Crime & Punishment / Evidence vs. Proof
Here’s one subject where I will be so bold as to challenge the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. Okay, they did it right but our legal system has morphed into a circus they could not have imagined when it comes to the death penalty.
If you commit capital or 1st degree murder, you’re outta here.
If you commit manslaughter, a PROMPT trial should gather all the facts and testimony to get you into or out of jail. The two charges cannot be confused. Charges get trumped up in the media and the courts react by trying to make a strong statement on crime. Conversely, plea bargains are cut all the time for brutal murderers who will now be treated with all the courtesy of a Sunday School picnic.
Is it murder or not?

We all know O.J., but does anybody remember Colin Ferguson? Stay with me on this…
If you think O.J is innocent, you’re simply an idiot. The problem I had was when they started talking about the death penalty for him. There is a mountain of evidence against him and most of it is beyond question. Okay, the cops didn’t do a perfect job gathering and preserving the evidence but I dare you to try to boil a pot of water correctly with that much scrutiny and not screw it up. The snag is the lack of proof.
Get it?
Evidence, no matter how much you collect, is but an indication of what likely happened. Everybody scratches their head and says “well, I dunno, it kinda looks like…” while proof is concrete. You KNOW, beyond any doubt, and anybody could see the proof and tell you the same. Was Al Cowlings with O.J., maybe helping him? I doubt it, but who knows? No witnesses and no PROOF. He should sit in maximum security with the general population until he gets tired of being somebody’s girlfriend and decides to talk. We don’t know everything there is to know yet. If he ever confesses, corroborates the evidence, and circumstances come to light to lessen his sentence, so be it. If not, screw him. Oh, yeah, his “husband” will take care of that.

To understand the value of proof, consider this;
Colin Ferguson was a Jamaican immigrant in New York City who hated Whites, Asians and “Uncle Tom” Blacks. He had all kinds of troubles in his life and by his mid thirties had reached the end of his rope. He had worked for a burglar alarm company until an injury on the job ended his glorious career. A paltry $25,000 insurance settlement would not last long and he filed appeals that failed to net him any more cash. His last letter of rejection arrived on December 7th of 1993 and prompted him to get on the train to Long Island and wait until it left the city limits so his planned actions would not embarrass then Mayor David Dinkins. He pulls out his 9mm Ruger (legally purchased in California, of all states) when the train enters Nassau County and proceeds to shoot 25 people of his choosing in a railcar crowded with about 100 people. He did this very methodically, with six of the victims ultimately losing their lives. As he paused to reload, he was jumped and restrained by three men still able to do something in spite of the carnage and panic. So a workers comp case didn’t go his way and this 5:33 train to Hicksville, New York was the one frequently used by the Chairwoman of the State Workers Compensation Board.
That’ll show ‘em.

He showed no remorse at all and would tell anyone who would listen how this unfair world had done him so wrong. He was kept in protective custody, out of the general population for fear he would be harmed due to his habit of throwing out racial slurs. One of his victims was a 27 year old widow who had moved out of the city to live in a “safer” suburb. During trial, he fired his defense team (they were costing him nothing) and acted as his own counsel. He spoke of himself in the third person when questioning his victims, as if he hadn’t been there at all, and made a joke of the court. His bombshell defense was the assertion that he fell asleep on the train and a mysterious man took the gun and loaded magazines from his bag on the floor. I suppose all the gunfire did not wake him in time to reclaim his “stolen” weapon. He was given six life sentences and remains in prison at a cost of nearly $100,000 a year.

Back to the train;
There were dozens of witnesses and he was restrained RIGHT THERE by his OWN VICTIMS until the cops boarded the train and placed him in custody. They had to pull him over the bodies of his victims to get him out of the railcar. This page alone contains all the PROOF you need to sentence him to death. Today. No appeals, no whining, no jailhouse religious conversions. Just give him a preacher, and then give him a bullet. Well, the goody-goody Liberals of New York had stricken down the death penalty in their Utopian Paradise and it was not a legal option in the state at that time. They have since rethought this position but it is not retroactive. Darn.

