"When he was 3, he was hospitalized for drinking about 10 ounces of vodka.... [H]is stepfather... forced him to perform sex acts, kicked him with spurs, beat him, ran him over with a car, forced him to drink alcohol, injected him with drugs, attempted to drown him and created devices to electrically shock him if he wet the bed.... When he was a child, Zack’s older sister killed their mother with an ax.... As an adult... [h]e was unable to cook, measure, select weather-appropriate clothing, follow a bathing routine, follow directions, pass a driver’s test or open a bank account.... In 2002... the Supreme Court held that executing people with intellectual disabilities violated [the] constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.... but courts repeatedly denied him relief, citing Florida’s IQ score cutoff...."
Zack had murdered 2 women.
The last paragraph of his final statement: "And finally, to Governor Desantis and the Clemency Board: I love you. I forgive you. I pray for you."
Posts
86 comments:
Well, at least he won't kill again
It's truly unsurprising, how little information that article had, about the TWO women he Murdered..
I guess Their lives didn't count?
Maybe if THEY had been drug addicted LOSERS.
Attachment disorder is a hell of a condition. That long intro, likely written to garner sympathy, tells me just how dangerous this man would be if encountered. That his sister killed their mother with an axe or that he killed two other women is no surprise.
I’m opposed to execution but I’ve never had a friend or family member murdered either.
…and there are always extenuating circumstances. Every time….
As an adult... [h]e was unable to cook, measure, select weather-appropriate clothing, follow a bathing routine, follow directions, pass a driver’s test or open a bank account....
What WAS he able to do that earned him the death penalty?
There is almost nothing about his crime, and nothing about how he carried it out.
He didn't lack the capacity to murder two women.
FL has a bright line test. So what?
Nothing in the HuffPo story about the lives of the two dead women and their families.
Some folks just don't understand Zack's democrat family's quirks.
There's no way to delay the trouble comin every day.
Only enough intellect left to kill two women?
2) My Millennial son just told me we need to reinstate mental institutions, and I agree. This soul should never have been out on the streets.
@Kate, +1. When will we as a country admit that deinstitutionalization was a terrible idea? This guy Zach needed help he doesn’t seem to have received and two women are dead who might otherwise still be alive. Nikolas Cruz needed help but didn’t get it because “he was not a threat to himself or others,” and so 14 children died.
Here's a little more information.
https://apnews.com/article/florida-execution-beach-murders-michael-zack-987eebb2ee4013b1682d32c13385362d
As usual Mr. Zachs had behavior and impulse control issues. He has subsequently been cured.
Our society failed this man and his parents really failed him. If there was any justice, his dad would have been executed too. But he did kill two women.
The last paragraph of his final statement: "And finally, to Governor Desantis and the Clemency Board: I love you. I forgive you. I pray for you."
Wow.
What that suggests to me is that he found Christ while he was in prison.
It's also evidence that he doesn't have an intellectual disability at all. If he can learn grace and redemption, and get to a place where he's praying for the people who are killing him, the Holy Spirit is with him and helping him.
We all die, of course. None of us want to die. Even Jesus prayed before his crucifixion. He prayed long and hard, asking God not to crucify him. But the answer he got was that it was God's will for this to happen. And Jesus accepted it, putting the Lord's will ahead of his own.
My opinion is that we should not kill people who are helpless and vulnerable. I believe killing is for God, and not for humanity. We're supposed to love our brothers and sisters, not stab them or poison them.
"An eye for an eye" might seem like rough justice. But the people who loved the two women who were murdered will find that killing Zack does not bring their loved ones back.
Also we should all remember that Jesus has promised us that there is an afterlife, and we will be reunited with those we love.
At some point, a human being is just another animal with no more worth to himself or others than a rabid dog.
gilbar said...
"Maybe if THEY had been drug addicted LOSERS."
Conservatives need to retire the claim there are no victims in this country because it just isn't so. Nobody asked to be here, and the situation some of us are born into is just mind blowing. I have a foster brother who became a gang banger after arriving here through some weird lottery some Christians put together to rescue orphans from the Korean War. His parents didn't even know their names were entered to win. He had no idea why he was here, because he didn't speak the language, and he didn't have any connection to these weird people. It took him decades to even partially assimilate, growing up in violent South Central, Los Angeles. He didn't make much of himself, but I don't consider him a loser at all. The man survived. More things than most of us have ever encountered or can even imagine. I'm proud of him for that.
Other people's ignorant judgments just makes things worse for everyone.
