UNIT 1012 SEND OUR THANKS TO WILLIAM BARR FOR HELPING US TO RID THE WORLD OF KILLERS

"This lack of finality devastates the criminal justice system. It diminishes the deterrent effect of state criminal laws, saps state prosecutorial resources and continually reopens the wounds of victims and survivors." - In a 1991 op-ed in The New York Times, William Barr argued that death row inmates' ability to challenge their sentences should be limited to avoid cases dragging on for years

            

A woman holds up a sign with ‘Too many terrorists in prison’ written on one side and ‘Kill them all’ written on the other during a rally in Tel Aviv on April 19, 2016 to support Elor Azaria. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP)

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://mondoweiss.net/2017/08/israelis-palestinian-attackers/ ….. ….. http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-group-of-50-families-in-israel-for.html]

        We, the members of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, whose group consists of murdered victims’ families and friends give our utmost thanks to US Attorney General William Barr for carrying out the 7 executions of the killers on Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute.

            We send our utmost thanks and congratulation to the Attorney General. He is our hero in showing his care and love for the murdered victims’ families. We wish that more leaders can take his leadership example and follow it. We will pray for him all the way. 

            We will write an article refuting Austin Sarat’s article, “William Barr Uses Victims and Their Families to Prop Up America’s Failing Death Penalty System.”

As is often the case in America’s death penalty system, this summer’s resumption of federal executions was accompanied by high-minded talk about the families of murder victims and their needs. In July 2019, when Attorney General William Barr first announced his intention to put five condemned men to death, the Department of Justice issued a statement explaining that doing so would bring “justice to the victims of the most horrible crimes.”

At the time, Barr added, “We owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Last June, after prevailing in a year-long legal struggle over whether federal executions could proceed, the AG reiterated those sentiments. He again spoke of the government’s obligation to provide justice for victims. And similar statements accompanied last month’s DOJ decision to appeal a court ruling overturning the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

Barr’s invocation of an obligation to victims is a refrain repeatedly heard from death penalty supporters. It is part of their long-running effort to mobilize support for it by accommodating victims and including their perspectives and experiences in the death penalty process.

  

Chief Justice Rayner Goddard

RESPONSE: Barr is right, he is the one who truly cares for murder victims’ families who want justice. As our hero, Rayner Goddard, the late Chief Justice of UK said:

“My sentiments are more in favour of the victim than they are of the murderer. There is a tendency nowadays when any matter of criminal law is discussed to think far more of the criminal than his victim.” [Speech in the House of Lords by Chief Justice Rayner Goddard, 10 July 1956]

 

            We will quote as many murder victims’ families who support the death penalty, here is one example:

  

Helle Jespersen with her daughter Louisa Vesterager Jespersen.

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://nyheder.tv2.dk/2019-06-11-mor-staar-frem-for-foerste-gang-efter-hendes-datter-blev-draebt-i-terrorangreb]

Helle Petersen, who is the mother of the Dane woman, Louisa Jespersen beheaded in Morocco supports the death sentence for the killers. We stand with her and walk in her shoes and we not only agree with her strongly but with also went through what she had to go through and we will not forget her daughter. She wants justice and she is not revengeful at all. 

Here are two quotes from her.    

"The most just thing would be to give these beasts the death penalty they deserve, I ask that of you," said Helle Petersen in a letter read by her lawyer in an anti-terrorist court in Sale, near the capital Rabat. "My life was destroyed the moment that two policemen came to my door on December 17th to announce my daughter's death," the mother of 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen wrote in the letter, read out in total silence and with the defendants' faces impassive.

“It will bring some sort of justice to our daughters. They go around and kill people, now they will feel what is like to be sentenced to death. That is the bigger picture I try to focus on, justice for our girls and our families and to prevent them from killing again.” – Helle Petersen, the mother of Louisa Jespersen, told the news after the killers were sentenced to death.

