[Southsider2k12]

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/13249740/detail.html

State Prepares For First Execution In 15 Months
Victim's Family Members To Watch Execution


MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. -- Convicted killer David Leon Woods is scheduled to be executed sometime after midnight Friday morning at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.

Unless he gets last-minute clemency from Gov. Mitch Daniels, Woods will receive a lethal injection for the murder of Juan Placencia, 77, during a 1984 burglary in Garrett. Woods is also waiting for word on his request for the U.S. Supreme Court to block his execution.

The state Parole Board unanimously recommended against granting clemency. If the execution proceeds as scheduled, Woods would be the first person to be executed in Indiana in 15 months. Before that, the state executed five people in a seven-month span in 2005. That was the most executions in one year in Indiana since 1938, when eight men were electrocuted over the span of nine months.


Woods has spent 22 years on death row. During his clemency hearing last month, he said he broke into Placencia's house because he thought he wouldn't be home and he wanted to get some of belongings of his mother, a former girlfriend of Placencia. He said he stabbed Placencia because Placencia startled him.

Five of Placencia's 13 children plan to be at the prison to witness the execution

[Max Main]

Killing in self-defense is morally permissible. Could someone show us how killing this s.o.b. is self-defense now? If not, then his execution is morally impermissible vengeance.

[Ang]

Personally, I disagree with Max. I think that 22 years is too long to be on death row. I believe that if someone violently takes a life, or premeditates a murder, then they should be sentenced to death and executed within 30 days of judgement. I think that if the judicial system were less lenient on criminals, there would be less criminals. Right now most criminals have more rights than their victims and that is morally wrong. This guy to brutally stabbed a man to death with nary a second thought about doing it, yet he is supposed to have rights? As far as I'm concerned, he lost his rights when Mr. Placencia lost his life and because of his actions, he deserves to lose his life as well. And Mr. Placencia's family should be there to watch if they want to.

[Max Main]

Please remember the people who were found to be innocent of the crime they received the sentence of death for. They were exonerated well after your proposed 30 day limit.

Do you think it is ok to kill someone?

Recall also the Founding Fathers who described certain rights as Inalienable. That means that they cannot be lost or taken.

And Gandalf, defending Bilbo's action, or inaction, when Frodo said that Gollum should have been killed, asked, "Did you give him life? Then don't be so quick to take it!"

Incidentally, jusst because I don't think killing the prisoner now meets the standard of self-defense, don't think that I despise his crime any less than you do.

Thou shalt not kill.

[Southsider2k12]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18481783/

Indiana man executed for 1984 killing
David Leon Woods dies by lethal injection for fatal stabbing of 77-year-old

Joe Raymond / AP
Gene Placencia talks to reporters early Friday following the execution of David Leon Woods at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Gene Placencia's father, Juan Placencia, was killed by Woods in 1984.

Updated: 5:55 a.m. CT May 4, 2007
MICHIGAN CITY, Ind. - A man convicted of killing a 77-year-old man during a 1984 burglary was executed by lethal injection early Friday.

David Leon Woods, 42, was pronounced dead at 12:35 a.m. Central Daylight Time, officials at the Indiana State Prison said.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected requests that Woods’ execution be stayed Thursday, as did the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels also denied clemency for Woods on Thursday. The state Parole Board had earlier unanimously recommended against granting clemency.

Woods’ attorneys had tried to stop the execution on the grounds that Indiana’s lethal injection protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. He also disputed the state court’s method of determining whether he was mentally retarded, which could have rendered him ineligible for the death penalty.

Woods was convicted of breaking into Juan Placencia’s house in 1984 and stabbing him to death.

[Roger Kaputnik]

Does anyone feel safer?

[Ang]

Max, let me ask you this:

Say one of your children was taken by a man who brutally tortured them until they died. Would you want that man to live?

Think about the families and loved ones left behind. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If it was your mother, sister, wife/husband, brother, father, child or best friend. Would you honestly want that person to live after what they did to another human being?

No, I don't think it's right to kill someone and that is why a person who does needs to be punished. I'm not saying ALL people who kill other people should be executed. But, there are certain circumstances where execution is warranted.

