Tag: anti-death penalty

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10366127/Prosecutor-wants-US-death-penalty-police-shooting-pair.html

Female cop was ‘shot dead in cold blood with her own gun as she pleaded for her life’: Illinois prosecutors seek death penalty for man and woman arrested for her murder and for critically injuring her partner

• An Illinois prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for Darius Sullivan and Xandria Harris who are accused of injuring a police officer and killing another
• Illinois is not a death penalty state, but the U.S. Attorney General can authorizing a filing for the ultimate punishment under certain circumstances
• Sullivan and Harris are charged with shooting dead Bradley police Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic, 49, on Wednesday and wounding her partner, Officer Tyler Bailey, 27 
• Rittimanic pleaded with the pair for her life before she was fatally shot
• According to Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe, her last words were ‘you don’t have to do this, please just go, please don’t please don’t’

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and CHRISTINA COULTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 18:50 EST, 3 January 2022 | UPDATED: 09:02 EST, 5 January 2022

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A prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for two people charged with shooting dead a veteran Illinois police officer with her own weapon as she pleaded for her life on the ground and critically wounding her partner, who is now fighting for his life. Although Illinois isn’t a death penalty state, the U.S. Attorney General can authorize the filing of a petition to seek out the punishment in certain federal murder cases. In court on Monday, Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim Rowe painted the picture of a cold-blooded killing that deserved that designation during a bond hearing for Xandria Harris, 26 (bottom-right), of Bradley in the county’s Circuit Court. She and Darius Sullivan, 25 (bottom left), are charged with fatally shooting Bradley police Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic, 49 (top), and critically wounding her partner, Officer Tyler Bailey, 27 (inset), late Wednesday. Bailey is hospitalized at a Chicago-area hospital. ‘At the time Sullivan fired the fatal shots into Sgt. Rittmanic, Sgt. Rittmanic was pleading with them to just leave, “you don’t have to do this, please just go, please don’t please don’t.” She was desperately pleading for her life,’ Rowe said, according to court documents.

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Here’s a case that hard for this anti-death penalty pro-life-er.  When they are convicted, a life sentence without parole seems appropriate. 

The only wiggle room for me is when a convict demonstrates that they are too dangerous to keep alive by, for example, God-forbid, killing a corrections officer.  

I am disgusted at the barbaric criminals we have created.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0403/Alabama-man-released-after-decades-on-death-row-Sign-of-a-flawed-system-video

USA USA UPDATE
Alabama man released after decades on death row: Sign of a flawed system? (+video)
As the number of death-row exonerees continues to grow, fundamental questions are being raised about potential flaws in the system.
By Cristina Maza, Staff writer APRIL 3, 2015

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Hinton is the third death-row inmate freed in the United States in less than a month. Since 1973, 151 people besides Hinton have been released from death row. And as the number of exonerees continues to grow, fundamental questions are being raised about potential flaws in the system.

“The fact that there’s innocent people in prison or death row has transformed people’s understanding of the death penalty,” University of North Carolina political scientist Frank Baumgartner, author of “The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence,” told Monitor reporter Patrik Jonsson.

“Your opinion about the death penalty in the abstract is one thing, but meeting exonerees changes the death penalty from an abstract principle to a very practical issue of: Can the government do it right every single time?

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And, we don’t know exactly the extent of the “error rate”.

Now isn’t the saying better that 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent goes to jail?

No erasers on the “pencils” of the death penalty!

Given that a trial costs 4 times the cost of life in prison (read that somewhere; good enough for a swag!) seems like we should just eliminate it for the most part. (Maybe it’s retained for those felons convicted of killing a correction officer?)

Sorry, but being pro-life means being anti-death penalty.

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