Posted on 04/30/2009 10:34:11 AM PDT by granite
SACRAMENTO - Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco called for overhauling the state's death-penalty system during a Capitol rally Wednesday for crime victims.
Pacheco, the keynote speaker at the 20th annual Victims March on the Capitol, criticized the years-long delays between when a criminal is sentenced to death and when the execution takes place.
Pacheco singled out the 1992 death sentence for Andrew Lamont Brown, of Riverside, for killing 17-year-old Christina Ann Ramirez, of Riverside, during a carjacking. Brown remains on death row.
"How has this animal not received justice?" Pacheco said, choking up. "He has been sitting on death row at our expense for $90,000 a year for 17 years."
(Excerpt) Read more at pe.com ...
Running for State Attorney General, I see.
In theory I could support a death penalty for animals like Charles Manson or Paul Bernardo. In real life what you’re talking about is handing the Janet Renos, Ronnie Earles, Mike Nifongs, and Scott Harshbargers a license to kill people. I’d have to have several kinds of major changes in the American justice system before I could support a death penalty here. For starters, you’d need to jettison the entire “adversarial” system of justice and adopt something like the French system which is called “inquisitorial” in which the common motive and incentive of all participants is to figure out what happened and determine if any punishments are warranted. NOBODY should ever have any sort of a career or money incentive to put people in prison or hang people.
That does make sense. Upon conviction they have a nine month appeal window and that’s it. Judges are required to hear appeals irrespective of personal opinion.
Upon no reversal the convict is executed at the end of the nine month waiting period and case is closed.
To ensure fair trial during a death penalty case, all forms of evidence must be subject to forensic testing and witnesses before appearing are to undergo questioning while being connected to a lie detector testing. Then when taking the stand they are required to answer any questions to which they gave questionable answers in the pre-trial questioning session. Inconsistencies will require further questioning.
What do you guys think?
“He has been sitting on death row at our expense for $90,000 a year for 17 years.”
They need to cut through some of the red and get it done. He should have been fried long ago.
“For starters, you’d need to jettison the entire “adversarial” system of justice and adopt something like the French system which is called “inquisitorial” in which the common motive and incentive of all participants is to figure out what happened and determine if any punishments are warranted. NOBODY should ever have any sort of a career or money incentive to put people in prison or hang people.”
That’s the only thing I don’t like. It’s like the state is determined to make sure someone goes to jail and puts people who defend themselves in the position of possibly being sent to jail.
All we need is a freakin’ bullet and an off duty cop.
Correction: Cut through some of the “red tape”
Lie detectors are a fraud.
This is such a waste of tax payer money. He was sentenced to death for a reason and we shouldn’t wait decades to see it carried out.
I’ll do it. I’ll even provide my own equipment and ammo.
Interesting.
First you tell all that you don’t support the death penalty. No problem.
Then you tell all that you could support a death penalty provided it was preceded by a French style judicial system. Okay.
Except that the French style judicial system exists within a national context that doesn’t allow the death penalty.
So you’re in favor of the death penalty within a system that doesn’t permit the death penalty.
Let me guess: You’re secretly a lawyer in the Death Penalty Project.
As I said, interesting.
But pure sophistry.
With everything I’ve seen on the Sandra Cantu murder in California, it makes me furious that the thing that murdered that little girl will prolly never be executed, even if it gets the death penalty.
Anybody here read “The Stand”? I kind of like the system Arizona had in that book. I know King was just kidding, but good Lord, it’s tempting.
We need the Chinese to give us tips on strengthening our backbone.
A nice, long public crucifixion. A lovely thought.
I would have problems executing someone without
DNA or proof positive evidence, simply because
you can’t correct a mistake like executing the
wrong person.
If you have all the proof, however, appeals should
be limited to the evidence that brought the conviction.
No social commentary or alleged misrepresentation should
shield the condemned from their date with the hangman.
BTW I’d be fine with hanging or the guillotine. Both are
100% proven methods of getting the job done.
The question here is how you’d feel about those Duke lacross players having been executed for rape. Or Tom DeLay being hanged by a Ronnie Earle court edict. There are too many cases of Earles, Janet Renos, and Mike Nifongs and their ilk becoming state AGs and governors and too many of those careers are built upon the blood of innocents. Try doing a couple of google searches on “bobby fijnje” or “grant snowden” when you get a chance...
Oh, I remember now, the Markham law.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.