In response to a column in Sunday's paper by a noted columnist, I would like to differ with him on what is moral and what is not. The subject was homosexuality.Extras
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Local family suing Carrolls
Theres a question that has been nagging on my mind for several minutes now: If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, what would my last meal be? Would I quick motor home for a taste of Moms cooking? Would I go someplace upscale and unnecessarily expensive like Nadias? Or would I just swing by Wendys drive-thru and grab a couple double cheeseburgers in order to save a few bucks?
This requires a lot of thoughtful consideration, but clearly depends on the circumstances of my untimely demise.
If I found out I had lung cancerthe wily killer that took out my appropriately named kitty, Puffy, so many years agoand was going to kick tomorrow, I would first wonder why I was dying of lung cancer. Not being a smoker, I would try to make up for Mother Natures mistake by buying a pack of Marlies. Then I would probably eat crab, because isnt crab like Cancer in the zodiac or something?
WASHINGTON ? Everything we needed to know about Alberto Gonzales we learned before Feb. 3, 2005.
That's the day the Senate, which spent more time in gauzy celebration of Gonzales' Hispanic heritage than it did examining his legal prowess, voted to confirm him as attorney general.
We knew Gonzales' chief qualification to be the nation's top law enforcement official was that he had been ? to use a phrase that apparently carries great weight inside the current Justice Department ? "a loyal Bushie." We knew this because loyalty to George W. Bush was really the only credential Gonzales' public record offered.
The third person to be executed in Texas so far in March was pronounced dead at the Hunstville Unit’s death chamber Tuesday night.
Charles Anthony Nealy, who was known as “Anthony,” was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m., seven minutes after the procedure began. He would have been 43 on Friday.
In a lengthy 4 1/2-minute statement before he became unconcious, Nealy was eerily calm and tried to provide comfort to his sister, brother-in-law and other friends on hand to witness the execution.
SALT LAKE CITY -- A man on Utah's death row for killing an attorney at a courthouse said he wants to be executed to avoid the pain of chronic arthritis.
Ronnie Lee Gardner, 46, claims he's not getting proper care at Utah State Prison. He said a prison doctor asked why he didn't drop his appeal to end his suffering.
"You should always follow your doctor's orders, except in legal matters," U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell told Gardner. Campbell advised him not to drop his appeal while other issues are pending.
LUCASVILLE Attorneys for a death row inmate whose execution was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court said the postponement gives them hope that the sentence will be thrown out based on a ruling this week in another capital case.
Kenneth Biros was scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing 22-year-old Tami Engstrom, dismembering her body and scattering the remains across two states. He and the family members of his victim waited more than six hours past his scheduled 10 a.m. execution time for the Supreme Court to rule that the lethal injection could not proceed.
The justices one-sentence decision agreed with a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that upheld a lower courts order saying Biros should be allowed to continue appealing a lawsuit with other inmates challenging Ohios method of lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment. Other executions have been delayed in the past year because of the suit, although a former cult leader was put to death despite his appeal.
Ronald G. Champney, one of three men sitting on death row as the result of Schuylkill County murders, returned to the county Tuesday in search of another chance with the judicial system.
Attorneys from the Defender Association of Philadelphia are asking President Judge William E. Baldwin to give Champney a new trial or at least vacate the death sentence against their client.
The hearing before Baldwin will resume at 9:30 a.m. today and is expected to continue at least through Monday, Deputy Attorney General Andrea McKenna said after Tuesday’s hearing.
On Monday, the Georgia House voted to pay Robert Clark $1.2 million for the 24 years he spent in prison for a rape he didn't commit. The Senate is expected to approve the payment ?- although mere dollars, even a million of them, cannot compensate Clark for the years he has lost.
Georgia's taxpayers need to get used to forking over small fortunes to make up for years of unjust imprisonment. Indeed, in a decade or two, Georgians may find themselves trying to figure out how to compensate families for the lives of men and women who have been unfairly put to death. If legislation pushed by prosecutors is passed into law, the day will likely come when a Georgia judge sentences an innocent man or woman to die.
The General Assembly is considering a bill that would allow judges to sentence a criminal defendant to death even if a jury of 12 cannot agree on capital punishment. Currently, the law requires a unanimous decision by 12 jurors before a defendant gets the death penalty. Under House Bill 185, which won the support of the House Judiciary (Non-Civil) Committee, only 11 jurors need vote for execution.
