Schwarzenegger Denies Allen Public Clemency Hearing

[The Straight Story]

Governor Denies Allen Public Clemency Hearing
Written for the web by Elizabeth Bishop, Internet News Producer


Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he will not hold a public clemency hearing for death row inmate Clarence Allen who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on January 17.

Schwarzenegger has the option to conduct a private clemency hearing as he did in the case of Stanley Tookie Williams earlier this month.

Allen, who at 75 is the oldest inmate on death row, is asking for mercy because he uses a wheelchair, is deaf and blind and suffers from other medical conditions.

http://www.kxtv.com/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=15085

[niyad]

1. exactly what is supposed to be accomplished by executing him?

[goclark]

2. Barbaric and insane! nt

[Catherine Vincent]

3. I guess the Terminator is living up to his name.

[Silverhair]

4. Allen had ALREADY been given a life sentence for murder.

But a parole board showed him a mercy that he had not shown to his victim, and he was given parole.

While on parole began murdering the people who had testified against him in the first trial.

Now he wants mercy because the state has been so slow (20 + years) in carrying out the sentence.

[madeline_con]

5. Remind me again how life in prison...

keeps potential victims as safe as the DP.... :shrug:

The now-75-year-old death row inmate who plotted three killings 25 years ago - from inside Folsom Prison - will finally come face-to-face with the fate a Glenn County jury and judge pronounced in 1982. Glenn County Superior Court Judge Roy MacFarland is scheduled to re-sentence Clarence Ray Allen to three death sentences at a 10 a.m. hearing Nov. 18, and set the convicted killer's execution date. Allen has spent the last quarter-century housed at San Quentin Prison, appealing the conviction, the first in Glenn County history where a jury called for the death penalty. MacFarland presided over the triple-murder trial where Allen was convicted for his role as master conspirator and a contributor in the 1980 shooting deaths of Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Douglas White, 18, at Fran's Market in Fresno.

(snip)

At the time of the market murders, Allen was serving a sentence at Folsom State Prison for ordering the 1974 murder of a 17-year-old woman named Mary Sue Kitts and planning and participating in a burglary that year of Fran's Market. At Allen's murder-burglary trial in 1977, it was reported that Kitts was ordered killed because she had told people - including Schletewitz - that Allen was involved in the market burglary.

(snip)

[roguevalley]

6. I hope after this that Austria digs up Arnie's father and throws him

in the trash. He must get off on the power. I wonder what his pogo stick of a wife thinks? I can imagine the Kennedys' feelings.

[Silverhair]

8. What do you hope happens to the Democratic governor's who also...

...refused clemency? He was sentenced in 1982, and has asked each gvernor for his sentence to be commuted. The Democratic governors refused him too. And your desire for those Democrats who also turned him down is...?

[roguevalley]

11. the same. I loathe capital punishment. state murder for murder. it sucks.

[Silverhair]

12. Will you let a life sentence actually mean LIFE?

By that I mean stay in prison until they finally drop dead, even if it is at 115, they are in there - not matter what they tell the parole board and no matter how model prisoner they are - they are there for L I F E.

Are you willing for life to actualy mean it?

This guy was serving a life sentence for murder and was paroled. He did a con job on the parole board. He had actually been plotting the murders of the people who has testified against him, and once he got out he began to kill them. When he was caught, after three murders, he had a list of the names on him. The state failed to protect the people who had the courage to testify and they died for it. There is absolutely no doubt of his guilt.

DP should never be used if there is any realistic possibility of doubt. But in some cases, it IS possible to be completely certain.

So, should life mean life, or should life mean "just a few years"?

Here in Texas there is a drug dealer who shot and killed a Texas Ranger when his place was raided. He was given life. (He is extremely lucky to be alive. Usually, when you shoot an officer in the presense of other officers, you die instantly in a hail of bullets. Not revenge, just the others are fearful that they will be shot next and don't want to be shot.) He has been a model prisoner and he says that he feels remose. Locally, and to some extent nationally, he is becoming a cause celebre as activist groups petition for his parole.

Parole the cop-killer, or in jail forever?

From the grave there is NO parole, and that killer will kill no more. If life really meant it, the same think could be achieved.

[bliss_eternal]

10. Maybe gov musclehead is afraid

this guy will order his murder. :sarcasm:

Seriously, I don't know how maria stays with him.

[cantstandbush]

7. I guess being deaf, blind, and cripple is not enough suffering for

some vengeful souls.

[Silverhair]

9. If the execution had been prompt, he would never have gotten to...

...his present condition. Instead he has gotten about 23 more years of life than he gave his victims AFTER he was already supposed to be serving LIFE for a previous murder.

If LIFE had really and truly meant L-I-F-E then the later victims would still be alive. But life only means a few years at most.