@Kate: "My Millennial son just told me we need to reinstate mental institutions, and I agree."
Thank the 1950s to 1970s progressive left for ending mental institutions. The left doesn't mainly fight with the right, it fights with prior versions of itself. Institutions were the progressive solution to people laying on the streets and smashing their heads bloody into brick wall. See London's ancient "Bedlam" (Bethlehem) mental hospital.
In the 1950s, some felt the inane asylums, sanitariums, state hospitals, and mental institutions were cruel warehouses and should be replaced by community houses and reintegration with society. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest popularized the BAD ideas that mental illness was just cultural rebellion, and that mental treatments were mostly cruel and destructive (i.e., incapacitating drugs; lobotomies).
The left released everyone and built community houses. Then, lefty NIMBYs demanded they be removed...because property values...because violence and poop on the streets... So, mentally ill people are now largely in prison and sometimes executed, or back on the streets of San Francisco and NYC causing mayhem.
Each left generation has shown that it must personally fail before it learns that there are no utopian solutions. Only after they fail do they seek the best imperfect option.
I would also say that my experience as a lawyer and a pro-lifer is that our judicial system is a nightmare of incompetence and dishonesty. I think it's laughable to suggest that an innocent person has never been executed. How about that kid whose murder was described in Stenberg v. Carhart?
The sensitive liberals who wrote Roe v. Wade tried to simultaneously outlaw the death penalty. Not surprisingly, not-so-sensitive conservatives noticed that babies were getting the ax while horrific killers had a new right not to be killed.
It should surprise exactly no one that the death penalty was quickly resurrected by the Supreme Court, while it took those elite minds 49 years to confess error about the violence of abortion.
I'm against the death penalty. But it was wrong and glib for the Supreme Court to lie about it when they said it was unconstitutional. The Constitution clearly says that a person's life can be taken by the state if the state is following the correct criminal procedures, a.k.a. "due process."
I would urge attorneys fighting capital punishment to focus on the Supreme Court's attack on the jury system. The jury has always meant 12 people. And it has to be unanimous. This was widely known and accepted at the time the Constitution was adopted.
The Supreme Court who deconstructed the word "person" and pretended like they did not know what that word means, is the same shit-show that deconstructed the word "jury" and pretended like they didn't know what that means, either.
By it's reckless and stupid attack on the jury, the Supreme Court made it far more likely that innocent people would die on death Roe.
Fight for 12. Fight for unanimous. And attack the judges who attack the jury. God bless.
“… 2) My Millennial son just told me we need to reinstate mental institutions, and I agree. This soul should never have been out on the streets.”
This has been the case for years.
In VT, the power biological parents have over more caring and capable people- is so backward.
Grandparents prevented from seeing grandchildren while the parents use drugs and neglect these children.
I’ve seen it.
It's not like he killed a poet or anything. Just a couple of women.
All executions should be public via pay per view with the proceeds going to the victims next of kin. This would provide transparency, put paid to the wages of evil and provide relief to the victims family.
From court records:
"Living in Tallahassee, Zack borrowed the car of a bartender and never returned it. He drove to Youngstown where he met a carpenter who eventually let Zack stay at his house. Zack vanished after stealing two guns and some cash. He drove to Niceville and pawned the guns. He went to a bar on Okaloosa Island, where he met Laurie Russillo, whom he allegedly strangled to death. From there he drove to Pensacola Beach and met the victim, Smith, at Dirty Joe's Bar. He killed her at her home. Stealing some electronic items, he returned to Panama City to pawn them. There, he broke into a house and was arrested two days later."
He seems to have been entirely functional, and homicidal toward women.
The things he was subjected to as a child reminded me of the story that our oldest told the McGraw Crime Dog puppeteer who visited his kindergarten classroom to talk about child abuse: that we locked him in a box, that we stuck his infant sister's fingers into electrical outlets to punish her, that I urged him to hide under his bed from his dad... We never even spanked our kids. A CPS rep came to the house out of the blue on the day of the puppet show while our son was still at school and confronted me with all this while our daughter was taking her nap - to say I was flabbergasted would be a gross understatement. It was terrifying.
Ultimately, of course, they determined that our son must have been lying for attention, though he'd told the same story to the principal and then to the CPS woman the principal called that day (they were particularly struck by his use of the term "electrical outlet").
And the other thing the background reminded me of is the supposedly recovered memories in the truly horrible "multiple personality disorder" book When Rabbit Howls, which I'm pretty sure is now considered to be one big tapestry of dark fantasy.
