Capital Punishment: Fed to the lions?

MoonHowler

male_lion

Huffingtonpost.com

Days after his state bungled the execution of a death row inmate, Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Christian (R) appeared to be uncompromising on his death penalty views.

In an interview with the Associated Press published Saturday, Christian said Clayton Lockett’s case did not sway his support for the practice.

“I realize this may sound harsh,” Christian told the AP, “but as a father and former lawman, I really don’t care if it’s by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions.”

Is this a case of Lions-1, Christians – 0?

Read More

Devil went down to Georgia and said no clemency for Troy Davis

MoonHowler

Convicted cop killer Troy Davis is slated to be executed at 7 pm tonight after being denied clemency from a Georgia pardons board.  Denial of clemency has been described as routine.

This execution has been troublesome for many people including proponents of the death penalty.  7 out of 9 of the witnesses in the trial have recanted their statements.  At least one has said that he was young when he said what he gave them what they wanted to hear. 

CBS News reports the following:

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen described the denial of clemency as “routine.”

 “Parole boards almost never grant clemency, so this is not a surprise,” Cohen said. “Now if Wednesday’s execution is going to be halted it’s going to have to come from the federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court in particular, which last week halted a Texas execution.”

 Davis has gotten support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year. State and federal courts, however, repeatedly upheld his conviction for the 1989 killing of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who was working as a security guard in Savannah when he was shot dead rushing to help a homeless man who was being attacked.

Read More

Virginia Ready to Fry a Woman

MoonHowler

Dead woman walking–Convicted killer Teresa Lewis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection this Thursday, September 30. If the execution goes through, Lewis will be the first woman to be executed in Virginia since 1912.

Lewis was convicted of killing her husband and stepson for $250,000 in insurance money. Death penalty activists say that Lewis is being treated unfairly because the 2 gunman who killed the victims only got life in prison.

According to the Richmond Times Dispatch:

Lewis, then 33, plotted with her then-22-year-old lover, Matthew Shallenberger, and his friend Rodney Fuller to murder her husband and stepson on Oct. 30, 2002. Killed were Julian Lewis, 51, and C.J. Lewis, 25, a soldier visiting the Lewises’ mobile home.

She was to be the beneficiary of her stepson’s $250,000 life insurance policy should he and her husband die. She left a door unlocked so Shallenberger and Fuller could enter early that morning. The two arrived armed with shotguns paid for by Teresa Lewis. She left the bedroom and waited in the kitchen during the shooting.

The gunfire over and her husband dying, Lewis retrieved his wallet from their bedroom and divided the money with the killers. She waited 45 minutes before calling for help, but Julian Lewis lived long enough to tell a deputy sheriff, “My wife knows who done this to me.”

Teresa Lewis, Shallenberger and Fuller pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced Shallenberger and Fuller to life and Lewis, whom he called “the head of this serpent,” to death.

Read More