Schwarzenegger denies clemency to convicted killer - Yahoo! News
Schwarzenegger denies clemency to convicted killer - Yahoo! News. You’ll recall that Schwarzenegger is a self-described social moderate. Seems to me that with this sort of nonsense decision he’s a far-right pandering assclown. If you needed yet another reason to vote against this guy when he comes up for reelection — and if you do, you haven’t been paying attention — here it is.
December 12th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Considering what this guy has been doing (writing books, etc), I find it surprising that Gropenfurer stepped in at all. I’m against the death penalty to begin with- this seems to confirm one of the reasons why.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
I am not crazy about the death penalty either and would prefer life imprisonment as the ultimate punishment. With all this talk about “how great” Tookie is let’s not forget he was convicted of killing four people. I don’t think writing some children’s books makes up for that.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Of course it doesn’t, but it doesn’t justify the death penalty, either. Schwarzenegger is an ass for going along with it.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
I can understand that one might think that Tookie shouldn’t be executed.
But I guess I don’t understand why someone would be labeled “Far Right Ass Clown” just because he is following the laws of the land, as supported by 68% of Californians (the latest poll numbers I could find for support of the death penalty). That seems far removed from, er, “far right”. In fact, it would seem to me that holding the view that he should be spared would be considered a more accurate use of the modifier, “far”.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
If you support the death penalty, you’re the far, far, wrong-headed murderous right. That 68% of the state supports it is truly a sad statement. If you go along with a horrible law simply because it is the law, you’re an ass clown. I feel pretty comfortable with both assessments.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
I don’t think executing him is going to rectify the situation at hand- polls mean nothing to me, btw. If you want to make someone repay a debt to society for murders, a shot in the arm isn’t going to give justice to anything.
Although I am curious as to how many of these 68% “Californians” (I highly doubt ALL Californians are represented), are also anti abortion, because I find hypocricy to be quite fascinating.
December 12th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
Jill- The 68% figure was a Field Poll. And it should not be surprising, as Americans by and far support the death penalty. In fact, polls of most the Western World (including Europe) find support for capital punnishment.
A reference to the Field Poll can be noted here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/455trlpv.asp though a search on your search engine of choice will likely pull other results.
I don’t want the comments to descend into “most common Internet Post Topics: Take 8″ so I won’t take up a discussion of the moral stances of either side.
My original comment was merely that a person who describes themselves as a “Social Moderate” is hardly innaccurate when they uphold the social positions of the populace at large. I was merely taking umbrage at that characterization. Since then, CP has clarified that his use of “Far Right” was not meant in reference to the populace of the US- and I would propose incompatible with any historical right/left deffinition. Instead, he is refering to “Far Right” as a euphimism for “Views Opposite to those I agree with”. Given that, I see no real contradiction.
The Ass Clown part is probably a diservice to Clowns, but I digress…
December 12th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
Well, that’s a lovely ad hominem there. Let’s take your objections in pieces here:
You object to “far,” listing popular support in your favor. I’m not quite sure how popular support matters at all here. Slavery once enjoyed wide support, as did segregation. Were either right? No, of course they weren’t. Popularity has nothing to do with right and wrong.
Now, we’re talking about supporting killing people here. That’s bad. That’s very bad. It always has been and it always will be. If you’re for killing people, I feel very comfortable putting on the far end of the moral spectrum.
As for “right” versus “left,” my understanding — go ahead and correct me here if you think I’m wrong — is that things like sitting in trees and burning SUV’s are left-wing activities, while murdering convicts and and pushing religion on the public at large is what the right is up to these days.
That understood, I think I’m being pretty consistent to assert that supporting the death penalty — supporting murder — falls squarely under the purview of the far right.
Seriously, though: no more of this shit about popular support. It doesn’t make the practice good. It just means that the population is in that aspect very wrong about what’s good.
December 12th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Well, time for a real opinion here. I also don’t care what 68% or 99% of people say. The death penalty is the ONLY applicable punishment for the segment of the population that has made the choice to kill in the premeditated or mitigated manner that the LAW then calls for death. I know in the Left’s and Corey’s Perfect World ™ there is no evil and we can just close our eyes and pretend that if we’re not “evil” then we can eliminate evil in the world, but that’s not the real world.
Evil exists. It kills, it murders, it rapes, and it responds to weakness with ferocity. If it ever comes knocking on my door to hurt me or the people I care about, I don’t give a crap about the laws of California, it will be stopped with every bit of force I can muster, including killing it. Now, if this evil-doer has somehow escaped my wrath, and now has been taken into custody, and found guilty of crimes deserving of the death penalty under current law, he deserves to die. Not because its morally superior or its the evil of the state, but for revenge; and as a warning to anyone else stupid enough to follow the path of evil: kill people and you will die. You won’t get a government sponsored pension for the rest of your life and get to run your gang from behind bars. No, you will die. If only we didn’t wait 25 years to enforce this simple concept, perhaps it would have more of an inhibitive effect.
