Truly, you are a wise man. By executing Donald Jones, confessed murderer and crackhead, you are sending a message to crackheads everywhere: "Hey - murder is bad." I'm sure when that next crackhead is looking for his fix, he will pause and think about this case. In his crack-addled mind, he will reflect: "Has the US Supreme Court ruled on the constitutiality of Missouri's death system? Will my crime merit a death sentence.?" Perhaps your decision will lead crack-addicts to lead more thoughtfull, productive lives.
Or, you just allowed the execution of another poor, drug-addicted motherfucker, whose death will not change human behavior one iota. Well done, Governor.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/779B3A3A8829CAE286256FEF0013038B?OpenDocument
Posted by mike at April 28, 2005 12:55 AMAs charming an individual as Jones was:
Jones was condemned for beating Dorothy Knuckles, 68, with a butcher block and stabbing her repeatedly in her home... He later loaned her Chevrolet for two rocks of cocaine.
..if your state hadn't gotten him, he was surely headed for dietary health problems:
Jones had a last meal of hamburger pizza, chicken strips, french fries, cole slaw, Pepsi and apple pie, according to prison officials.
* * * * * *
These sorts of cases involving a crime committed within a family should weigh the opinion of the family into consideration. The outrage over Terri Schiavo's killing was caused, similarly, because her family's wishes were not being observed.
That said, there's no clear best solution for how to handle cases like these. Asides from the example-of-justice rational, which you don't appear to like, one could make the arguement that from a cost perspective when a case has reached this terminal stage within the criminal justice system, putting the man to death is certainly cheaper than a state-sponsered life in prison. I suspect you won't like that one either, but at least you can shave off a fraction of a penny on your state income taxes next year.
Regardless of what we do w/ our convicted murderers, take heart that there will always be plenty of horrible people around on the internet: Terri Schiavo's blog
Posted by: Cam on April 28, 2005 04:32 PMa couple points…
Cam,
1. It is, in fact, more expensive to execute a prisoner than to keep him/her in prison for life. This is supported by many studies, including but not limited to, ahem…a 1993 Duke University study which found that “going through the entire process required to execute a prisoner costs $2.16 million more than keeping him locked up until he dies of natural causes.” This is due to the administrative costs of the legal process and subsequent appeals,. All in all, the costs of the process of an execution, from start to finish, is more than life in prison. I could go on with this, but I believe that the cost is besides the point. I don’t think cost should be the primary factor when it comes to justice. Why not just crush all prisoners with large stones once convicted, so as to save taxpayers the financial burden of their life in prison? As for Mike’s intentions here, I’m not sure, but I think he is suggesting that the death penalty might be applied so arbitrarily that it is unfair and perhaps racist(?)…After all, who is to say which murders are heinous enough to warrant capital punishment…
2. The outrage over Terry Schiavo’s killing had nothing to do with the fact that her family’s wishes were not carried out, and everything to do with the fact that the Christian right has martyred Schiavo to promote their “culture of life” and conveniently characterized the dems as Godless heathens, “deathocrats” if you will. The memo by Tom DeLay to fellow GOPers encouraging them to take political advantage of the situation serves as pretty sturdy evidence of this. But don’t get me wrong. I am not a big fan of pulling the plug. Why didn’t they just let her continue to live, or vegetate, or do whatever she’s been doing the last 15 years? I don’t really get it, but i wouldn’t go so far as to call her death a killing. But in any event, when you get right down to it, her husband was her legal guardian, not her folks. So you might say that the wishes of the family, as far as the law is concerned, was indeed, carried out, as ghoulish as they may appear to have been.
And that’s my two cents…
Posted by: Matt S. on May 1, 2005 12:24 PMCam, you're not making a good case for comparing execution to the removal of life support. The death penalty and euthanasia are two distinctly different issues that cannot be thrown together simple because they both eventually end in death.
and Schiavo's husband is family, too, dammit.
the outrage over the removal of Schiavo's life support has more to do with opposition to euthanasia by the convervative Christian right; and shame on her family for dragging her case through the courts and into the national media spotlight.
Posted by: Lori on May 3, 2005 09:25 AMMatt, you misread. So allow me to repeat in italics:
...from a cost perspective when a case has reached this terminal stage within the criminal justice system, putting the man to death is certainly cheaper than a state-sponsored life in prison.
At the point in time we're talking about, Jones had already exhausted all appeals (e.g. everything related to the legal process had become a sunk cost). We're left comparing the cost of administering a lethal injection and a last meal with the cost of a lifetime of imprisonment and a lifetime of meals.
Concerning cent #2, you are half wrong about the Schiavo story. The national media would never have picked it up unless Schiavo's nuclear family (e.g. mother, father, siblings) had objected to her death. The family wanted her to live (claiming that she wanted to live and could recover against extreme odds) while her husband wanted her suffering to end (claiming she would not want to live on in her dehabilitated state). That conflict produced the outrage.
The Christian Right fanned these flames of controversy, but they didn't start the fire. They used the story in an attempt to promote their agenda (this is the part where you're half right) which is different from being a part of the story itself. The Christian Right may have thought they had a case for promoting the dignity of life; instead they had a very sad story that nobody could do much of anything about to produce a happy outcome.
As a segue to Lori, this is where the comparison between Schiavo/Jones should end, in that they are both sad stories with the state having made life-ending decisions over the objections of family wishes. The two cases are clearly far more different than they are alike.
As a point of terminology, Schiavo's death was not euthanasia. If they had, as Matt suggested, "pulled the plug" or if they had administered a lethal injection it would have been. But there were no plugs to pull, as she was not on life-support other than having a feeding tube. Instead of a humane end, they removed her feeding tube, slowly starving her to death over the course of a week which only fed the macabre media sensation. That's simply not right.
If she was able to feel pain, her starvation was a cruel and barbaric injustice. And if she was so brain-damaged that she was unable to feel pain, then what exactly were they saving her from? And wouldn't a lethal injection have been a more humane manner to end her life in either circumstance?
As you say, Lori, Schiavo's husband was family too. But in the 15 years since Schiavo's injury, he had since moved on with his life. He had a live-in-girlfriend and children with this other woman. However much he may have loved Terri before her brain damage, he no longer was able to care for her. But her parents and siblings were able to and wanted to.
The decision to end Terri's life was based upon Michael Schiavo's testimony that she wanted to die, which was conjecture based upon what he inferred from their conversations. There was no living will to re-enforce this assertion and Terri's parents and siblings vehemently objected to the ruling.
Yes, this decision over what to do with Terri should ideally have been made between her husband and her family out of the public eye. But neither side gave ground. To scold Terri's family for fighting for their daughter is wrong. By all accounts, they were doing what they felt was right. Just as we have every reason to believe Michael Schiavo was doing what he thought was right. The family's only recourse was to get the legal system to intervene on their behalf. They did what they felt they had to. Under such bleak circumstances there often is no satisfying compromise; there's nothing anyone could do but feel badly about it.
I was fishing for Mike's take on Schiavo and it instead looks like I've gone and taken my own bait. Mike's done what we could only wish the media had done more of and stayed away from it.
Posted by: Cam on May 5, 2005 08:55 PMMike,
It seems Missouri is executing people faster than you can work up an indignant posting about it. Vernon Brown was executed Wednesday.
Posted by: Max Power on May 20, 2005 05:27 PM