Posted on 11/24/2005 7:21:35 PM PST by baystaterebel
"Let's do it." With those last words, convicted killer Gary Gilmore ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, an age of busy death chambers that will likely see its 1,000th execution in the coming days.
After a 10-year moratorium, Gilmore in 1977 became the first person to be executed following a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that validated state laws to reform the capital punishment system. Since then, 997 prisoners have been executed, and next week, the 998th, 999th and 1,000th are scheduled to die.
Robin Lovitt, 41, will likely be the one to earn that macabre distinction next Wednesday, Nov. 30. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a 1998 pool hall robbery in Virginia.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
It's a good start, though.
Right you are.
Hey, California has over 600 on death row. Let's see if we can break 2,000 by the end of 2006.
Just wondering how many innocent people have been murdered in the US since 1977? Don't suppose the AP thought of including that statistic for a comparison did they?
Next!
Exactly. Here in Singapore we average about 40 a year. Or one every 9 days.
China kills around 2000 a year. No AP story on that one.
It just doesn't seem like very many. Roughly 36 executions per year, on average, since 1977.
That's lame for a nation this big.
They sho do like counting the dead, don't they?
'cept when talking about babies.
Mind you, I'm all for mercy in the law and some murders are crimes of passion but the real hardcore killers should be dealt with as a menace to society.
LOL, no AP can't report that.
Isn't it interesting how we're seeing "execution" stories again?
It must be part of the scumbag "mainstream" liberal news media's "Save Tookie" campaign.
Yep .. we are. Its just a drop in the bucket when you look at all the muderering trash we have. At least Tookie Williams is on the way out.
We're not just slacking, we're falling further behind.
Multiply that times about 45,000 and you have the number of unborn who were sentenced to death without so much as a hearing.
The 1000th should launch a big candle light vigil with Cindy Sheehan leading the lament that this country isn't worth dying for.
Just a conservative 25,000 per year, and that is a low number for the last 10 or so years, gives a nice round 700,000.
How many of those were innocent, excluding drug/game crime, is still hundreds of thousands.
Guess I will not loose any sleep over the 2000 dead murderers.
Of the total executions carried out to date nationally since the ban was lifted Texas has 355 of them with one more scheduled in 2005 for the first week in Dec.
It's a quagmire! Time to pull out.
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