Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell is currently exploring alternatives that would postpone the execution of convicted serial killer Michael Ross.
She told the Associated Press that her office is actually looking at their options and what's available to them. In a sense, they’re looking for excuses not to kill the guy in order to prevent a death penalty debate.
Forty-Five-year-old Ross is on death row for brutally raping and murdering four young women during the ‘80’s in eastern Connecticut. He confessed to killing eight women total throughout Connecticut and New York.
If Rell is successful in delaying Ross' planned Jan. 26 execution until after the "next" legislative session, state lawmakers will have a chance to eliminate Connecticut's capital punishment law. This would potentially stop what would be the state's first execution since 1960.
Rell, a Republican governor, has said that she supports the death penalty in heinous cases, according to the Associated Press.
So the question is posed: How many young women have to be ruthlessly murdered before it becomes heinous? Obviously in Connecticut, four is too few.
Ross needs to fry, plain and simple.
What other options are there? Let him rot in a prison cell for the rest of his life? Set him up with a lengthy sentence? -- there's an idea -- then he could get out and create more non-heinous cases.
There is no sense in preserving a life that’s ended so many. A person who consciously takes a life, especially in the manner of Ross’s, is not worthy of their own.
"A society that sentences killers to nothing worse than prison -- no matter how depraved the killing or how innocent the victim -- is a society that doesn't *really* think murder is so terrible." -- Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe
4 comments:
I never understood how someone can be for the death penalty and against abortion. And don't bring up innocence or I'll bring up Iraq.
But I love it when you use quotes! Here are some more:
"Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination because there it is invested with the approval of the society.... Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another out but similars that breed their kind." - George Bernard Shaw
"Crime is redeemed by remorse, but not by a blow of the axe or slipknot. Blood has to be washed by tears but not by blood."
-- Victor Hugo
"People who were fully informed as to the purposes of the death penalty and its liabilities would find the penalty shocking, unjust, and unacceptable."
--former supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall
"Capital punishment is the element from which war, genocide, holocaust multiply. If we cannot end the death penalty, the superior capacity for violence will continue its reign over reason, freedom, and love ..."
-- former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark
"It's a phony issue. To pretend the death penalty is going to end crime in the United States is to fool people, to promote public ignorance"
--Rudy Giuliani
"Is the state so sinless that it has the moral authority to kill? That's the question that Jesus was raising."
Bryan Stevenson, Director of Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama
"As I read the New Testament, I don't see anywhere in there that killing bad people is a very high calling for Christians. I see an awful lot about redemption and forgiveness."
-- James W. L. Park, former execution officer, San Quentin
"research has demonstrated the death penalty to be racist in application and social science research has found no consistent evidence of crime deterrence through execution, the ASC publicly condemns this form of punishment and urges its members to use their professional skills in legislatures and the courts to seek a speedy abolition of this form of punishment"
-- American Society of Criminology, Resolution of the Death Penalty
it is worth noting other institutions who have written against the death penalty, to name a few:
American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, National Association of Social Workers, Missouri Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, National Mental Health Association
"I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: (1) Irreparability in the event of an error in justice; (2) detrimental moral influence on [the people/society carrying out an execution]."
-- Albert Einstein
"Murder is murder, no matter who does it ... I think we as a society can afford to incarcerate people."
-- Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York
"I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because He alone gives it."
-- Mahatma Ghandi.
"The state must not claim the right to take human life away, which belongs only to the Almighty ... I can tell you firmly I am against the renewal of the death penalty in Russia."
-- Vladimir Putin
"The European Union is opposed to the death penalty in all cases and accordingly aims at its universal abolition, seeking a global moratorium on the death penalty as a first step."
-- European Union
"I don't know how anybody can get up Sunday morning and go to church and call themselves Christians."
-- Clarence Brandley, who spent nearly a decade on death row for a 1981 Conroe murder he did not commit and who came within 6 days of execution before he was eventually freed
I'll skip the religious quotes: Suffice it to say that based on the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, et al, it is against the tenets of virtually every world religion save Satanism to commit murder.
"The death penalty is a particularly cruel and unusual punishment that should be abolished."
--Fourth World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates
Don't be a fool, Rob. Don't be okay with state-sponsored murder.
And let heartless killers serve pointless and sometimes luxurious sentences in jail...only to be let loose to pry the lives away of other innocent people? I don't think so. Why don't you call the girls' parent's fools for wanting justice.
1. With what statistics will you back up the claim that people get out of jail for murder and murder again? I'd bet the likelihood is less than being struck by lightning.
2. It's not justice the victims' families seek, it is revenge. Don't mix up the two, and don't credit the state with the authority of revenge killing.
3. Prison, at least for common criminals and not CIA puppet mass-murderer dictators, is not "luxurious." First, it is a deprivation of physical freedom, which should be, given an end to the death penalty, the most serious penalty possible. Have you ever been imprisoned or interviewed people in a prison as a basis for your belief that it is akin to a resort hotel?
You play this emotional bit to suggest that we as a society are failing morally by not killing killers. You presume, again, to understand the emotions of the families. I believe that we uplift people and society, and the victims' families, by not continuing the cycle of violence. Murder unto murder is not just, it is rather an indication that society finds this most heinous violation of life, the snuffing of existence, as a morally feasible course of action. This is the cultural trait that leads the United States to be the individual-murder capital of the world.
"The assumption is all too often made that all murder-victim family members want the death penalty. The horrible reality for those of us who have lost loved ones to homicide is that nothing that happens to their murderers is going to bring our loved ones back."
-- Sharon Borcyzewski, whose daughter was murdered in 1997, Arizona Republic, 4/12/2004.
"We never thought that the person who killed Maria Grazia could be condemned to capital punishment. This won't give us back our daughter. As Christians, we are always against the death penalty."
-- Agata D'Amore, whose daughter, Italian journalist Maria Grazia Cutuli, was murdered by Afghan extremist Reza Khan, commenting on Khan's death sentence, AP, 11/21/2004.
"Having lost my father and grandmother to gun violence, I will understand the deep hurt and anger felt by the loved ones of those who have been murdered. Yet I can't accept the judgement that their killers deserve to be executed. This merely perpetuates the tragic, unending cycle of violence that destroys our hope for a decent society."
-- Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with healing. [It] just continues that cycle of violence and creates more murder victim family members. We become what we hate. We become killers.»
-- Bill Pelke, whose 78-year-old grandmother Ruth was murdered by 15-year-old Paula Cooper.
The murder victims' families for reconciliation is http://www.mvfr.org
for the source of all these and many more quotes and information on the death penalty, do a google serach death penalty quotes and it's the top link
nothing is ever clear cut when deciding the type of punishment for murder. the only thing I have to say is that as far as taking another life in return, I'm not sure if it changes anything. No, we should not let people out on the street who have no control over what they are doing. I guess the punishment should depend on the circumstances and how mentally bad off the murderer is. There are so many different types of situations regarding who committed the crime and the reason why. So, Rob, are you saying that a person should fry because they are going to keep murdering? Do you believe in rehabilitation? Do you think we have other alternatives other than capital punishment? Losing a loved one to a senseless crime is a horrific thing, but taking the life of another will not lessen the grief. I do believe some people who are innocent will die with capital punishment. But, I could easily kill someone if they were going to harm a loved one and I could stop them. Well, I guess that should be considered another issue. But is it? Food for thought
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