|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Civis Advocatus: Richard Moore’s Death Sentence Should Be Commuted
“A question of proportionality, prejudice and political motivation…”
previous post
6 comments
You left a lot out of your defense of Mr. Moore:
He had multiple felony convictions before this incident involving robbery, weapons, and assault and battery. He beat one man so badly he was hospitalized and then repeatedly kicked his girlfriend, Michelle Crowder, in the head while robbing her. He assaulted and robbed Valerie Wisniewski while she was working in her shoe store. There is at least 1 other assault and battery of a high and aggravated charge that he plead guilty to out there from another attack on a woman.
In the assault, robbery and murder of James Mahoney, the store clerk of the “zippy mart” that Moore chose to rob, he killed James Mahoney and tried to kill Terry Hadden, a customer in the store. After killing Mahoney and trying to kill Hadden, he stole $1,400 and dripping blood from his gun fight with Mahoney he headed off to buy some crack cocaine.
It’s pretty easy to be a model prisoner when you’re locked down and under supervision 24 hours a day. It’s very difficult to be a “dedicated father to two extremely bright and successful adult children, and now a loving grandfather” from prison – in fact, I would submit that it’s probably the fact that he was in prison that allowed his children to be successful.
The death penalty, assuming it is properly applied to an indisputably guilty defendant, does not “perpetuate a cycle of violence” – particularly when the defendant has a long preexisting violent rap sheet, as the Colonel appears to point out. The death penalty most assuredly ends the defendant’s cycle of violence. and while rehabilitation and restoration should be considered for some classes of defendants – perhaps the bank robber, the auto thief, the petty drug dealer, there have to be limits. The willful murderer who has been previously arrested for multiple violent crimes is beyond those limits.
I could not agree more with both of you ( Colonel and Catfish ) however having investigated numerous murders in my career there are problems with the death penalty. I have seen more brutal murders than this one get a life sentence. That all comes down to a lot of things but mainly the final opinion of those twelve jurors. We must remember it takes a unanimous decision by all twelve. Some are allowed to plead to a life sentence to avoid the expense of the trial process. Then if the subject is sentenced to death the appeals process drags it out for sometime. In this case over twenty years before it is carried out. Hell with all the shootings going on now in the Columbia area I dont think it is a deterrent to violent crime or murder. The prisons are all over crowded now and it is not going to get better in my opinion.
NEXT!!!
Wow, this article is nothing but nonsense. Mr. Moore deserves his earthly punishment. Through faith in Jesus he can spend eternity in paradise.
This has to be one of the stupidest opinions I have read as of late. Only a liberal lawyer could grasp so many straws. smh..