Clearly at least some of the described incidents really for-sure happened, as there are police and hospital records. But I did wonder whether there was something else going on.
In any event, this man sounds as if he was profoundly disturbed in ways that - if as described - couldn't be mitigated.
An expected DeSantis hit piece. Fair enough. Did it say anything about when Bill Clinton left the campaign trail in '92 to witness the execution of a mentally ill man in Arkansas in a similar situation?
rehajm said...
"I’m opposed to execution but I’ve never had a friend or family member murdered either."
I've seen friends killed in front of me and I'm still against the Death Penalty, because I think life sucks anyway, so making people live with their actions is probably the most exquisite punishment imaginable. The Death Penalty just seems like letting people off the hook. Plus, executions are part of our past. The reason people hate Christopher Columbus isn't because he was an awful human being, but because he came from a culture that was so much more violent than the ones he encountered. It makes him look bad. I saw an article yesterday, saying all animals engage in homosexual acts. We have to start evolving sometime. Maybe if we stop acting like the other animals, including killing each other, we might stand a chance of turning this franchise around.
Another major problem with classifying any human being as a "non-person"
is that you are dramatically raising the risk of mass murder
For instance, whenever pro-lifers cry about babies getting stabbed in the third trimester
you can always count on the media to say "it's a small percentage."
So, 60 million abortions under Roe v. Wade, how small is this percentage and maybe you should quantify it
Is it 1%? Then we've killed 600,000 innocent babies.
Is it one-tenth of one percent? Then we've killed 60,000 innocent people.
If it's a numbers game, then Roe v. Wade was far worse for humanity than one innocent man (or woman) dying for a crime they didn't do.
Babies are innocent, too.
Pro-lifers and pacifists and people who hate the death penalty should meet up and have conversations. If only we had some institution where they teach that human life is sacred.
My wife and I have both worked with more than a few very troubled people as part as our church work. They almost always have very troubled background stories. Few of them are true. As nice people our first reaction is to believe them.
He had a rough life, and it's too bad that society didn't do a better job protecting him, and then later, protecting others from him. But however bad he had it, it was better than the two women he killed without mercy. Interesting how the story builds its Hardship & Sympathy case for the capper: Ron DeSantis did this ! ! !
The death penalty works, like it or not. Evil walks the face of the Earth, and it preys on all, but prefers the weak.
You forgot to mention the names of his two known victims: Ravonne Smith. Laura Rosillo. There were likely many more.
Here's what really happens. My rapist was not prosecuted or was released early multiple times and likely raped dozens if not hundreds of women before and after me, thanks entirely to Democrat policies and philosophies. Juvenile records I happened to acquire contain notes that he was precociously known to sexually assault teachers and younger children, for which he was barely punished, or not at all.
Some dumb bunny psychologist labeled him a disorganized assailant, but I found him impressively competent at maximizing intentional psychological terror, preparing the house to prevent escape, and having the foresight to drag me around by my hair and make me clean any areas where he might have left physical evidence.
Staging is, after all, 90% of any job.
I question pretty much anything that comes flying out of criminologists' and profilers' pieholes, but their foundational theories regarding rehabilitation and measuring mental competence are especially suspect, emerging as they did in a shamelessly pro-criminal culture and prior to revelations from improved forensics. Surprise! As with other crimes, black men are wildly overrepresented as serial killers, while loner white guys are just average at it. Gay men are no slouches. Serial offenders usually don't have a type: they're more ecumenical than a Unitarian congregation on Easter Bunny Day. Criminals' targets usually have less to do with egghead theories than with mere opportunity. Sex offenders repeatedly commit lesser sex crimes, so decriminalizing the "small" stuff, like subway frottage, flashing, masturbating in libraries, and the annual Puerto Rico Pride Parade was real dumb.
DNA has shown us that a small cohort of offenders commit impressive quantities of violent crime and usually spent decades pleading down to sympathetic stuff like drug crimes before even catching a prison term. They can't be rehabilitated, especially by offering them time off for taking all those theater and poetry classes run by Bard co-eds and the brain trust at PEN's Prison Project.
And they are instructed to intentionally fail their IQ tests. More than one defense attorney has shamelessly admitted/bragged about this to me.
