Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (May 7, 2003)
OPINION 4 • The Clackamas Print • May 7, 2003 Lethal Injection vs. Life in Prison Editor-in-Chief/ Copy Editor Shadra Beesley News Editor/ Assistant Copy Editor Tina Tate Opinion Editor Cyndee Mady Feature Editor Elisabeth Meyer A&E Editor Pete Ford Sports Editor Elena Boryska Co-Photo Editor Robb Egan Co-Photo Editor Cory Price Webmaster Joel Gaynor Advertising Manager Mark Falling ext. 2578 Staff Writers: Marvin Baker * Isaiah Creel Nic Delzell * Jared Eschweiler Bekah Finch * Karen Hill Noah Holland * Frank Jordan Sadie McCarthy Production Assistants: Matt Baker * Heather Dolson Katie Funk * David Kolibaba Andy Price Adviser: Linda Vogt Secretary: JoAnne Gale The Clackamas Print is distributed every Wednesday except during finals week. Thou shalt not kill No^only did Christian Longo confess urdering his wife and three chil- Sadie McCarthy z"en’ ^escr’*5e<^ ’n detail what-it was Staff Writer to watch his wife struggle to take one last breath as he strangled her to its«—— death. Unbelievable. A man able to recall his murderous actions pleaded insanity in attempt to escape life imprisonment. The judge and jury didn’t buy it: off to death row Longo went According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a deterrent is used to create a fear of punishment in order to prevent criminal behavior. “If we execute a bunch of murderers and there is, in fact, no deterrent effect realized, we have killed a bunch of mtmderers,” said John McAdams of Marquette University. “If we fail to execute murderers when doing so would have deterred other murderers, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of inno cent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.” McAdams added that he would much rather execute 100 murderers (when in fact an unknown two are innocent) than keep them all alive for the sake of the two innocents. The death penalty is a necessary deterrent, because prison life is practically a howl of cherries. Imprisonment is not punishment enough for those who murder and rape. Those criminals do not deserve the basic luxuries of prison life. Did you know that because of the cruel and unusual punishment law, prisons sport cable television, racquetball courts and Internet? Convicts have the right to sue the prison if it lacks adequate entertainment. It costs our government more to house an inmate than to put a student through college each year. How can we afford to entertain criminals when our country is going through an economic cri sis? Longo viciously murdered. He does not deserve to live. Innocent victims have been allowed to die while we coddle their killer, Capital punishment is not an unethical idea. According to the eighth amendment of the Federal Constitution, “The inflic tion of death as a punishment for murder is not withoutJustification and is not unconstitutionally sevens. Neither is the punishment of death disproportionate to the crime being punished, murder." The Holy Bible preaches “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Who am I to argue with the powers that be? A simple response to Longo: “You are the weakest link, goodbye!” A jury of his peers sentenced 29 year- old Christian Longo to death for killing his wife and three small children on Wednesday, April 16 - making him the 27th prisoner to reside on Oregon’s death row. Juror Jake Turk is noted for saying, “If he doesn’t deserve the death penal ty then, you know, who does?” What gives one person (or a jury of 12) the right to sentence another per son to death, and why do people celebrate the occasion? Intentional killing should not be celebrated in any capacity. How are our youth supposed to dif ferentiate between right and wrong when we are sending them mixed mes sages? . : Don’t get me wrong -I am sympathetic to the families who will suffer the permanent deprivation of their loved ones, but to assist in the death of one per son to relieve the suffering of another is just another form of euthanasia. Any way one chooses to justify the act, it still boils down to one thing - murder. “Thou shalt not kill” is a biblical phrase familiar even to those who do not practice religion, yet many religious affiliates favor the death penalty inde pendent of their religious beliefs. It would be fair to say that these advocates of capital punishment are discriminatory in their piety. Proponents of the death penalty would have you believe that eliminating the inmate by means of lethal injection would alleviate the cost of perpetual housing of the prisoner. This could not be further from the truth. According to Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, “The death penalty is much more expensive than its clos est alternative - life imprisonment with no parole. Pre-trial motions, expert witness investigations, jury selection, and the necessity for two trials - one on guilt and one on sentencing - make capital cases extremely costly, even before the appeals process begins. In addition, many of these trials result in a life sen tence rather than the death penalty, so the state pays the cost of life imprison ment on top of the expensive trial.” The unconscionable acts of murder at the hands of Christian Longo will not soon be forgotten, and if it were up to me I'd throw Longo in with the rest of the prison population and let nature take its course, but it’s net up to me, and the question of ethics still remains. Is it ethical for society to condemn a man to death for committing the exact act they are about to reciprocate upon him - or is it simply legalized serial killing? The Clackamas Print. * Copyright 2003. 19600 S. Molalla Ave. Oregon City, Oregon 97045 (503) 657-6958 X2309 | cccprint@clackamas.edu http://www2.clackomas.edu/theprint Do you have something to shout about? Letters to the editor are always welcome. Drop letters by B-104 or send to cccprint@clackamas.edu Too much imagination, not enough frozen egg rolls Bk J » It was a Saturday morning and I woke up wanting ice cream for break- .X Shadra Beesley fast- Edltor-ln-Chlef As everyone knows, ignoring an early-morning ice cream craving (and by early morning I mean 11:59 a.m.) can be very detrimental to your health, so I jumped in the car in my pj’s and high-tailed it to the nearest grocery store so as not to put myself in any fur ther danger. As I was leaving the store with my pint of Ben & Jerry’s “Makin’ Whoopee Pie,” I noticed an elderly gentleman with a shopping cart contain ing nothing but bread. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “What a crazy old man! Why would he bother to get a shopping cart when all he’s buying is a loaf of bread?” However, due to my crafty omission of information, what you do not know is that the entire shopping cart was filled to the top with loaves of bread! And he was stacking them in neat rows in the back seat of his maroon Buick while his wife, whose chin I could just make out jutting from beneath a giant pair of black sunglasses, patiently waited in the passenger seat. He must have had something like a hundred loaves of bread. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “How could the entire shopping cart be filled with bread when there were already rows of loaves lined up in the back seat?” The answer to that question is, of course, “Well, I have no idea.” During the drive home, I contemplated this scenario, wondering what he could possibly have needed all that bread for. He was too old to be an army general buying food for his platoon. Perhaps he had thousands of little grand children at home demanding peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and there was a semi truck somewhere nearby filled with “Skippy’s” and grape jelly? In the end I decided he must be crazy. How could one person possibly need so much of one food item? My thoughts of an old man and his bread melted away as I settled down on the couch to a blissful breakfast of chocolate ice cream. My heightened sense of tranquility and content was cut short, however, when I realized that there was no space for “Makin’ Whoopee” in the freezer due to the fact that it was entirely filled with boxes of frozen egg rolls. Student Poll Does Christian Longo deserve to die? “It’s actually going to cost us more money to try to keep him on death row than it would to keep him in jail for the rest of his life?’ - Charles Hackett - - Erin Bradley - “I think anybody that kills someone in such a brutal way deserves to die. They are a threat to society and we need to get rid of them.” “If people think that it is so inappropriate to kill people, why kill them to show that it is bad?” - Laurel Burton - - Jason M. Thomas - “I wouldn’t feel right about paying for his incarceration. I don’t think that society should have to put up with him.’
