death penalty

By Bob Ellis • July 25th, 2008

From the LA Times, convicted murderer Dale Leo Bishop endorsed Barack Obama before being executed for murdering a friend with a claw hammer in 1998.
“For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes [...] Read more »

GUEST COLUMN
By Dudley SharpJustice Matters
Rev. Pickett is on a promotional tour for the anti death penalty film “At the Death House Door”. It is partially about the Reverend’s experience ministering to 95 death row inmates executed in Texas.
Rev. Pickett’s inaccuracies are many and important.
Does Rev. Pickett just make facts up as he goes along, hoping [...] Read more »

GUEST COLUMN
By Dudley SharpJustice Matters
Often the death penalty dialogue gravitates to the subject of innocents at risk of execution. Seldom is a more common problem reviewed. That is, how innocents are more at risk without the death penalty.
Living murderers in prison, after release or escape or after our failures to incarcerate them, are much more [...] Read more »

Debra J. Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle has a piece on the case before the Supreme Court arguing that execution by lethal injection is “cruel and unusual” based on the contention that these convicted murderers might feel some pain as they meet justice.
Saunders sheds some scientific light on these thin arguments:
Start with the bogus [...] Read more »

From Fox News, the Supreme Court is looking at the constitutionality of lethal injections.
For most people with common sense, it’s a no-brainer. But liberals must always anguish over punishing wrongdoers and worry that they might feel some discomfort as they receive their punishment for murdering an innocent human being.
From a purely constitutional perspective, I think [...] Read more »

From the Del Rio News Herald, the UN has voted for a moratorium on the death penalty. The vote is not binding.
The article points out that the U.S. took “the unusual step of siding with countries such as Iran, China and Syria.” Of course this makes the U.S. look bad, since everyone knows these [...] Read more »

The New York Times has an article today examining the death penalty’s deterrent effect. Some of the study information became available several months ago, but it examines the issue in a little more depth than some previous articles I read back then.
Incidentally, the primary study cited was done by a death penalty opponent, so it [...] Read more »

Opponents of the death penalty like to tell us that there’s no deterrent effect from capital punishment. Since it takes an average of 11 years to execute a convicted murderer, thus far removing the act from it’s consequences, that might not be a surprise.
But would it be a surprise if there were STILL a deterrent [...] Read more »

From KMBC.com (KMBC – Channel 9 News out of Kansas City)…
“Montgomery Found Guilty Of Killing Pregnant Woman
POSTED: 12:40 pm CDT October 22, 2007UPDATED: 5:45 pm CDT October 22, 2007
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A woman whose attorneys had argued that she was suffering from delusions when she killed an expectant mother and cut the baby [...] Read more »

“Convicted by a sleeping jury by Mark YannoneAugust 24, 2007 During the closing arguments of the prosecution of Florida citizen Nancy Grant, the assistant prosecutor told the jury, “if someone is telling another person about their civil rights, they are practicing law without a license.”
This is the state [...] Read more »

By Carrie K. Hutchens
There should be no statute of limitations, or deadlines without exceptions, when it comes to proof of innocence. No one should be forced to stay in prison or be executed, simply because the innocence issue wasn’t resolved in time. How ridiculous to suggest otherwise, especially when we have a judicial system so [...] Read more »

Jim Kent’s column in the Rapid City Journal today deals with capital punishment.
Kent says some of his opinions on crime and punishment come from his experiences in the Marine Corps where he did some corrections work. Having also worked in law enforcement and corrections, I concur with his first hand assessments of criminals in general.
I [...] Read more »

Far too few Christians spoke up in the recent public debate over capital punishment, and many of the few that did were from the misguided group that believes Christianity condemns the death penalty.
However, in today’s Rapid City Journal, there comes a letter to the editor from a pastor in Sturgis:
Death penalty is morally right [...] Read more »

I haven’t seen the need to say a whole lot in the aftermath of Elijah Page’s execution last night. I take no joy in his death, but do feel gratitude that justice was finally served, if 6+ years overdue.
I did, however, come across a story and a quote worth drawing attention to. It’s from In [...] Read more »

GUEST COLUMN
By Dudley SharpJustice Matters
76% of Americans find that we should impose the death penalty more or that we impose it about right – only 21% that it is imposed too often. (Gallup, May 2006 – 51% that we should impose it more, 25% that we impose it about right)
71% find capital punishment morally [...] Read more »

The Rapid City Journal reports Elijah Page’s execution has been set for 10:00 pm Central Time on Wednesday.
According to state law, the execution must happen sometime during the week, so it could be delayed and still fall within the legal timeframe.
Hopefully the governor will have the courage to follow through with it this time. [...] Read more »

GUEST COLUMN
By Dudley SharpJustice Matters
Several issues have come up with regard to lethal injection.
Generally, they are: 1) The murderer experiencing pain during execution; 2) The ethics of medical professionals participating in executions; and 3) Proper training of execution personnel.
1) PAIN AND LETHAL INJECTION
The evidence, including the immediate autopsy of executed serial murderer/rapist Michael Ross, supports [...] Read more »

Any murder, no matter how quickly, suddenly, or painlessly it is done, deserves the death penalty.
But as we approach the execution of Elijah Page, we should look at just how depraved the three who killed Chester Allan Poage were.
KELO features an excerpt from Elijah Page’s confession:
Investigator: “Were you laughing?”
Page: “We chuckled. We weren’t [...] Read more »

The Argus Leader has an article today on the Christian worldview of the death penalty, and it’s surprisingly balanced.
While it gives some of the touchy-feely rationalizations made by some Christians these days–which frankly aren’t biblical but are borrowed from their unbelieving neighbors–it gives a couple of the Scriptural references which support the death penalty:
“In Genesis [...] Read more »

As South Dakota gears up to execute convicted murderer Elijah Page, the sob stories are already starting. I saw one in the Rapid City Journal a couple of days ago which was short on fact about the upcoming execution, but very long (complete with the violin playing in the background) about how Page is just [...] Read more »

From KELO, the implementation of a new execution policy that clears the way to execute Elijah Page as he requested last year.
The new policy, which takes effect July first, lists the three drugs prison officials will use in Page’s execution. One renders the inmate unconscious, the second stops the inmates’ breathing, and the third stops [...] Read more »