Interring the Death Penalty

Great Post! Show them for their hypocrisy. 

If Mr. Carroll spent as much time actually reading alternate positions, looking at economic statistics and their correlation to abortion, and talking to real people about abortion and the death penalty, perhaps his admittedly well-written prose could be combined with well-reasoned logic. Alas, it is not.

One question that I asked Mr. Carroll and his supporters simply to define in the last thread was: What was your definition of "life"'s beginnings, and how did you come to that conclusion? Since multiple levels of definitional arguments, whether moral or logical, are at stake here, I attempted clearly to define when I considered "life" to begin for the mass of cells.  When the fetus can survive on its own and has the capacity to feel pain (at least 20 weeks; a recent scientist argues not at all) and the possibility of surviving on its own, is when I think that "life" begins for the fetus. Instead of defining his terms, Mr. Carroll instead reiterates his desire to protect the "innocent" and, in a moment where logical fallacies find their perfect illustration, conflates losing an "innocent" life (the fetus) with the possibility of killing an innocent person with the death penalty.

Though, to put it mildly, the logic is wanting in that instant, we are again left pondering: What is Mr. Carroll basing his argument of "life" upon, and how does he justify the surety of killing one life in exchange for another via the death penalty when at the same time he proposes that all "life" (read: nebulous concept based upon some supernatural, non-scientific definition that Carroll refuses to elaborate upon) be saved?

A more simple question to ask our author and other pro-lifers would be: If you are against abortion, then you and your wife shouldn't have one -- but what makes you the judge, jury and arbiter (e.g., the morality police... Terry Schiavo, anyone?) for the rest of the population?

Further, pro-slavery arguments often rested upon explicit and implicit paternalism. Slaveowners sought to depict their plantations as one big paternal family, with the slaveowner as the father, and the slaves as the well-treated children who would otherwise perish without "father"'s attention. Though I won't go so low as to equate Carroll as being the same as a slaveowner, as he did with me (I would "fit in perfectly among the Charleston Slaveocracy," to Carroll), I do find it curious that the same rhetorical strategy is at play here: Carroll and other pro-lifers see themselves as the paternalist father who knows what is best for women and their bodies. Women merely need to follow their orders!

Indeed, Mr. Carroll has a legacy of overinflated rhetoric, from his letter a few years ago equating stem cell research with "fetal farming" to his claim that "pro-aborts.. pervert the document [the Constitution]," his moment of using the Constitution as a prop to make women's reproductive systems property of the state. There is good reason, judging from Carroll's two most recent posts and his overinflated rhetoric, to agree with the Daily Record's characterization of Carroll as "very extreme" in his positions.

Source for Carroll info:http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/11/1/17420/0927

Embryologists Speak:

The developmental geneticist Jerome Lejeune (1926-1994), discoverer of the chromosomal basis for Down’s Syndrome, stated:

"…each of us has a unique beginning, the moment of conception … As soon as the 23 chromosomes carried by the sperm encounter the 23 chromosomes carried by the ovum, the whole information necessary and sufficient to spell out all the characteristics of the new being is gathered … a new human being is defined which has never occurred before and will never occur again … [it] is not just simply a non-descript cell, or a ‘population’ or loose ‘collection’ of cells, but a very specialized individual …" 

Dr. Kischer, emeritus professor of Anatomy at the University of Arizona, writes, "…the first thing learned in human embryology [is] that the life of the new individual human being begins at fertilization (conception)"  He continues, "we should respect a microscopic human embryo because at that time it is an integrated whole organism, just as the human is at every moment in time until death. Every human embryo deserves as much respect as you or I because it is formed as a new individual human life within the continuum of life …" To deny this, Kischer says, is "a trivialization and corruption of the science of human embryology."

Columnist Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe accurately sums up the disgraceful speech given by Governor Corzine in lauding all of those who contributed to the repeal of the death penalty law -- forgetting to mention the victims of the horrible murders that put those murderers there in the first place.

But there were some people Corzine forgot to mention.

The governor forgot Kristin Huggins. She was the 22-year-old graphic artist kidnapped in 1992 by Ambrose Harris, who stuffed her into the trunk of her car, then let her out in order to rape her and shoot her twice - once in the back of her head, once point-blank in the face.

The governor forgot Irene Schnaps, a 37-year-old widow butchered by Nathaniel Harvey in 1985. After breaking into her apartment and robbing her, he killed her with 15 blows to the head, using a "hammer-like" weapon with such violence that he fractured her skull, broke her jaw, and knocked out her teeth.

The governor forgot Megan Kanka, who was just 7 years old when she was murdered by a neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas. A convicted sex offender, Timmendequas lured Megan into his house by offering to show her a puppy. Then he raped her, smashed her into a dresser, wrapped plastic bags around her head, and strangled her with a belt.

In fact, the governor forgot to mention any of the victims murdered by the men on New Jersey's death row. He signed an order reducing the killers' sentences to life in prison, and assured his audience "that these individuals will never again walk free in our society." But he spoke not a word about any of the men, women, and children who will never again walk at all - or smile, or dream, or breathe - because their lives were brutally taken from them by the murderers the new law spares.

And he goes on to note another point the Governor and all those short-sighted individuals who supported this repeal simply refuse to acknowledge.  The death penalty deters present and future murders.  And so the repeal of the death penalty will very likely ensure that more innocent victims will be murdered in the future. 

A widening sheaf of studies (some by scholars who personally oppose the death penalty) have found that each time a murderer is executed, between 3 and 18 additional homicides are deterred. To mention just one example, University of Houston professors Dale Cloninger and Roberto Marchesini studied the effect of the death-penalty moratorium declared by Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2000, and Ryan's subsequent commutation of every death-row inmate's sentence. Result: an estimated 150 additional murders in Illinois over the subsequent 48 months.

New Jersey hasn't executed anyone since 1963, so the new law may be largely symbolic. But there is nothing symbolic about all the blood shed since the death penalty was abandoned 44 years ago. In 1963, there were 181 homicides in the Garden State. By 1970 there were more than 400, and by 1980, more than 500. In 2002, state officials calculated that on average, a murder was committed in New Jersey every 25 hours and 41 minutes.

While the murder rate since 2000 has declined modestly across the country, it has "jumped 44 percent in Jersey, up from 3.4 murders per 100,000 people to 4.9," writes Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute. "Jersey's increase in murders has been the sixth-highest in the country."

That may explain why 53 percent of the state's residents opposed the death-penalty repeal, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, while 78 percent favored retaining it for "the most violent cases." Perhaps they grasp the truth that eludes the politicians in Trenton: When the death penalty is unavailable, more innocent victims die.

In addition to the Governor, all of those who supported this repeal have thereby taken the side of the vicious murderers.  They have given the back of their hand to the present and future innocent victims of murder. 

I would say "thanks for nothing," but that sort of sarcasm really wouldn't be accurate.  Only those who have now turned a blind eye to those innocent victims see them as nothing. 

To the rest of us they are living breathing human beings who are deserving of the protection that has just been taken away from them.  Coupled with his recent candor in admitting that the State simply cannot protect witnesses of gang violence, we now know that he could care less about protecting the people of this State. 

No.  He'd rather play the "progressive moralist" and sign Ambrose and Jesse's Law, thus protecting the most vicious murderers in our midst. 

by Trochilus