i'll let you go first
oh well what's there to say doesn't seem like it's being carried out very well in my opinion
seems like it takes so long between
conviction and carrying out the penalty that i don't see that it makes any difference to sentence anybody
yeah it seems like they could die of old age waiting to get the death penalty
yeah
yeah i know what you mean um i in Maryland they they do have capital punishment
and uh i've seen uh a lot of people get convicted sentenced and then just nothing happens just endless endless endless appeals
yeah
uh-huh well from what i understand i saw a statistic just a few days ago um
so far this year year or was it during the last year somewhere during a years time i think it was they executed twenty five people in the nation meanwhile there were twenty five hundred people on death row
so i i and it's building up you know they're they're convicting them faster than they're executing them so it's really building up
yeah what's amazing is some of them have been on death row for a number of years and uh here in Maryland i know we have a real problem with overcrowding in prisons
uh-huh
yeah everybody's got that
uh just
yeah but i mean in here it's uh to the point where they were letting prisoners go
uh-huh
uh commuting the sentences of those that were in in jail for lesser crimes
yeah
in order to put more people in into the jails and it was just uh amazing
uh-huh
to me and of course they made a big deal out of the the few that got out and turned around and committed a crime within five days of getting out
yeah
and being rearrested and
isn't isn't Maryland where the famous Willy Horton case was
uh
i can't remember refresh my memory
it was uh that was the one that was used so much in the campaign
in the political in the presidential race
uh may it may not have been Maryland it may have been Massachusetts i don't remember
um i don't remember myself
anyway well the question is you know do you think it it does make a difference in whether or not a criminal commits a crime or do you think it can if it's done right
um
i think if they if they started executing them on a regular basis
uh that i think it might make a difference right now i don't see it making a difference i don't see someone not going out there
if it
and committing murder because they're afraid they're going to get sentenced to death i mean most people out there committing murders like don't care
uh-huh
they just don't care
yeah
well i think in large measure the reason they don't care it's not because the punishment but so many of the people that commit crimes don't get punished
yeah
the police don't catch them or the courts don't convict them or or they don't serve very much of the time and so uh
you know their their success rate is very high crime does pay cash you can make a good living at it
yeah yeah and there's uh there's a lot of people here in Baltimore that uh have and we just had uh a real big cocaine bust and
of course you know they're they're playing it up real big that it was looked like it was a very very small ring and they just happened to get lucky and catch the guy
yeah
but i mean uh Baltimore has uh an all time record for the number of deaths
so far this year i think they've got over a hundred dead already this year
last year it was DC i guess Baltimore caught them
well it's kind of it's kind of moved up and you have to remember that it it it
uh there's i think X number of people out there that are going to commit murders
uh-huh
and uh once you kill off a few of them i mean if you murder a guy because he murdered your partner or something like that i mean pretty soon you run out of people to murder
yeah
yeah the only consolation is so many of the murders are you know the the violent people going against each other and so they you know society's not going to put them to death well at least maybe the guy they cross next time is going to
uh i think
i think capital punishment is an appropriate punishment for the kind of people where we say you know this sort of person is just not acceptable to our society and we are there by going to remove them from society not temporarily but permanently
yeah
i mean i i personally think life imprisonment
i don't think much of life of life imprisonment first of all it's never turns out to be life but second you know why should we
the idea of life imprisonment with no chance of parole well that means you're going to put them in a cage you think it's never ever going to be safe for them to walk the streets again well then
why bother just execute them because that's that way you're sure they'll never ever going to walk the streets again
yeah
so any any anybody that says life in prison with no chance of parole i'd say uh give them the death penalty
so
yeah you know it makes sense
um you know you have the occasional person who may have been falsely accused but i mean
uh so few and far between uh you know makes good TV movies and that's about it
yeah and and also um
the
the thing i don't like about a lot of these court trials and a lot of these appeals is that it's not based on what is true and what is false but rather it's on the rules of evidence what can i hide and what do i have to tell
yeah
and i think our courts should be geared much more strongly towards finding out the truth than they currently are
and and that way we can be sure you know we can find out the truth we can find out what really happened
yeah
and and base
the verdict sentence on what the person did not on what we're allowed to let the jury hear
yeah i had my uh my father-in-law participated in a uh a jury trial he was he was actually on the jury
and uh this man was accused of killing uh i think it was two people uh and shooting a uh policeman
um point blank in the face of course he didn't die and uh this was during a holdup of a uh uh a restaurant and it came out during the trial that um they had tried to rob another place
uh-huh
uh-huh
and uh when the guy came out with the bag they thought was money it turned out to be a couple cookies
and uh you know jumbo cookies and and so they were so upset from robbing this guy you know trying to do this holdup that didn't work
that they quite literally were mad and went into a restaurant to hold the place up and just started you know shooting people
just started shooting people
you know it's
because they botched the first job and
yeah
so now they're going to get even
yeah and get even with who i mean you know stupid guys
yeah
and uh it turned out that the you know policeman survived to the point that he was able to you know identify the guy
uh-huh
and of course you know they tried to make the cop look out like he was uh a uh no good rotten drunk
yeah
i mean it was amazing
so what was the verdict what was the results there
oh he was found guilty yeah he uh
oh
last i heard he uh
he beat a push for the death penalty now whether they finally got it or not i don't know i kind of uh
uh-huh
stopped listening after a while
uh-huh
um you know he would come home and and you know after the trial was over he came home and told us what was going on and of course then they had to go back to decide you know after
the the penalty phase yeah they've decide the penalty separately from the verdict
he had to go
right
and uh yeah everybody everybody was pretty much you know let's burn him
uh-huh
and that's you know that's the way they wanted to do it and he was surprised because he thought there was going to be a problem because he uh you know some people on the case were
were a little hesitant on convicting him on some of the charges but i mean when it all came down they just
within an hour
decided the man's fate
yeah well you know you just have to decide you know what you well there's really two separate decisions there i guess one is did it really happen the way the the prosecutor said it happened
you know is this man really guilty and you have to decide that but then you have to decide you know as a member of society what do i want to do with this guy who did this thing
yeah
and that will i i've never been on a jury i've never had that experience i'm not sure i'd look forward to making that kind of decision about a man's life
yeah yeah well it it it went pretty pretty quick from what he said
uh-huh
but i mean there's there's there's a lot of other crimes out there i mean besides murder i think uh now if you're dealing drugs now caught more than twice or something
yeah
uh it there's uh a death penalty associated with it
well the thing i'd be most likely to attach the death penalty to is the violence i mean yeah i can handle people people selling drugs you know it's it's wrong but
it it's not worth somebody getting executed for but we hear so much about the violence and how it's not safe to walk the streets because somebody you know these random drive by shootings and that sort of thing
uh-huh
and the people i'd most likely want to sentence to death are the people that just show a really low regard for human life
that you know you never know when they're going to turn or hurt the next person because it doesn't really matter to them whether someone else gets hurt or not
yeah yeah i agree
and so i go let's these are the kind of people i would like to yeah get out of here and get out of circulation and say i don't we don't accept your kind in our society
yeah i agree i i've i have uh a low tolerance for that kind of uh that kind of person
and uh as far as uh you know there are some some other crimes that i think uh you know
kidnapping um you know when they
i mean kidnapping per se has a certain uh
fine and penalty associated with it but
uh-huh
um some of these people are just out and out brutal i some of the cases i've heard about over the years
