Santorum rethinks death penalty stance

[Lisa_N]

Matt25, aside from the reality that anything the NYT prints is suspect, I don’t think you can use the simple comparison between murder rate and death penalty vs non-death penalty states. There are just too many other factors that might have more impact on the rate. For example a state like North Dakota may have a lower rate of murders not because they don’t have a death penalty but because the population is more spread out and more rural than states where there are large urban areas such as California. Oregon had a death penalty. It was voted out and voted back in. I don’t think the murder rate changed at all. IOW I just don’t think the death penalty itself has that much impact.

Lisa N

 

[mjdonnelly]

Garrison:

Since I returned to the Catholic faith( a miracle for me) whilst I was in a very small town, Palamos, Spain, I believe with all my heart that the death penalty only serves the powerful. Violence begets Violence. America surely represents the Violence. It is gaining in strength. Witness this poor woman, Terri, 41, being starved to death. Need I say more.

And how are your subways these days?

 

[jim_orr]

Ghosty:
Yes, I agree it’s an assumption, because that’s all it can be until tested…The Pope is not arguing for the abolition of the death penalty, and neither am I. We’re arguing for a possible relaxing of its useHave you read the record on Pelican Bay Prison? That’s the test and it proves the pope is wrong on the face of it, as are the bishops for pushing this modified and new teaching along without the facts. You don’t experiment on innocent people to test an assumption. You study the existing evidence and draw conclusions as to the correctness of your assumption. The pope and the bishops have not done that and that in itself is enough to raise eyebrows about their judgment concerning this subject.

There is no bases for their argument other than trying to be consistent with their anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia positions, i.e., being “prolife.” However, the Church would never allow exceptions for abortion and euthanasia no matter how traumatic the circumstances; she would be against one innocent person being aborted or euthanised. Why would she want to promote a position on the basis of being “prolife” in this case when it will most definitely result in more innocent people being murdered and harmed? Where is the consistency in that?

Ps. You do know, don’t you, that less than two percent of all convicted murdereres receive the death penalty?

 

[Ghosty]

I’m not finding anything on Pelican Bay that supports your contention. Pelican Bay is essentially a two-tiered prison system, in which the presumed dangerous members of the population, or those heavily entrenched in gangs, are removed to a heavily isolated containment until they are “broken” (snitch on their fellows), and then released back to the general population. This is not even close to the kind of containment I’m suggesting.

Pelican Bay has a specific unit, the Security Housing Unit, which is similar to the kind of lock-down I’m describing, but it’s not a permanant containment unit; it’s merely the “heavy duty” section used to break members of gangs and others who are considered “temporarily dangerous”.

The recent murder plot, which I believe is what you are talking about, was not related to the SHU. You’re again talking about a typical “maximum security prison” situation, which is not what I’m advocating at all. Prisoners consistantly held in a SHU containment would not have been able to hatch such a plot. In fact, no history of such plots or attacks originate from SHU style lockdowns that I can find.

 

[demolitionman65]

I agree. The thing that bothers me is that the pope and bishops are completely sidestepping the issue of justice for the victims, in their headlong push to end the death penalty.

Where does “eye for an eye” find justice for the victims? Have you heard of the New Testament?

why should a mass murderer who may have been responsible for their deaths be given more than 20 years to repent and allowed to die in the state of grace and go to heaven? Where is the “justice” in all of that?

Because God wishes for ALL souls to go to heaven.

So, are you saying evil is done by good people?

Evil is done by people. There are no good or evil people, just people. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Ever hear of that?

People who do evil - are evil.

Well, we need to put you in charge of the World Court. Apparently, you are the only one who can see into the souls of others.

Pope John Paul II is wrong saying that just as he is in his claim that because of high tech modern prisons capital punishment is no longer needed to keep innocent people safe from harm.

Given everything else you have said, Mr. Orr, your refusal to treat with the Pope’s teaching is hardly surprising.

You need prayers, sir. And I suspect, a really thorough confession, though on that point only you can be really sure.

 

[Hildebrand]

Philip P:

I would still like to see an argument for how the death penalty furthers the cause of justice. How does killing someone uphold, preserve, or otherwise have any bearing whatsoever on the victim’s rights? Some might raise the point of punishment - the ultimate crime deserves the ultimate punishment - but that simply shifts the question rather than answering it. Instead of justice, now we are discussing the purpose and efficacy of punishment (which might very well be a useful discussion).

