Friday, October 3, 2008

Friday

Pat Jessamy doesn't like regional jury pools (which you wouldn't know from her efforts to shelve the Abell Foundation report), but is the idea constitutional?

As further proof that our political leadership is neither inept nor corrupt, the subpoenas continue for the Sheila Dixon investigation.

Carrie Everett of the Southwestern District of BPD received a reprimand after someone police captured committed suicide during her shift, and she's taken her story to the streets.

Two little dears were arrested for robbing a shoe store in Edmondson Village on September 24th. The issue was education here, as anyone could have taught them a shoe store is no place to rob.

A prosecutor turned appellate judge in Maryland argues against the Death Penalty in The Daily Record.

The economic crisis has even struck homes burgled, as evidenced by the random things nicked in today's blotter.

3 comments:

ppatin said...

Some of my issues with Andrew Sonner's piece about the death penalty:

-It's unfortunate that the death penalty is applied inconsistently, however it's better to execute some murderers than note at all. The best way to eliminate inconsistency is to make the death penalty mandatory for capital crimes. Unfortunately the Supreme Court's very bad decision in Woodson v. North Carolina makes that impossible.

-He says that the fact that the two death sentences his office won were overturned on appeal is an argument against the DP. I disagree. What we should do is drastically reform the out of control appeals process for capital cases. Simply giving up on capital punishment rather than working to improve it is quite frankly un-American. We should be striving to improve and streamline our justice system rather than throwing our hands up in defeat.

-He also ignores the fact that even in a state that hardly ever executes anyone the death penalty has value because it forces the thug-huggers to concentrate their efforts on fighting capital punishment. If we ever abolish the DP in this state then the pro-criminal crown will immediately begin attacking life w/o parole.

If you want an example of how a good legal system would handle this, take a look at the case of the last two men to be hanged in the United Kingdom (thank you wikipedia.) Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans murdered John Alan West on the 7th of April, 1964. They were convicted in July of that year, and hanged on the 13th of August. That is the sort of legal system we should strive to have.

ppatin said...

I wish I could go back and edit my posts for typos. In my second paragraph I meant to say "none at all," not "note at all."

I am so wise said...

In the early 1940s Croatia had a death penalty system where execution had to take place within 3 hours.