If it's crap... We'll tell you
John Allen Muhammad will be executed today at 9:00 PM EST.
For those who don't know who he is for some unexplainable reason, John Allen Muhammad, along with his protege Lee Boyd Malvo, were responsible for the Beltway sniper attacks which claimed the lives of ten completely random and innocent people, possibly seventeen, and injured three. The reason?
He was mad at his ex-wife.
Prosecutors believed that the entire thing was a plan to kill his ex-wife and regain custody of his kids, and he would use the random sniper attacks to draw attention away from himself. Malvo claimed that his greater plan though was to indoctrinate more troubled youths like Muhammad had done with him, and after training them to send them all across the United States and carry out mass shootings.
Muhammad was sentenced to death and has shown no remorse for his actions. Malvo, who was 17 at the time and could not face the death penalty, was sentenced to life in prison. Since then, he has regretted his decisions and has called the daughter of one of his victims and apologized for what he had done.
The Supreme Court denied Muhammad's appeal, meaning the only thing that would prevent his execution would be an intervention from the state of Virginia.
The death penalty is a controversial issue, but let's be clear. John Allen Muhammad is a vile man who doesn't care about anyone and would almost certainly try to kill more people if he were given the chance. He committed one of the most senseless crimes of the decade just because he was bitter, and dragged an impressionable youth with him to do his dirty work. Share your thoughts, but I say good riddance.
He was mad at his ex-wife.
Prosecutors believed that the entire thing was a plan to kill his ex-wife and regain custody of his kids, and he would use the random sniper attacks to draw attention away from himself. Malvo claimed that his greater plan though was to indoctrinate more troubled youths like Muhammad had done with him, and after training them to send them all across the United States and carry out mass shootings.
Muhammad was sentenced to death and has shown no remorse for his actions. Malvo, who was 17 at the time and could not face the death penalty, was sentenced to life in prison. Since then, he has regretted his decisions and has called the daughter of one of his victims and apologized for what he had done.
The Supreme Court denied Muhammad's appeal, meaning the only thing that would prevent his execution would be an intervention from the state of Virginia.
The death penalty is a controversial issue, but let's be clear. John Allen Muhammad is a vile man who doesn't care about anyone and would almost certainly try to kill more people if he were given the chance. He committed one of the most senseless crimes of the decade just because he was bitter, and dragged an impressionable youth with him to do his dirty work. Share your thoughts, but I say good riddance.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Meddle on -
Robert Pickton is a Canadian serial killer who claims to have killed 49 women and may have fed them to his pigs.
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Permalink Reply by SketchedLilly on -
They've found the remains of 27 for certain.
He targeted Vancouver prostitutes, so he had a long time to work before anyone really noticed.
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Permalink Reply by superkavi on -
* Capital punishment goes against our most basic human right - the right to life.
* Lethal injection and electrocution are not always smooth and painless. They can cause painful deaths and are actually a form of torture.
* Keeping prisoners on death row for many years (16 years in Tracy's case) is itself cruel and a form of torture.
Deterrence argument
* No one has ever been able to demonstrate statistically that killing murderers deters others.
* When countries (eg Canada) get rid of the death penalty there is no instant increase in crime.
Execution of the innocent argument
* Legal systems always make some mistakes. Executing the wrong person makes people think the law is unfair.
* . They were 95 people have been released from death row in the USA since 1973found to have been wrongly convicted
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Permalink Reply by Latter Day Heretic on -
wells said.
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Permalink Reply by Meddle on
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Counter-argument: John Allen Muhammad killed ten random people and would have killed more.
Fact quoting is fine and dandy but it doesn't exactly prove the death penalty is wrong. There's no argument that there are flaws in the system, and there are people actively working and succeeding in correcting them. But another fact you forgot to mention was that violent crime has been consistently dropping over the past twenty years, with the death penalty still in place and wrongly convicted felons being set free. As for violating their right to life, they forfeited that right when they decided to break the law by taking the lives of others.
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Permalink Reply by superkavi on
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Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row.
--Governor George Ryan of Illinois, January 2000, in declaring a moratorium on executions in his state, after the 13th Illinois death row inmate had been released from prison due to wrongful conviction. In the same time period, 12 others had been executed.
Examples of wrongful convictions
Arizona: Ray Krone, released in 2002
* Spent 10 years in prison in Arizona, including time on death row, for a murder he did not commit. He was the 100th person to be released from death row since 1973. DNA testing proved his innocence.
Illinois: Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and LeRoy Orange, pardoned in 2003
* Sent to death row on the basis of "confessions" extracted through the use of torture by former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and other Area 2 police officers in Chicago. They were pardoned by outgoing Governor George Ryan, who also commuted the remaining 167 death sentences in Illinois to life imprisonment.
North Carolina: Jonathon Hoffman, exonerated in 2007
* Convicted and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a jewelry store owner. During Hoffman's first trial, the state's key witness, Johnell Porter, made undisclosed deals with the prosecutors for testifying against his cousin. Porter has since recanted his testimony, stating that he lied in order to get back at his cousin for stealing money from him.
Factors leading to wrongful convictions include:
* Inadequate legal representation
* Police and prosecutorial misconduct
* Perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony
* Racial prejudice
* Jailhouse "snitch" testimony
* Suppression and/or misinterpretation of mitigating evidence
* Community/political pressure to solve a case
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Permalink Reply by Meddle on
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Are you going to actually argue something or are you going to keep copying and pasting facts? No one in their right would ever say the system works 100% of the time.
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Permalink Reply by superkavi on
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so you would let an innocent man or woman die to satisfy your need for vengence?
as for the copy and pasting facts, what wrong with wanting people to be informed of the facts rather then remain ignorant.
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Permalink Reply by Meddle on
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By your logic, we should abolish the prison system as well, since the same misconduct that gets people sent to death row happens when innocent people are put in prison. Would you have the prison system removed entirely because innocent people suffer? Procedural misconduct is not a reason to remove something but a reason to fix and correct it. It is unavoidable that there will be biased or corrupt people somewhere along the justice line. It will always happen, be it a prosecutor, a jury member, a police officer, or a judge.
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Permalink Reply by superkavi on
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you must have a nice view in that ivory tower of yours.
yes fuck the little people who end upjail because some prick's too lazy ,racist or stupid too do there job and find the real culprits.
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