As for this whole concept of “state sponsored murder”, that’s a non-starter. Should we not prosecute thieves because the state sponsors theft in the form of taxes (try not paying them to find out exactly how at the point of the government’s gun you really are)? No. We enact a moral government to enforce the social contract of society. That often requires force that if enacted by the general populace would constitute crime or would be “wrong”.
You don’t like that government, you can vote to change it, and if that doesn’t work: move. Go to England or some other morally “enlightened” place and stop your complaining. I can assure you that once California tips over the edge into the Left’s Perfect World, I will be well on my way to Texas. Until then I can watch it teeter around like our “populist” governor.
December 12th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Revenge. Wow. That’s petty and pointless. What do you get out of lowering yourself to the criminal’s level? Do you feel better about yourself for stooping as low as they do? Is as common thug what you want to be? Don’t give me any nonsense about it being a deterrent, either. The death penalty has never been demonstrated to work that way, and assuming as much is just so much worthless conjecture.
I don’t approach this from some hypothetical perfect world. (Thank you, by the way, for putting words in my mouth. That’s lovely.) I approach it from a standpoint of valuing compassion towards other people over revenge and its ilk. I guarantee you that one does more towards making this world a better place by being kind to people than they do through vengeance.
Does that mean that I think all criminals should be set free? No, of course not. I also don’t believe that we have the right to kill them. Doing as much assumes that we have perfect knowledge about their guilt and innocence, as it’s an irrevocable punishment. We don’t. If we did, no verdicts would ever be overturned, and they are. It also assumes that killing people is somehow a good thing, which I think we’ll all agree it isn’t.
And as for your final “love it or leave” point, Carter, that’s the most asinine, unpatriotic thing I’ve ever heard. This country is great because we can complain and we can bitch and we can moan and we can protest and we can vote to change things. If we take that away — or even if we discourage it — we’re taking steps towards a totalitarian state. If that’s what you want, I’d suggest that not even Texas would be to your liking. Perhaps you’d enjoy North Korea.
December 12th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Let’s see. Revenge. Yes. That’s how I feel. You may feel free to turn the other cheek. If the evil we are speaking of here touches your life (which I hope will never happen to anyone I know), I encourage you to speak to the jury that will decide its fate and ask them to spare the evil-doer’s life. I will not do the same.
The death penalty is a pretty strong deterrent for me, but I have the misfortune of being an evil white male, so no midnight vigils would be held for me. When the urge to hunt someone down and kill them comes to me, I keep that in mind. I suppose there are some for whom the death penalty isn’t a deterrent, but if the threat of death won’t deter them, what will?
Corey’s Perfect World retracted. I don’t believe we will get to a better place by approaching the evil in this world with an open hand, compassion, or attempting to understand it. Evil must be confronted and destoyed. When evil rears it’s head, often killing is the only response that will stop it, so I can’t agree with the blanket statement that killing isn’t sometimes the good thing.
As to knowledge of guilt and innocence, there are certainly cases where the prosecution and the police have made mistakes that have cost people their lives, whether executed or merely sentenced to an extended stay in prison. These cases do not excuse those undeniably guilty. To fix this, I propose the expense of the lengthy appeal process of a capital case should be taken up by the people in the first trial, such that a just outcome can be arrived at with the expedience, and sometimes fairness, missing in the current process.
As to love it or leave it, North Korea, et. al., I presented the available option of voting to change the system. Instead of bemoaning a convicted killer who created a force that has destoyed so many lives, you should write your legislator and ask them to repeal the death sentence. You should campaign for DAs who will not seek the death penalty. There are already states in this country that do not apply the death penalty. All of these are options that our federal republic offers us. I offered England as an option only because its law most closely matches your views on a national level, perhaps I should have offered Illinois. I chose Texas as my point of exile, because its law most closely matches my views within our diverse republic. I fully advocate voting to change the law as you see fit, and I will do the same, and I will see fit to not term you or your candidate an “ass-clown”, etc.
December 12th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
CP:
Where do you get the “ad hominem” claim? You accused the governor of being a “far-right pandering assclown”. But at worst, he can be accused of pandering to a majority of democrats- people who support Abortion, Gun Restriction, Pro-Labor laws, etc- as well as republicans. That is, unless you want to extend the meaning of “far right” to mean ANYONE who supports the death penalty (which is what I thought you were doing at the end).