There's a certain cache about artwork by a rock star; no matter how crude or nave, it's surrounded by an aura that evokes the artist's music. Debonne Vineyards (7743 Doty Rd., Madison, 440.466.3485) is bringing together 100 pieces by "artists" such as Carlos Santana, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan, Tony Bennett and Jimi Hendrix in its Debonne Vineyards Rock & Roll Art Show, running from noon-8 p.m. today and Saturday, and noon-midnight Friday. There'll also be photos from sessions with Led Ze...
Thursday, March 22
Peking Acrobats
Lucasville -- Convicted killer Kenneth Biros will live to see another day.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the state's request to allow the execution of Biros to proceed as scheduled.
The 48-year-old Trumbull County man, sentenced to death for the 1991 aggravated murder of Tami Engstrom, spent Tuesday in a holding cell just 17 steps from Ohio's execution chamber.
A man with a history of robberies was executed Tuesday evening for a fatal shooting during a convenience store holdup in Dallas nearly 10 years ago.
From the death chamber gurney, Charles Anthony Nealy blamed a more than 20-minute delay in his execution on technicians' inability to find a suitable vein to carry the lethal chemicals.
"I used to tear up the doctor's office," Nealy said. "I hate needles."
ATLANTA - The Georgia House adopted a measure Tuesday designed to stop death penalty opponents from "sabotaging" capital punishment cases by allowing judges to consider a death sentence even if two jurors vote against it.
The plan, which now moves to the Senate, would soften Georgia's capital punishment rules by erasing the requirement that a unanimous verdict is needed to secure a death penalty.
It was prompted by at least 16 cases where holdout jurors prevented prosecutors from getting a capital punishment verdict, said House Majority Whip Barry Fleming, the bill's sponsor.
ALTADENA - Investigators looking for the body of Tommy Bowman and other child victims who may have been killed by Mack Ray Edwards said Tuesday they hope to give their families something they have been denied for decades - a funeral.
Caltrans is scouring its records of freeway construction projects to determine where Edwards, a construction worker who buried some of his victims' bodies along the freeways he helped build in the 1950s, was working at the time of Tommy Bowman's disappearance in 1957, according to Detective Vivian T. Flores of the Los Angeles Police Department.
"There's still those fathers and mothers and sisters I have to deal with every single day that are looking for their kids," Flores said.
FORT PIERCE — Steven Hayward served 16 years in prison for his first murder - and under the law at the time, he was allowed a second chance at life and set free after serving less than half of his 35-year prison sentence.
He was out of prison for only three months before he shot and killed another man in the same neighborhood. This time, a majority of jurors who convicted him of first-degree murder last week in the 2005 death of Daniel DeStefano say he deserves no breaks and should receive the most severe punishment the law allows.
The jury Tuesday afternoon voted 8-4 in favor of recommending Hayward be sentenced to death for murdering DeStefano. Prosecutors say Hayward, 38, robbed and shot DeStefano, 32, twice in the pre-dawn hours as DeStefano filled Tribune newspaper racks at businesses along Avenue D on Feb. 1, 2005.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas -- A man with a history of robberies was headed to the Texas death chamber Tuesday evening for a fatal shooting during a convenience store holdup in Dallas nearly 10 years ago.
Charles Anthony Nealy, whose 43rd birthday is Friday, would be the ninth condemned inmate executed this year in the nation's most active capital punishment state.
Nealy had at least three earlier convictions for aggravated robbery plus an extensive juvenile record for shoplifting, burglary and theft. The Dallas man insisted he was in Oklahoma and not in Texas the night of Aug. 20, 1997, when an Expressway Mart just south of downtown Dallas was robbed of some $4,000 and the store owner and a clerk were gunned down.
ALTADENA - Investigators looking for the body of Tommy Bowman and other child victims who may have been killed by Mack Ray Edwards said Tuesday they hope to give their families something they have been denied for decades - a funeral.
Caltrans is scouring its records of freeway construction projects to determine where Edwards, a construction worker who buried some of his victims' bodies along the freeways he helped build in the 1950s, was working at the time of Tommy Bowman's disappearance in 1957, according to Detective Vivian T. Flores of the Los Angeles Police Department.
"There's still those fathers and mothers and sisters I have to deal with every single day that are looking for their kids," Flores said.