[Max Main]

the only time it is morally acceptable to kill someone is in self defense. If someone did murder someone in my family, my desire to exact revenge would definitely include lead, if you follow me. But that revenge is not morally defensible.

The state policy of killing killers has no deterrent effect.

Ang states that she thinks killing is wrong, yet she will support killing in certain circumstances. I do, too: But my circumstance is self defence; hers includes the state 'getting even'.

Incidentally, in Indiana, you are justified legally in using deadly force in self defense if someone is in your house or if you are being carjacked. In some states, in neither case is deadly force sanctioned. I think in California you actually would have to show that you tried to contact police or get other help before using deadly force in your own house. Can you imagine?!

[Ang]

Ang states that she thinks killing is wrong, yet she will support killing in certain circumstances. I do, too: But my circumstance is self defence; hers includes the state 'getting even'.

No where did I use the phrase "getting even." I said that a murderer should be punished for their crimes and sometimes that punishment means execution.
Using lead to redeem your loved one's death--that's getting even. A judicial system that convicts a murderer and sentences them to death for their crime-That's justice.

[Max Main]

Ang did not use the words "get even;" that was my summary of her position on state-sanctioned killing.

regarding the use of lead, re-read my post on that. Revenge is immoral. I just maintain that since the execution is no longer morally justified by not being in self-defence, it is mere revenge.

Justice? Justice must be moral to be legitimate. Immoral acts cannot be 'justice.'

[Max Main]

Would Ang sentence these two as below? Or to death?





Perth girls get life for murder
Map showing location of Perth and Collie in Western Australia
Two teenage girls in Western Australia have been sentenced to life in prison for killing a friend to see whether they would feel remorse at the deed.

The girls, aged 16 at the time of the murder, strangled Eliza Jane Davis then buried her under a house.

They told police they knew it was wrong to kill but it "felt right", and they did not regret Davis's death.

Perth Children's Court president Denis Reynolds said the murder was "gruesome and merciless in the extreme".

Shallow grave

The pair, who cannot be named because of their age, killed 15-year-old Davis while the three were staying at the same house in the coal-mining town of Collie, south of Perth, on 18 June 2006.

They had been discussing how neither would feel bad about committing murder when they decided to kill Davis, who was sleeping in another room, a court heard in April.

They dressed in old clothes then strangled Davis with speaker wire and buried her body under the house, the court heard.

The girls confessed to police after deciding the grave was too shallow and that they would inevitably be caught.

Earlier, they had reported Davis as missing and pretended to help with the search for her body.

Their lawyers said experts were baffled as to the motivation behind the attack.

The girls were jailed for life, with a minimum sentence of 15 years.

From BBC News Site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6639027.stm

[Ang]

The girls were minors. Probably not even 16 yet. The story gives no details about their home lives, only what they did. Based on the information I think the sentence is fine.

But, Max, since you started this game, in the following story I believe that all of these people deserve the death penalty...

http://www.davidduke.com/general/compare-t...rders_2020.html

Now let’s contrast the coverage of the Duke Lacrosse nonexistent rape with the actual rape, torture and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Channon and Christopher were in love and pursuing their education at the University of Tennessee. Their only crime was they had a car that the assailants wanted and that they hated White people enough to commit heinous acts of torture and murder against them.

The horrendous crimes against this young couple are forensically proven:

Channon Christian was tortured and repeatedly raped for a period of two days by five assailants including a woman.

While she was still alive, Channon’s breasts were cut from her body.

The assailants poured toxic cleaning fluid down her throat to destroy DNA evidence.

Channon’s boyfriend Christopher Newsom was tortured and forced to watch the rape and torture of Channon.

While still alive, the assailants cut off Christopher’s penis.

Christoper was shot, bound and his body wrapped up in bedding and set afire.

Channon’s disfigured corpse was dumped in a trash can.

These crimes were real. They are proven by forensic evidence and the confessions of the assailants.

[Max Main]

David Duke???? Are you kidding us? Let me see a legit source for this, and then we can continue this conversation.

