well oh our topic is capital punishment
i guess uh
one thing is to compare uh how it is maybe here in Texas versus uh
in Rhode Island
maybe your part of the country
yeah i you know i'm not sure if we have the death penalty here
to be perfectly honest with you hold on a second
do we have the death penalty in Rhode Island no okay no we don't
but you know um
yeah
i i have some feelings about it in the sense that
i feel if a person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt
and it's a really heinous crime
i feel like the Bible says an eye for an eye
um-hum describing a heinous crime being like murder or
yeah you know something really a serial killer or
what other ones would be
you know someone who who really has no remorse
you know that that just does these things uh
i don't know without feeling guilty about it at all you know and the and their
we in fact we have an example going on right now with this uh school teacher involved some teenagers
uh-huh
into uh committing murder get getting rid of her husband
um
i don't know if you're familiar with it Pamela Smart in New Hampshire
don't think i've heard of that one
see now in a situation like that the boys are only sixteen years old and they were sexually involved with her
and i think like at that particular point she was twenty three
you know so she wasn't really that much older than them
and being a boy at that age i think that they're very
um you know let's face it that's at a point in your life when you you're just starting to realize all the things of life
yeah
i think she probably had a lot of influence on them and they probably would have never done something like that
if it wasn't for the crime of passion type of thing
yeah we had one uh course in Texas they uh used to string them up now they
and
uh-huh
got more uh civilized and uh give them lethal injection so we definitely do have uh capital punishment
yeah
now see i agree with that i i don't think a person should be electrocuted or
hung or you know in in other words i believe that they should be punished and done away with
on one hand like i say if they're if they're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt
but if there's
the the other the other hand where you say you know if there's just that slim chance that they didn't do it
and then you know spend the time say life imprisonment
then at least they have a chance to over the years be proven not guilty
yeah
you know
there was one here recently that comes to mind that's about a woman that uh this is ridiculous i mean it's almost uh
it'd be funny if it wasn't so so sad i mean this woman this woman went out and hired somebody to uh
yeah
to uh kill another mother
oh that's the cheerleader thing
yeah right have you heard about that one
oh yes that was on TV here
yeah isn't that something
it made national um
i didn't know it made the
national news
yeah really
that was something wasn't it uh it's unbelievable this
but you know i i i saw i can't figure out what people are doing any more
i mean it's getting so bad
and i don't think unless that the crime that the laws get to the point where people are afraid to do something because they know they'll be punished
you know what i'm saying
well that brings up i guess part of what would be a question is uh you know is i guess you feel like that's a deterrent in uh capital punishment should be
yeah and you know and i i don't know if it would be
but i mean we don't know that it wouldn't either
well it uh must be i think it's a matter of degree and uh of course uh course it varies from case to case or individual
yeah
and the other point someone made at one one time was that
if someone is guilty of a terrible crime or they're a serial killer or mass murderer
that if they're in prison that gives you the chance to um get into the person's mind
to find out uh what led them to the point that they were at when they committed the crime
to uh try to understand how their mind worked to prevent
uh you know another person from getting into the same situation
yeah
but i don't know you know maybe you could do that for a certain period of time
but i mean how long does that kind of a thing take
you know to to um say to question the person or to get into their head
yeah
you know even if it took five years i think that if at that time you you feel that they were guilty or that they were uh of sound mind where they knew what crimes they were committing i mean people know what they're doing
huh
you know that that i really do i believe that that capital punishment should be there
the prisons are overcrowded
it costs the taxpayers a lot of money
that's one thing down here we certainly have a problem with overcrowded prisons
yeah i'll tell you in the state of Rhode Island it was so bad
that the intake center that they have to house the the criminals before they go to the uh penitentiaries and stuff
um were overcrowded and the judge fined the state thousands of dollars a day
um
to build a bigger intake center
yeah
so i mean it it's like where does this all stop
well they're releasing them uh early here
exactly same thing here and that's that's what they did
and
and then uh then you hear about ones that are on early release going out and
yep
committing a
in fact the news tonight they had uh someone come on a seventy three year old man
they they had gotten into a housing for the elderly and and the person who perpetrated the crime went in with someone who had a relative there
and uh apparently this this person was on drugs and the old man was an invalid and he was in an elevator and he died for twelve dollars
um
well i tell you what i think that uh you know this may this may be a cause rather the actual topic but uh i think that a lot of this is caused by
the steady diet of violence they seem to
yep
want to be uh
you know showing on movies and television
yeah and i also think that the uh fact that a lot of mothers are working today
and that children are not bonded to the parents
um-hum
and other people take the responsibility for raising these kids or the children are left out
you know
that's true
on their own and they don't really feel the family um closeness that we had when oh when i was growing up
my my mother didn't work you know and when she did uh a part time job she was there
you know it wasn't like she
well well what seems to be the answer is to concentrate on uh you know the children
getting mothers back in the home
well yeah well i don't know if that's
you know kind of
going to be necessarily workable but it would be uh one way
oh i know i know
it certainly has to start with the children
how do you feel about it do you do you think there should be capital punishment
yes i do i think it's uh something that unfortunately uh at this stage of the game i would hope that at some point we would become
you know civilized enough where we could do away with it but as of right now and the way things are i think it's uh something we just have to have
yeah i i do myself i really think that it's it's all well and good to um be a do-gooder or to to um
you know try to spare everyone's life but when someone has no regard for another person
excuse me their property or their personal
uh being or their families i mean you know when whole families are killed and
um-hum
and and yet you have someone who'll commit a crime of robbery and spend twenty five years in jail
i mean to me it's like we have things messed up somehow
you you know what i mean
yeah
and and like this banking crisis thing where people have stolen millions of dollars and they're out walking around
huh well i just uh
i think all our laws are are really screwed up
i do i i don't know what to do about it i wish i did
but uh
well i think it comes back to uh starting with the children once you get them you know if you get them
yeah
where they have a sense of values and uh you know that uh that's what it takes
yeah exactly
morals yeah
that people start uh oh you know repeat about it you know they start to see this violence in a steady diet and uh it's to be uh just
did you ever see the program uh Why Does Johnny Kill
uh
about these young children who
were were not even like sixteen years old they were eleven and twelve and fourteen and fifteen year olds and they they actually committed murders
and the question was whether to try them as adults or as children
all right
can't remember that
and whether or not to uh institute you know capital punishment where it was necessary and things like that
yeah
that has to
that's a tough one too
yeah i i mean what would you do in a situation like that you say well he's only ten years old
but the crime he committed is that of an adult
yeah
he made that decision
we had a personal experience with something like that it wasn't didn't go as far as murder but this
this girl young girl had uh she had gotten hold of a gun and she came around to the office where my wife worked and she was she had this mental problem with uh with a doctor she works for him and uh he was she was just
after him you know and the cops pick her up
uh-huh
and uh there wasn't a thing they could do you know they'd take her down to the juvenile hall and then they'd have to let her go and she'd be back doing it
yeah
imagine so see this is what i'm saying and even with uh people who are mentally incompetent you know uh like deranged
it's so hard to get people even institutionalized because they're overcrowded
so you have people walking the streets that are child molesters
or uh