Would a DP supporter please articulate how justice is served, or maybe more to the point, what your understanding of justice and punishment are?

From the Roman Catechism:

Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to civil authorities, to whom is entrusted the power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishment inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence.

Pope Pius XII: “Even when it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death, the state does not dispose of the individual’s right to live. Rather, it is reserved to the public authority to deprive the criminal of the benefit of life, when already, by his crime, he has deprived himself of the right to live.”

http://www.diocesereport.com/myview/myview_park2_03_2001.shtml

If the Pope and others would be clearer, I would be more appreciative. What I mean by clearer is that our Western society is a PAGAN society, or at the very least, a *highly *watered down Protestant society. Societies like our own do not value the lives of the innocent, therefore they forfeit a good deal of their rights in deciding in matters of life and death (The Church does not take away the authority, it is always there, however they forfeit the right to use it). Why? Because they have a strong tendency to toward the culture of death, not the culture of life (capital punishment when used properly and justly, in a society that values life, is APART of the culture of life because it seeks to defend the lives of the innocent). However, in a society such as ours (where we kill millions of the unwanted, the rejected, the disabled, and many more all in the name of choice), it become very evident our society has shown we do not know how to make the correct and proper decisions when it comes to life and death. Therefore in such societies, capital punishment ought not be used because we are like mischievous kids (to put it nicely) playing with a loaded gun. It is fitting to tell the kid to put the gun away. When our society returns to its senses, only then can we be seen as responsible in such matters.

 

[jim_orr]

Ghosty:

I’m not finding anything on Pelican Bay that supports your contention. Pelican Bay is essentially a two-tiered prison system, in which the presumed dangerous members of the population, or those heavily entrenched in gangs, are removed to a heavily isolated containment until they are “broken” (snitch on their fellows), and then released back to the general population. This is not even close to the kind of containment I’m suggesting.

It is important that we be comparing apples to apples Did you try coping the link below and paste it on your address line and then click “go?”

mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n707/a04.html

 

[jim_orr]

Hildebrand:

From the Roman Catechism:
Pope Pius XII: “Even when it is a question of the execution of a man condemned to death, the state does not dispose of the individual’s right to live. Rather, it is reserved to the public authority to deprive the criminal of the benefit of life, when already, by his crime, he has deprived himself of the right to live.”
http://www.diocesereport.com/myview/myview_park2_03_2001.shtml

Thank you for your comments and for the above link in particular. I found Answer by Fr. Stephen F. Torraco on 11- 15 -2000 (EWTN) a very articulate explanation for capital punishment, and represents the reasoning in Catholic thinking that I find very compelling. That coupled with the evidence from Pelican Bay Prison makes for a very real and solid argument compared to the viewpoint of “assumptions” presented by the bishops and some Catholic laity on this message board.

 

[Ghosty]

Jim Orr: I’ve done everything imaginable, including doing my own search on the core website for articles on Pelican Bay Prison. If you just give me some details of the case in question, I can do a news and google search. As it is, I’ve read about a dozen articles about security problems at Pelican Bay since yesterday, and not a single one of them dealt with the SHU.

 

[jim_orr]

Media Awareness Project

US CA: Inside Pelican Bay

URL: mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n707/a04.html

Newshawk: Jo-D and Tom-E

Pubdate: Sun, 22 Apr 2001
Source: Press Democrat, The (CA)
Copyright: 2001 The Press Democrat
**Contact:**male2(‘letters’,‘pressdemo.com’); letters@pressdemo.com
Website: pressdemo.com/
Details: mapinc.org/media/348
Author: Mike Geniella, The Press Democrat

INSIDE PELICAN BAY , Part 1

**Instructions are written in tiny print on small scraps of paper that are wrapped in protective coverings and hidden in body cavities of departing prison parolees and inmate visitors. **

**Called “kites” or “wilas,” the smuggled messages are a key part of an elaborate communications system that has enabled Nuestra Familia gang leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison, 250 miles north of Santa Rosa, to run organized crime syndicates on the streets of Northern California communities, authorities say. **

**But now, through a wide-ranging investigation dubbed “Operation Black Widow,” federal prosecutors are targeting top criminal commanders who have ruled from their cells despite 24-hour surveillance in one of the nation’s “super-max” prisons. **

