NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to violate
their copyright. I will give some information on them. I chose this article this
week in celebration of California voting No on Proposition 34.
PAGE
TITLE:
http://www.sacbee.com/breton/
ARTICLE
TITLE:
Death Penalty a necessary tool to rid us of monsters
DATE: Saturday 3 November
2012
AUTHOR: Marcos Breton
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Marcos
Breton is the author of books on baseball, winner of Guillermo Martinez-Marquez
Award. He writes for the Sacramento Bee.
URL: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/03/4959888/marcos-breton-death-penalty-a.html
& http://voteno34.org/marcos-breton-death-penalty-a-necessary-tool-to-rid-us-of-monsters/
 |
| Marcos Breton |
Marcos Breton: Death
penalty a necessary tool to rid us of monsters
mbreton@sacbee.com
Published Saturday, Nov. 03, 2012
There is no feeling good about advocating for the
death penalty.
It's not cool or compassionate. It's not
politically correct in California, where law and order arguments often ascribed
to Republicans sound like loser arguments because Republicans make up less than
30 percent of an all-time high of 18.2 million registered voters.
Arguing for the death penalty flies in the face of
reasonable-sounding declarations that a cash-strapped California can save a
fortune by repealing a flawed state-sanctioned killing system that isn't
executing anyone anyway. Let's spare our state bottom line and also spare the
guy who kept a sweet boy alive while torturing him for a 10-hour period with
the sharp end of a fishing knife – methodically plunging 80 shallow stab wounds
into his little body.
I covered that story in 1996, when 8-year-old
Michael Lyons of Yuba City was murdered by an already-convicted violent sex
offender named Robert Boyd Rhoades.
All these years later and I still can't get a
single image out of my mind: Michael's little footprints on the interior
windshield of Rhoades' truck. The poor little thing frantically pressed his
feet against Rhoades' windshield as he undoubtedly wailed and begged for his
life while that monster did what he did to him and exerted complete power over
Michael in the nightmare of his final hours on this earth.
Michael's blood was found on Rhoades' knife, which
was found in his truck along with Rhoades' underwear. Michael's throat was
slashed on both sides of his neck. Michael was stabbed on both sides of his
abdomen and above his left nipple. He had puncture wounds on his hip and
buttocks and eight stab wounds under his chin. He had defensive wounds on his
hands, which investigators believe showed that he was trying to stop Rhoades as
Rhoades tortured him.
An autopsy showed Michael had internal injuries
from a sexual assault that DNA evidence showed had been committed by Rhoades.
Investigators believe Rhoades twisted the knife in Michael several times to
inflict greater pain.
They found Michael lying face up in the brush on
the west bank of the Feather River. He was naked from the waist down. His
Batman T-shirt was pulled over his face.
When I sat in the pews at Michael's memorial
service, in the back of a church with the other media, I could feel my insides
trembling. The facts of the case and my imagination took me to a place where in
that moment, in a house of worship, I felt I could hear Michael's screams in my
ears.
If I can still hear those screams 16 years later,
and I do, imagine how Michael's mother feels.
But you know what? The people behind Proposition 34
– who are pushing for a "yes" vote to repeal California's death
penalty – don't want you to imagine it. They don't want to come within 10,000
miles of the specifics of cases like Michael's – the worst of the worst crimes
in our state.
Instead, they want to beguile you with sanitized
arguments of $100 million cost savings to the state – arguments that prey on
our disgust for government waste.
The same lawyers who filed endless legal delays
that ran up the tab to execute 13 death row prisoners since 1978 are the same
ones who decry the cost.
To be fair, there are some very good people trying
to repeal California's death penalty, including Donald Heller, the exceptional
Sacramento lawyer who wrote California's death penalty statute in the first
place. In the twilight of a distinguished career, Heller fears that his work as
a young man could cause an innocent man to be put to death.
Modern DNA evidence has revealed the innocence of long-time
death row prisoners in other states. How many of the 13 men executed in
California have been found innocent by DNA evidence?
Zero.
Do I believe it anymore when the California
legislative analyst or others cite massive cost savings to issues as complex as
repealing the death penalty?
No.
Men like Rhoades, "Night Stalker" Richard
Ramirez and others can't simply be put in the general prison population. You're
still going to have to segregate them and pay extra for their quarters, whether
you call it death row or not. You're going to have to pay for their health care
and other expenses.
The pro-Prop. 34 people sound like those who
believe that if we just legalize all drugs, that evil, vicious drug dealers
will be neutralized. It's a pie-in-the-sky argument. Evil lives whether we want
to believe it or not.
If we just distill this unseemly business down to
cost savings, we will always be the better for it, right?
Consider the victims of offenders currently on
California's death row: 255 children; 43 police officers, 235 people raped and
murdered and 90 tortured and murdered.
Fewer than 2 percent of murders in California
become death penalty cases. Instead of repealing the death penalty, the worst
of the worst criminals in California could be put to death much more quickly
and cheaply if the state simply switched to a protocol where one drug is
administered by lethal injection. But that change in protocols has been locked
up in the courts.
I would never presume to tell you how to vote, but
I'm going to vote no on Proposition 34 on Tuesday.
It's nothing to feel great about. But the death
penalty is a needed tool to deal with monsters that don't deserve our mercy –
and who showed none while killing innocent people in the most unspeakable ways.
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