Tuesday, April 10, 2007
A Wayne By Any Other Name.....
I saw in the paper today that the County Attorney wants the death penalty for Jonathan Ian Burns, accused of the heinous murder of a Gilbert woman in January.
FYI: "Ian" is Gaelic for "Wayne".
Dude is probably guiltier than OJ, but in the same paper, I saw an article about a guy in Dallas who spent 10 years in prison and another 14 years as a registered sex offender. Only problem is that the guy didn't do it. It was a case of mistaken identity, finally confirmed by DNA testing 24 years after his conviction. The guy who they now believe really did it died in jail several years ago. Had our wrongly convicted defendant been accused of a capital crime, Texas would certainly have given him the ol' IV of Death by now. And he didn't do shit.
So why do we still have capital punishment in this supposedly enlightened country?
Too many preachers? Maybe. Though capital punishment is supported across the board by religious people, folks who attend church regularly actually tend to be less in favor of capital punishment than those who attend infrequently or not at all.
Too many conservatives? Probably. They support it by a huge margin.
The reality of it is that this ridiculously outmoded and unenlightened practice is heavily favored by Americans across the board, regardless of politics, religion, gender, or age. I guess we think some folks just need killin'.
(Enter sarcasm mode here) We're in good company, at least. Pretty much all of Europe, including the former Soviet Republics, have abolished it, and our neighbors to both the north and south have as well. But we share an affinity for killing our own citizens with such human rights bastions as China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and pretty much all the Islamic nations of the Middle East and Asia. (Exit sarcasm mode here.)
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FYI: "Ian" is Gaelic for "Wayne".
Dude is probably guiltier than OJ, but in the same paper, I saw an article about a guy in Dallas who spent 10 years in prison and another 14 years as a registered sex offender. Only problem is that the guy didn't do it. It was a case of mistaken identity, finally confirmed by DNA testing 24 years after his conviction. The guy who they now believe really did it died in jail several years ago. Had our wrongly convicted defendant been accused of a capital crime, Texas would certainly have given him the ol' IV of Death by now. And he didn't do shit.
So why do we still have capital punishment in this supposedly enlightened country?
Too many preachers? Maybe. Though capital punishment is supported across the board by religious people, folks who attend church regularly actually tend to be less in favor of capital punishment than those who attend infrequently or not at all.
Too many conservatives? Probably. They support it by a huge margin.
The reality of it is that this ridiculously outmoded and unenlightened practice is heavily favored by Americans across the board, regardless of politics, religion, gender, or age. I guess we think some folks just need killin'.
(Enter sarcasm mode here) We're in good company, at least. Pretty much all of Europe, including the former Soviet Republics, have abolished it, and our neighbors to both the north and south have as well. But we share an affinity for killing our own citizens with such human rights bastions as China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and pretty much all the Islamic nations of the Middle East and Asia. (Exit sarcasm mode here.)