However, like other death penalty supporters, Barr ignored important but inconvenient facts about murder victims’ families and their wishes concerning capital punishment.

One such fact is that those families are by no means a unified or homogeneous group. Some ardently support capital punishment, but many are adamant in opposing it. Some want to see the person who killed their loved one die; others publicly oppose such a course of action.

RESPONSE: William Barr did not ignore. It is the bias leftist mainstream media who deliberately chose to cherry-pick those murder victims’ families against the death penalty and ignore those who support it.

  

Nathaniel and Cleo, the Parents of Hadiya Pendleton

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/local/hadiya-pendleton-s-parents-say-her-killer-deserves-death-penalty#]

The parents of Hadiya Pendleton wanted the killer to pay with his life but they were disappointed that Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011. See this article, ‘Illinois Death Penalty was Abolished Based on a Lie Posted By Daniel Greenfield’

“We can only go speak to a grave. No. I think it's totally unfair,” Nathaniel said. Hadiya’s father says that if the death penalty were available in Illinois, Michaeil Ward would deserve it. Hadiya's mother agrees. “I don't think its cruel to say that you incited this on these people, so why are you still able to live the rest of your days out and have, possibly, the opportunity to enjoy the later part of your life?” Cleo said.

In even the most high-profile cases and in the most shocking crimes, families have spoken out against the death penalty. They do not seek, or want, the kind of justice Barr promises to deliver.

Thus, after Dylann Roof shot nine people attending a Bible study group in a South Carolina church in 2015, several family members of the slain victims opposed his execution.

As the daughter of one of those who Roof killed explained, “Despite the anger I am still coping with from my mother’s death, I don’t believe in the death penalty, even for the man who killed her. That’s my conviction because of my faith. I’ve said the same thing all along—I don’t believe as human beings that we should take away someone’s life just because we have the power to do so. God is the only person, the only being who decides our fate.”

RESPONSE: Please see this blog post of ours: ‘OPEN LETTER TO SHARON RISHER: YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT OF THE HOLY BIBLE‘

Also, Sarat forget to write that Malcolm Graham, whose sister, Cynthia Hurd, was one of the nine people fatally shot by Roof during a Bible study class at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church supports the death penalty for Roof:

"If there's any case in America where the death penalty is deserved, it is this one," Graham said. "The crime was premeditated. It was calculated. But most importantly, Graham said, Roof's crime "was an attack on a race of people."

"Those who died that night simply died because they were there, and that they were black. That type of hate, that type of discrimination, that type of just evil, has no place in a civilized society, and has no place in America's jails," he emphasized.

In the Tsarnaev case, one of the families who lost a son and who had a daughter horribly injured in the bombing asked the government not to seek the death penalty. In a letter published in the Boston Globe at the time of the original trial, they wrote, “We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives.”

RESPONSE: Austin Sarat fails to mention those survivors and families who wants Tsarnaev to be executed. Hear from them:

"He is a threat to all of us and he needs to die." — Bombing survivor Adrianne Haslet

The mother of Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old killed in the attack, expressed outrage at the court's decision.

“I just don’t understand it,” Patricia Campbell told The Boston Globe. “It’s just terrible that he’s allowed to live his life. It’s unfair. He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to do what he did. He planned it out. He did a vicious, ugly thing.”

   

adriannehaslet

Right back atcha motherf*cker.

I’m so livid at today’s ruling by the federal court. First and foremost, I cannot emphasize enough, without a shadow of a doubt, that the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul to stop racial profiling, and the death penalty is used in far too many cases of injustice. AND. The death penalty should be used in this particular case.

This terrorist admitted in court he was guilty of crimes committed against our country. He confessed, with his brother, to a man who testified in court that their plans were to drive to New York and bomb the city too. This terrorist gave the finger when asked if he felt guilty. AND.
The warden of the jail where he would be housed for life testified that, indeed, other terrorists have committed crimes on the World Trade Center through messages on pipes of the jail. I know, this sounds crazy. But that is why I stood by the death penalty in this particular case.