[Ang]

Go to Snopes and you will find the story there. Kay? It wouldn't paste to this website and the link they provided wouldn't work. so, I searched for the story and that is what I found. I didn't want to put a bad link here because I knew you would call me out on it. I just wanted you to read about the story itself and what that poor couple had to endure.
The link that doesn't work is: http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/newsom.asp but you can find the story in the What's New section at www.snopes.com and it's called Newsom/Christian Murders.

I can see that your narrowmindedness is going to be a source of contention on this topic, so Max I'm done with it. I really don't care of your opinion on the death penalty. I stand firm in my conviction that in certain cases it is justified. You don't want to respond on such a heinous crime because you don't like the source of information I provided. Despite where the info came from the story is true, and those five people should not be allowed to breath my air as far as I'm concerned.

[Max Main]

I will check the snopes on this (a favorite site of mine).

I think you and the readers will apprecciate the irony of your using David Duke, the most notorious bigot of our time, as a source, then calling me narrowminded.

In all these types of arguments, it is easy to find examples of innocents condemned and innocents slaughtered. I am hoping to arrive at some conclusion as to the morality of the state killing someone. There is an inconsistency in both our positions that is at the crux of the biscuit.

[Ang]

As far as David Duke is concerned, I have no idea who he is. I don't read his stuff and I have never heard of him. As I stated before, the Snopes site wouldn't let me copy and past the story here nor would the link provided work. So, I went to Ask.com and looked for the story. The particular one I chose was the only one I could find that provided all the information I was looking for. It had nothing to do with the author or the intent of the article. I simply chose it because it contained all the details in one story.
If my choice has offended anyone, I apologize. Like I said, I never heard of that guy ever before and know nothing about him.

[Max Main]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke

Ang, I enjoy your posts and find you always to be informed and informative, interesting, too. That is why the David Duke reference surprised me a bit. Wikipedia is usually a pretty good source. In fact, the Enc. Britan. people were upset a few months ago when researchers found the two about even in accuracy!

The crux is that while we agree about the horror of killing someone, we both have counter examples. You, with your feeling that given certain circumstances, it IS ok to condone, even encourage, killing by the state. Me, with the feeling that I would want some one dead who injured my family (or others, for tht matter).

Are you willing to define the terms of execution? What is someone has different standards for that?


Am I willing to accept killing under non-selfdefense conditions?

that is where the discussion leads.

[JHeath]

Max, I have to jump in here. Are you telling us that even if someone in your own family was murdered, you wouldn't want to see that person given the death penalty?

Personally, I agree with Ang here. I'm somewhat opposed to paying for someone who has committed such a crime. Maybe if we didn't grant so many appeals throughout the process, it wouldn't take so long.

So is it the system that none of us seem to agree with, or the idea of he death penalty? Maybe it's both?

[Ang]

I believe a person should be sentenced to death if they commit a crime that is purely evil, whether premeditated or not, as in the case I presented. If a guy gets drunk and runs over his neighbor because of a dispute, he does not deserve the death penalty. If that same guy tortures and mutilates the neighbor, keeping him alive but causing severe pain and humiliation until the neighbor just can't stay alive any longer--He deserves the death penalty.
I also feel that once a sentence is handed down, there should be no 22 years on death row. No way! They should have 24 months to file an appeal and the sentence should be carried out within a maximum of 36 months. I give the option for an appeal to support Max's arguement of "maybe it's the wrong guy."
I think if the process were more strict, it might act as a deterrent--especially if the executions were public (but that is a whole nother can of worms I don't care to open).
So, that's my feeling on the death penalty.

[Max Main]

JHeath, read the previous posts so we do not merely rehash.

There is no deterring someone who is criminally bent on murder. For one thing, they usually do not expect to be caught.

Some states do have an automatic review of the case when a death sentence is handed down. I assume we agree that in cases where the defense is flawed, the accused is innocent, or there is no premeditation, the death penalty should not be given.

The discussion is whether killing is morally acceptable when not in self-defence. I say it is not, and when a killer is locked up, the self-defense motive is gone. Killing then would be immoral vengeance.

Even in a case of torture and murder, as reprehensible as it is, could you please explain to me the moral justification for taking another life, given that vengeance is not acceptable?