Posted on 09/29/2009 11:05:04 AM PDT by fiscon1
About a year ago, I served on the jury on the murder case of Michael Hodges. Hodges was killed when he was confronted by an individual that also lived in the same set of housing projects on the West Side of Chicago. It's been so long that I have to confess that I can't remember the name of the suspect. Two eye witnesses testified and each gave near exactly the same version of the crime. That was the center piece of the evidence against the defendent and the jury ultimately came back with a guilty verdict. The case was gruesome. Hodges was shot six times at close range and five of those shots were in the back as he tried to flea. It's also unfortunately all too familiar in the projects of Chicago. In fact, the case was so ordinary that I can't find one news article about it. I only know because I happened to sit on the jury.
(Excerpt) Read more at theeprovocateur.blogspot.com ...
“five of those shots were in the back as he tried to flea.(sic)”
snicker ... FLEA v flee
Sorry I can’t help myself. I know it’s petty, but spell-check is NOT your friend.
What part of "Thou shalt not suffer a murderer to live" don't we understand?
by the way, I did go out and read the blog post. it was worth reading. thanks.
Ryan had no choice. There’s a police commander named Jon Burge, he has a wikipedia page, that tortured people for near two decades and many wound up on death row. Ryan began to discover that those ready for death had their confessions beaten out of them. He had no idea how many there were and so he couldn’t at that point continue the death penalty because he’d be doing nothing else but investigating to make sure that someone who was beaten didn’t get killed.
no worries. I agree that spell check is your friend but in this case, flea is a real word and so spell check wouldn’t pick it up.
Is that perhaps supposed to be a quotation from the Holy Bible? No such quotation exists.
Or were you perhaps thinking of "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?" (Exodus 22:18).
But surely you aren't calling for the death penalty for practitioners of witchcraft?!
Regards,
By suffering murderers to live, we free them to commit more murders and worse. A liberal judge will say "life imprisonment is cruel and unusual" and set them free, probably because of prison overcrowding. Numbers 35:16 "But if he struck him down with an iron object, so that he died, he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death. 17 And if he struck him down with a stone tool that could cause death, and he died, he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death. 18 Or if he struck him down with a wooden tool that could cause death, and he died, he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death.
Why do we ignore the Lord when He repeats Himself?
I am not going to get into scripture but again, Jon Burge beat hundreds of confessions including many murder confessions. No one knows how many there and all agree that folks still sit in jail from tortured confessions. So, scripture aside, Ryan had no choice but to suspend the death penalty. To do otherwise would have guaranteed that innocent people faced death.
The reason I point this out is because you clearly don’t live in Illinois. In Illinois, most know of Burge and how he lead to the suspension of the death penalty. There are very few, including death penalty proponents, that blame Ryan for doing this. In fact, prior to his corruption charges Ryan was viewed, correctly in my opinion, as a hero for suspending the death penalty. He had no choice. I say this because you offered an opinion with absolutely no knowledge of the situation. Before you rush to condemn someone for suspending the death penalty, it’s much better to know the facts. If you still believe that the death penalty must be imposed even though you know that an unknown number of death row inmates had confessions beaten out of them, then you have the problem. In this case, Ryan was absolutely correct.
I have a friend who works in juvenile detention in Illinois. Recently he took one of his boys to Chicago for a ‘home visit’ (it is standard before a release can be arranged). He said the neighborhood was so bad that drugs were being dealt in broad daylight as they drove through, and the apartment where the boy’s mother lived was so bad that the carpet was literally filled with roaches (they climbed on his feet as he stood in the house, climbing up onto his arms even). The mother was drinking a beer, smoking a cig and watching Jerry Springer. She only talked to her son during the commercials. Two other juveniles were in the kitchen playing cards, drinking beer and smoking. What chance does this kid have, when he is released to go back to that home on those streets?
LOL, it sort of makes sense. He was trying to ‘flea’ meaning he was trying to get small and not present a large target. OK, never mind...
OK.
Time to start it up again.
It’s even more plain in Exodus:
“Thou shalt not murder”.
yeah, you may want to remove that comment. The term LOL has no place in a description of a brutal death. Let’s hope Michael Hodges isn’t looking down on you now.
That's why you are going where you are going in this discussion. From their it doesn't matter if I bring up Willie Horton or any of the other many murderers set free only to kill again. It doesn't matter how many rapists, set free only to rape and add murder to their repertoire.
It doesn't matter what I write, for you will find an excuse to all murderers to live.
You even ignored the statement how a Liberal/Progressive judge will overturn a life sentence because it is too "cruel" in his eyes - the slippery slope of judicial activism and freeing the worst of them to murder again.
No, I have given you the testimony and I am freed from that blood guiltiness by speaking up so in public.
I encourage you to Memorize and ask the Lord what it means "The murderer shall be put to death" when God repeats it three times.
If you do, you might find out how God forgave the Apostle Paul his murders and made him the greatest of the Theologians.
I bid you Adue.
I am not excusing anything. A police commander tortured hundreds if not thousands. What don’t you get about that? You can’t have a death penalty if you don’t know how many on death row had oonfessions beaten out of them. This happened for twenty years. No matte what the scripture says, when the Governor discovers that a police commander used torture to routinely get confessions, you can’t have a death penalty.
You are dealing in theory, I deal in reality. In reality, you can’t have a death penalty when there is overwhelming evidence that innocent people would die if you continue it. I bid you adie because your argument is at this point absurd. If you still think that Illinois needs a death penalty knowing that thousands may have had their confessions tortured, then you may want to read the scriptures some more.
No, I think Ill let it stand as written esp since I think it’ll irritate you. I see you have lots of spare time to be offended. BTW you might want to spend some time brushing up on the reading comprehension thing. ;)
"The Murderer shall be put the Death", "The Murderer shall be put to Death", "The Murderer shall be put to Death".
If you don't believe that, tell God.
I’ve walked through Englewood before and what you notice is how much garbage there is everywhere but a garbage can. These issues are very difficult but I think that if community leaders started by organizing parties to clean up the garbage that would go a long way.
My old boss once bought a drug house. He obviously got a good deal. First thing he did was get cop friends who kicked out the dealers and then he fixed the broken windows, cleaned up the floors, and simply made the building look pleasant. He said, “dirt attracts dirt and if you make the place look nice the dealers will look elsewhere”. I think to start they need to clean up the literal dirt and the figurative dirt will follow.
Forget God, tell the hundreds on death row that had confessions beaten and tortured that we need to move forward with the death penalty and it’s up to them to prove that their confessions were gotten unlawfully. Do you have any idea how absurd you sound? I am telling you that the Governor knew that one police commander directed hundreds if not thousands of confessions to be tortured. It was systematic. That’s how it worked. He did it for twenty years. As such, it was impossible to know how many people were on death row from tortured confessions. These are the facts. This isn’t about guilty people facing punishment but innocent people getting the death penalty. You’re still quoting scripture and totally ignoring the facts. That’s absurd.
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