hmmm because he will be dead by the time his execution date rolls around? ------------------ ...out with the old, in with the new...
...According to police, Vetter was shot Thursday after pulling Hale over for not wearing a seat belt. Police said Vetter, a six-year Department of Public Safety veteran, was sitting in his patrol car finishing paperwork when he was attacked. Hale walked up to the trooper's car carrying an assault-style rifle and fired a single shot through the windshield. Investigators believe Hale used the radio in Vetter's patrol car to call police and tell them of the shooting. Hale then got into his car and drove off. Hale was stopped about 100 yards from the shooting scene after Hays County Sheriff's deputies shot out his front tires. Hale then got out of his car, placed a rifle on a patrol car and surrendered, police said. So how fast was this guy driving?? He fled the scene, but other officers arrived at the scene, pursued him, caught up with him and shot out his tires a whole 100 yds away. He's lucky he wasn't run over by a Honda Accord! This is a tragedy. My heart goes out to the officer's young wife and 8 month old son. The man deffinitely fits the deffinition of a threat to society. Spaceghost, that was exactly my thought. I think they spend something like three times the amount to put someone to death as to put them away for life. But then, his mother is alive and kicking at 94. ------------------ Stay Cool... [This message has been edited by dc sports (edited August 09, 2000).]
Hays County officials said that Hale, who had previously received a ticket for failing to wear his safety belt and was delinquent on paying his taxes, had threatened officers that he would kill to keep his land and avoid going to jail. Well, he just bought himself a free ride to Huntsville where he will die, naturally or by injection. It may cost more but its worth every penny in the end. The guy thought he was a badass, and the State of Texas will show him what we do to badasses. You don't mess with a trooper. ------------------ "Hello! We're New Order. This is reading. You're the audience. Let's rock the ****ing house" [This message has been edited by Smokey (edited August 09, 2000).] [This message has been edited by Smokey (edited August 09, 2000).]
So killing a trooper is worse than killing a random person? ------------------ Going for the Rolls Royce! visit www.swirve.com
My heart also goes out to the family and friends of the trooper. That is terrible. I am completely anti-death penalty, but for me, it would be a dishonor to this man's memory to debate the merits of executing his assailant in this thread. This is a horrible tragedy for everyone involved. ------------------ Save Our Rockets and Comets SaveOurRockets.com
I don't particularly like cops because they have never, ever been nice to me. Not one ever cut me a break for anything. They give me nothing but BS and disrespect whenever I encounter them. But, I'm not an ignoramous who is going to shoot a cop over something as silly as not wearing a seat belt and getting busted for it. I respect cops for the jobs they do and I hate to see any cop get killed. Unfortunately, a lot of cops become cops because of the empowerment and authority that comes with it. Some go to far and even abuse that power. Some even think they are next to God on the omnipotent scale. But, the only thing this case goes to show is what an insane world this place is. If I were a cop, I would almost think twice about pulling people over for simple, stupid things such as not wearing a seatbelt if the outcome could be death. Cops look the other way all the time when it comes to traffic violations. I would look the other way on this violation. If people can't buckle up, then they must want to die and they will get what's coming to them. But, I guess you wouldn't be a good cop if you looked the other way and you wouldn't be helping to save any lives for that matter, either. This elderly man is an insult to the human race. If your consitutional rights were violated, then tell it to the judge. That is what cops always tell me to do whenever I get cited. Letting this old-timer live is a dishonor to the cop who died. In certain other countries, the families would be allowed to do to this man what they please. Age should have nothing to do with it. In fact, they should expedite this case so he can die asap because he doesn't deserve to live another second. He is evil. Surf ------------------
It is a tragedy and I feel for the trooper's family and friends. I share Surfguy's sentiment towards police officers. I too have had bad experiences. I too think some do it for power and abuse that power. And, I too respect most of them for the job they do. My brief thoughts on the death penalty. You (who support the death penalty) are mad that this man killed someone else. You think, "Who was that old man to say who lives and who dies?" Well, I ask "Who are you or who is our government to say who lives and who dies?" I don't want my or any government telling me who should live and who should die. That is as basic as this argument gets. The death penalty is not the answer. I say lock them up and put them to work.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/629458 I want someone who opposes the death penalty to defend this 72 year old man who shot and killed a trooper on I-35. Why should this man be given life in prison instead of death by lethal injection? The death penalty may not be perfect in Texas, but this is a perfect case for it. ------------------ "Hello! We're New Order. This is reading. You're the audience. Let's rock the ****ing house" [This message has been edited by Smokey (edited August 09, 2000).]
