A blind deaf 80 year old man will be executed tonight...

[catnhatnh]

except he is 76 and he is merely hearing and sight impaired as are most 76 year olds...which is poignant to me since my Mom and Dad are each 76 and 78 respectively...I hate the death penalty, but this guy as a poster boy is wrong...he is every bit as wrong as 80 year old nazi guards are wrong....the death penalty is wrong tonight,wrong tomorrow and wrong forever...But every clown who is not protesting tonight,who protested Tookie Williams a few weeks ago is a hypocrite...it is either right or wrong and if you "pick your battles"....

[Christa]

1. Was thinking the same

Tookie was all over the place - why don't we hear about this old man? :cry:

[QC]

4. If only he had a cute nickname--like Clarence "Honey Bunny" Allen

or something, then all of Hollywood would be clamoring to save him and DU would be in an uproar. But WTF kind of a name is Clarence? And besides, he hasn't written any children's books and nobody ever made a movie about him.

[Catherine Vincent]

2. Most DUers that were against the dp for Williams is against

the death penalty period.

[tuvor]

3. It's hard not to notice an inconsitency between now...

...and in Tookie's last days, whether at the prison, or here at DU.

I recall so many posts here saying it was ALL about the death penalty, and NOT Tookie's celebrity. Well judging from the lack of DP protest posts over inmates executed since Tookie, I'm begging to differ.

[catnhatnh]

6. This clown...

....is amongst the LEAST sympathetic I have known....but while I have cheered the prosecution of older nazis I have never approved of the death penalty...this vicious bastard who is to die tonight is not worth the smear on my country he will (deservedly) become...

[philarq]

9. He is a poster child in favor of the Death Penalty

Even though he spent 25 years in appeals, that should not be a factor in his favor but rather an indictment on the state of the slowness of the judicial process.

Guy gets convicted of murder then arranges from Jail no less, to have three of the witnesses to the first murder killed. --very unsympathetic

[sirjohn]

12. My thoughts exactly-should have been executed 22 yrs ago

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sendero]

5. Having read a great deal..

... about both of these cases, I'll tell you my opinion - there was *some* question as to Williams' guilt, it was not a cut and dried case.

This one is cut and dried IMHO. That might be why people arent' as agitated.

Also, since DNA finally proved once and for all that Roger Coleman was in fact guilty, the folks crying "innocent" are going to have to be a lot more careful who they decide to champion. Raising a big fuss for someone like Coleman makes a mockery of the people who really are innocent and who were convicted on much less evidence.

[catnhatnh]

7. Wrong song,Butch...

....if dna avails,great,and in the single Coleman case it is a comfort.But until each death penalty case is so guaranteed I will disagree...you use one guy proven to be a deathbed liar to smear all...I would rather believe most people about to die (and those would be people we are about to kill) tell the truth-if I were to be dead in minutes,I suspect I might make admissions...

[sendero]

8. I didn't say that..

... oh ye of faltering comprehension. I said that if you do the most cursory investigation, Roger Coleman was never likely to have been innocent, damn near nobody in that town thought he was and frankly if you are going to try to stop the death penalty - you need to find real examples of miscarriages of justice.

Deathbed utterances aren't worth a goddamned thing, why would anyone put any stock in that? The criminal wants to make you feel guilty for carrying out the sentence, folks who can commit crimes that like do not necessarily have or suddenly develop a conscience.

[catnhatnh]

10. Oh I doubt my comprehension fails...

...on his deathbed Tookie admitted his crimes...Roger says it wasn't me though dna says otherwise,,,when you are strapped to a table and about to be done,most admit fault...I would rather this not happen,but to are detriment' it does...

[catnhatnh]

11. And as my final comment...

....how sad and to America's loss
that we must kill to prove that killing is wrong...
that a crime so past society's pale
can be matched by society...
in a better place this does not happen
god forbid we are not in this place yet...

[sirjohn]

13. Time for the guy to go. Let God figure it out.

[wiley]

14. What would Jesus say?

I never got the impression in Sunday School or church that God or Jesus support the death penalty. Am I wrong?

[diamondsndust]

15. did you ever read the passage about...

an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth??? how much imagination does it take to keep going until you get "a life for a life"?? you took a life, now you have to give yours...

[Hippo_Tron]

17. The old testament also says that slavery is okay...

That working on the sabbath day, eating shellfish, and planting different crops side by side are all offenses punishable by death. Why does "an eye for an eye" have any more weight in modern society than these passages.

What about the passage "Vengeance is mine sayeth the lord."

And I still don't think that you have answered the above poster's question. Would Jesus support the killing of anyone?

[sirjohn]

22. Human beings are full of paradoxes

There's no way to make sense out of it, especially when we start arguing about words.

[ragin_acadian]

19. tough call!

he got the death penalty, for our sins.

oh, yeah! he was soooooo pro-death penalty!




just thought i would interject that. :D

[fortyfeetunder]

16. The irony of this one...

I posted this on LBN, but this still gets to me -- the old man almost died of natural causes, but was rescusitated -- only to be executed the midnight after his birthday... :wtf:

"Allen, who suffered a heart attack on Sept. 2, would be dead already without the efforts of the prison medical staff to save him. "

[ladjf]

18. No civilized country still executes people, on barbarians.

We are an international disgrace.

[Moochy]

20. Other Countries that have the death penalty

* Afghanistan
* Antigua and Barbuda
* Bahamas
* Bahrain
* Bangladesh
* Barbados
* Belarus
* Belize
* Botswana
* Burundi
* Cameroon
* Chad
* China (People's Republic)
* Comoros
* Congo (Democratic Republic)
* Cuba
* Dominica
* Egypt
* Equatorial Guinea
* Eritrea
* Ethiopia
* Gabon
* Ghana
* Guatemala
* Guinea
* Guyana
* India
* Indonesia
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jamaica
* Japan
* Jordan
* Kazakhstan
* Korea, North
* Korea, South
* Kuwait
* Kyrgyzstan
* Laos
* Lebanon
* Lesotho
* Liberia
* Libya
* Malawi
* Malaysia
* Mongolia
* Nigeria
* Oman
* Pakistan
* Palestinian Authority
* Philippines
* Qatar
* Rwanda
* St. Kitts and Nevis
* St. Lucia
* St. Vincent and the Grenadines
* Saudi Arabia
* Sierra Leone
* Singapore
* Somalia
* Sudan
* Swaziland
* Syria
* Taiwan
* Tajikistan
* Tanzania
* Thailand
* Trinidad and Tobago
* Uganda
* United Arab Emirates
* United States
* Uzbekistan
* Vietnam
* Yemen
* Zambia
* Zimbabwe

The death penalty, if it can not be guaranteed to be 100% accurate, has no remedy. It is unjust.
That is my opinion, you are welcome to differ, but I wont be swayed. Just look at that list of countries, and I ask you can't we do better than this?

from: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777460.html

[T Town Jake]

21. I doubt many DU flamewars will erupt over this execution...

...I'll leave it to the discerning among us to assess just exactly why...