|
|
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 1,657
1500+ posts
|
|
1500+ posts
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 1,657 |
Quote:
Love Triangle Gone Vicious
Lodi, San Joaquin County -- Terri Lynn Winchell left home on the last night of her life in January 1981 to help a boy she knew hated her.
That's just the way she was, friends and family said. Good-hearted. A devout believer in turning the other cheek, in giving people a second chance.
But this was a chance she should not have given.
By the end of the evening, the 17-year-old church choir singer and high school beauty lay raped, hammered and stabbed to death, her corpse sprawled between two rows of grapevines.
She had no inkling of it, but she had been caught in the middle of a love triangle gone hideously bad. Her boyfriend, unbeknownst to her, had been involved in a gay relationship with another man -- whose jealousy drove him to recruit a street thug who would take Winchell out of the picture.
Twenty-five years later, that early-'80s thug, Michael Morales, is due to be executed at San Quentin State Prison for a crime that capped years of running with gang-bangers and snorting, gulping or smoking every mind-twisting substance he could get his hands on. He would be the 14th person to be put to death in California since executions resumed in 1992 after a 25-year halt.
Morales is 46 now, and by his supporters' accounts he has transformed himself into the sort of mild-mannered, devout Christian that his victim Winchell was. In his family's eyes, he is a gentle artist, a remorseful, very loving and caring man who deserves a last-minute reprieve to avoid his appointment with the lethal injection chamber at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, and should instead live out his years in prison without parole.
I'm opposed to capital punisment on GP but I've noticed a reccurring theme in pleas for clemency. The claim that a religious conversion has altered the prisoner so profoundly that he/she should be pardoned for their crime. It is always a Christian conversion that is claimed, too.
If capital punishment is to continue, the religious experience should be disallowed in the appeals process as well as in clemency pleas. The state should not be placed in the position of judging the sincerity and veracity of a convict's religious experience. Neither should the state judge the qulity of one religion v. another. Would a conversion to Islam, Judaism or Paganism be viewed with the same sympathy as one to Christianity?
Thoughts anyone?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 34,506 Likes: 64
"Hey this is PCG342's bro..." 15000+ posts
|
|
"Hey this is PCG342's bro..." 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 34,506 Likes: 64 |
The scumbag should be fried.
"Are you eating it...or is it eating you?" [center] ![[Linked Image from i13.photobucket.com]](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a275/captainsammitch/boards/banners/blogban3.jpg) [/center] [center] ![[Linked Image from i13.photobucket.com]](http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a275/captainsammitch/boards/banners/jlamiska.jpg) [/center]
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
|
|
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7 |
If he's truly turned over a new leaf, then he won't have to suffer hell when his body expires.
Kill him.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts
|
|
Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618 |
I'd rather see him rot in a cell.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 7,251
6000+ posts
|
|
6000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 7,251 |
Quote:
I'm opposed to capital punisment on GP but I've noticed a reccurring theme in pleas for clemency. The claim that a religious conversion has altered the prisoner so profoundly that he/she should be pardoned for their crime. It is always a Christian conversion that is claimed, too.
If capital punishment is to continue, the religious experience should be disallowed in the appeals process as well as in clemency pleas. The state should not be placed in the position of judging the sincerity and veracity of a convict's religious experience. Neither should the state judge the qulity of one religion v. another. Would a conversion to Islam, Judaism or Paganism be viewed with the same sympathy as one to Christianity?
Thoughts anyone?
As a fundamentalist Christian right-winger I couldn't agree with you more. If anything a Christian conversion would grant a clarity to the horror of the offence that warrented the death penalty and while the conversion should give the murderer peace that they will recieve mercy in the hearafter, they still need to pay for thier crimes. If they truly believe that they will be going to heaven the death penalty isn't that big of a deal.
That's teh religious side of the argument. The legal side is that the state has no right to judge what is or isn't a true religious conversion. Otherwise the state could tell us who's qualified to be a pastor or a priest or elder. It would also put the state in a position of defining what true religion is or worse what THE true religion is.
Putting the "fun" back in Fundamentalist Christian Dogma.
" I know God exists because WBAM told me so. " - theory9
JLA brand RACK points = 514k 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,000
5000+ posts
|
|
5000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,000 |
Quote:
Pariah said:
If he's truly turned over a new leaf, then he won't have to suffer hell when his body expires.
Kill him.
Actually, that's not all that far off from my own beliefs, which are rooted in Judaism.
According to Jewish law, when a person is obligated to be put to death, there is no way out of it. The reason for the death penalty is not to remove a bad person from this world. For some crimes, the only physical punishment is death, and when a person guilty of such a crime accepts that punishment, and atones beforehand, the death penalty can act as the method of his final atonement, and his crime is forgiven by God.
If these people who claim to have found religion and reformed truly believe in God and in the next world, then they have nothing to fear, and they should use their punishment as their means of atonement. If they do this, I believe they will find forgiveness. However, when they try to escape their physical punishment, then like Pariah said, the punishment that awaits them is far greater than anything they could ever experience in this world.
<sub>Will Eisner's last work - The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of ZionRDCW Profile"Well, as it happens, I wrote the damned SOP," Illescue half snarled, "and as of now, you can bar those jackals from any part of this facility until Hell's a hockey rink! Is that perfectly clear?!" - Dr. Franz Illescue - Honor Harrington: At All Costs"I don't know what I'm do, or how I do, I just do." - Alexander Ovechkin</sub>
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,000
5000+ posts
|
|
5000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 5,000 |
I should also add that Jewish law makes it extremely difficult to hand down the death penalty. Not only must the act be witnessed by two men, the witnesses must also warn the transgressor of what he is about to do and what will happen to him. If the witnesses did not warn the man, then he may not have truly understood what he did wrong, and the death penalty cannot act as an atonement for his crime. Life is too sacred to throw away, and so the death penalty is extremely difficult to enact.
<sub>Will Eisner's last work - The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of ZionRDCW Profile"Well, as it happens, I wrote the damned SOP," Illescue half snarled, "and as of now, you can bar those jackals from any part of this facility until Hell's a hockey rink! Is that perfectly clear?!" - Dr. Franz Illescue - Honor Harrington: At All Costs"I don't know what I'm do, or how I do, I just do." - Alexander Ovechkin</sub>
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
|
|
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7 |
Quote:
Pariah said:
If he's truly turned over a new leaf, then he won't have to suffer hell when his body expires.
Kill him.
I'd like to add that it's a huge misconception that people think Jesus "saving" you means to keep your body from dying, when it really means to give Him your soul. There's nothing about that-that means avoiding physical death.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001 Likes: 1
We already are 15000+ posts
|
|
We already are 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001 Likes: 1 |
Quote:
MisterJLA said:
The scumbag should be fried.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,958 Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
|
|
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,958 Likes: 6 |
Lyle LovettSo who says he'll forgive you
...
God does
But I don't
God will
But I won't
And that's the difference
Between God and me
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
|
|
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7 |
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 2,993 Likes: 1
2500+ posts
|
|
2500+ posts
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 2,993 Likes: 1 |
Quote:
Pariah said:
Quote:
Pariah said:
If he's truly turned over a new leaf, then he won't have to suffer hell when his body expires.
Kill him.
I'd like to add that it's a huge misconception that people think Jesus "saving" you means to keep your body from dying, when it really means to give Him your soul. There's nothing about that-that means avoiding physical death.
 Pariah speaks the truth!
Reveling in the knowledge that Sammitch will never interrupt my nookie ever again.
112,000 RACK Points!
|
|
|
|
|