The only IQ test that really matters is the one demonstrated by voters who elect the idiots who cut these animals loose. Here's the math section: once, my rapist was caught in the act and got a 15 year sentence. The sentencing judge reduced it in advance because he was deemed mentally deficient (the rapist, not the judge, though recollections may vary). Then my rapist miraculously regained his faculties, or at least one doltish faculty member from USF who got his rocks off helpin' poor deprived serial rapists of the Sunshine State get "college degrees" which got them additional time off the end of their sentences.
Armed with his spanking new "college psychology degree," the no longer mentally deficient Henry strolled out after a mere seven years, again, and went back to fist-torturing and worse. Meanwhile, just like the first half of Flowers for Algernon, the Florida Legislature got smarter (more Republican) and did away with such nonsense, instituted truth-in-sentencing, 80% required time served for violent crimes, and recidivism sentencing enhancements.
Then, just like the second half of Flowers for Algernon, law professors and judges and Soros/Koch-funded DAs and NGOs got all those intelligent laws either overturned or gnawed to bits by exceptions. Or, judges just ignore them, with no consequences.
And now it's 1992 all over again. Who failed the IQ test this time? Not the criminals.
...Death By Split Jury
I did not know that split jury was a form of execution
The last time I read a story like this, it was about Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, signing the death warrant of a mentally retarded person who had murdered some unfortunate. It was excused as the kind of thing a liberal had to do in order to remain politically viable in a state like Arkansas.
I don't understand what the question is. You kill someone in anything other than in a self-defense mode, you relinquish your right to citizenship at the very least, your own life in the worst circumstances. A society that wants to have standards, wants to protect it's own citizens, has to have guardrails and a message to those who would act against it. Some still will not get the message. But others will and will think twice about their actions.
Those that don't give a s___ will end up getting what they deserve, but only if society has the guts to defend itself.
Yes...we should have mental institutions all over to house those incapable of living among the greater society. But once the act is done- murder- the appropriate punishment is the only answer.
To those who say it's not a deterrent, I say, you cannot know how many it has deterred. But we can know exactly how many will not be repeat offenders.
Zack's lawyers claimed he had a "developmental disorder" or an "intellectual disability". Florida has a simple, brightline presumptive test for such claims, which is an IQ of 70, + or - 5 points, so a range from 65 to 75. There are additional factors besides the number, which can in some circumstance change the assumption, such as when did the disability manifest itself or could a defendant manage normal life activities.
Zack scored in IQ tests over the years 92, 84, 86, 79, and 80. The other test circumstances also did not apply to Zack.
He raped and murdered 2 women. The second victim was attacked without provocation, chased around a house while being assaulted, and eventually stabbed to death. After, Zack stole items from the house and pawned them, stole her car, swapped license plates from another stolen car, and generally took logical steps to escape, showing no signs of those claimed "intellectual disability".
Zack's jury found him guilty of murder 1 and rape, unanimously, and then voted 11 to 1 for the death penalty.
Sounds like the system worked the way it's supposed to, except for the extra 27 years Zack got to live but his victims did not.
Gov. Bill Clinton, running for president, signed the death warrant of murderer Ricky Lee Rector, who was so mentally compromised that he put aside half of his last meal so he'd have something for later.
The reason people hate Christopher Columbus isn't because he was an awful human being, but because he came from a culture that was so much more violent than the ones he encountered.
How can you possibly be more violent than capturing people, enslaving them, and then either slaughtering them like cattle and eating them, or cutting their still beating hearts out of their chests and offering the hearts to the gods?
BTW didn’t Bill Clinton fly back to Arkansas from the campaign trail to witness the execution of Ricky Ray Rector?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/the-time-bill-clinton-and-i-killed-a-man/460869/
Clinton was having a Sista Soulja moment.
Compare and contrast.
Other people's ignorant judgments just makes things worse for everyone.
Remember people, you're not allowed to judge career criminals who commit multiple murders...that makes things worse for everyone, especially the career criminal.
You can count on the radical left to forget the two women he murdered.
Unless you're arguing that the person killed people on accident, what difference should IQ make?
“Zack scored in IQ tests over the years 92, 84, 86, 79, and 80.”
Those numbers probably would have probably gotten Zack into Harvard if he was the right race and gender.
@Tina Trent, what a rough time of it you've had. Thank you for sharing your story and unique perspective with us. I hope you have found healing, and it looks like you have already found your strength.
First, it is kind of funny that it is only in this context that IQ tests can correctly determine a person's intelligence. In every other context, IQ tests are racist or, at least, culturally and socioeconomically biased.
