Saturday, July 21, 2012

MY RESPONSE TO ANTOINETTE BOSCO’S ARTICLE: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT NO SOLACE TO SURVIVORS (23 OCTOBER 2011)


As mention in my previous post, I strongly denounce those murdered victims’ families who are against the death penalty when they want to abolish it. I respect Antoinette Bosco in her decision to oppose capital punishment but I suggest that she should not ask for the abolishing of the death penalty. There are several points which I want to point out that she is wrong in her article: Capital Punishment No Solace To Survivors on Sunday 23 October 2011.

I have talked to many who strongly support Dr. William Petit Jr., the lone survivor of this unspeakable crime, who has sought the death penalty for the murderers of his family. And believe me, I empathize with all of them, even though I believe strongly that they are wrong to want more murders, even if done so-called legally by the state.

WRONG! = They do not want more murders; they just want a just punishment. Writer, Don Feder once quoted in his article, McVeigh puts capital punishment in focus 25 April 2001: Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. To equate the lives of killers with those of victims is the worst kind of moral equivalency. If capital punishment is state murder, then imprisonment is state kidnapping and restitution is state theft.

“That unnatural death at the hands of another is wrong, except in a clear case of self-defense.” 

WRONG! = I agree with what Benjamin Tucker once said, And capital punishment, however ineffective it may be and through whatever ignorance it may be resorted to, is a strictly defensive act, - at least in theory.”

The state is no more justified in taking a life than is an individual. Killing cannot be sanitized by calling it "official" and "legal."

WRONG! = Please see my response to Werner Herzog.

"The truth is, no one in my family ever wanted to see Shadow Clark put to death. We felt instinctively that vengeance wouldn't alleviate our grief. We wanted Clark in prison, removed from society forever, so he could never hurt another person. But watching Clark suffer and die would have done nothing to help us heal. Worse, wishing Clark would suffer and die would only have diminished us and shriveled our own souls. We had had enough pain already, dealing with the indescribable horror of our loved ones' brains and blood splattered all over their bedroom walls. We didn't need to increase our own torment by demanding more blood."

WRONG! = As mentioned above, I respect your opposition to the death penalty but by putting Shadow Clark to prison, he might be a violent individual who might murder a prison guard or inmate or he might escape or be released to kill again. Just look at Steven Mark Pryer or Kenneth McDuff. Even if Clark did die behind bars in prison, many other murdered victims’ families would want to see justice done as life imprisonment is not justice. 

And Mary emphasized where we all stood: "Hatred doesn't heal. Mercy, compassion, moving on with life, turning toward good people, walking into the light of love as much as possible, that's what victims need. And our lawmakers have the capacity to help us do that by abolishing the death penalty and along with it, the fantasy that it will make the pain go away."

WRONG! = To your family, you will not feel pain and I respect your decision but you got to feel for other victims’ families who will disagree with you for sure.

“The fantasy that will make the pain go away.” It is no fantasy, just ask the following people:


From the Pro Death Penalty Quotes website:












Ask the following people what they have gone through:
1. Family members of Holly Carol Washa
2. Tumini
5. Family members of Dawn Marie Garvin
8. Parents of Jennifer Cardy
12. Family members of Jamie Bulger and and Moosa Mukhtiar Ahmed
Sadly, the United States, which so often claims to be the world champion of human rights, is the only Western industrialized country that still practices this barbaric punishment. We do have 16 states without the death penalty, but unfortunately, Connecticut is not one of them.

WRONG! = Most European countries and even Canada abolished the death penalty despite public opinion being in favour of it. Connecticut has now become the 17th state without the death penalty, look at what happen to Daniel E. Gonzalez. The two killers knew that since there is no death penalty in that state, they chose to murder him. I suggest looking at the increase homicide in Illinois after the death penalty was abolished.

In the fall of 2005, they launched the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty, saying we must be people who affirm life. "State-sanctioned killing in our names diminishes all of us," they said.

I agree.

WRONG! = You agree but Immanuel Kant, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Alex Kozinski, Chalerm Ubumrung and many others will disagree with that statement. There are many other Roman Catholics who support the death penalty. Saint Thomas Aquinas was quoted in his Summa Theologica: "If a man is a danger to the community, threatening it with disintegration by some wrongdoing of his, then his execution for the healing and preservation of the common good is to be commended.  Only the public authority, not private persons, may licitly execute malefactors by public judgment. Men shall be sentenced to death for crimes of irreparable harm or which are particularly perverted."

Many of us are working to end the death penalty in Connecticut. We who belong to the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty believe we have the means to punish convicted criminals without having to resort to killing them for protection, vengeance or retaliation.

WRONG! = No executed murderer ever killed again, you cannot be sure whether those who go to prison might re-offend again. The ACLU opposes life sentences, Law Professor and former federal prosecutor, Bill Otis said, “When LWOP is the most you can get, ever, you have handed dangerous and violent inmates a license to kill.”

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