**Five of the highest-ranking Nuestra Familia leaders are to be moved today from Pelican Bay to a federal detention center in the East Bay. All of them reached Pelican Bay, where the state’s most hardened criminals are housed, by committing murder or attempting murder. **

**They are to be arraigned Thursday in U.S. District Court for a new set of charges under a 25-count indictment accusing them of murder, attempted murder, drug trafficking and racketeering. **

**Eight other gang leaders are named in the indictment, which became public Friday. **

---

**The charges grow out of an investigation launched by Santa Rosa police nearly four years ago. It expanded to include the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department and other agencies, costing $5 million and uncovering “hit lists” and other orders prepared in prison and smuggled to gang members on the outside, police say. **

 

[jim_orr]

Inside Pelican Bay Prison, Part 2

**Santa Rosa police Cmdr. Scott Swanson said Saturday the indictments are “intended to strike at the heart of the Nuestra Familia criminal organization and disrupt its operations by removing the leadership’s ability to control its street gang members.” **

**Until now, Nuestra Familia had exploited a prison system that allowed gang warlords, guarded and free from the violence that permeates the gang underworld outside, to pass on instructions to thousands of followers. **

**Included were orders to kill errant gang members who betray their trust, directives on how to collect “taxes” from drug dealers operating within gang-controlled neighborhoods, and demands for retribution against rival gangs. **

**“It’s not easy to acknowledge the extent to which these notorious gang leaders communicate with the outside, allowing them to maintain control over criminal activities that are being committed on their behalf,” Pelican Bay Warden Joseph McGrath said. **

**“I’m sorry to say that it’s true.” **

**On most days, a chilly coastal wind blows across the treeless yard at Pelican Bay. Inmates who are allowed to mingle and exercise together huddle in separate cyclone-fenced areas for Latinos, blacks, whites, Asians and American Indians. **

**“If we put them in together, they would kill each other,” McGrath said. **

**In such a tense environment, the strength and determination of Nuestra Familia gang members stand out. They engage in rigorous exercise routines, the sight and sound mimicking a military boot camp. “It’s as if they’re training for an invasion,” said prison investigator Mark Piland. **

---

**The yard is cold and stark. But an even harsher prison world, separated by electrically charged fences and barren ground, is the 1,056-bed “SHU,” named for security housing unit. **

 

[jim_orr]

Inside Pelican Bay Prison, Part 3

---

**The isolation is even more pronounced than Death Row at San Quentin. Each prisoner sits alone in an antiseptic cell, painted white and with a glass wall so that guards can always peer in. Meals are brought to each cell; each prisoner is allowed out only one hour a day, alone, to exercise in a concrete courtyard smaller than a basketball court. **

**This is where Nuestra Familia’s “high command” shares an eerie silence with leaders of the state’s toughest gangs: the Mexican Mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Guerillas and the Nazi Low Riders. **

**Inmates’ clothing, personal belongings and bedding are X-rayed before they are placed in a cell. A prisoner’s bunk is a mattress on top of a slab of concrete attached to the back wall. Stainless steel toilets have no removable parts that could be used to make weapons. **

**In this utilitarian environment, a small television set is often a prisoner’s only companion. **

**Eight cells form a pod, which are arranged in a cluster around a computerized control room so corrections officers can monitor virtually every inmate movement. **

**Pelican Bay opened 11 years ago as a home for the most violent, predatory offenders in the 160,000-inmate state prison system. The isolation of its 275-acre site in a clearing along the North Coast between Crescent City and the Oregon border was a major factor in deciding where it should be built. **

**Now overflowing with inmates, the high-tech prison is divided into two sections: the high-security unit and a general population wing. Overall, Pelican Bay today houses about 3,400 inmates, 1,100 more than its designed capacity. **

How imprisoned gang leaders, some nearly 1,000 miles from their neighborhoods, continue to orchestrate criminal activities on the outside is testament to their ingenuity and to what Warden McGrath describes as chronic understaffing in Pelican Bay’s prison gang investigative unit.

 

[jlw]

I am like Santorum. Rethinking things. Still “in favor”, but not 100%.

Can I make a political point??

He is moving leftward before Casey can call him on it.

 

[jim_orr]

Inside Pelican Bay Prison, Part 4

Mounds of mail spill over the desks of the three prison investigators who are assigned to monitor the contents of hundreds of pieces of correspondence flowing daily in and out of the complex.