Second, given recent events, I can't trust our politicians not to get us from "mentally retarded defendants should be exempt from capital punishment" to "mentally retarded people cannot be held criminally liable in any case." No thanks.
The policy regarding mental institutions was poisoned at its root because the Eugenics Society of England wrote the 20C founding law and based it on the concept of lifetime incarceration in order to prevent the insane from reproducing and passing on their genes. In the Seventies people were in the asylums and sanatoriums who were "rounded-up", the term used at the time, in the Thirties and institutionalized for being mildly mentally challenged or an unwed mother or even just,deaf. There is a documentary on one of these places called Meanwood.
http://www.meanwoodpark.co.uk/insight/out-of-sight-the-documentary/
It's good that this abuse, lifetime incarceration, was ended and it's good that drugs were discovered that enabled people with real mental health issues to live productively. But unfortunately fear of repeating the past horrors combined with a thrifty wish to keep costs down led to a reverse abuse in which people with serious mental health issues who cannot take the drugs they need on their own are left "in the community." This merely means homeless on the street till they die.
The left prides itself on being unable to make distinctions and on enacting policies based on that inability. Leftys cannot tell a man with mental illness from a man who lost his job. They cannot tell a drug addict from a woman who lost her job. And they can't tell a criminal from any of these three. People in the first three groups make up the homeless and the left treats them all (and the criminals who mix in with them) as people who need to get a job and an apartment. Society, to a lefty is the problem because it won't supply the job and the house. Once again ideologues are insisting on a one-solution-fits-all policy. Once they took the wrong people out of society and now they leave the wrong people in. We are all owed respect including noticing who we really are.
Is it just me or is it weird hearing the same posters insist that our justice system is broken and corrupt and then also believe that same systen is competent to decide who should live or die?
Remember the Petit family murders in Connecticut? The two perps were given deaths sentences 16 years ago. Pretty deservedly.
The CT supreme court declared the death penalty unconstitutional, and they live today. One is now a "woman", and is in a women's prison.
His list of deficiencies was extensive, and apparently even though not stated directly included the ability to know right from wrong.
It would seem he shared more in common with a mad dog than a human.
I suppose that living the rest of his natural life in a cage would have appropriate.
If people can't be executed because they're too stupid, then maybe they should segregated from the rest of society. because you're bascially claiming they're too stupid to understand right from wrong.
Or that Rape and murder are wrong.
The fact is that you dont need to be 149 IQ genius to understand torturing someone, killing someone, beating someone up, raping someone is wrong. Six year old kids know hurting someone else is wrong.
Of course, I'm being silly. This "He's too dumb to be executed" is just another excuse used by Libtards to cancel and restrict the death penalty. They don't really believe it.
The libtard mind and soul is a strange thing. They revel in "killing those Goddamn ruskkies" by thousands because crimea must be under Ukrainian congrol. And are indifferent to the Ukrainian women and children getting killed in the crossfire. "That's war, baby" they say in their tough guy voice.
Yet execute someone who murderedand raped someone and the tears flow. "My God how could you do that, that's so barbaric!".
Is it all fake? Its seems to be. Contrast the libtard indifference and chortling when Ashli babbitt was murdered on J6, with the endless pathos, tears, and public mourning over the meth fueled death of St. George of Minnapolis.
If these libtards get more power, I think we have Gulags and execution chambers in our future.
They were a "burden" and under his... our social order it is ethical and progressive to deem them nonviable.
That said, Capitol (sic) or capital punishment?
Steve said...
"An expected DeSantis hit piece. Fair enough. Did it say anything about when Bill Clinton left the campaign trail in '92 to witness the execution of a mentally ill man in Arkansas in a similar situation?"
West TX Intermediate Crude said...
"The last time I read a story like this, it was about Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, signing the death warrant of a mentally retarded person who had murdered some unfortunate. It was excused as the kind of thing a liberal had to do in order to remain politically viable in a state like Arkansas."
1992 was when Bill Clinton was suspected of using the Death Penalty to deflect attention away from the Gennifer Flowers scandal. The inmate's name was Ricky Ray Rector, and he had blown off part of his brain with a gun, after committing his crime, leaving him with the intellect of a five-year-old. When the authorities came to escort him to the execution chamber, someone noticed he hadn't finished the pecan pie from his Last Meal, and asked him why not? He said he was "saving it for later." It's been said the prison's Warden resigned in disgust over it. In 2002, the Supreme Court banned the execution of people like Ricky, saying it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Gennifer and Monica, three rapes, wiping away the parameters of reality (by releasing alternative medicines) sticking us with Hillary and all of her baggage, PLUS executing the mentally ill.
