okay well um about capital punishment first of all i know that in uh Texas they have lethal death by lethal injection i guess that's the uh preferred method have they used anything else
yeah
i don't know to tell you the truth i don't follow it uh any more than i have to but i do know someone was just recently uh
in in Texas in your memory
i see
oh yeah that's that's kind of the euphemistic term for it um so uh have you been following the the Dahlmer case at all
put to sleep
exactly
ooh no more than again no more than i have to um i have very mixed feelings about this whole issue um
that one's a little too grizzly too huh
uh i i really don't like the idea of of uh death penalty capital capital punishment however you want to put it
um-hum
um and yet i do
concur that there are some people that have to be kept away
forever yeah i mean i really do think there are some people that there's nothing that can be done about so it makes a dilemma for me
hum
i see um do you think that uh putting putting those people in jail permanently would be an equally good solution
i i the i always think about it in terms of myself and i really wonder if i'd really wanna be in jail for the rest of my life or just killed
um-hum
i mean i think i and some have asked to be killed
you know there there have been been some criminals who said
and this is what i want and i can yeah i can see that side of it
um-hum
uh because i don't know what life is like what what life means if you're in jail the rest of your life
um-hum
well certainly for for someone like Charles Manson who's very definitely going to stay in jail for the rest of his life i uh i i can't imagine that he will ever be allowed out by the parole board that uh his life is not going to improve
um-hum
um do you think uh do you think that that uh the death penalty is effective as a means of retribution
a a deterrent or right yeah
yeah as as as a deterrent value yeah
i'm not i don't know uh uh you know i don't think we've we haven't used it enough they say in in in countries where you know you're gonna have your hand cut off you know if you steal et cetera that
that it has that that there is less crime uh we certainly let our people out
um-hum
way too fast i don't know i don't think i've got enough evidence on that what about you
um well to be honest i think that the uh capital punishment is is is a uh red herring in the crime and punishment business
um-hum
um as you said we're letting our people out far too much really the problem is
that i i think two fold number one in Los Angeles as you may know there's uh lots and lots of problem high crime areas and and uh
in black parts of town the cops the cops don't trust the the people who live there and the people don't live there trust people don't trust the cops who who uh
um-hum
run the beat so in this heated air of mistrust people don't do what's necessary
um-hum
to keep crime down because
uh you know if if uh it takes too much work or if you're liable to get beaten just because you're black or whatever things are not going to change and so
capital punishment doesn't matter if the criminals who are committing the crimes don't get caught in the first place
right and may be killed on the street anyway death is not that big a i mean one way or the other death is part of their everyday lives
oh yeah as as uh
i mean a white collar person thinking they may get killed you know that's a big deal
yeah
but the other people are thinking they may get killed when they get up and walk to school
yeah exactly you know John John Singleton who's who uh made the film um Boys in the Hood noted that uh one in twenty five black men will be killed at the hands of other black men
yeah
yes yeah
and uh that's you know for them the death penalty is irrelevant i mean it's what what difference is that going to make to them there's got to be more effective policing and there's got to be more trust on both sides of the equation
yeah yeah
that's right that that's right and uh what we do is we keep coming up with ways to handle i mean i just heard the attorney general or i think it was on PBS the other night briefly going by because it made me to angry but he was talking about
how wonderful our presidents have been because uh we've gotten this and that many more jails and