LUCASVILLE, Ohio - Attorneys for a death row inmate whose execution was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court said the postponement gives them hope that the sentence will be thrown out based on a ruling this week in another capital case.
Kenneth Biros was scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing 22-year-old Tami Engstrom, dismembering her body and scattering the remains across two states. He and the family members of his victim waited more than six hours past his scheduled 10 a.m. execution time for the Supreme Court to rule that the lethal injection could not proceed.
The justices' one-sentence decision agreed with a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that upheld a lower court's order saying Biros should be allowed to continue appealing a lawsuit with other inmates challenging Ohio's method of lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment. Other executions have been delayed in the past year because of the suit, although a former cult leader was put to death despite his appeal.
HUNTSVILLE, TexasTexas death row inmate Charles Anthony Nealy has been executed.
RAVENNA - It was a prosecution deal that Randy Resh and Bob Gondor say cost them the past 17years of their lives in prison, and now with the first retrial in a Portage County murder case a week away, they want to know of any new deals made with inmates.
The formal request was made Monday to Portage County Common Pleas Judge Laurie J. Pittman, who granted a gag order in the the matter on March 2.
Four days later, two representatives of the prosecutor's office visited Grafton Correctional Institution, where Resh and Gondor had been imprisoned for the past several years.
Demolle, 24 at the time, admitted as much during two separate interviews with police and the district attorney's office. He apologized for it in three letters he wrote, and his DNA matched DNA extracted from semen found on Jaquita's body, Brouhard said as he recapped the last two weeks of the trial.
In order to ensure the jury finds Demolle guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances, a crime that can put Demolle on death row, the jury must understand how he did it, Brouhard explained.
Demolle did it by holding Jaquita against her will, Brouhard said. He did it by repeatedly penetrating her body. Then, Demolle thought about the consequences and killed the girl instead of letting her go, the deputy district attorney said.
HOUSTON (AP) - The convicted triggerman in a murder-for-for hire plot in San Antonio and a man found guilty of killing a 16-year-old Houston-area girl lost appeals Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court, moving them another step closer to execution.
The high court refused to review the cases of death-row inmates Rolando Ruiz Jr., 34, of San Antonio, and George Whitaker III, 36, of Houston. Neither has scheduled execution dates.
Ruiz was convicted in the 1992 slaying of Theresa Rodriguez, 29, who was shot in the head at close range with a .357-caliber Magnum pistol in the garage of her San Antonio home as she got out of her car. Evidence showed Ruiz was paid $2,000 by the woman's husband and brother-in-law so they could collect on life insurance policies worth $400,000.
On the grainy videotape, one man carrying a shotgun and another with a pistol are seen inside the convenience store just south of downtown Dallas, taking money from a cash register then grabbing a bottle of wine and a couple of six-packs of cold beer.
What the tape doesn't show is the man with the shotgun blasting Expressway Mart owner Jiten Bhakta, 25, who was taking a nap in his office, or the man with the pistol ordering employee Vijay Patel, also 25, to lie on the floor before fatally shooting him in the head.
Bhakta's brother, also at the store on that August evening almost 10 years ago, identified the man with the shotgun as Charles Anthony Nealy, a paroled robber from Dallas, and Nealy's nephew, Claude, as the second gunman. Charles Anthony Nealy is set to die in Huntsville on Tuesday evening -- three days before his 43rd birthday.
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The man convicted of killing his wife during a 1992 shooting at the St. Louis County Courthouse could become the oldest person on death row in Missouri.
A St. Charles County jury has recommended the death penalty for 67-year-old Kenneth Baumruk, who was convicted last month. A formal sentencing hearing was scheduled for Monday afternoon.
Baumruk turns 68 next month. Currently, the oldest death row inmates in Missouri are 66-year-old Cecil Clayton, who killed a Barry County deputy in 1996, and 59-year-old Donald Hall, convicted of killing a Springfield jewelry store owner in 1992.
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Moratorium on death penalty makes sense
Monday, March 19, 2007 11:41 AM PDT
Barbara Sloan woke up in the middle of the night and had a dream.
She wanted to photograph the aftermath of death.
“This was just in the middle of the night,” Sloan said. “I woke up and it was just one of those things like you felt like you just have to do. I couldn’t sleep after that. Those kinds of things stick with you.”