That President Bill Clinton is a real piece of work, who's earned a life of wealth and celebrity, hobnobbing in the Hamptons.
By the way, that Zack guy sounds like a mad dog. I would've put him on a chain in a prison and forgot about him.
Did it say anything about when Bill Clinton left the campaign trail in '92 to witness the execution of a mentally ill man in Arkansas in a similar situation?
@Steve, I assume the case of Ricky Ray Rector, and that case is much more complex that can be summarized in one (or even two) sentences. His initial crime was heinous enough: at a nightclub with some friends he became angry when one of his friends was denied entry for not being able to pay the cover charge. Rector pulled a gun and started spraying bullets, killing one person. He eluded capture for three days by living on the streets and sleeping in the woods. A sister persuaded him to turn himself in, but he insisted that he would only turn himself in to a particular police officer who had known the family for years. The officer came to Rector’e mother’s house to pick him up, Rector arriving after the officer did. The officer turned to say something to Rector’s mother, and Rector shot him twice in the back of the head. Then Rector went out into his mother’s back yard, put the gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately (I chose the word deliberately) the shot did not kill Rector, but it did, effectively, lobotomize him. He was later ruled fit to stand trial after being evaluated by psychiatrists. He was subsequently and unsurprisingly found guilty, and sentenced to death despite his self-administered lobotomy. On the eve of his execution he ordered and ate a last meal but set the dessert aside when the guards came to take him to the execution chamber “to eat later.”
There is no question that Ricky Ray Rector killed two people, one of them — a police officer — in cold blood. His brain injury came after the crimes were committed. But I do have a question as to how licensed psychiatrists could tell a judge that he was fit to stand trial. Shouldn’t “fit to stand trial” mean able to cooperate with his attorneys in his defense? Once the psychiatrists told the judge that he was in full possession of his mental faculties the law did what the law sometimes does and operated on the fiction that everything was normal when it obviously wasn’t. Sometimes the law is like junk science — it appears to have all the trappings of real science (or real justice) but a modest dose of common sense knocks that down in a hurry.
Thanks Aggie, I appreciate it. What really cheeses me isn't actually criminals themselves but the academicians, journalists, preening (almost always in my experience also pervy) defense lawyers, and judges who make big bucks and social capital playing agony aunt for them.
I only know one defense attorney whom I respect.
After I was brutalized, I went to Atlanta and became a VISTA then a CASA and worked with abused and abandoned kids. That was how I realized that the vast majority of people in crime-ridden communities, and even the criminals themselves, are screaming for help, and consequences, and life-long prison for those too broken to save. The criminals who can be saved look to police to be the daddies they never had. Grim, and it doesn't always work out, but when it does, it works.
That's where I learned that even criminals want police to stop them. That grandmas raising their grandkids want more police, not ANTIFA. They know that police are the only people who really understand these communities and really care about them. If liberals and academicians butted out, the death rates would go down. If police weren't demonized by waste-of-breath liberal arts losers, these communities might have a chance to survive.
Anyone who doesn't get this is cosseted in Candyland. Must be fucking nice.
Good riddance.
One way or the other, normals will protect themselves from the dangerous defectives like Zack.
The to-do is largely just more lefty hypocritical horseshit.
You don't like the death penalty? Stop imposing it on innocent babies and we'll talk.
I have long predicted that if the death penalty is ultimately ruled unconstitutional in the US, the next target will be life-without-parole. If you are going to argue that it is wrong to execute someone with a mental disability, then why is it ok to incarcerate that same person for the rest of his life? The argument here is that he lacks the capacity to understand right from wrong, but that hasn't changed with a different punishment chosen. What, exactly, makes life-without-parole constitutional in a case like this and a death sentence unconstitutional?
Joe Bar, 9:50:
"Remember the Petit family murders in Connecticut?"
Dear God, yes.
Whatever my philosophical misgivings about the death penalty (I'm less and less sure I want the state to have this power over its citizens), and my procedural ones (I'm less and less confident we haven't executed the occasional innocent defendant despite the multi-decadal appeals), I remember this case.
Their guilt isn't just beyond reasonable doubt, it's beyond any possible doubt. And I've never come across anyone more deserving, though I know of comparable ones. If Dr. Petit somehow got into their cells, there is no harm he could do to them that I could vote to convict him for.
