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
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ext. 2578
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Sadie McCarthy
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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.
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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.’