A recent Gallup Poll showed that support for the death penalty has declined recently, but is sit supported by a majority of Americans. Now two new polls show the same thing. According to the Rasmussen Poll, about 57% of Americans support the death penalty -- and a new YouGov Poll had the approval even higher, at about 65%.
This support remains high even though most of the civilized world no longer puts people to death, and it puts us in the company of such countries as Iran, China, Iraq, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia (company I'm not at all comfortable with being compared to). And the fact that dozens of people on death row have been found to have been innocent (and innocent people have undoubtably been executed) seems to have had no effect on support for the death penalty in this country.
Frankly, that sounds like a pretty blood-thirsty country to me. And if you don't agree, just look at the chart below -- when people were asked if they would still support the death penalty if the person being executed gasped for breath for 20 minutes and was in severe pain before finally succumbing to death (as has happened a couple of times recently). Amazingly, about half of Americans would still support the death penalty (49%).
And if that's not blood-thirsty enough for you, the You Gov Poll also asked about water boarding -- and even though 66% of Americans said they thought water boarding was torture, more than one out of four Americans (27%) said they would be willing to personally water board someone suspected of being a terrorist. Note that says suspected terrorist, and not someone proven to have committed a terrorist act.
Is it any wonder that most of the rest of the world is afraid of this country?
I would have been very happy if that particular individual had choked and gasped for several *hours*, if not *days*! Of course, because your reading is confined to the liberal-dominated MSM who spent all their efforts bewailing the execution you will not have known the full details of his crime. Allow me:
ReplyDelete"In 1999, Lockett and two confederates broke into Bobby Bornt's house to rob him. Bornt recognized Lockett as the man he had hired a few weeks earlier to cover a tattoo.
Lockett savagely beat Bornt for 15 minutes with a shotgun, as Bornt's 9-month old son wailed in the next room. The three men bound Bornt's hands together with duct tape and set about searching his home for something to steal. Indeed, Lockett pushed Bornt off the couch, complaining that he was bleeding too much into what he called "my couch."
About that time, Bornt's friend, Summer Hair, showed up to invite him to a party. The thieves pulled her inside, threw her against a wall and hit her, holding a gun to her head until she called her friend waiting in the truck outside, to tell her to come inside. That was Stephanie Neiman.
Stephanie walked in, and she, too, was beaten until she relinquished the keys to her truck. All three victims were locked in the bedroom with Bornt's infant child, while Lockett and Co. ransacked the home, pausing only to pull Hair out and gang-rape her. One of Lockett's crew orally sodomized her, then vaginally raped her. Lockett raped her vaginally, anally and orally.
Lockett directed one of his conspirators to steal a shovel from Bornt, loaded them all up in Bornt and Neiman's trucks and drove to a remote area. Lockett took Hair from one of the trucks and again raped her vaginally and orally. He returned her to the truck, where the third man forced her to perform oral sex on him.
(Let's pause here to reflect on The New York Times' hysteria over hazy date rape allegations by drunk coeds on college campuses.)
Lockett demanded that his victims promise not to tell the police what he had done. Bornt and Hair promised, but Stephanie would not, so he yanked her out of the truck and directed one of his confederates to start digging a grave.
(He later told the police that he wanted to kill all three adult victims so that his parole officer wouldn't find out he had left the county.)
Stephanie stood by the grave being dug for her for 20 minutes. Lockett shot her, but his gun jammed. So he walked back to the truck to fix it, listening to Stephanie cry, "Oh God! Please! Please!" The three men laughed at her.
Then he returned and shot her again. But Stephanie was still breathing -- so Lockett told the others to bury her anyway. She coughed as dirt was heaped on her face. She was buried alive."
No one is trying to justify this man's crime. It was horrible, and he deserved to be severely punished. But that can be done without stooping to his murderous level -- as your own country has shown.
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