Some people are unquestionably guilty, and nothing less even approaches justice.
Tina, 8:24 – I don't have the words. I admire you, and wish you the best.
Cassandra lite: first, so what? Do you even know his victims' names?
Not that it matters, but Rector was cognitively normal when he killed his two victims, one in a shootout where he hit three people. Then he lured Officer Robert Martin, a childhood family friend, to his family's home under false pretenses and ambushed him, blowing him away. Martin was married and had three children. Mourn for them.
Only then did he shoot himself, and only accidentally as he was trying to escape. The shot caused disputed mental impairment. The orchestration of Officer Martin's cold-blooded murder as Martin was trying to help him eviscerates all but the stupidest pleas for sympathy based on his later, accidental, self-inflicted impairment.
Rector wasn't nearly as disabled as represented. His "saving some dinner for later" was just the latest ploy by defense attorneys to stay the execution. Meanwhile, Officer Martin's family was dragged through decades of hearings, public abuse, death threats, intense denouncement and relentless intrusion by the media and international "human rights" organizations. Their suffering is lifelong. They have no privacy. They were destroyed. A little worse than pretending to save a dessert for later, don't you think?
The media should no more profit from their tiny violin recounting of killers' last meals than offenders themselves can profit from writing books about the crimes they commit. And when people stop falling for this obvious garbage, maybe they will.
Gorsuch and possibly Kavanaugh are open to the idea of restoring the jury to 12, and unanimous.
See Khorrami v. Arizona
Gorsuch is on fire. I don't know how many innocent people are sitting in prison -- or have been executed -- because six states don't know what a jury is, and the United States Supreme Court doesn't know what a jury is.
Why don't you poll people on the street! People know how many people are on a jury. Supreme Court Justices who fuck with the size of a jury should be forced to wear robes cut into mini-skirts.
Tina,
God bless you. Keep fighting, keep praying.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
The sentencing judge reduced it in advance because he was deemed mentally deficient (the rapist, not the judge, though recollections may vary).
Tina Trent - what an extraordinary (and horrible) life story! But this sentence discloses what a remarkable woman you must be. Were I in your situation, I'm certain that the outcome for me would not have been nearly as hopeful. For one thing, I'm sure that my Marine Corps tactical axe and Henry would have seen some bloody action one dark night. In which case, I'd be writing this from the 23d cell on the right in D Block.
- Krumhorn
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome impairs executive functioning skills; it doesn't mean the person is mentally retarded. People with FAS tend to get in a lot of trouble because they're impulsive and lack judgment. If they're raised by an alcoholic mother in a violent home . . .
I once visited a treatment center for drug-addicted mothers, which included a program for their children. The clinicians said "crack babies" did much better than kids with FAS. Drugs go through the system quickly. The effects of alcohol (heavy drinking) in early pregnancy are forever.
"Gorsuch is on fire. I don't know how many innocent people are sitting in prison -- or have been executed -- because six states don't know what a jury is, and the United States Supreme Court doesn't know what a jury is."
The Number is zero. Again, this absurd moral peacocking over killing murderers.
Our society has become obsessed with racism--from stating as fact that racism is the defining principle underlying the founding of the USA, to stating that all interactions between people today involve racism, to making the charge of "racist" as the most atomic and irreversible of all allegations.
Racism is A problem, but it's not THE ONLY problem, and there are many other problems that surpass its evil. For instance, child abuse. The kind of child abuse that results in raising children who will then murder you with an ax, while your son goes on to just murder everyone.
The Number is zero.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and no babies have died under Roe v. Wade.
I rarely throw out words like "un-American," but an absolute faith in the state is weird as shit. I hope you are not actually in the criminal justice system. It's a very stressful job, because the possibility of screwing up is always there.
You're not omniscient, dude, and your zero number is ridiculous on its face. Who are these prosecutors, judges, and juries who are always right, 100% of the time?
Krumhorn: never say never. Now that the ACLU got his life sentence overturned on a paperwork technicality, I'll certainly be there to greet him if they ever let him out again.
rehajm said...
…and there are always extenuating circumstances. Every time….
Two friends, one murdered, the other irresponsible accident. So I may be biased.
But... What the soft people refuse to acknowledge is that there are vastly more people who have synonymous circumstances and yet don't murder or randomly discharge weapons in the house.
Screw the extenuating circumstances, you choose to murder. Regardless of the age of the victim.
rehajm said...
…and there are always extenuating circumstances. Every time….