Sometimes an imprisoned gang leader writes his directives in his own urine on the back of an innocent-appearing drawing before sticking it in an envelope and mailing to an outsider. When the urine dries, the contents of the message remain invisible to the naked eye until the recipient holds the paper to heat so its secrets can be revealed.

Or messages called “ghost writings” are lightly embossed with a pointed object on the inside of a manila envelope. The envelope is glued back together, and mailed with other documents to an outside contact, who rubs pencil lead lightly over the markings so the message can be read.

From these intercepted messages, investigators gleaned chilling new insights into the gang’s inner workings.

One ghost-written message from imprisoned Nuestra Familia leader Javier Zubiate, convicted killer of Joseph “Littlewolf” Lincoln in a Santa Rosa motel in 1995, asked a gang leader in the East Bay to travel to Sonoma County and kill a Zubiate rival. Another Zubiate message asked the same East Bay gang leader to organize a Nuestra Familia “colony” in Sonoma County.

Prison authorities acknowledged they’re unable to keep pace with the underground communications network that serves a rapidly expanding prison population. At Pelican Bay, a facility with an operating budget of $83.8 million and a custody and support staff of 1,317, a total of four prison investigators handle the task of monitoring prisoners’ communications.

“I probably sound like another government bureaucrat complaining that we don’t have enough staff to do our jobs, but it’s the truth,” said Pelican Bay Warden McGrath. “Just look at the numbers.”

McGrath is lauded by Sonoma County authorities for assigning Piland to work full-time with local and federal investigators who secretly probed the inner workings of the Nuestra Familia leadership during “Operation Black Widow.”

Brian Parry, chief of the state Department of Corrections’ law enforcement unit, said that a total of 40 gang investigators currently are in place inside the state’s 33 prisons to monitor thousands of gang members’ contacts with the outside world.

“We could use just that number alone at Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons,” Parry said.

During a three-year investigation into criminal activities of the Nuestra Familia prison gang, a special organized crime task force uncovered “hit lists” sent through the mail or delivered by prison parolees on behalf of gang leaders.

Targets included disloyal followers, gang rivals and even tenacious prosecutors.

 

[jim_orr]

Inside Pelican Bay Prison, Final - Part 5

The task force uncovered how gang leaders hide behind constitutional guarantees of confidential communication between attorneys and clients by using followers who either work for lawyers, or who can fabricate legal letterheads and envelopes.

Because high-risk inmates don’t have access to computers, typewriters or word processors, they send handwritten notes to outside associates who transform the contents into phony legal documents. Then they are sent back to designated inmates on the inside in envelopes marked with an attorney’s return address.

A message smuggled into the prison in the rectal cavity of a Nuestra Familia gang member reports on the activity of the gang at the prison from which he was transferred. The tiny writing takes up five lines per one regular line of paper. ( Press Democrat photo by John Burgess )

Pelican Bay prison investigator Piland and Andrew Mazzanti, a Sonoma County district attorney investigator who worked with Piland and others on the special task force, told federal prosecutors that they reviewed about 3,000 letters written by Nuestra Familia members over the course of a nearly four-year investigation.

They discovered that imprisoned gang leaders devised elaborate codes, including the use of the Huazanguillo dialect of the ancient Aztec language Nahautl.

Piland, Mazzanti and other task force members also intercepted written provisions of the Nuestra Familia “constitution” that direct gang members and associates on the outside to deposit drug profits and money scored in armed robberies and other criminal activities in “regimental banks” overseen by the leadership.

“The specifics of the organizational structure of Nuestra Familia is constantly evolving, but the street operations are overseen by a ranking gang member from within Pelican Bay prison. Gang members and associates build status and credibility with their leadership based on their ability to accomplish profitable and or violent criminal activity through others while incarcerated,” according to an internal FBI document.

While the extent of the gang’s intricate communications network has been amply documented, what can be done to lessen its effectiveness is the focus of debate.

“They’re at no risk,” McGrath said. “Many of them are serving life terms. They don’t have to worry about being stabbed or challenged by other inmates because of their secure environment. Yet they can send an order out, and because their structure is so sophisticated they know that if somebody doesn’t carry out their orders, someone else will take care of that person.”

“We talk about the long arm of the law. But now there’s the long arm of the gang.”

