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Execution brings out strong feelings about death penalty


Execution brings out strong feelings about death penalty
Posted: Oct 26, 2010 3:38 PM Updated: Nov 02, 2010 2:14 AM
By JD Wallace - bio | email

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) – A group of people gathered in midtown Monday to keep their message against the death penalty alive.

"Because I oppose the death penalty," explained Nancy Mairs as she protested with members of Coalition of Arizonans Against the Death Penalty on the corner of Speedway and Campbell.  Mairs said that her foster son Ron DuGay was fatally shot in the head ten years ago.  His killer has not been found, and Mairs said that if they are, she does not want them to be executed.

"We would have liked to have them caught so that they couldn't do it again," Mairs said.  "But we consider ourselves fortunate to have not been put through the grueling trial so many homicide survivors go through."

"When Muhammad was put to death, I thought justice was served," Cheryll Shaw said at a family home.  Her father, Jerry Taylor, was killed by D.C. snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo on a Tucson golf course.

"The first thing that went across my head when the execution started was just reliving everything of how my dad was killed," she said.

Now, as the future of Death Row inmate Jeffrey Landrigan sits in the hands of the court, two people with different perspectives on capital punishment share their own personal experiences to consider.

"I say Ron is dead.  Why would I want anybody else dead?  It would not soothe us in any way.  It would just grieve us," Mairs said.

"But then you think, 'this is another life being taken,' but then when you sit back and realize that this was my father he took place in killing, I believe he got what he deserved," Shaw said.

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COMMENT: In the State of Virginia, they execute the guilty murderers within five to seven years from the first sentence. In this way, it will not allow the victims’ families to endure years of heartache and in this case, Cheryll Shaw had justice and closure. For a violent murderer like Jeffrey Landrigan, the abolitionists here do not want to disclose to the public that he was convicted of a murder and escaped from prison only to kill again.

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