Since then, you have clarified again, stating that “supporting the death penalty… falls squarely under the purview of the far right.” And you are simply incorrect, both for the past and present. Take the cardinal leftists of history. They are the all time winners in total government-sponsored body count. Go ask Gov Davis what he thought while denying clemency after clemency in his term. Go ask a majority of California democrats.
And I’m not currently interested in debating the right or wrong of capital punnishment (unless the sparks continue to fly, I guess). But I tire of the constant claim that the “Far Right” is taking over the country when polliticians do what real bonified far-lefties feel a majority of america shouldn’t agree with (even if that same majority does in fact agree). It may shock you, but not every bad idea is unconstitutional, and not every bad idea is the product of some right wing conspiracy.
And, by the way, if we were talking slavery in the 1800’s I’d have made the same remark. Back then, they actually made the effort to refer to striations in popular opinion by labeling segments differently. They didn’t label all Unionists as Abolitionists, because there were in fact very big differences. And likewise the Articles of Separation signed by Confederate states made expansive effort to distinguish the differences between Abolitionists and other Union factions.
Perhaps it is comforting to attribute EVERYTHING “bad” to the other guys. I suppose that if one can attribute Capital Punnishment solely to the Far Right, it is easier to ignore their claims since they were already wacko to begin with. I wonder what would happen if the people thusly gerrymandering the political divide took a minute to really see how many people on their side of the aisle really disagreed with the positions they articulate.
Perhaps then we might see substantive debate on specific issues, rather than fire and brimstone when the Bad Guy is in power and crickets chirping when the Good Guy is doing the exact same in power. I know that I never saw anything more than a blip before Snoop decided to pick a winner…
December 12th, 2005 at 11:13 pm
Ok, Henry. Uncle. Arnie isn’t the far right. Whatever you say. How about I go ahead and say that I believe that he’s the “far wrong” and we all call it a day?
For the record, I couldn’t say why I got in to the whole labeling debate in the first place. Relative to the fact that we live in a state and a nation that’s A-OK with killing people, that’s sort of beside the point.
Also for the record, yes, I do attribute more of the world’s wrong to The Right than I do to The Left. Then again, count up the Democrats who voted for the war in Iraq or the PATRIOT act or who support the death penalty or who failed to oppose the death penalty. Both sides are pretty fucked up, aren’t they?
Happy?
December 13th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Henry’s point was that governors, state reps, and legislators from both sides of the aisle support the death penalty and (regardless of whether it is right or wrong) there is only an uproar about it when someone from the right happens to be holding a high office. Perhaps there was similar cries of outrage over the death penalty when Gray Davis was in charge…but I doubt it.
Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s right but let’s discuss it as an issue when applied to anyone, regardless of who happens to be in charge.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:34 am
Fair enough, CP.
As to why we got into the debate in the first place, I suppose you only have to read your original post. The sole subject of your post is that Gov Schwarzenegger is not a Social Moderate, but rather a “Far-Right Pandering assclown”. You said nothing about your views on Capital Punishment, or the morality of the death penalty. And it seems to me that your view of the death penalty as right or wrong is not germane to whether or not Schwarzenegger is pandering, so I declined to offer my opinion.
I’m genuinely sorry if disagreeing with your post has upset you. Really, I am. Even so, it strikes me as a disservice to discourse to start out calling people names only to turn about and lament the fact that you now find yourself (unexpectedly) in a discussion about the appropriateness of those names.
-hb
December 13th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Henry: I didn’t explicitly come out and say “I am agains the death penalty,” but I think it’s pretty clearly stated implicitly. As for the name calling, I really didn’t see that as central to anything. If it read as something other than “Schwarzenegger is bad because he let this happen,” then I clearly didn’t do a very good job of making my point. I’m sorry if I somehow offended you by impuning the right.
Collin: Yes, I’m quite aware that a great many republicans and democrats are way, way, way in the wrong on this one. This was a high profile case. It was in the news, so I mentioned it. Sadly, that’s usually the only time I’m aware that these things are going on.
By the way, I did complain when #1,000 was killed a week or so back. I do not know the political affiliation of the governor in that state, though, so I may or may not have complained about a democrat as well. Either way, I’d just as soon not have another opportunity to complain about this.
December 13th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
Collin, there was quite an uproar over the scheduled execution of Robin Lovitt two weeks ago, who was scheduled to be the 1000th person to be executed since the death penalty was reinstated in this country. In that case, the governor was a pro-death penalty Democrat (Mark Warner of Virginia), who did in fact commute the sentence to life because DNA evidence which could have exonerated Lovitt had been destroyed by police.
Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, a pro-death penalty Republican, suspended the death penalty in that state indefinitely, citing the fact that more people on death row had been exonerated than put to death. This did not endear him to the right, who had blocked the move in the Republican controlled legislature of that state. Corey is asking that the same be done by Schwarzenegger, and when he did not do so when given the opportunity in a high profile case, called him out as pandering to the right, which is true since the left in this country does not support the death penalty, and moderates are unlikely to change their votes based on death-penalty support (or lack thereof).
The death penalty transcends party lines. The right’s persecution complex in this country (even while controlling most govt. and media entities) is ill-founded. Had Gray Davis still been governor during this case, there would have been just as big of a protest, primarily because this prisoner had made friends with high-profile celebrities. In fact, there is a protest for every death penalty case, you just don’t hear about them because no celebrities show up.
Carter, I agree with you that the way to change this is through the legislatures. Allowing the governor to commute death sentences gives too much leverage to death penalty supporters who can claim that if the courts fail, at least the governor can step in.
I disagree with the death penalty, in large part because so many of those on death row in this country are there because they are poor and poorly represented in their trials. As new technologies such as DNA evidence come into play, so many of those on death row have been exonerated it is ridiculous to claim that no innocent people have been killed. The Innocence Project alone (http://www.innocenceproject.org) has exonerated many innocent people who would have been put to death without them. If someone who is sentenced to life in prison is exonerated, at least we can let them out and maybe give them some money to make up for the time they’ve lost. If they’ve been put to death, not much can be done.
I also think that requiring death penalty opponents to remove themselves from juries in capital punishment cases is wrong - it certainly doesn’t create an accurate representation of the public.
December 13th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Tej-
I must confess that I am less interested in the fight over whether or not Capital Punishment is right or wrong. I am more interested in seeing the debate framed accurately (hence my original objection to the post).
With that accuracy in mind, there are clearly two stances to take at this point. The first is the appeal to moral authority, so voiced by CP and Carter. One believes that killing is wrong under all circumstances, and the other that Killing can be justified under certain circumstances- specifically when the perpetrator has forfeit his life in commission of a crime. Neither of these positions seems approachable in this discussion because each one rests on specific moral convictions that I do not think people have the desire to budge.
The second is your utilitarian argument. I agree that Capital Punishment is an ultimate decision and as such it is entirely possible that innocent people will be deprived of rights (i.e. Life) without the possibility of recompense. And the application of any government policy should always err towards protecting innocent life. Unfortunately, it is an untenable position if adopting that policy results in more death to innocents than it would prevent.
Despite the bald assertions to the contrary, there are in fact plenty of examples that suggest the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime.
Countries such as Singapore and Saudi Arabia have very harsh capital punishment laws and have comparably less incidence of those crimes when compared with other countries of similar governments but less stringent penalties. A particularly glaring example is the incidence of drug trafficking in Singapore (where it carries the death penalty) compared to neighboring countries.
A study called Pardons, Executions and Homicide from December 2001 proposes a rather strong deterrent effect.
While not an example of Capital Punishment per se, a study was performed to examine a huge discrepancy between the US and UK of the rate of burglaries where the home was occupied at the time. In the US the rate was far, far lower. Surveys of prisoners in the US point out that the greatest fear of those burglars is that they will show up in a house with an armed owner.
Finally, there is the question of marginal cost of eliminating the Death Penalty. Namely, the lack of escalating punishments creates an incentive for criminals to perform a more heinous crime if they believe it will hurt their cause. This is the reasoning that lead kidnappers in 2000 to kill their hostage. They reasoned that near-life in prison for kidnapping was roughly the same as life in prison (in California where the chances of getting the death penalty are quite slim) for killing the primary witness to their crime. Theirfore the increase in risk was quite marginal compared to the possible benefit (getting off scott free).
The final utilitarian argument falls down to a facts analysis. Either it saves more innocent lives than it costs, or it does not. Obviously the interpretation of those facts has room for much interpretation. But it also removes the moral highground that people like to preach from, which is why I always appreciate it when people choose it as a point of discussion.
December 14th, 2005 at 8:31 am
I feel like I’m watching a cable news channel with a bunch of little heads in boxes shouting at each other. Can someone change the channel back to the weird holiday party guests show please?
December 14th, 2005 at 9:47 am
I like the debate, everyone brings up good points. Tej and Henry are both very good at debating. I am not. I like to try to get to the premise of any debate but in this case I think Henry beat me to it.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:03 am
No luck, Robert. Looks like the remote is broken. What will we do!! Brain hurting from too much thinking. Maybe a trip to the Yahoo Entertainment section will make it better. Mmmm fluffy news - yummy.
December 14th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
Actually on that note I’m kind of enjoying happynews.com.
December 14th, 2005 at 3:31 pm
Nice! Their cover story is about rescued dolphins.