He is a threat to all of us and he needs to die.

I cannot imagine the comments I’m about to get for speaking my mind, but these have been my thoughts since I testified. I’m not a woman with a grudge, I’m a human with a brain.
#bostonstrong
Also props to me for putting his ugly face on my Instagram that’s freaking growth if I’ve ever seen it!!! I’m ready to testify again. LFG 💪🏼🇺🇸

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-government-must-again-seek-death-penalty-boston-marathon-bomber ........ https://www.instagram.com/p/CDUxDKkHHBr/]

“He needs to die,” survivor Adrianne Haslet wrote on Instagram about Tsarnaev, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2015.

Haslet, 40, a dancer who lost a leg in the attack, was one of 17 people left without at least one limb as a result of blasts set off by bombs that Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted as a crowd gathered near the finish line one of America’s most famous running events.

The brother was killed in a shootout with police after a manhunt.

“The death penalty should be used in this particular case,” Haslet wrote. “This terrorist admitted in court he was guilty of crimes committed against our country. He confessed. … He is a threat to all of us and he needs to die.”

  

Rebekah Gregory

@rebekahmgregory

So people are sitting on death row for far less, and the US Appeals court chooses to overturn the sentence of this COWARD??! All this does is give him the attention he wants, and prolongs the nightmare we have been living the last SEVEN years. Disgusting.

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://twitter.com/rebekahmgregory/status/1289302478551265281]

Another attack survivor, Rebekah Gregory, wrote on Twitter that the court’s decision was “Disgusting.” Gregory, 32, a young mother, also lost a leg as a result of the attack.

“So people are sitting on death row for far less, and the US Appeals court chooses to overturn the sentence of this COWARD??!” Gregory wrote.

“All this does is give him the attention he wants, and prolongs the nightmare we have been living the last SEVEN years. Disgusting.”

INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/2996055193849760 .......

Such objections were also registered this summer in the case of Daniel Lewis Lee, the first person executed under Barr’s edict. Lee, a one-time white supremacist, was put to death for torturing and killing a family of three. Earlene Peterson, who lost her daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law because of his crime, joined Lee’s lawyers in an unsuccessful effort to stop the execution. As she observed, “I believe putting Daniel Lee to death is not the answer. It’s an easy way out. He should have to live through this. Like I did.”

RESPONSE: All of the seven killers executed by the federal government as of September 24, 2020, Earlene Peterson, was the only victim’s family member who opposed it. The rest supported it, again, Sarat quotes her and ignored the rest.

 

Dustin Lee Honken, 52, was put to death by lethal injection in Terre Haute penitentiary, Indiana

See the statements from the families whose victims were murdered by Dustin Lee Honken:

Statement from the family of Terry DeGeus:

“The reason for us being present today was not to watch a man die. It was to show love, support, and respect to my daughter’s father, Terry. That we loved him until the end and still do. It was the least we could do."

Statement from the family of Lori, Kandace & Amber Duncan:

“To whom it may concern,”

“27 year ago two beautiful girls and their mother were taken from us by a violent criminal and his girlfriend. For 27 years we have grieved for them while their killers lived on.”

“Today, the little girls Kandace and Amber would be 37 and 33. They never had the chance to grow up and share in the joys and sorrows of life. Their mother never got to see them having a first dance, first date, or walk down the aisle at their wedding. There were no family reunions. No visits to grandparents’ house, no overnights at cousins. Their lives were snuffed out.”

“However, their killer has lived the years since then with a bed and meals provided for him.”

“Today, we gather to witness the execution of Dustin Honken, their murderer. It is a day we thought would never come. Finally, justice is being done. It will bring a sense of closure but we will continue to live with their loss. However, this is a step toward the healing of broken hearts and shattered lives.”

“We regret that so many members of our family have passed on and were never able to see this day.”

