Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you want to reform the justice system, let's make it so if you use a gun in a criminal act, you automatically get life in prison. How about we make the punishment for abuse more strict than getting caught selling dope on the street? There are so many more "fixes" we could be doing to our justice system. How about taking away a governor's power to pardon murderers for getting on his/her good side?
I agree with all of the above. I'm for de-criminalization of all victimless activities (including drugs and prostitution) and long mandatory punishments for all violent crimes. Most of my friends (whom you'd probably define 'Tea Baggers' for their fiscally-conservative views) think exactly the same.
From my experience, these are people on the left who object mandatory sentences, and promote returning criminals back into the community.
I think the best way to bring back confidence in Florida's justice system is buy putting the burden of convection back on the prosecution instead of making the defense need to prove innocence.
Good! Now we have the DNA test to make sure innocent people are not falsely accused, and to prove guilt of those who deserve the capital punishment.
The problem is that many times DNA evidence is not brought before the court for one reason or another.
Not a DNA case, but just look at the Pioneer Hotel case that was on 60 Minutes not too long ago. The county prosecutor refused to release the guy from prison unless he pleaded no contest to the crime just so they could still have a conviction on the books.
Exactly. One innocent person executed is one too many. Imagine if that was you, your mother, father, sister, brother.
There are innocent people on death row right now. The justice system is not fool proof and there is enough corruption, power and greed in it to hold innocent people just so those in power can be seen as getting the job done.
There are horrible, guilty people in prison. Why give them the easy way out by putting them to sleep and thus out of their misery? Prison is not a cushy place where they get to relax, watch cable TV and lounge around all day, it is a miserable place and one that provides justice to victims.
I voted in favor of the Death Penalty but there needs to be a different method.
They need to bring this back...
I find it to be a miscarriage of justice that these animals can kill people in the most sadistic of ways imaginable, but the state has to kill them "humanely."
You think the state should kill them in the most sadistic of ways imaginable?..would you consider that justice?
For people like John Couey, no execution method is sadistic enough.
Murder of Jessica Lunsford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In his confession Couey said that he entered Lunsford's house through an unlocked door at about three o'clock in the morning, awakened Lunsford, told her "Don't yell or nothing", and told her to follow him out of the house. He occupied a trailer along with two women, some 100 yards (91 m) away, at the time of Lunsford's abduction. He admitted in a videotaped and recorded deposition to raping Lunsford in his bedroom. Lunsford was kept in Couey's bed that evening, where he raped her again in the morning. Couey put her in his closet and ordered her to remain there, which she did as he reported for work at "Billy's Truck Lot". Three days after he abducted her, Couey tricked Jessica into getting into two garbage bags by saying he was going to 'take her home'. He instead buried her alive as he decided he could do nothing else with the girl. He said he 'Didn't want people seeing him and Lunsford across the street.'
You think the state should kill them in the most sadistic of ways imaginable?..would you consider that justice?
Absolutely!
Why should someone that tortures and brutally kills another human being, taking their life prematurely be allowed to sit in jail, given 3 meals a day, for 25 years, then be allowed to lay on a bed and be put to sleep before being given a lethal drug so they can go peacefully in their sleep?
They should be tortured just as much as the person they killed and Florida should institute a measure like the one we have in Texas, if you murder someone and there's witnesses, you hit the express lane and move to the front of the crowd on Death Row.
For people like John Couey, no execution method is sadistic enough.
Murder of Jessica Lunsford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In his confession Couey said that he entered Lunsford's house through an unlocked door at about three o'clock in the morning, awakened Lunsford, told her "Don't yell or nothing", and told her to follow him out of the house. He occupied a trailer along with two women, some 100 yards (91 m) away, at the time of Lunsford's abduction. He admitted in a videotaped and recorded deposition to raping Lunsford in his bedroom. Lunsford was kept in Couey's bed that evening, where he raped her again in the morning. Couey put her in his closet and ordered her to remain there, which she did as he reported for work at "Billy's Truck Lot". Three days after he abducted her, Couey tricked Jessica into getting into two garbage bags by saying he was going to 'take her home'. He instead buried her alive as he decided he could do nothing else with the girl. He said he 'Didn't want people seeing him and Lunsford across the street.'
How about the most famous man to ever be executed in Florida...
Dashing and charismatic, Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy won the trust of his female victims before taking their lives and claims to have committed up to 30 homicides across seven states between 1974 and 1978. The dark-haired seductive serial killer commonly approached his victims pretending to have an injury, before overpowering them, luring them into his Volkswagen and bludgeoning them with a crowbar and taking them to a secluded spot. He often returned to the crime scene for several hours, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses and is said to have kept the decapitated heads of some women at his apartment for months.
Self-described as “the most cold-blooded son of a ***** you’ll ever meet,” Bundy was initially arrested in Utah in 1975 for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault, but it soon became clear that he was responsible for a much longer list of grisly crimes across the country.