Rocketman, killing a cop is not worse then killing a normal person. I believe completely in the death penalty. I belive that if u kill someone, u deserve to die. Dreamer, its simply a matter of following the laws of society. A person knows that if they kill someon, they are very likey to face the death penalty. If u dont want to die, simply dont kill anyone. I believe they need to expand the death penalty even more. If someone kills somebody, what fu#king right do they have to live. I'm not even for all this shi! like lethal injection, etc. These assho#les who go around killing people should be killed in the same fashion. U shoot someone in the head, your ass desereves to be shot in the head. A stupid drunk driver runs over someone, well sorry but your ass is going to be run over too. The killers need to be taught a lesson. It's not okay to take a life, and then expect to spend the rest of your life in jail. Why the hell should I, a taxpayer, pay for these bastards to live in jail. I dont even care if they are working and paying for themselves. The point is they killed someone, and there is no reason for them to live. ------------------ Fun Police Says: 1. Posting in stupid threads is not FUN! 2. Spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure are not FUN! 3. Stupid BBS names are not FUN! 4. Smeggy is not FUN! 5. Conduct yourself in a FUN way! The Fun Police are Watching. Eat MANGOES & Have FUN or be Assimilated. [This message has been edited by R0ckets03 (edited August 10, 2000).]
R0ckets03 If my wife is dying of cancer and asks me to find some cyanide. Does that mean I should die also? Not trying to start an argument. I just think your logic is a bit flawed. As I've stated in another thread, I'm still on the fence when it comes to the death penalty. ------------------
I posted this story as an example of why we should not get rid of the death penalty. There is no doubt that this man shot and killed a state trooper for no reason other than he was pissed off for getting a ticket. I hope the old man does not plead insanity The life of a police officer is just as valuable as the life of any random person. In this case, a police officer risks his/her life everyday to protect you. It would be an injustice to all other officers to see this man get life. Why become a police officer? They don't get paid very well. They become police officers because they like to help others. It is not okay to kill anyone. It is not okay to kill police officers. The death penalty may not be perfect in Texas, but we should not get rid of it in all cases. ------------------ "Hello! We're New Order. This is reading. You're the audience. Let's rock the ****ing house"
I avoided this topic all day yesterday, but now I'm too annoyed. I do -- to state my credentials -- support the death penalty for some crimes. However, I am rather shocked at the vindictiveness that some posters seem to feel against this cop-killer. The death penalty doesn't exist to satisfy the desire for revenge of a victim's relative -- or worse: strangers like ourselves. It is there to punish transgressors, not to reward victims. Sentiments and comments like some of these makes it very difficult to defend the death penalty as a policy. The act of execution should be a very somber thing, and the decision to carry it out should be made soberly. Execution isn't meant to be a murder. Dragging someone behind a car defeats that purpose. ------------------ Rockets Draft Obligations Summary http://www.gaffordstudios.cjb.net/
So you really believe that if Texas would've executed even more people than it already does, then that man wouldn't have killed the trooper. My guess is if he hasn't gotten the message yet, then he wasn't ever gonna get it. ------------------ Going for the Rolls Royce! visit www.swirve.com [This message has been edited by Rocketman95 (edited August 10, 2000).]
the DP is not only about deterrence, it is about PUNISHMENT it is about prevention. By executing murderers, you prevent them from murdering again, period. Why should someone who has murdered another human being, be allowed to have the ability to do it again? NO executed murderer has ever gone on to torture or terrorize or murder another victim again, ever. It is the ONLY sure fire way of protecting society from the absolute human refuge. LWOP does NOT completely protect the innocent citizens, not by a long shot. ------------------
JuanValdez - I got a little too emotional and I have edited the post. ------------------ "Hello! We're New Order. This is reading. You're the audience. Let's rock the ****ing house"
Ty: I might agree with you except for the fact that violent crime has INCREASED since the re-instatement of the death penalty. The death penalty has become more about vindication than about deterring crime. If you really believe corporal punishment is a deterrant, why not cut off the hands of those who steal? Or blind peeping Toms? Violence leads to more violence in all forms. The constant perpetuation of violence in our society, no matter how it is justified, creates more problems than it solves. No matter how often someone studies and finds that the death penalty costs more and deters crime less than prison sentences, it is shot down because people want to see crimes vindicated. It has very little to do with factual reality or imperical data. In addition, the system by which criminals are punished using the death penalty is flawed. If even one innocent man or woman is executed, it is too many. Now, if the death penalty actually WAS a deterrant to crime and the system was set up to prevent the deaths of innocent people, that would be one thing. I would still object for personal reasons but I could at least understand the logic behind it. As it is now, there is no logic that can justify its use. ------------------ Save Our Rockets and Comets SaveOurRockets.com
>>"Ty: I might agree with you except for the fact that violent crime has INCREASED since the re-instatement of the death penalty." Um, I think that might have to do with the increase of crimes on a whole and not the deterrence of the death penalty. Are you familiar with Logical Fallacies? Cause that could be a TEXT BOOK example of one, Post Hoc. Using your logic then I could also argue, Crime rates have increased over the last 15 years, over that same time period we have increased the law enforcement presence on the streets, therefore increasing law enforcement officers has a negative affect on crime. I mean come on, there are a LOT more factors that go into crime rates, than the type of punishment we delve out. There is NO WAY of proving whether the death penalty or not, like I said though that is not the main reason I am Pro DP. >>"Now, if the death penalty actually WAS a deterrant to crime and the system was set up to prevent the deaths of innocent people, that would be one thing." Can you list the innocent victims who have been killed by a murderer that we have executed? (chirp, chirp, chirp) There are NUMEROUS cases of murderers who received Life w/o Parole (lwop) who have gone on to commit heinous acts and continue to MURDER people, from stabbing guards, to killing other inmates, to setting up hits on people on the outside. Why give them this chance? The death penalty is the ONLY way you can guarantee this murderers will no longer be able to kill again. The death penalty is not about "revenge" anymore than sentence of LWOP or 20 years is. It is about punishing people for their crimes. ------------------