WHILE there is no doubt we have a problem statewide with the Texas Youth Commission, this problem starts at the local level with school districts, local police departments and juvenile detention systems, including the "zero tolerance" law passed by our state.
The school districts and local police file charges on kids for minor infractions, based on zero tolerance, and send them to juvenile for minor infractions to keep them out of school so the districts don't have to bother with them.
The "system" works to keep kids locked up and out of public schools.
LIVINGSTON, Texas Condemned prisoner Charles Anthony Nealy says he wasn't even in Texas when two men were gunned down during a convenience store robbery in Dallas almost 10 years ago.A Dallas County jury believed otherwise.Nealy faces lethal injection this evening in Huntsville for the shooting death of one of the men, 25-year-old store owner Jiten Bhakta.One of Bhakta's workers, 25-year-old Vijay Patel, also was fatally shot. Nealy's cousin, Claude is serving life in prison for that killing.Nea...
Kenneth Baumruk is brought into the St. Charles County courtroom by officers for his sentencing Monday.
(Odell Mitchell Jr./P-D)
Lisa Schmidt was there in the St. Louis County courtroom nearly 15 years ago when her stepfather, Kenneth Baumruk, shot and killed her mother Mary Baumruk. Now, after a judge sentenced Kenneth Baumruk to deaththis afternoon, Schmidt says she wants to watch his execution.
The convicted triggerman in a murder-for-for hire plot in San Antonio and a man found guilty of killing a 16-year-old Houston-area girl lost appeals Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court, moving them another step closer to execution.
The high court refused to review the cases of death-row inmates Rolando Ruiz Jr., 34, of San Antonio, and George Whitaker III, 36, of Houston. Neither has scheduled execution dates.
Ruiz was convicted in the 1992 slaying of Theresa Rodriguez, 29, who was shot in the head at close range with a .357-caliber Magnum pistol in the garage of her San Antonio home as she got out of her car. Evidence showed Ruiz was paid $2,000 by the woman's husband and brother-in-law so they could collect on life insurance policies worth $400,000.
LIVINGSTON, Texas – On the grainy videotape, one man carrying a shotgun and another with a pistol are seen inside the convenience store just south of downtown Dallas, taking money from a cash register then grabbing a bottle of wine and a couple of six-packs of cold beer.
What the tape doesn't show is the man with the shotgun blasting Expressway Mart owner Jiten Bhakta, 25, who was taking a nap in his office, or the man with the pistol ordering employee Vijay Patel, also 25, to lie on the floor before fatally shooting him in the head. Charles Anthony Nealy
Bhakta's brother, also at the store on that August evening almost 10 years ago, identified the man with the shotgun as Charles Anthony Nealy, a paroled robber from Dallas, and Nealy's nephew, Claude, as the second gunman. Charles Anthony Nealy is set to die in Huntsville on Tuesday evening – three days before his 43rd birthday.
Kenneth Baumruk is brought in the St. Charles County courtroom by officers for his sentencing Monday.
(Odell Mitchell Jr./P-D)
Remembering a hero Soldier laid to rest More of America's fallen
THE WOODLANDS Close friends on Monday remembered Pfc. Cory Kosters as a young man who had a passion for weapons and the character of a hero as they celebrated the soldier's life.
Family and friends filled the sanctuary at Crossroads Baptist Church, leaving standing room only.
SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED 50 years ago in the Arroyo Seco, a mystery coursing through Eldon Bowman's mind ever since.
On March 23, 1953, his son, Tommy, 8, vanished at the end of a brief hike less than a mile from the Altadena home they were visiting.
"I'll beat you to the car," Tommy told his two cousins before scrambling out of their lives forever.
"There are some cases, factually, that call out for the death penalty," prosecutor Peter Margino told the jury in his closing argument in the John Evander Couey case. The kidnapping, rape and murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford was a cold, calculated and premeditated murder."
At the death-penalty phase, another prosecutor, Ric Ridgway, told jurors that the crime was "evil," and went on to describe Jessica's death by suffocation in two plastic bags, buried in a shallow grave.
"She was in pain," said Ridgway. "In the dark. She was certainly terrified. If this is not the person who deserves the death penalty, who does?"
MASURY, OHIO - A ``crybaby killer'' whose chance meeting with a young mother at a bar led to a night of horror faces execution for killing her, cutting up her body and dumping the parts in two states.
