Phoenix, AZ—Joseph Wood was
condemned to die after being convicted of two rather nasty murders. I won’t comment on his innocence because I
don’t know. It seems on its face Wood’s two murder convictions was not the subject of controversy.
We will never know what
demons drove Wood’s violence or if there were any very real excusable brain
malfunctions behind his mad acts. We can
only guess.
I won’t argue that some
hopelessly evil people on our earth don’t deserve to live. I absolutely encourage people to use guns and
other deadly weapons in self-defense and the defense of others. The concept of killing these people decades
later is an entirely different matter.
Arizona used secret drugs
obtained from a clandestine source to kill Wood. Wood’s lawyers demanded to know about the
drugs and their effectiveness, but were rebuffed throughout the entire appeal
process. This was happening in a nation
where its government brags about its transparency.
Wood choked and gasped for
air during the nearly two hour deadly ordeal.
Finally he died. The legislature
sought lethal injection to make murder by government quick and clean. Just as Wood’s lawyers feared Arizona’s
experimental drug cocktail failed and the execution was botched.
Just like Wood’s murder
victims, he too had family members and friends. The kin on both sides of these things always suffer
too. Murder and punishment is an ugly
business.
It would be a lot less
disturbing if witnesses and cops never lied, evidence and it’s meaning was an
exact science but that’s just not the case.
Jurors are a lot of things
but perfect is not one of them. We can
never guess what a jury will do and that alone is a monument to their
guesswork.
Twice prosecutor of the Year,
Kenneth Peasley from Pima County, AZ was the champ of all Arizona prosecutors
putting more people on Death Row that any other. He was a Death Penalty Hero for sure.
Peasley was a brilliant
lawyer and ruthless prosecutor. He was
the master of giving immunity to confessed killers if they’d testify
implicating others. Peasley would put a
suit on Satan and bring him into court as he vouched to a jury for his
witnesses from Hell.
Thankfully that ended when
Peasley got caught knowingly putting a perjuring police witness before a jury
in a death penalty case. Peasley was
subjected to a pretend Grand Jury investigation by his peers and
exonerated. The State Bar of Arizona
yanked his law license.
Peasley since contracted and
died of cancer.
With hundreds of Death Row
inmates being exonerated sometimes after decades of solitary confinement
something’s obviously wrong.
If we end the Death Penalty
we will save hundreds of millions on appeals.
We too often forget that we must bay for both the defense and
prosecution of Death Penalty cases. It’s
significantly cheaper if we simply warehouse the convicted killers until they
die or are too old and feeble to cause any harm.
I’m going to end with a
simple premise; the Death Penalty is always and properly the tool of a
Police State. It’s better suited for
Nazis, Communists and Fascists. It does not belong in a civilized society.
Who in their right mind would
give a politician or bureaucrat the right to kill them? That’s exactly what we’ve done! Considering the crackpots we elect was that a
good idea.
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