Because inmates enjoy unmonitored communication with their lawyers, McGrath said the bizarre details surrounding a San Francisco dog mauling case involving two attorneys and a Pelican Bay inmate they adopted as a son are extreme but troubling examples of how far afield things get.

“I’m not saying the legal protections prisoners and their lawyers enjoy have been corrupted. But it only takes a few willing accomplices to do serious damage,” McGrath said.

McGrath acknowledged there are few additional restrictions that can be imposed on imprisoned gang leaders even if they are caught illegally communicating with the outside.

“If someone is already serving a life sentence, and he is housed in SHU,” McGrath said, “there really isn’t much more punishment we can hand out without coming into conflict with the constitutional rights of prisoners.”

End of Story

 

[Ghosty]

The task force uncovered how gang leaders hide behind constitutional guarantees of confidential communication between attorneys and clients by using followers who either work for lawyers, or who can fabricate legal letterheads and envelopes.

Sounds like a problem with the U.S. constitution and its enforcement, not with the actual containment potential. You won’t get any argument from me on that front. What’s being described is far below actual containment potential, however.

 

[jim_orr]

demolitionman65:

So, what you are saying is that if we can’t fulfill our responsibility in controlling these people, they need to die?

[The above quote followed my errant posting of Part 4 Inside the Pelican Bay Prison story on another thread started in 2004. I am relocating here along with another poster who responded to this Demolitionman65’s posting]

 

[jim_orr]

pnewton:

While you (demolationman65’s post above) put a spin on it worthy of a politician, you are essentially correct.

If the leadership of a society is unable to protect the people it has a moral obligation to protect by imprisonment alone, only then can it employ capital punishment to that end.
The duty to protect the innocent of society is a grave moral obligation placed on those in authority.

 

[jim_orr]

Another newspaper article on this story appeared in the Orange County Register intitled "Murder from the Inside Out" on Sunday, April 29, 2001. It contained some additional quotes from Brian Parry, Assitant Director of the CA Corrections Department and Cmdr. Swanson, Santa Rosa Police Dept.

“Despite such intense security, gang leaders have managed for years to effectively communicated with members and foot soldiers in other prisons and on the outside, prosecutors said.”

"‘The hard-core prison gang members recruit these Kids,’ said Brian Parry. “We know when certain gang members parole, they go out with a mission or orders to organized drug trafficking, commit robberies for money for the gang and hurt or kill those gang members who didn’t follow orders. Most of these gang members kill each other. They use that as their internal discipline.’”

“In California, 160,000 people are in prison, another 120,000 are on parole and at least one-third of the total are gang members, said Parry.”

“In California, Parry said, ‘the gangs have a hand in at least 75 percent of prison violence.’”

“‘We do ourselves a disservice if we talk about gangs. This isn’t a bunch of young hoodlums. This is organized crime,’ said Cmdr. Scott Swanson of the Santa Rosa Police Department, which traced local murders to Nuestra Familia members at Pelican Bay.”

“You can’t just take off the top layer, and say, ‘OK, were finished,’ Swanson said. ‘There are thousands and thousands on the streets.’”

"‘Here is the most secure prison in California and this is what’s happening inside the walls,’ Swanson said. ‘I don’t want to be a politcian and say it’s a crisis. I would prefer to let the facts speak for themselves. But when you talk about a criminal enterprise that’s been responsible for hundreds of murders over the years and thousands of robberies, extortions and what it does to the community, is that a crisis? You decide’"

 

[jim_orr]

Ghosty:

Sounds like a problem with the U.S. constitution and its enforcement, not with the actual containment potential. You won’t get any argument from me on that front. What’s being described is far below actual containment potential, however.

Read it again if that is what you think.

You can talk about “potential” all you want. This is reality. According to the pope and bishops, we are safe from hardened criminals in these high tech prisons. I want SOME CATHOLIC BISHOP OR VATICAN OFFICAL TO PRESENT THE EVIDENCE THAT ENABLED THEM TO PROMOTE THE IDEA THAT WE ARE SAFE FROM SUCH EVIL BY SIMPLY SENTANCING THE WORST OFFENDERS TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE. This is just what we need more of - the most evil doers in society spending the rest of their lives protected inside high tech prisons where they can continue to reek havoc and harm on innocent people for the rest of their natural lives.