Death Penalty – Coast Contact

A driver plowed a rental van through a crowd of pedestrians on a busy Toronto sidewalk Monday, killing 10 and injuring 15, in Canada’s worst mass killing in almost three decades.

Capital punishment was removed from the Canadian Criminal Code in 1976. It was replaced with a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole for 25 years for all first-degree murders.

After the killing spree on Yonge Street will there be a change in attitude about capital punishment in Canada? I have no idea. Canadians are peace loving people.

California does have a capital punishment law. Killers are sentenced to death. As of Aug 24, 2017 there were 747 people in their “death row.” Due to delays and legal challenges, the state hasn’t executed a prisoner more than a decade. Only 13 men have been put to death since capital punishment was restored in 1978.

Clearly California really does not put killers to death. Giving those killers a death sentence probably gives satisfaction to the families that lost loved ones to killers. Is that a good enough reason to keep the law in place? It has been said that Death row inmates have a greater likelihood of dying of old age than actually facing their death through a lethal injection.

A total of 57 countries retain the death penalty law, according to Amnesty, while executions were recorded in 23 nations in their statistics for 2016.

My belief is that if death penalties were actually carried out in a timely manner (trial – found guilty – limited delay for trial errors – limited delay for claims of innocents) then there would be less killing.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been sentenced to death. It took six years to execute Timothy McVeigh after he was found guilty of killing 168 people, including 19 children at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Massachusetts isn’t OK with the death penalty (under state law no one has been executed since 1947), but Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s outrageous crime may have changed the minds of many Massachusetts citizens. Which brings up the question under what circumstances is the death penalty justified? Is it multiple killings or the savagery of the killings or is that the killer shows no remorse or what else?

At the end of the day there are reasons for determining that someone has committed a crime that is so heinous that there can be no other penalty than death. Massachusians will have to make that decision just as the citizens of every state must reach a decision.

The Total Number of Death Row Inmates as of January 1, 2015: 3,019 … California, 743, Oklahoma, 49, Kansas, 10. Florida, 403, Mississippi, 48, etc.

What right do these killers have to live? The killing of even one person is justification for the death penalty with limited appeals for those found guilty.