At some point, you’d think that scumbags choirboys in Texas would get the hint that their little undocumented wealth redistribution plans may be a little more complicated here than they would be, say, in San Francisco or Portland. But no:
And:
Texas man chased down carjacker who dragged woman to her death
The story of the second one, while tragic, is noteworthy because without Our Hero, the cops would probably still be looking for the goblin. Instead, he faces the needle because there was a witness to the killing, and under Texas law he goes straight to the head of the line.
And it’s getting more difficult in other states, too:
An
allegedhome intruder attacked an armed homeowner in Atlanta, Georgia, Monday afternoon and was shot and killed.
He was inside the guy’s house, where he assumed room temperature after being ventilated. There’s no “alleged” about it.
KWCH reports that the incident occurred about 7 p.m., and the suspect allegedly started by pounding on a door at a neighbor’s house.
The suspect then focused on a second home, where the armed homeowner called the police and asked them to come quickly because he did not want to have to shoot the man. But the suspect allegedly kept attacking.
The homeowner said, “[He] threw 2 bricks through my window and tried to crawl through in my window and told me he was going to kill me and kinds of other things. So, unfortunately, I had to shoot him.”
Nothing unfortunate about it, old son; the son of a bitch sounds like he needed killing. Sadly, he’s only “critical”, but we can hope. Anyway, for all these heroes:
Good drills all round.
That said, while I’m fine with the use of lethal force in the field, I’m against the death penalty for criminals once they’re in the hands of the state. Too many times the state have the wrong person. Police lie or tell a limited version of the truth. And it makes it safer for the police if the criminals know they can safely surrender. Plus there’s the possibility that the criminal repents and reforms (it does happen).
For reasons I’ve detailed here before, I agree. Capital punishment at the hands of the State is too expensive, it does not serve a general deterrent effect (in terms of lowering general murder rates), and carries the certainty at some point of executing someone for something they did not do.
So you both think that the scrote who dragged an innocent woman to her death (in front of a witness) should be allowed to live?
Got it.
Bluntly, yes. Witnesses can lie. This case, of course, is egregious but it’s the principle of the thing, the general case. There was a case a while back of a man positively identified by three separate children as a child molester who spent over a decade in prison before being exhonorated. The children made up the whole thing.
Since 1976 10% of the people on Death Row in the US have been found innocent.
An apology is scant comfort to a corpse.
As for the surrendering aspect, I hope that’s obvious: if the perp knows he can surrender to the police and live he’s more likely to do that; if he knows he’s going to die he might as well take a few of them with him.
My take on the death penalty is that it should be done by firing squad, the squad being made up of the jury that handed down the sentence. That way, it’s not ‘The State’ ending the convict’s life, it’s 12 citizens who found that the convict’s behavior merited death.
This also means that as a juror, you need to believe strongly enough that the crime deserves death that you are wiling to carry out the sentence yourself, no pawning it off on an anonymous state employee.
On that last one: of COURSE it’s unfortunate.
Don’t you know how hard it is to get blood out of a carpet?