Daniel Lee, the father of the Tiffany Lee, who was murdered by Lezmond Mitchell said:

The Navajo Nation opposed the execution of Mitchell, saying it violated the Native American group’s sovereignty.

But the family of the 9-year old girl, Tiffany Lee, rejected the Navajo Nation’s stance. “An eye for an eye,” Daniel Lee, her father, told the Associated Press.

“He took my daughter away, and no remorse or anything like that. The Navajo Nation president, the council, they don’t speak for me. I speak for myself and for my daughter,” he added.

When she could not persuade the AG to stop Lee’s execution, Ms. Peterson and others filed suit asking that it be delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that attending the execution would create an unacceptable risk of being exposed to the virus. The DOJ opposed her suit.

RESPONSE: On this date, April 12, 2020, Abdul Majed, a former Bangladesh Army officer who was convicted for his role in the 1975 Jail Killing following the Assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, was executed by hanging at 12:01am. Despite the COVID-19 crisis, the Bangladeshi Judicial did not gave any excuse and had the killer executed. 

We find it suspicious that they use COVID-19 as an excuse not to carry out an execution but seems not to have a problem releasing criminals for fear of COVID-19 spreading in public.

  

One recent example is the case of Ibrahim E. Bouaichi

Ibrahim E. Bouaichi is charged with the murder of Karla Dominguez, and was arrested last year after Dominguez accused him of sexually assaulting her in Alexandria, Va.

The incident in Karla Dominguez’s apartment last October was violent, and it was not consensual, she testified in Alexandria District Court in December. The man she accused was indicted on charges including rape, strangulation and abduction and jailed without bond in Alexandria.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Ibrahim E. Bouaichi’s lawyers argued that the virus was a danger to both inmates and their attorneys, and that Bouaichi should be freed awaiting trial. On April 9, over the objections of an Alexandria prosecutor, Circuit Court Judge Nolan Dawkins released Bouaichi on $25,000 bond, with the condition that he only leave his Maryland home to meet with his lawyers or pretrial services officials.

On July 29, Alexandria police say, Bouaichi, 33, returned to Alexandria and shot and killed Dominguez outside her apartment in the city’s West End.

A man accused of murdering an Alexandria woman, who had accused him of sexually assaulting her last fall, died Saturday (August 8, 2020) from a self-inflicted gunshot wound that occurred as police tried to arrest him again on Wednesday. The man’s family issued a statement Saturday night saying they were grieving the loss of both lives.

INTERNET SOURCE: https://soldierexecutionerprolifer2008.blogspot.com/2020/08/virginia-rape-suspect-ibrahim-bouaichi.html

In late 2019, 175 family members of murder victims urged Barr not to resume federal executions. They argued that “The death penalty does not prevent violence. It does not solve crime. It does not provide services for families like ours. It does not help solve the over 250,000 homicide cold cases in the United States. It exacerbates the trauma of losing a loved one and creates yet another grieving family. It also wastes many millions of dollars that could be better invested in programs that actually reduce crime and violence and that address the needs of families like ours.”

Their plea went unheeded.

RESPONSE: Marc Klaas of Sausalito, whose daughter Polly was murdered by Richard Allen Davis in 1993, said anti-death penalty activists have a troubling effect on the families of the victims and society in general.

"It diminishes the victims when people burn candles and mourn someone who has committed a heinous crime," Klaas said. "People on death row are some of the worst individuals that appear on the face of the earth.”

"The abolitionists refuse to acknowledge that evil exists and evil has to be put down."

            Those 175 murder victims’ families DO NOT speak for the other millions who want to see the death penalty carried out. Most murder victims’ families do support capital punishment.

          In March 2019, many murder victims’ families protested against Governor Newsom’s suspending the use of death penalty in California.

“Baby killers, cop killers, mass murderers; I mean really the worst people in society have been deemed worthy of the ultimate law of the land, the death penalty,” Klaas said. “But the abolitionists have created barrier after barrier.”

  

My name is Chaima, I’m 19. I was kidnapped, tortured, raped, slaughtered and burned by my executioner.