By most accounts, Ken Biros, now 48, was a hardworking guy with just a drunken-driving and theft record when he met Tami Engstrom, 22, after work on the night of Feb. 7, 1991, in a tavern here on a Northeast Ohio hillside overlooking abandoned steel mills of Sharon, Pa.
Biros is to be transferred by Monday afternoon from death row in Youngstown to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where executions are carried out, prisons spokeswoman Andrea Dean said Sunday.
In what has become something of a recurring exercise in recent years, the U.S. Senate is being asked to authorize an additional federal judge for the Southern District of Indiana.
The district, which comprises the lower two-thirds of the state including Indianapolis, now has five judges. They serve courthouses in the state capital, Evansville, Terre Haute and New Albany.
Jurists say another judge is needed because those five carry among the highest caseloads in the nation - the third highest when cases are weighted for complexity.
FRANKFORT - Legislation to require a review of capital punishment in Kentucky has stalled.
"I'm afraid that it is lost for this session," said Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Stein said she would recommend her committee study the measure - sponsored by Reps. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, and David Floyd, R-Bardstown - before next year's session.
It is a worthy debate: Should the state of Oregon continue to sanction execution as the ultimate punishment for crimes?State Rep. Chip Shields, a Portland Democrat, has renewed the perennial moral debate this legislative session, saying he wants to approach the question on practical grounds: Is it more cost-effective to imprison someone for life than it is to execute him?
Shields has introduced a bill that would hold a moratorium on the execution of the 33 men on death row in Oregon pending findings of an 11-member task force that would compare the fairness and expense of putting people do death with the cost of simply making a life sentence without possibility of parole mean exactly that.However, we suspect is the second major part of the task force’s assignment where Shields’ real intent lies: Assessing whether the death penalty, which Oregon voters...
Family and friends remember a Georgetown man killed in last week's raging floodwaters.
A memorial service was held Sunday afternoon for 80-year-old Fred List.
You'll remember rescue crews attempted to save List and his wife, Kathlyn, after the two got stuck in rising water.
Sunny, Delbert, Kerry, Gary, David and Robert . Their names sound like a recitation of students in a fifth-grade class roll book. But this group of people belong to a much darker list.
They all spent between four and 22 years waiting to be executed for crimes they didn't commit.
These are six out of 102 people who have been exonerated and released from Death Row and prison. Their lives are presented in Theater Winter Haven's latest stage read, "The Exonerated."
HUBBARD Debi Heiss has been keeping her friends close, but her enemies closer.
And for the 42-year-old coffee shop employee, its clear that her biggest enemy is Ken Biros, the 48-year-old former Brookfield man who killed her sister 16 years ago.
Biros due to be executed by lethal injection Tuesday morning has spent the last couple years no more than a couple miles away from where Heiss lives on the south end of Hubbard and not too far from state Route 616, the site of a prison where Ohio moved its death row.
MASURY, Ohio A "crybaby killer" whose chance meeting with a young mother at a bar led to a night of horror faces execution for killing her, cutting up her body and dumping the parts in two states. By most accounts, Ken Biros, now 48, was a hardworking guy with a drunken-driving and theft record when he met Tami Engstrom, 22, after work on the night of Feb. 7, 1991, in a tavern here on a northeastern Ohio hillside overlooking abandoned steel mills of Sharon, Pa. Biros is to be transferred by thi...
I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I was inspired to write by yet another budding prayer circle or medicine wheel or whatever magical mystery maze these folks misguidingly create in Marin Open Space.
Please stop. When I'm walking in these areas, I do so to escape man-made environments. Seeing shaped stone circles with collections of magpie trinkets, really garbage, in the middle like a dump, does nothing spiritual for me. It is irritating instead.
The grass is killed, the landscape littered and whatever enjoyment of nature is to be gleaned is gone. Open space is not for houses of worship. If you want them, build them in your own homes.
WINTER HAVEN - In 1984, Marion Moorman was involved in the defense of a man sentenced to death row.
Fifteen days before the convicted man was set to die in Florida's electric chair, the man was exonerated when new DNA evidence surfaced clearing him of the charges.
"Unfortunately, that happens too often, and the chances of it happening are higher when someone is being convicted of a serious crime, because the stakes are higher," said Marion Moorman, the Polk County public defender. "I have a lot of interest in the cases where people on death row have been wrongly accused."
