Stephanie Salter: Death penalty foea s a awakeninga still a compelling story

Sister Helen Prejean was only slightly exaggerating Tuesday when she told her Human Rights Day audience at Indiana State University, "I have crisscrossed this nation 44 hundred thousand times." Since 1982, when someone asked if she would consider writing to a prisoner on death row, Prejean has been on the move to raise awareness - her own and ...

[Dudley Sharp]

Sister Helen Prejean: Why fact checking and critical thinking are important
Dudley Sharp, contact info below
RE: "Death penalty foe’s ‘awakening’ still a compelling story", Srephanie Salter, The Tribune Star, 4/14/2009
http://www.tribstar.com/opinion/local_story_1...
I agree with Sister Prejean:“you've got to get real knowledge" in the death penalty debate. However, to confirm that you are getting "real" knowledge, you must fact check. I looked at "Death penalty foe’s ‘awakening’ still a compelling story".
Prejean's comments as "Prejean".
My reply as "Sharp REPLY"
Prejean: Sarcastically, she says:“As if we can have a designer death penalty,”“I don’t want it for everybody, I just want it for my criminal.”
Sharp REPLY: We actually do have an extremely limited "designer" death penalty, that can only apply to around 10% of all murders, based upon SCOTUS guidelines, which, as a general description, are the defining of a capital murder as a murder with secondary aggravating circumstances.
This Sister knows this and was just snowing folks with rhetoric she knew to be false.
Prejean: "Once a government decides it is all right to kill anybody, you are going to have the whole spectrum.”
Sharp REPLY: As the Sister well knows, SCOTUS has continuously put more limitations on death eligible prosecutions. She knew this bit of storytelling was false, as well.
Prejean: Prejean said. Killing is killing, and it is immoral.
Sharp REAL: Of course, killing is not killing, unless one amorally or immorally, equates the rape and murder of children with the execution of the rapist, murderer, or the 13 million slaughtered in the Holocaust with those executed for carrying it out. Her comment is common anti death penalty moral blather.
Prejean:“What do you think they write in as the cause of death” after an execution?" “Homicide.”
Sharp REPLY: Sister, what would you recommend, "Death by lethal injection as a legal sanction for the rape and murder of children?" That's OK.
Prejean:“Every single person who’s been strapped down and killed in this state has been killed in your name.”
Sharp Reply: True, just as every murderer who was released from prison and then murdered, again, was released in your name.
Prejean: None of us, including murderers, amounts only to his or her worst deeds.
Sharp REPLY: Jurors are well aware of that, yet, they still give a death sentence based upon the most just and appropriate sanction for the crime committed, in the context of both the life of the murderer and, let's not forget, the innocent murder victim, who was also much more than an innocent murder victim.

contd

[Dudley Sharp]

contd

Prejean: No society’s legal system is so perfect, omniscient and equally applied that it can guarantee innocent people will not be executed or even that all defendants will receive proper legal representation. Thanks to efforts such as “The Innocence Project,” Prejean noted, more than 130 people have gotten off death row in the United States via DNA or other exonerating evidence.
Sharp REPLY: The 130 is a continuous scam that has nothing to do with actual innocence. This has been well known, for many years, by anyone willing to do a tiny bit of fact checking. Possibly 25 actual innocents have been identified and released from death row, since new death penalty sentences were given after Furman v Ga.
See "The 130 innocents scam", http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/03/04/fact-...
In addition, the Sister fails to tell anyone that innocents are more protected by the death penalty.
see http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/01/30/the-d...
Prejean: Killing someone for having killed someone else not only contradicts Christ, it doesn't heal the wounds of loss in loved ones left behind.
Sharp REPLY: It most certainly does not contradict Christ and the Sister knows that, as she wrote in "Dead Man Walking".
Prejean: Victims’ families she has spoken with who did not want prosecutors to press for execution, she said, have been told they must have “condoned” their loved one’s slaying or, incredibly,“It’s a shame you didn't love your child.”
Sharp REPLY: I would like to see how many confirmable examples of this that Sister Prejean can produce, if any.
Prejean: Sixty-two family members of murder victims helped convince New Jersey lawmakers to throw out that state’s capital punishment statutes, she said, and others just persuaded New Mexico’s Legislature to do the same.
Sharp REPLY: Some reality is needed. Neither state used that as a reason they got rid of the death penalty.(1) If we could do a random survey of parents whose children had been murdered, I strongly suspect that the polling would show in excess of 90% supporting the death penalty. 80% of the US supports the death penalty for true, capital murders.(2) We do have one, very good, anecdotal example. 168 innocents were murdered in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building. Let's say that there are 800 adult family members who really cared about those 168 murder victims. It is probably much greater. Out of those 800, one family member, or 0.125%, has become an anti death penalty activist. I think that speaks volumes as to how representative it is of family members who oppose execution.
NOTE: Death penalty opponents have done a good job at finding and encouraging such family members to come forward. There is an organized anti death penalty movement. There is not any organized pro death penalty movement. But, reality does have a place in the discussion.
Again, I agree with Sister Prejean:“you've got to get real knowledge".
(1) SEE "How bad can death penalty repeal get? The New Mexico and New Jersey examples", Dudley Sharp
(2) See "Death Penalty Polls - Support Remains Very High", Dudley Sharp, April, 2009

[Nautilus1]

http://www.topix.com/forum/news/death-penalty...
Dudley the Euro gang of prison pen pals could use some of your wisdom
Posting at above would help the victims I feel

[Sumie]

Nautilus1 wrote:

http://www.topix.com/forum/new s/death-penalty/T5PBIIPP6U4UHA FTN
Dudley the Euro gang of prison pen pals could use some of your wisdom
Posting at above would help the victims I feel

Yes, Dudley. please come help Nautilus.

God knows he needs it.