Moving ahead, I am wondering if all our blustering in this columns will last 2 more weeks. Should we now stop to think that perhaps there's another human right to be twinned with doing away with death penalties: i.e. freedom from dependanence on drugs and exploitation by criminals and drug warlords (and "wedge" politicians whatever that means?) All that celebration and glorification will come to nought if Australia does not take to the streets in similar numbers to say "NO to Drugs"! Will at least half of Australia and the trade unions now protest that the govt is not doing enough to combat drugs? Will parliamentary bipartisan motions be made to say "out, damn spot" to Drugs? (Like Lady McBeth, you'll find the guilt sticks) Will the media take this up in similar force? or maybe this is not an issue that will sell papers? (where is media independence when you need it?) Should we take a different tack and decriminalise drug use? Where are you guys on this track? adios.

To Sneaky Peter.

Norman Mailer is hardly a credible source of informed criticism of the US criminal justice system. He has the blood of an innocent man on his hands, caused directly from his own, oh so superior “be nice to crims” trendy lefty attitude.

Jack Henry Abbot was a vicious career criminal who had been convicted of a string of very serious offences including armed robbery and murder. When Abbot was convicted of the murder he threw a jug of water into the face of the sentencing judge. Abbot then wrote a book in prison “In the Belly of the Beast” in which he raged against his incarceration and praised the anti social attitudes of violent vicious criminals.

Mailer read the book and began a campaign to have Abbot released. He submitted to the parole board that Abbot had the makings of a great American writer. The parole board apparently never bothered to read Abbot’s book when listening to Abbots parole submission, because they failed to recognize that Abbot was obviously extremely dangerous. They simply took Mailer’s personal recommendation and Abbot was released. After his release, Abbot went to a restaurant where he had a trivial confrontation with a waiter who stopped Abbot from using the staff toilet. Abbot reacted exactly the way any dangerous and violent man can be relied upon to react when confronted with an innocuous and trivial situation. He pulled out a knife and stabbed Richard Adan to death.

We can see exactly the same socially superior attitudes exhibited by Mailer in the posts submitted by Hedgehog and Sneaky Peter. Since opposition to capitol punishment is presented as being the cause of “intelligent” people, one suspects that the desire of both of them to appear to be perceived as “intelligent” is far more responsible for their opposition to capitol punishment than any objective analysis of tiresome facts.

Redneck's constant use of terms such as "trendy lefty attitude", "socially superior attitudes" - by his supposed "trendy left wingers, indicates two things:

1. A massive inferiority complex.
2. Appalling ignorance.

Now the inferiority complex is self evident. However his postulation that anyone who opposes the death penalty is a "trendy lefty" indicates narrow perspective. There are numerous people on both sides of the political spectrum who find the death penalty pointless, heartless and regressive.

For people interested in pursuing action against the death penalty, I recommend joining Amnesty International at the following link:

http://www.amnesty.org.au/Act_now/campaigns/death_penalty

While young Van Tuong Nguyen was having his eyeballs pop from his head and his tongue protrude from his mouth like a bloated piece of rubber, his bowels voiding themselves down his kicking and trembling legs, another state sanctioned murder took place in the good ole USA. This man with an IQ of only 77 was murdered in North Carolina as follows:

"USA (North Carolina) Kenneth Boyd (m), aged 57

Kenneth Boyd was executed as scheduled on 2 December 2005. He had an IQ of 77,
placing him in the borderline mental retardation range.

According to press reports, some 200 protestors, including a group from Amnesty
International, gathered outside the prison where the execution took place."

Another death which achieves absolutely nothing.

Suggest that all those in favour of death penalty go and view one.

To all those who see the death penalty for the travesty that it is, please join Amnesty and fight this barbaric practice.

Thank you

Why hang people? It seems so barbaric. Lethal Injection seems a much more humane alternative. I mean we don't euthanase our animals by chucking them off balconies with rope attached to their heads.

Redneck,

Speaking of the US justice system and "tiresome" facts. Here’s some I put to Leigh but never got a response. If the death penalty is such a good idea, then how do you justify these points: -

1. The inconsistencies from state-to-state in America’s execution rate: -

(Since 1976)
- Texas: 355

- All other states with capital punishment: 642

That’s over 1/3 when Texas only has less that 1/10 of the total population of all the execution happy states. Yet execution is reserved only for the most heinous murders. (In the last few decades anyway).

2. Or why it’s alright to execute the estimated 1-5% of death row prisoners in the US who are later found to be innocent? (Figures are sketchy as authorities - for obvious reasons -suppress this data).

One could argue that it prevents murders but when you give governments and justice systems such a power, you’re setting a precedence. And I for one don’t trust politicians THAT much. Nor do I trust a sometimes flawed judicial system.

Sure, murderers kill too. But we don’t trust them to protect us, convict the guilty or run our country now do we?

Your claims that capital punishment reduces crime are questionable at best. If capital punishment reduces the murder rate, then why does Britain and Australia have some of the lowest murder rates per capita in the world?

You haven’t given any logical arguments to the vast majority of posters in the first thread on this issue (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=3880). All you can do is rattle-off terms like “trendy lefties”.

Your inability to see the picture as a whole and your accusations of “trendy lefties” somehow having “sympathy for crims” demonstrates just how simple-minded you are. Why do you continue to make a fool of yourself?

No wuckers, Keith.

Firstly. If twice as many “whites” were executed in the USA in 2004 as blacks and Hispanics, then if your figures are correct, (Sneaky Peter's were woefully wrong) it is almost certainly a statistical anomaly in the year 2004. One of the prime arguments of the anti capitol punishment brigade is that capitol punishment is racist because far more blacks are executed than “whites” (even though blacks make up only 16% of the US population.). If you are claiming that more whites than blacks are executed, you are undermining one of the key arguments of your own side.

Secondly. The average murder rate for blacks is 50 times higher than for “whites”. Black women are murdered by their spouses at a rate 6 times higher than for their white sisters. These figures hardly gell with your implication that whites are more violent than blacks. In Southern California, the homicide death rate of Hispanics is four and a half times higher than for “whites”

Thirdly. What is a “white”? Native American Indians, Arabs, Calabrians and Pacific Islanders are all classed as “white”. These races and ethnicities are disproportionately represented in serious crime and their unacceptable behaviour is ballooning out the rate of “white” criminal behaviour.

One US Justice Department web site that I once visited gave these figures for incarceration rates of versus ethnicity. Imprisonment rates for negroes is 1993 was 1,947 per 100,000 population. For Hispanics it was 529, for “non Hispanic whites” it was 306, and for Japanese Americans it was only 36.

Clearly, cultural and ethnic factors are significant in rates of violent criminal behaviour. I presume that you will now try to figure out some angle to blame white society for what you do not wish to focus upon. I see that Pariah has already attempted that feat