well Kirk uh i believe in capital punishment i'm from Texas and we have that in in effect down here and uh i guess i'm kind of the old school you know an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
uh-huh
uh-huh
do you have um has Texas always had capital punishment or they ever had a period where they outlawed it
uh no sir not to my knowledge uh they've always had it
i see right from day one
uh-huh
i'd have to confess to you that uh i don't know what the i honestly don't know what the law in Maryland is i think
we have
i think we have a capital murder law uh
uh-huh
i think that's probably the only crime for which you know capital punishment is meted out
um-hum
my own i guess my own personal feelings are i tend to take a look at the social cost benefit ratio which sounds kind of callous but uh
it's basically you know it what what is the net the net benefit to society if you execute someone for a particular crime versus say if you lock them up for the rest of their lives or something of that sort
and in many cases i decide in favor of capital punishment in fact i think in most cases
uh and there probably be a few instances in which i would think that maybe it wasn't warranted
well well uh Kirk is capital punishment is that like death death yeah right uh-huh uh-huh
that's that's death right
and uh let's see Texas uses death by lethal injection now right
well uh the death by the electric chair uh and uh let's see the last time that i was uh privy to it death by electric chair
oh i see okay i see
um-hum you see one of our problems is down here since we were one of the later states to join
um-hum
is that uh murder was rampant i mean uh horse horse thieving and was rampant down here in the old days and i bet you can go to any town within the state and find a hanging tree
um
um-hum um-hum
um-hum
and you know you stole somebody's uh horses or uh stole their cattle that was a capital offense and you got hanged from the nearest limb if uh you know you were caught
um-hum
um-hum
so it's got goes back to the old days now i don't know about Maryland uh golly or what they did in the old days
well Maryland's a pretty complicated state
uh-huh
because it's uh
well because of its colonial you know background and then of course during the Civil War or during prior and during the Civil War it was a border state you know with half the state northern northern and half the state southern you know in sentiment and so forth
um-hum
i suspect that like most most states uh you know in the nineteenth century and so forth that they certainly had capital punishment
yeah right
uh it's not a Quaker state or something of that sort you know like Pennsylvania
right um-hum
but uh
and i as i said i think we we have a a capital murder law on the books right now i guess my feeling you know i can set up some hypothetical cases where uh
well suppose there was something uh you know a famous uh medical researcher who murdered his wife
yeah
you know now this you know the question is well what are the prospects of this medical researcher making medical break throughs that might benefit human beings in the future never mind that he murdered his wife
is that what you meant while ago uh when you said you know about about uh putting them in prison actually what you meant what kind of contribution can they make if you don't murder them
right you know and i i i think i'd have to sit down and say well what kind of contribution would they make and also what what
right uh-huh
um-hum right
do you i think another element in it in it is what kind of society do you what what message are you trying to send to society i mean like the uh
yeah
i'm i'm actually in favor of things like uh if you're going to execute somebody you uh i don't see any reason why they shouldn't televise it you know or what have you it's uh
um-hum
yeah
it uh uh you know people ought to be aware of what it is that you know what it is that they're doing and uh you know what what the sentence really means
when you uh you know if you sentence somebody to death this is what it really means just like they show you what prisons are supposedly like
um they pardon
what
well you you know you have the Christian view
uh-huh
and the Christian view is to forgive you know and uh
um-hum
and maybe try to rehabilitation rehabilitate
um-hum
and of course when you do that you know then your costs go up on that measure and those who have lost someone uh you know feel like that that uh the guy's escaped justice
um-hum
and uh so you know i can see that point too i'm just kind of the old line that uh i believe if you go out and kill your neighbor you know you can look to lose your own life
um-hum
sure uh
and and it's true that uh some people uh you know uh go out and and commit a murder and they could really uh
