On the Death Penalty

"If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong."

-New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson

Although I have some serious issues with the death penalty, and don't think it's always administered fairly, I do support it in some cases.

Josef Fritzl is one such case.

This is the Austrian guy who kept his daughter imprisoned in his basement for 24 years, raped her repeatedly, and fathered 7 children by her (one of which died.) If there is ever a guy who should be shot, gassed, electrocuted, lethally injected, it should be him.

When I first heard about this case, I was shocked. I'm pretty hardened, so for me to be shocked is pretty rare. The only other case that shocked me in recent memory was the Chinese guy who beheaded a passenger on a greyhound bus in Canada. It was just the sheer randomness of that crime that made it shocking. Here's a guy, trying to get some sleep on a bus, and suddenly he's being stabbed to death for no apparent reason.

Josef Fritzl is a different story, though. He knew what he was doing, and he continued doing it for decades. Only now is he showing remorse. So it seems he's going to get life in prison, but that's not good enough. The guy is already in his 70's. He doesn't have much of a life left. He needs the harshest punishment possible.

Yeah, I'm a democrat, and a liberal, so it's strange to see myself saying such things. But this is one topic where I differ from the rest of my peers. I think the death penalty has flaws, absolutely. Especially here in Texas, where there is almost a revolving door execution chamber going on. In Texas, inmates have been put to death even when new evidence is available that could prove their innocence. When G.W. Bush was the governor here, it was pretty well known that the guy only spent 15 minutes reviewing the cases of the condemned. I would be just as content with most of these death row inmates being given life in prison rather than put to death. If there's a possibility that innocent people are being killed, then it just isn't worth it.

However, there will always be exceptions to the rule. Those particular people who are just so depraved that their very existence in this world is wrong. People like Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker" who scared the hell out of me when I was a kid living in Downey. This was the guy who just walked into peoples houses at random and killed them, then cut their eyes out or some other random act of depravity. Ramirez was convicted in 1989, and now 20 years later the guy is still on death row. Come on, 20 years? Put the guy out of his misery, please! It's these types of people that make me still support the death penalty. And then there's Fritzl, who I personally can't wait to see his comeuppance.