 “My daughter was murdered and burnt. I call for the application of the death penalty! That’s all I ask,” the victim’s mother said, who also sought the intervention of Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

            Recently, in Algeria on October 1, 2020, 19-year-old Chaima Sadou, an Algerian girl who was raped and murdered. As our group consists of families and friends of murdered victims, we stand with the mother who wants the death penalty for the killer. Even many Algerians supported the death penalty for the killer and want him to pay with his life.

When death cases do go forward, murder victims’ families are generally afforded the chance to participate in the sentencing phase of capital trials and help shape the outcome of those proceedings.

But even this opportunity has turned out to be a mixed blessing for them.

As the anthropologist Susan Hirsch, herself the surviving spouse of someone killed in the 1998 terrorist attack on the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, observes, “Victims’ statements are a double-edged opportunity.” “Recounting a story in public may,” Hirsch writes, “allow it to veer out of the teller’s control. Victims may break down while testifying—crying, shaking, unable to complete the story. Less obviously, the state’s goals shape victims’ stories; the prosecution routinely focuses not on what had the most impact on a victim but what will have the most impact in convincing a jury to impose the harshest penalty.”

Noting the potential incompatibility of interests between prosecutors and victims’ families, Hirsch suggests that, as is true of their views of the death penalty itself, there is no single victim perspective about what should happen to any particular capital defendant.

As she puts it, “Whether they testify or not, victims hold many different understandings of the penalty phase and a variety of motivations for participating. Some hope to confront the convicted defendant with the horror of his crime. Other victims… seek public acknowledgment of their pain or loss. Still others feel a solemn obligation to make a public representation of a dead loved one, to make sure that the dead victim is ‘present’ in the legal proceeding.”

While victim testimony affords family members the chance to make their pain and suffering visible in capital trials, it is not without its costs to them. It also damages the fairness of the cases in which they participate.

Their testimony turns courts into sites of grief and mourning and intensifies the already heightened emotions that always attend the deliberations of sentencing bodies in capital cases.

RESPONSE: Much of the expense results from obstruction by opponents of the death penalty. The same arguments they use against the death penalty are the same they are going to use against LWOP.

See this article from Shari Silberstein: Ending the Death Penalty Is One Step Toward Ending Mass Incarceration

To be clear, I’m not talking about merely replacing the death penalty with life without parole sentences, which fail on nearly the same scale. Like executions, they also target the most vulnerable (a full two-thirds of people currently serving life without parole are people of color) without delivering public safety gains. There is mounting evidence that people age out of crime, leaving life-without-parole sentences without any purpose other than to inflict suffering until death.

   

Alexis Hoag

@alexis_hoag

 And when the new administration abolishes the death penalty, converting death sentences to life without parole, we need to fight against LWOP. Both are excessive and both end in death. This nation can do better.

[PHOTO SOURCE: https://twitter.com/alexis_hoag/status/1326539453901369347]

All of this complexity belies Barr’s simple equation of capital punishment and doing justice for victims. It suggests that what he promised to deliver to their families by resuming federal executions is not necessarily the kind of justice they welcome or that leaves them better off. In fact, Barr’s emphasis on satisfying victims’ families distorts reasoned consideration of the federal death penalty as well as the adjudication of capital cases,

We should be clear: The AG and his allies are using victims and their families in an effort to bolster a death penalty system that is now widely understood to be rife with errors and is losing the American people’s support.

RESPONSE: At the beginning of this article, we send our utmost thanks and congratulation to the Attorney General. He is our hero in showing his care and love for the murdered victims’ families. We wish that more leaders can take his leadership example and follow it.

AG Barr is not using victims and their families to bolster the death penalty system. Sarat is ignoring the cries of those Murder Victims’ Families who support the death penalty, he just choses to mention those who are against it and ignore the rest who support it. The problem with the system does not lie with the death penalty or any judicial punishment it is the fault of the ACLU who is always taking sides of the criminals.

