholic hierarchy and among the Catholic faithful in the pews. Whereas polls once showed that American Catholics supported the death penalty about as much as other Americans, they now show that support for the death penalty among Catholics has fallen below 50 percent. Just last month, Catholic bishops in the United States inaugurated a vigorous educational campaign to end the death penalty.

[Cuban_Liberal]

1. I just love Sr. Helen.

Maybe--- just maybe--- we will finally succeed in ridding ourselves of the abomination of capital punsihment.

:thumbsup:

[DemBones DemBones]

2. I think we all hope and pray the US will soon end the death penalty.

As most DUers probably know, though many may not personally remember, the Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment for several years, with the decision being made about 1971 -- give or take a year, I was very busy with a baby born in 1970. ;-)

The years before SCOTUS reinstuted it were good years for all who believe in the sanctity of life, even the life of the worst criminals/sinners.

[Cuban_Liberal]

3. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972)

It was a good decision. Too bad the states didn't get the hint...

*sigh*

[DemBones DemBones]

4. But the ban lasted for years, into the

eighties, didn't it? As I remember, Gary Gilmore was the first person executed when the death machine that is capital punishment was re-booted in the U.S., and he was executed by firing squad in New Mexico, IIRC.

Anyway, there's a good chance it will be outlawed again in our lifetime. I hope we'll see laws banning euthanasia enacted, too, and a change in people's attitudes and behavior regarding abortion so that the demand for abortion will be greatly reduced. We need more respect for life in this country, whether it's the life of convicted murderers, the life of the severely disabled, or the life of the unborn.

I pray for the scales to fall from the eyes of Catholic judges who support the death penalty, in particular Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. (I'm not sure how Justice Kennedy votes on this issue.)

[Princess Turandot]

5. Oddly, the people of the state of NY for years wanted the death penalty..

the Republican Senate & Democratic Assembly, who get along so well that this was the first time in many years that NYS passed a budget before the fiscal year began, both always submitted a DP bill to the Governor, who for at least a dozen years was Mario Cuomo, who would not sign the bill. Pataki ran only on the DP in his campaign. That and I think Cuomo -fatigue won him the election. No one was ever executed and the law was subsequently determined to be unconstitutional by a state court. There has been no effort to come up with a new bill, probably because the will of the people has changed, now that NYC is abt the safest large city in the US. (The Assembly is Democratic because of NYC.)

I confess that I am not a total opponent of the DP. I used to be, but post 9-11, were we to capture Bin Laden, I realized that I believe he should be executed, unless they were willing to put him into the general population at Attica State prison. My view is that certain crimes are so heinous that society as a whole cannot forgive them, because they are perpetrated by people who are not human: multiple murders by sociopaths (Ted Bundy & Timothy McVeigh, not that poor ill woman who drowned her kids in Texas or the insane Uni-bomber), people who kill individuals that they kidnap, and people who kill children pursuant to sexual assault. I think they embody the evil that the Pope believed in, even while he rejected the notion that the 'fire and brimstone hell' loved by the fundamentalist zealots, was something that one could be sure of. While it is true that these days such individuals can be incarcerated permenently,and thus protect society,I believe that they deserve to feel the terror that their victims did.I don't think that the families of the people who died in the OKC bombing need to suffer for the rest of their lives by hearing abt the ongoing life of Timothy McVeigh. And it is hard to forget that Ted Bundy, although not yet convicted of any murders, was smart enough to escape from jail on 2 different occasions, and killed at least 4 women after that. My heart goes out to the father of Polly Klass, killed in California by a paroled sex offender, knowing that a Canadian anti-DP legal group actually maintains a website on which people on death row can publish their thoughts, writings & artwork.

Of course, most of the people executed in the US fall into none of those categories, are represented by people who are lawyers in name only, and are disproportionately non-caucasion. I don't think too many of them fit my criteria. Generally, the people who do really really bad things with intent, wind up with world class legal defense, not lawyers who fall asleep at the defense table during trial. I think that the DP should only be administered on a federal level, assuming that we had a normal federal government!

I wonder if JP II had the ability to go back in history to the years before Adolph Hitler rose to power, and be able to kill him, what he would have done. I would kill him in a heart-beat. Hitler's life was not worth the fifty million people who died because of him, and the consequences that it meant for so many people afterwards.

As to the RCs on the SCOTUS who support the DP, they make their decisions on neither moral or legal grounds. They are worthless, and not just because of the death penalty.