DO NOT READ if you are weak of stomach. The following case is the type of people who I believe keeping alive is not an option, because if they were capable of doing what they did, nothing is going to keep them from hurting even MORE innocent people....which is a chance they should NOT be given. ----------------- Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School. On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together....and then died together. They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend's apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth's neighborhood. The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own. The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls' pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside. Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as 'Gonzalez' called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls' bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything. The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. 'Gonzalez' to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth. Jennifer Ertman's dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local television reporter when the call came over a cameraman's police scanner that two bodies had been found. Randy commandeered the news van and went to the scene that was now bustling with police activity. My first knowledge of the death of Jennifer was seeing Randy, on the news that evening, screaming at the police officers who were struggling to hold him back, "Does she have blond hair?? DOES SHE HAVE BLOND HAIR?!!?" Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter's brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth, but they were unable to escape that fate themselves. I've seen hardened, lifelong cops get tears in their eyes when talking about the scene more than a year later. The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston's brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders. The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned 'Gonzalez', he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife's urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters' bodies to rest. 'Gonzalez' said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know. His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls. While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Sean O'Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe's 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. He was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then "jumping in" Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member. Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing conciousness. The gang continued drinking and 'shooting the breeze' for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul. The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her. For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered. The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour. One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, "she was loose and sloppy." One of the boys boasted of having 'virgin blood' on him. The juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to "get some". He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile. When the rapes ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was too little to watch. Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O'Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O'Brien's home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that "the b**** wouldn't die" and that it would have been "easier with a gun". Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again. The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth's two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer's ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls' bodies were kicked and stomped on after the strangulations in order to "make sure that they were really dead." The juvenile pled guilty to his charge and his sentence will be reviewed when he turns 18, at which time he could be released. The other five were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death. ------------------
Jeff, Is this increase in numbers? or increase in percentage? A vague statistic! ------------------ ...out with the old, in with the new...
How about some RELEVANT statistics? The death penalty is a punishment for MURDER, so the "overall crime stats have virtually zero to do with it. How about this stat though, from the Department of Justice. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/totals.txt In 1991, the US hit a 10 year high in murders per 100,000 people at 9.8! That year we executed 14 people. Over the next 8 years we executed more and more people, starting with 31 in 1992 all the way to 98 last year, and we will top 100 this year. What has happened to the Murder rates, since 1991? They have fallen to the lowest rate since 1967 and were at 6.3 in 1998. Does this mean that the DP is a deterrent? Maybe so maybe not, but to dismiss it based on the OVERALL CRIME rates is folley. Because in FACT the murder rate is DECREASING. By the way, next to meet his maker is: "Larry Robison who was sentenced to die for the August 10, 1982, murder of Bruce Gardnera General Dynamics assembly line worker. Robison, a former construction worker from Abilene, was arrested Aug. 11, 1982, in Wichita, Kan., driving the car of 33-year-old Bruce Gardner of Lake Worth. The previous day, Bruce was one of five people found mutilated, shot or stabbed in neighboring cottages near Lake Worth. Also killed were Bruce’s girlfriend, Georgia Ann Reed, 34; her mother, Earline Barker, 55; and Georgia’s 11-year-old son, Scott. Robison, who has acknowledged a history of drug abuse, was convicted of capital murder for Bruce's death. But before Bruce arrived at the Shore View Drive cottage, Robison had slain Rickey Lee Bryant in the bathroom of the home they briefly shared. Rickey, 31, had been shot twice in the head, decapitated, sexually mutilated and stabbed 49 times. His ***** was found in the kitchen sink and his testicles were never found. Robison then went next door and killed Georgia Ann Reed in her bed. Reed's son Scott, who in two days would have been 12, was killed in the living room. Under his body was a hammer, which authorities suggested may have indicated that the boy had intended to defend his mother. Reed's mother, 55-year-old Earline Barker, was also killed in the living room. She had been recuperating from surgery to correct a brain aneurysm. Bruce was killed when he arrived to pick up Georgia for a date. Rickey's mother found her son's body, posed with his head in the crook of his arm. Authorities then found the bodies of the other victims. Greg Pipes, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Robison, said the idea that he was insane is an illusion. “They did diagnose him (as schizophrenic),” Pipes said. “But there are an awful lot of people diagnosed as schizophrenic that aren’t killing people." Pipes also stated that if Robison's sentence were to be commuted to a life sentence, he would be released from prison in a few years since mandatory release laws were in effect at the time of his crime. Mandatory release requires an inmate to be given "good time" credit of one and a half days for every day served in prison. When the inmate's time served plus his good time credits equal his sentence, he must be released, regardless of his potential as a future danger to society, after only one third of the actual sentence is served." From the justice for all website. ------------------