             Truth is the death penalty does help the murder victims’ families even years after the killer was executed, most victims’ families will agree. Let us give two examples:

For two decades, Lera Shelley endured what seemed like endless court hearings as she waited for the execution of her daughter's murderer, serial killer Michael Ross.

It was all worth it, Shelley said, the moment she saw Ross die by lethal injection in the death chamber at Osborn Correctional Institution in May 2005.

Finally, she said, there was justice for 14-year-old Leslie and the seven other women whom Ross admitted killing in the early 1980s.

"When I saw Michael Ross take his last breath, I knew it was all over. No more appeals, no more 'Walking with Michael' on the Internet," Shelley said Wednesday April 3, 2012. "It was like a big cloud that had been hanging over our head for years had finally been lifted and sunshine was coming in," said Shelley, 68, of Griswold.

   

  

'I smiled as he was pumped full of bullets': Father watches as 'monster' who raped and murdered his three-year-old daughter is executed by MACHINE GUN in Yemen

Yemeni father describes ‘relief’ at witnessing daughter’s rapist and killer executed by machine gun ‘I feel as if I have been reborn’, says Yahya Almatari

A father said he watched the execution by machine gun of the man who raped and murdered his three-year-old daughter with 'relief and satisfaction'.

Yahya Almatari stood at the front of crowd of thousands as his close neighbour Muhammad al Maghrabi was shot at point blank range with an AK-47. 

The 41-year-old had been convicted by a Sharia court in Yemen of raping and strangling toddler Rana Almatari having snatched her off the street. 

  

            We will close with a quote from our beloved Judge, Rayner Goddard:

“There is one other consideration which I believe should never be overlooked. If the criminal law of this country is to be respected, it must be in accordance with public opinion, and public opinion must support it. That goes very nearly to the root of this question of capital punishment. I cannot believe or the public opinion (or would I rather call it the public conscience) of this country will tolerate that persons who deliberately condemn others to painful and, it may be, lingering deaths should be allow to live…”  - [Speech in the House of Lords, 28 April 1948] 

OTHER LINKS:

16a. 'Justice has been done': Mother's joy as paedophile who raped and murdered her 'beautiful' daughter, 4, is executed by AK-47 and strung up on crane in Yemen

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1296836950438268

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4798462/Mother-s-joy-paedo-murdered-girl-executed-AK-47.html

16b. ‘Justice is done’ Mum's joy at execution of paedophile who raped & murdered daughter, 4

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT - The mother of a four-year-old girl who was brutally raped and murdered by a sick paedophile claims “justice has been done” after the attacker was publicly executed and strung up on a crane.

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1298234203631876

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/842340/paedophile-rapist-murder-public-killed-yemen-justice-4-year-old-Safaa-al-Matari-al-Saket

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17a.'I smiled as he was pumped full of bullets': Father watches as 'monster' who raped and murdered his three-year-old daughter is executed by MACHINE GUN in Yemen

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1284475508341079

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4756442/Father-watches-man-murdered-girl-executed-AK-47.html

17b. Yemeni father describes ‘relief’ at witnessing daughter’s rapist and killer executed by machine gun

‘I feel as if I have been reborn’, says Yahya Almatari

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1285949228193707

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-father-daughter-rapist-machine-gun-killer-execution-murder-sanaa-yahya-almatari-rana-muhammad-a7874976.html

17c. Rapist, 41, who attacked and murdered a three-year-old girl is executed with a machine gun at point blank range under sharia law in Yemen

https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1281975985257698

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4745862/Rapist-murdered-girl-three-executed-Yemen.html#ixzz4oPbg7PUe

18. Pope Francis’ Statements About The Death Penalty Are A World-Class Lesson In Catholic Theology

By Andrew Bieszad on December 20, 2018

http://shoebat.org/2018/12/20/pope-francis-statements-about-the-death-penalty-are-a-world-class-lesson-in-catholic-theology/