Residents say it poses a threat; firm says city can't require removal
10:58 PM CDT on Sunday, March 18, 2007
kholland@dallasnews.com
MASURY, Ohio (AP) -- A "crybaby killer" whose chance meeting with a young mother at a bar led to a night of horror faces execution for killing her, cutting up her body and dumping the parts in two states. By most accounts, Ken Biros, now 48, was a hardworking guy with just a drunken-driving and theft record when he met Tami Engstrom, 22, after work on the night of Feb. 7, 1991, in a tavern here on a northeast Ohio hillside overlooking abandoned steel mills of Sharon, Pa. Biros is to be trans...
The March 9 AP story, “U.S. considering hostage rescue,” said that the Bush administration may consider a “risky military rescue of three Americans held hostage more than four years by drug-trafficking leftist rebels in Colombia.” The men, contractors for Northrup Grumman Corp., were on a drug surveillance mission when their plane crashed. Northrup and the families have urged our government to work on diplomatic efforts. President Bush, on his trip to Latin America, addre...
Is this any different than the 400 hostages still being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay? What about men such as David Hicks, an Australian citizen held over five years without charge, without trial, without being sentenced, with no idea of when he will be released? Don’t we believe that all are innocent until proven guilty? Shouldn’t the U.S. be the leader in human rights by being a better example to the world? Doesn’t Bush know that the world is saying the same thing about our government as he said of the rebels?
Contact Congress to have the Bush administration expedite the release of those still held and then close Guantanamo.
Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, has asked the Texas House to record her as voting against a bill allowing the death penalty for predators convicted twice of repeated sexual assaults of children.
Dukes said Tuesday that she was off the House floor Monday when a colleague incorrectly punched the button on her desk recording her voting in favor of tentative approval of House Bill 8 by Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball.
Members voted 119-25 Tuesday to send the proposal to the Senate.
Video: Sentencing hearing for Waye Adam Ford Survey: Do you support the death penalty? Is it a suitable punishment for Wayne Adam Ford?
SAN BERNARDINO - Serial killer Wayne Adam Ford was sentenced to death Friday for the brutal and sadistic killings of four women, two from San Bernardino County.
"Death is the appropriate verdict for this defendant and these crimes," Superior Court Judge Michael Smith ruled.
March 18, 2007 -- A string of never- before-published e-mails by John Mark Karr, the slimy teacher who made a false confession in the JonBenet Ramsey murder, details his twisted obsession with young girls in his care.
The Post recently obtained the lurid e-mails in which Karr reveals his perverse passion and involvement with children while he was a fourth-grade teacher in Napa Valley, Calif.
In an interview with The Post, Karr also exhibited his eerie fixation with the notorious 1993 Polly Klaas murder case, breaking down and crying as he was read the killer's confession.
Long before Mike Farrell, star of the hit show ?M*A*S*H?, began his career in show business, he was an activist that was devoted to many human rights causes. On Saturday afternoon, about a dozen curious fans gathered at Riverhouse Books in St. Helena to hear Farrell share stories about his life.
Farrell was in town promoting his autobiography, ?Just Call Me Mike,? and meeting with members of Napa?s chapter of Death Penalty Focus, a nonprofit agency that Farrell started that?s opposed to the death penalty and seeks ways to have it abolished.
His life of activism began before he became an actor, while he served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Farrell?s fellow Marines gave him grief over a friendship that he made with a fellow Marine, who was African American, he said.
We need to expose the rape subculture in all Texas prisons, says ROD DREHER
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, March 18, 2007
If it's true, as Winston Churchill supposedly said, that you can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners, then what does the youth prison rape scandal say about Texas?
In relation to the criminal justice system, deterrence may be classified into two different categories including specific and general deterrence. In very simple terms, simple deterrence is employed by the use of the death penalty because the executed criminal is prevented from repeating the violent crimes that he committed.
However, general deterrence is the prevention of the public at large from committing similar crimes because they fear the consequences of their actions.
The largest question raised when debating the use of the death penalty is if the benefits of deterrence by capital punishment outweigh the issue of basic human rights. The issue of basic human rights when considering the purpose of the death penalty in society can be very simply justified: a person who has committed a violent enough offense to be eligible for execution has in essence surrendered his rights when he harmed another person or broke the law.
COLUMBUS, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland today w