1,000th execution scheduled for 2am Friday December 2nd

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10283003/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10157824/from/RL.3/

RALEIGH, N.C. - A man who killed his wife and father-in-law awaited lethal injection early Friday in the nation’s 1,000th execution since capital punishment resumed in 1977. Kenneth Lee Boyd, set to die at 2 a.m., spent the day visiting family and friends. Late Thursday, Gov. Mike Easley denied Boyd’s clemency request. Earlier in the day, the U.S. Supreme Court and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected final appeals by Boyd’s lawyers. “We went in and told him the governor turned him down and he handled it well,” said Boyd’s lawyer, Thomas Maher, who was among a succession of visitors at the state’s Central Prison. Larger-than-normal crowds of protesters were expected at the prison in Raleigh, and vigils were planned across the state. Prison officials planned to tighten security. Boyd, 57, did not deny that he shot and killed Julie Curry Boyd, 36, and her father, 57-year-old Thomas Dillard Curry. Family members said Boyd stalked his estranged wife after they separated following 13 stormy years of marriage and once sent a son to her house with a bullet and a threatening note. During the 1998 slayings, Boyd’s son Christopher was pinned under his mother’s body as Boyd unloaded a .357-Magnum into her. The boy pushed his way under a bed to escape the barrage. Another son grabbed the pistol while Boyd tried to reload. The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that capital punishment could resume after a 10-year moratorium. The first execution took place the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah. Vietnam experiences Boyd told The Associated Press in a prison interview that he wants no part of the infamous numerical distinction. “I’d hate to be remembered as that,” Boyd said Wednesday. “I don’t like the idea of being picked as a number.” The 1,001st could come Friday night, when South Carolina plans to put Shawn Humphries to death for the 1994 murder of a store clerk. In Boyd’s plea for clemency, his attorneys had argued his experiences in Vietnam — where as a bulldozer operator he was shot at by snipers daily — contributed to his crimes. As the execution drew near, Boyd was visited by a son from a previous marriage, who was not present during the slayings. ‘One mistake’ “He made one mistake and now it’s costing him his life,” said Kenneth Smith, 35, who visited with his wife and two children. “A lot of people get a second chance. I think he deserves a second chance.” Smith’s wife planned to witness the execution, as did two other family members of the victims whose relationship was not immediately clear. Boyd’s lawyer, a small group of law enforcement officials and journalists also planned to watch through.

What are everyone's views/thoughts on the death penalty? I am personally opposed to it, and when I read this particular case it saddens me greatly. I'm part of the local Amnesty International here at our school, and we all wrote letters today and faxed them down in an attempt to do something. But the governor denied clemency.

I just feel as though the death penalty is the wrong method of punishment. Its a bit hypocritical; to kill those who have killed. Does it make us any different from the killer himself? And I think death would be more a release than a punishment. I'd personally find it much worse to rot in prison for the rest of my life than die early.

This is really my first time posting on this particular forum so I really don't want to go off on a huge tirade and piss people off. So if I offended/offend anyone, it really isn't my intention.

[Larry_OHF]

And I think death would be more a release than a punishment.

If I were to be able to choose life in prison and the death penalty, I'd go for the death penalty because like you said...its a release from the torment. I would not call living my life behind bars a life, always wondering if I were going to get beat up, get sick and suffer, bored out of my skull at doing nothing all day long...yeah...give me the fast way out of that.


You know...I have been known in the past to say "give them death", but once I began placing myself in their shoes...and thinking about it a bit more, I am inclined to say that the death penalty is probably not a good idea. For one, its more expensive to us for the lawyers and the clemancy hearings, and the appeals after appeals...I think its cheaper to just let a guy live for 50 years with nothing to eat but very bland, cold food and see how many boyfriends he can make.

[ 12-02-2005, 08:31 AM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

[Timber Loftis]

For the DP in theory. Incontrovertible. People who argue society can't justify it have poor logic skills.

Against it as applied. Needs to be no failure rate in the system. When you can't do a "take back" you can accept almost no rate of failure in the system above 0%. Wrongful executions break the system as applied.

[Morgeruat]

It depends of course, It needs to be a "just" punishment, ie drug trafficking as seen recently in the Van Tuong case, he was a lackey, and a mule, nothing more, it was not a just punishment, for serial rapists, murderers (I'm thinking typically first degree murders, or those which are absolutely reprehensible) etc perhaps a few other cases (not sedition, desertion, treason, etc those can be handled with lengthy prison terms, though desertion and treason are still legally punishable by capitol punishment)

The movie The Shawshank Redemption (one of the best movies ever) shows pretty well the result of a lifelong imprisonment, the ability to function in the world is stripped away and the knowledge and skills of many longtime inmates is virtually nill for them (at least as far as those skills lead to being able to function in society productively). which is arguably a more cruel punishment than a release from life which will give them a chance to attone for their wrongs to the person they killed, which is largely how I view the death penalty in regards to murderers.

[ 12-02-2005, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Morgeruat ]

[Chewbacca]

Whoa, complicated topic!

Who exactly the Death Penalty punishes and how. It's not just the convicted.

The heaviest consequences come from the most final acts. There is also the matter of redemption and how arbritarily someone is put outside of it's possiblity on this mortal coil.

But a Jane's Addiction song lyric about Ted Bundy always strikes a cord in me: ...Some people should die, that's just unconscious knowledge...

Like that fellow this week in Florida, convicted of taking that little girl behind a car wash and was caught on tape.

Why should he get to eat, breath, whack-off, and crap until he dies of old age in the isolation ward, while that little girl won't ever grow up and her last moments were spent getting degraded by that bastard. The evidence is clear and solid from the video to the DNA. Considering the nature of his crime and being able to bear witness to part of it makes me feel like Give me a rope and I'll string em up myself right now!!!

It's most definitely a "brain against the mind" type of topic.