Now, the case against evidence. Another guilty bastard that should NOT get the death penalty yet is Scott Peterson. Like O.J., all the evidence in the case indicates he killed his pregnant wife Laci and, of course, his unborn son. Proof, however, is not readily apparent in this case. It was just before Christmas and she was 8 months pregnant. Hormones and holidays likely made her tough to live with, especially if she found out about his habit of boning Amber Frey. He dug himself into a deep hole and probably was gonna get his butt vacuumed out in a really ugly divorce, due entirely to his own actions. Problem is, we don’t know anything for sure. Put him in the slammer until he talks, but don’t kill him until you KNOW what happened and can rest assured he acted alone. Once dead, he can never implicate anybody else who may have aided him and they would forever escape justice. I hate to think we would reward him (or O.J.) for being slick enough to cover up a murder, and at first it kinda looks that way. In a very real sense, the criminals who are smart, calculating, wealthy or just lucky are the ones who always escape justice anyway. Still, he should remain alive and have each new day to decide if he wants to offer the court anything new.

Again, the value of proof.
Clara Harris is the affluent dentist from Friendswood, Texas who found out her dentist husband was messing around with his “assistant” and spent months in a valiant effort to save her marriage. She had scheduled breast implant surgery, bleached her hair blonde (she’s Hispanic) and started a punishing workout regimen to compete with a much younger woman. She knew exactly what her weak areas were and what to improve because he had told her in brutal detail.
The night he was supposed to break off the affair, he instead went to a hotel on the shore of Clear Lake. His 16 year old daughter, from his previous marriage, was with her step mom Clara when they tracked him down. She called his cell phone, made up a story about one of the twin 5 year old boys he fathered with Clara being sick, and they waited in the lobby until he came out of the elevator. Of course, his “assistant” was with him and a cat fight from hell ensued in the hotel lobby. The daughter slapped him as well, screaming that she hated him. Security broke it up, police were called, and each party was heading to the parking lot.
The idiot husband chose to walk with the “assistant” to her vehicle, instead of his wife and daughter, which may have sealed his fate. He found that her SUV had been rammed and vandalized. Here comes Clara, with his daughter in the passenger seat of her Mercedes, and runs over her him. He was dragged a substantial distance beneath the car. Making a big circle over curbs and bushes, she did it again. Then a third time. The cops, already in route for the cat fight, were there in minutes. It was all captured on security video. 
When she got out of her car, she proclaimed it to be an accident. She offered no help or sympathy to her horribly disfigured husband and he would remain conscious until arriving at the hospital, only to die a short time later.
One can imagine the mental state of his 16 year old daughter at this point. Clara’s life had been shattered and he was certainly a first rate ass, but she did not have to murder him. Divorce was created for exactly this sort of situation. All the proof in the world and she’s still alive.

Andrea Yates, right up the street in Clear Lake is probably the best example of all the proof you need. In June of 2001, she drowned all five of her kids in the bathtub and then called her husband who worked nearby at NASA. She told him he needed to come home, then hung up and called the police to let them know what she had just done. She was wet and breathing heavily when the first officer arrived and immediately told him she had just killed her children. She showed the officer to the bed where she had placed the soaking wet bodies of her four youngest children. She mentioned nothing of the oldest boy who, at age seven, was the final victim. The officer found that one on his own, still floating in the bath tub. She readily admitted to suffering from post-partum depression after the 4th birth and had another child at the insistence of her equally nutty husband. Was she insane? Who cares?!!! She just killed five children because she felt they would be better off in Heaven than being raised by a failed mother. A sane person doesn’t do that. Why is she still alive?
First, it was murder. Second, it was five counts. Third, they were NOT adults. Kill ANYBODY less than 10 years of age and you should fry. Fourth, she was their mother. You know, the one person in this world who would never harm you is your mother, right? Fifth, she confessed immediately and was found to have been on psychoactive drugs for years to control her zany behavior. What more do we need?
Her convictions were overturned by the state of Texas. If THEY can't kill her in Texas, this nation has truly lost it.