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PAGE TITLE: http://townhall.com/columnists/ashleyherzog/
ARTICLE
TITLE:
Liberal Lies About the Death Penalty
DATE: 10 November 2010
AUTHOR: Ashley Herzog
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Ashley
Herzog is a Townhall columnist and the author of Feminism vs. Women.
 |
| Ashley Herzog |
In July 2007, two
career criminals, Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, broke into the
Connecticut home of Dr. William Petit. The pair beat Dr. Petit nearly to death
with a baseball bat and tied him up in the basement, saying “if you move, we’ll
put two bullets in you.” They then set upon his wife, Jennifer, and two
daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela.
Komisarjevsky
savagely raped Michaela in her bed, pausing only to take cell phone pictures of
the terrified little girl. After forcing her to withdraw $15,000 from her bank
account, Hayes raped and strangled Jennifer in the living room. Then, as police
surrounded the house, they bound the girls to the beds, doused them with
gasoline, and lit the house on fire.
Yesterday, Steven
Hayes was sentenced to death by lethal injection in a state that has only
executed one person since 1960. For most people, the only shame is that his
death won’t come quick enough.
Not so for death
penalty opponents, who spend more time bleating for monstrous criminals than
for their victims. When Hayes is finally strapped to that gurney, there will no
doubt be candlelight vigils, where criminal-coddlers will spout canards about
capital punishment.
We know what
they’ll say.
They’ll say the
death penalty does not deter murder. We don’t know that, since it’s never
actually been studied. This is a statement of personal belief, not fact.
What we do know is
that the murder rate soared when the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty
in 1972. In 1960, the U.S. murder rate was 5.1 per 100,000 people. By late 70s,
it had nearly doubled, reaching 10.2 in 1980. The U.S. government didn’t
execute a single person that year. The murder rate only began to fall as more
capital sentences were handed down in the 1990s. By 2009, it had plummeted to
an all-time low of 5 per 100,000. 52 people were executed last year.
They’ll say the
death penalty is the easy way out for murderers. While a few might feel that
way, most of them spend years filing appeals. They resist execution until their
legal options run out—which is why it often takes decades to execute a death
row inmate.
They’ll say the
death penalty is racist, so we need a moratorium. To hear them tell it,
Southern juries would be stringing innocent blacks from trees if the ACLU
didn’t keep them in check.
Tell that to the
parents of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, who were carjacked and murdered
in Tennessee by four black thugs in 2007. The killers raped Chris, shot him
three times, and lit his body on fire on a set of railroad tracks. Over the
next several hours, Channon was raped multiple times and had bleach poured down
her throat. She was then “hogged-tied” and stuffed in a trash can to suffocate.
The DNA of two
defendants, Lemaricus Davidson and Letalvis Cobbins, was found on the victims.
All four admitted to witnessing and participating in various aspects of the
crime, including raping the victims and holding them at gunpoint. They showed
no remorse. When asked if he ever thought of sparing Channon’s life, defendant
George Thomas replied, “F--- that white bitch, she don’t mean nothing to me.”
Only one defendant,
Lemaricus Davidson, received the death penalty. The other defendants claimed he
initiated the carjacking and ultimately stuffed Channon in the trash can.
Davidson was tried by a black prosecutor and sentenced to death by a
multi-racial jury. Rather than wantonly sending blacks to the death chamber,
the juries reserved the ultimate punishment for an obviously guilty ringleader.
Unfair? Racist? You be the judge.
Finally, they’ll
say the death penalty is barbaric. If it’s barbaric to execute someone who has
been granted an attorney, formally tried, convicted, and had his conviction
upheld after decades of appeals, I’m happy to live in a nation of savages. Is
death by lethal injection too cruel a punishment for a man who raped a woman
before suffocating her in a trash can? Or a man who burned a child alive in her
bed, surrounded by stuffed animals?
Only if you have
no sense of justice. For the Petit family, justice has finally been served.
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|
Christopher
Newsom and Channon Christian
|
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|
When
they were whole: A June, 2007 photo shows Dr William Petit, left, with his
daughters Michaela, front, Hayley, centre rear, and his wife, Jennifer
Hawke-Petit, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts
|
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