Here in Massachusetts the controversy
over the Death Penalty has been pushed to the forefront by a few
particularly vicious crimes committed here in the past couple
of years. Last year was the worst. A ten year old boy from Cambridge,
Jeffrey Curley, was kidnapped by two men, one of whom lived in
the boy's neighborhood. They took the boy to a house in New Hampshire
where they killed him, then raped his lifeless body. They put
his body in a plastic storage container, filled the container
with cement, and dumped it into a river. This crime hit me hard.
I have a son the same age. If this had happened to my son, I don't
know how I would have gone on with my life.
(-11/13/98 -UPDATE!!- One of the
two men accused in this crime was just found guilty of First Degree
Murder. Now he gets to spend the rest of his miserable, useless,
pathetic life in jail. It's better than he deserves! The trial
for the second scumbag is just getting ready to start. They had
to move the trial to western Massachusetts because of pre-trial
publicity)
There is another term used to describe
the Death Penalty, Capital Punishment. That's what the Death Penalty
is, punishment for only the most heinous of crimes. It is not
revenge, it is not a deterrent, it is punishment, plain and simple.
The two men who killed this innocent young boy deserve no less
than death. I would defy anyone to give me one reason why we,
as a society, should allow them to draw another breath. What possible
socially redeeming qualities could these two men have that, after
the nightmarish atrocities they inflicted on a child, we should
let these men see the dawn of another day?
The list goes on and on. In the
past few years here in Massachusetts we have had:
A man shoot his girlfriend in front
of her children because she wanted to split up with her.
A man cut his wife's throat, again,
in front of her children.
Two men followed a women home from
a convenience store, drag her from the parking lot of her condo
into the woods, rape her and crush her head with a rock.
on and on and on.
How long are we going to allow this
to continue?
There are certain crimes that the
only fitting punishment is death. We need to restore Capital Punishment
to this state, the sooner the better.
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