The Death Penalty, Intelligentsia, and Corrupt Visions

This is hardly a cheerful subject for December is it? Nonetheless, I'm posting something about it here because I just read a very interesting article over at Captain's Quarters, and because one of the purposes of our blog is to introduce newsworthy topics to our Progeny as we work at helping them grow up to be responsible, thoughtful, voting citizens. There are hard issues that informed people need to work through, and this is one of them.

Theoretically, I don't have a problem with executing those guilty of certain crimes. In practice, I worry about accidentally executing the innocent and am more ambivilant about the death penalty over all. I don't know if I could vote for the death penalty because I don't think our justice system is just enough to insure the guilty are always convicted. Too often the guilty go free, and I worry very much about the innocent being convicted.

On the other hand, many people have died because their killers did not get the death penalty for previous murders. So I guess innocent people die in either case. On the other hand, I'm a lot more squeamish about the state ordered execution of the innocent, but I'm not sure I have a good reason for that. Squeamishness is hardly a logical reason for an opinion.

But enough about me- see this post at Captain Ed's place (it's not by Captain Ed- he's opposed to the death penalty). Read the comments too. There are thoughtful people asking hard, thought provoking questions on both sides.

Here's an excerpt from the post:

I'm not a good enough theologian to even try to convince you of the moral
propriety of the death penalty, but I would like to take a stab at the LWOP
argument. It seems to me that it isn't enough to say that the people of
California could have simply chosen to keep a killer like Tookie locked up
forever. Getting rid of the death penalty means that we have to also consider
the foreseeable consequences of guaranteeing criminals that they can kill as
many innocent people as they want, for whatever reason at all, without even
facing the theoretical possibility of placing their own lives at risk.
A few
examples to make my point: Suppose we have a career criminal with a long record
of violent felonies, what we in California would call a "three-striker", who
knows that he will be sent to prison for the rest of his life if he is ever
caught committing a new offense. When he goes to rob the local convenience
store, he doesn't want to hurt anyone - he just wants the money. But he also
knows that, as there is no death penalty, he will face the exact same punishment
(life imprisonment) whether or not he kills the clerk, the only witness to his
crime. He would be a fool not to do so. If he happens to bump into a police
officer on the way out, he may as well kill him too - there is no extra charge,
so to speak.

Captain Ed wrote briefly about his views on the death penalty here.

What do I think about the death penalty? I still don't know. What do I think about the behavior of the anti-death penalty MSM, Hollywood, and politico types who choose somebody like Tookie Williams as their poster boy? That's a little easier to decide.

The Anchoress, as undecided as I am (I think) on the death penalty wrote about the Tookie case and the disturbing view it gives us of the Hollywood mind:

I haven’t commented until now, because frankly, I haven’t completely formed my opinion on the death penalty. I know all the arguements - I think they all have merit - and I have not been able to come to an absolute opinion of my own, and so I say nothing.

But when I heard on the radio the ubiquitous Jesse Jackson talking about Tookie’s “strength” as though he was some sort of martyr (Political Teen has video) I just couldn’t help thinking to myself…when Cardinal Ratzinger became Benedict XVI, he couldn’t BUY this sort of sympathetic coverage. While tonight we hear about how Tookie “did more good than harm,” all we heard last April was that the new pope was a hardcase - relentless and inflexible and probably mean, too.

When I got home, I said all of this to my husband and he - not a man given to scripture quotation - said, “in those days men will call good evil and evil good…”

And Michelle Malkin blogged about it in her hard-hitting, pull no punches, straightforward fashion:

Jesse Jackson, the racial demagogue-turned-wannabe Death Row gawker, is desperately lobbying to be one of Tookie Williams' execution witnesses, according to cable news reports.

Reader Doug from Upland e-mails that the crusading Rev. Jackson did not know the names of Williams' victims when asked by KFI-AM radio talk show hosts John and Ken.

[Update: Reader Denise R. writes, "I was listening to [KFI host] John Zi[e]gler, he actually asked Jesse Jackson the names of the victims on a couple of occasions and his microphone was taken from him by Judge Mathis (the TV judge) and broken. He also was pushed by Jackson supporters, after that happened he was forced away from Jackson by Sheriff's Deputies.]

On MSNBC this evening, host Tucker Carlson told his "friend" Al Sharpton that he would spare him embarassment by not asking him the names of the victims.

Michelle Malkin linked to this article at Blacknews.com, written by LA actor and writer Joseph Philips. The whole article is worth a read, but I'll just share three paragraphs:

Here again, wealthy celebrities are telling hard working, law-abiding citizens that the example offered by them is inadequate to save their communities; the models of competence, creativity and virtue that are alive in these neighborhoods is simply insufficient. No matter that hundreds of young people find the strength of character - the hope -- to resist the gang life. No matter that many of the stars have themselves found the strength to rise out of the tough streets. All that means nothing as compared to the words and example of Tookie Williams.

On Sunday November 13, one week before the "Save Tookie" rally at San Quentin, fourteen-year old William Cox and a friend were attending a neighborhood carnival when they were gunned down by a man who mistook them for rival gang members. Cox, who was not in a gang, was struck in the chest and died at the scene. That is the evil wrought by Stanley Williams!

Of course Snoop and Danny Glover did not hold a rally for William Cox. His death went unnoticed by the Hollywood commissars of compassion. They were too busy trying to save the life of a cold-blooded killer to notice one more young life snuffed out by gang violence. That tells you all you need to know about the corrupt vision the Hollywood left has for America...