Two friends, one murdered, the other irresponsible accident. So I may be biased.
But... What the soft people refuse to acknowledge is that there are vastly more people who have synonymous circumstances and yet don't murder or randomly discharge weapons in the house.
Screw the extenuating circumstances, you choose to murder. Regardless the age of the victim.
Saint Croix said...
The last paragraph of his final statement: "And finally, to Governor Desantis and the Clemency Board: I love you. I forgive you. I pray for you."
Wow.
What that suggests to me is that he found Christ while he was in prison.
What that suggests to me is that he was familiar with almost every other inmate's about to be executed making of a farewell statement that might serve as a last ditch effort to save himself. Prompted or otherwise.
Saint Croix said...
Also we should all remember that Jesus has promised us that there is an afterlife, and we will be reunited with those we love.
You're projecting your religion upon those two women. That'a a you-thing not a them-thing.
He didn't do a slow fade into another scene of their lives, he turned off the projector.
Temujin said...
To those who say it's not a deterrent,
It's not a deterrent, it's a punishment.
Levi Starks said...
I suppose that living the rest of his natural life in a cage would have appropriate.
Yes, but that's not what would have happened.
Joanne Jacobs said...
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome impairs executive functioning skills; it doesn't mean the person is mentally retarded.
Yep. Friend of my spouse hired unknown to me brought his AFS kid along when he worked on the back. Caught the kid tormenting my dog with a stick. "Keep hitting my dog with that stick and I'll hit you with it." "OK." He tossed the stick and left my dog alone demonstrating the ability to put two and two together.
I'm with Saint Croix on most of this. No one can claim accurately that our legal system is 100% good or 100% bad.
Every judicial system ever has been axiomatically imperfect. Yeesh.
D.D. Driver said...
"Is it just me or is it weird hearing the same posters insist that our justice system is broken and corrupt and then also believe that same systen is competent to decide who should live or die?"
No. It isn't. But if you want perfect justice kill the guy yourself. Besides. Isn't it the jury that decides? Life isn't fair. The justice system is flawed. Don't you think all those kids your girlfriend aborted wanted a chance too?
We need a lot more killing.
I will share, somewhat on topic, that I think it is crueler to have a 20 year old serve 60 years in prison vs execuuion at 20. But that goes against the grain.
The IQ cutoff is 70.
Does this mean liberals cannot be executed in Florida?
@Tina Trent, no one disputes that Rector was in his full mental capabilities when he shot up the nightclub, killing a man, and when he cold-bloodedly murdered Officer Martin. I disagree that one can shoot oneself in the temple with a .38 special and not suffer brain damage. I note that actor Jon-Erik Hexum totally destroyed his brain after shooting himself in the temple with a blank. The report in Wikipedia claims that the shot effectively lobotomized Rector. I know better than to believe everything I read in Wiki, but I cannot believe that the damage to Rector’s brain was minor and I cannot believe that he was able to cooperate effectively in his defense at trial.
Your report about harassment of Officer Martin’s family left me sick to my stomach. What sort of animals live in Arkansas?
As an aside I wish people would stop trying to kill themselves by shooting themselves in the head. You have a very real chance of not succeeding in the job. The worst case I ever heard of was recounted by a retired police officer who, as a rookie cop, was called to a horrific scene where a young man had tried to kill himself by sticking a .22 rifle in his mouth and pulling (pushing on) the trigger. He didn’t succeed in killing himself but he did sever his optic nerve, so add daily head pain and permanent blindness to whatever other problems drove him to try to take his life.
"Zach had murdered two people."
Althouse, why not use "Zach murdered two people" instead of your past perfect version? We use the past perfect simple (had + past participle) to talk about time up to a certain point in the past. The past perfect tense is used to emphasize that an action was completed before another took place. So are you emphasizing that Zach was executed BECAUSE he was a convicted murderer of two people?
The simple past tense is used to describe a completed activity that started in the past and ended in the past. Zach murdered two people. Needs no further embellishment. And explains his sentence and execution rather completely.
You're projecting your religion upon those two women. That'a a you-thing not a them-thing.
You're assuming that Jesus doesn't love people. That's an ignorant thing.
Big Mike said...
That's why you use a shotgun. Empty the whole bucket at once.
There have been instances where the revolver at the temple was at such an angle that the bullet went under the skin and came out somewhere else.
@Saint Croix
And now you're projecting it upon me.
Big Mike said...
What sort of animals live in Arkansas?
The same sort that live everywhere else.
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