While facing murder charges in Colorado, he successfully pulled off two dramatic escapes and committed multiple assaults and three more murders on the run, before being recaptured in 1978 in Florida, where he received three death sentences in two separate trials. The sadistic sociopath was eventually given the electric chair in the Sunshine State’s Raiford Prison in 1989 at age 42.
Or the 2nd most famous man, this guy was given the "humane" death penalty...
In August 1990, Rolling murdered five students (one was a student of Santa Fe College and four attended the University of Florida) during a burglary and robbery spree in Gainesville, Florida. He would mutilate his victim's bodies, decapitating one. He then would pose them, sometimes even using mirrors, to intensify the carnage in the rooms.
The first attack occurred early August 24, 1990, when Rolling broke into the apartment shared by Sonya Larson and Christina Powell. Finding Powell asleep on the downstairs couch, he stood over her briefly, but did not wake her up, choosing instead to explore the upstairs bedroom where Larson was sleeping. Deciding that he would rape Larson, he went back downstairs to murder Powell, first taping her mouth shut to stifle her screams as he stabbed her to death. She died while trying to fend him off. Rolling then went upstairs, taped Larson's mouth shut and her wrists together behind her back, and threatened her with a knife as he cut her clothes off of her. He then raped her and forced her face-down onto the floor where he stabbed her five times in the back. Rolling posed the bodies and left the apartment.[3]
A day later, on Saturday August 25, 1990, Rolling broke into the apartment where Christa Hoyt lived by prying open a sliding glass door with a KA-BAR knife and a screwdriver, but she wasn't home. He waited in the living room for her to return. At 11 a.m. she entered the apartment and Rolling surprised her from behind, placing her in a choke-hold. After she had been subdued, he taped her mouth shut and her wrists together and led her into the bedroom, where he cut the clothes from her body and raped her. As in the Larson murder, he forced her face-down and stabbed her in the back, rupturing her heart. He then decapitated the body and posed the head facing the corpse, adding to the shock value of whoever discovered her.[3]
By now the murders had attracted widespread media attention and many students were taking extra precautions, such as changing their daily routines and sleeping together in groups. Because the spree was happening so early in the Fall semester, some students withdrew their enrollment or transferred to other schools. Tracy Paules was living with Manny Taboada, her burly 200 lb roommate. On August 27, Rolling broke into the apartment by prying open the sliding glass door with the same tools he had used earlier. Rolling found Taboada asleep in one of the bedrooms and, after a struggle with the young man, eventually killed him.[3]
Hearing the commotion, Paules went down the hall to Taboada's bedroom and saw Rolling. She attempted to barricade herself in her bedroom but Rolling broke through the door. Rolling taped her mouth and wrists, cut off her clothing, and raped her before turning her onto her belly and stabbing her three times in the back. Rolling posed Paules' body but left Taboada's in the same position in which Taboada had died.[4]
With the exception of Taboada, all of the victims were petite Caucasian brunettes with brown eyes.
Although law enforcement authorities initially had very few leads, police did identify two suspects; one a University of Florida student (Edward Humphrey) who had a history of mental illness and bore numerous scars on his face from a car accident, making him an ideal video snip when discussing news about the investigation. His image was played multiple times by media outlets.
Rolling was arrested in Ocala on a burglary charge and, in the course of that investigation, his tools were matched to marks left at the Gainesville murder scenes. The small one-man camp where he was living was in a wooded area located near the apartment complexes frequented by students, including those of the victims. There, investigators discovered recordings Rolling had made of him singing folk songs he had composed and audio diaries alluding to the crimes. He was then charged with several counts of murder in November 1991.
The two men the police had identified as suspects were released with no further suspicion of participating in the crimes.
Rolling was finally brought to trial, by Alachua County State Attorney Len Register, nearly four years after the murders. His motive, according to Rolling, was to become a "superstar" in much the same way as Ted Bundy. Before testimony began in his trial in 1994, Rolling pled guilty to all charges. Subsequently, State Attorney Rod Smith presented the penalty phase of the prosecution. Rolling was sentenced to the death penalty on each count. During his trial, Court TV conducted an interview with his mother from her home. During the recording, his father could be heard shouting off-camera.
Three psychiatrists agreed that Rolling had a personality disorder and functioned at the maturity level of a fifteen-year-old.[5]
[edit]Further murders
After Rolling was arrested, police in Louisiana alerted the authorities in Florida to an unsolved triple murder in Shreveport, Louisiana on November 4, 1989. Detectives noted that there were similarities between the Gainesville murders and those of 55-year-old William Grissom, his 24-year-old daughter Julie and eight-year-old grandson Sean. The family had been attacked in their home as they were preparing for dinner. Later Julie Grissom's body had been mutilated, cleaned and posed.[6]
Although Rolling never officially confessed to investigators handling the Grissom case, he did write about the murders using information that only the killer would know. Shreveport police obtained an open arrest warrant in 1994 but Rolling was never extradited to Louisiana to stand trial for the killings.[6]
You think the state should kill them in the most sadistic of ways imaginable?..would you consider that justice?
yes
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
