Death penalty likely to expand in Virginia under McDonnell

It's far from easy to say violent killers shouldn't be handed a death sentence, especially in cases where a lot of victims or particularly vicious acts are involved. What's hard--or should be for anyone who thinks about it--is sending an innocent person to death, which happens. And if that innocent person wrongly convicted were your father, or brother, or sister or mother, daughter, son, best friend--well, would you be quite so eager to see them strapped to a gurney or chair and killed by the state (which represents us)? How must it feel to be the loved ones of people wrongly executed? Where is their vengeance? Until we can bring those later proven innocent back from the dead, how can anyone justify the death penalty?

I believe in the Death Penalty and Virginia should continue to enforce the Death Penalty. However, if Virginia employs a Medical Examiner with a criminal history, then it is virtualy impossible for the Prosecutor to qualify the Medical Examiner as an expert which is a required step before the expert can testify to the evidence collected during the autopsy. Without the Medical Examiners expert testimony, the case ceases to be a Death Penalty case and the Murderer/Rapist can live out the rest of his worthless life in prison! My point is, enforce the Death Penalty but Virginia needs to employ people who are qualified to testifying during the trial. Comment is based on my personal experince as the relative of a murdered child.

It's easy to stand back and say violent killers should not be put to death, but what if someone walked into your house and shot one of your family members? Do we forgive and forget, or an eye for an eye a life for a life. My only response is that if the state doesn't give this person the death sentence, I will if it is one of my family members. If we make examples of these violent offenders, maybe the violence will stop.

I think the death penalty is totally earned by some of those who receive it. I also think that no innocent life should be taken so that the burden of proof to get the death sentence must be incredibly high. Otherwise it must be life in prison. This idea of executing those other than the "triggerman" makes me pretty uneasy. Being with the killer is not the same as being the killer. Don't know that I can agree with that bill.

Again, if the prohibition of murder is not religious based than what is it? Why support abortion and oppose death penalty?

And for that guy who keeps calling conservatives the american taliban- grow up and educate yourself. You have no idea how ignorant you sound do you?

I have to agree with Capital punishment for the people that helped kill someone and Capital punishment for those that kill first responders and police. I am a moderate Democrat and I do not want to pay for their college education in jail and their exercise regime etc...etc...etc...If they were put to sleep their families would move on with thier lives and they would have a chance to improve their lives and not be victims of having a father or mother alive in jail. In the Middle East there is almost no crime. My family lived there for over 25 years and we felt much safer there than we do here. You would of had to live this experience to understand what I am saying. People there fear getting in trouble and hurting someone because they know they will pay. Yes its kind of rough but it saves thousands of innocent lives in the long run.
I dont want to pay these private companies the money to house these long term criminals either. This is a huge business and you know how people are with businesses all they care about is profit so these companies will be very active in stopping Captial punishment so they can profit. Another example of not caring a bit about the people and only caring abo

Some of these elected officials, MR. Morrisey and friends, have no touch with reality, and know not whereof they speak! His arguments against the death penalty are complete exaggerations of the facts.

It makes me feel ill when I know that our state is going to kill someone. When I read about someone trying to get the Gov. to parden them, I always hope that this life will be spared. I don't think we should kill people because they are sick. Help is what they need, not death. I wish this state would do away with the death penalty. Jails are for punishment and hospitals are for the sick.

Arguing against the bill, Del. Joseph Morrissey, D-Richmond, called it "unwarranted, unworthy and un-Christian."

There you go again. Please keep your religion OUT of my politics.

It may be "Un-Christian" but is it Un-Muslim? Or Un-Buddhist? How about Un-Rastafarian?

*Shakes Head*

If they are convicted then hang them high!!!

Amazingly, our European allies have much lower homicide rates (and crime in general)than we do despite their having abolished the death penalty as a barbaric response with the potential to punish the innocent as well as the guilty with the ultimate penalty. Here in Virginia over the last year alone we have seen several convictions overturned after years of unjust imprisonment--what if those innocent "convicts" had been murdered by the state? Does our governor, blessed as he was by Pat Robertson, have the power to raise such unlucky victims of the state from the dead? Anyone who's served on a jury should know the realities of "reasonable doubt"--I've actually heard fellow jurors say they'd vote any way that would get them home for the weekend! Combine that attitude with lousy witnesses, lab errors, and a badly overloaded justice system, and then try to justify capital punishment within any moral belief system. Good luck!

Hard on fetuses,
Soft on murderers, terrorists and illegal immigrants.

And you wonder why we have societal problems??

Imagine this: Death Penalty reserved for violent killers of/order givers to kill an innocent person; with one appeal of sentence given within 6 months of the original guilty verdict (to satisfy due process rights and lessen innocents put to death). Psych evaluation in that time must find them non-rehabilitative. If appeal finds them guilty again, the convicted, after ten minutes to say goodbye to loved ones present, should be taken into a small plastic lined room with an executor and shot point blank in the medula oblongata. This ensures no suffering; instant death via vital to life portion of the brain destroyed; it's not inhumane and they had due process. This also relieves a backed up court system filled with frivolous appeals + overcrowded prisons, saving $$. The second/appeal trial tries to rescue those wrongly convicted, allows for further evidence entered, and another attorney team chosen. The quickly doled out sentence means deterring others through knowledge of it's workings. The plastic makes for easy clean up. It's that simple.

For those of you that argue that the death penalty is not a deterrent, I raise a point

I have not murdered anyone because of the death penalty. Is not one human life that I could have ended worth it? Of course convicts are going to say that the death penalty didn't deter them, they have already killed someone. I don't think you can reverse deter someone. Think about the vast majority of us who will not kill someone because of a risk of getting the death penalty. You have to start thinking in abstracts here, folks.

All IMHO as always.