Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on March 14, 2007

Click here to view bill details.

Maybe this will free up some prison space!!!

i thought you said this bill was DEAD??? I GUESS YOU WERE WRONG. it is the will of the people, and more importantly,the will of the representatives of the people. come on, let's hear your wailing, moaning, and gnashing of teeth now.

I think it would be a big step in the wrong direction for MI to bring back the death penalty. Numerous studies have shown that the death penalty costs more than life in prison (think about all the appeals and due process that must take place with death penalty that is extremely costly). Also, it is not been shown to be a deterent to crime. The cost of managing the cases, the equipment, etc. would cost our state a bundle which we can hardly afford. Better solution would be to have more reform policies in prision and try to cut down our recidivism rate and rehabilitate rather than just "jail" them. Every death penalty class and case I studied shows it is not a good way to manage crime or prision population or costs.

are simply a way of determining the facts, and whether or not the poor unfortunate murder's rights have been infringed in any way. yes, it IS expensive, but not nearly so as keeping the murderer alive at our expense for the rest of his life. now, if our resident liberal is true to form, he will quote some unsubstantiated figure taken from a liberal website. it will tell of costs as high as 24 million per execution, then it will tell of other costs as high as 114 million per execution. the problem with these figures is that they both come from the same state, california. the OTHER problem with these figures is that they are false. the anti-death penalty movement is rampant on the internet, and they keep trying to find their 'holy grail'. a factually innocent inmate who was executed. they have not found one yet. until then, they keep spouting about how horrible it is to 'hold down a poor defensless inmate and murder him'. they will not speak of the victims, and how they were killed in this debate, focusing instead on the 'poor subdued murderer' they love so well. they will assume every murderer to be innocent, a victim himself, plucked from his hearth and home to be murdererd by the state. all this to garner your sympathy for the murderer. without this 'special sympathy', they are just murderers. yes, they are human beings, with rights, but they took it upon themselves to snuff out AT LEAST ONE human life, willfully, with malice aforethought. as of now, michigan doesn't have the stomach to put heinous murderers to death. it's time we changed that.

on death penalty cases?? what's your major? or are you an academic? either way, you sound like >carrot-top<, and i know that he is not that educated, nor does he 'study' anything. if you are him, you need to go back to class, and not at some liberal bastion of society, but in the REAL WORLD. by the way, please try not to use the same bogus figures THIS time that you used LAST time. we've been over that already.

how many 'INNOCENT' murderers are currently incarcerated in michigan, which does not offer access to such an appeals process? i imagine, what with very limited, and very slanted judicial revue, that there are SEVERAL.

at 38,000 a year, we should be able to afford several rehabilitation programs in our prisons, but we can't. other states do. why can't we? rehabilitation will not help the murderer because we do not intend to let him back out onto society anyway, at least not on purpose. they get sentenced to life in prison without the probablility of parole. the only way they can get out early is to be pardoned. let off. allowed to 'get away with murder'. i don't see jennie sticking her neck out, offering pardons to murderers, do you? even she, obviously, doesn't think that added rehabilitation programs would help. rehabilitation is not an issue for a death penalty murder case, guilt has already been established, and the only choice is life in prison without parole, or the death penalty. either way, the inmate will not be released so wasting my money on putting him in a rehabilitation program is unacceptable. there are those, like >carrot-top< who will profess that ALL KILLING IS WRONG, but will not bat an eye at putting a murderer into jail at our great expense until he is dead.

jumped right on this one. see messages 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 for starters. the TROLL already is flooding this thread with its posts, several of them baiting other people. it is the TROLL's meat-and-potatoes kind of issue. do not respond to the TROLL's posts.

the death penalty opponents DIDN'T quote this interesting little figure. putting ONE inmate to death saved the state of california over TWO MILLION in tax dollars over keeping him alive at public expense. TWO MILLION times each and every convicted murderer in this state is A LOT OF MONEY. just the savings from ONE execution would allow us to keep one inmate in jail for 52+ years, or 52 inmates in jail for one year. lowering the cost per inmate that the state pays would save us even more money.

DON'T think for yourselves. you just keep right on toeing the liberal party line. i personally don't care what our resident troll says, speak your mind. he certainly does. you can either support the death penalty, or support the murderer for the rest of his life. which would YOU rather.

"Every death penalty class and case I studied shows it is not a good way to manage crime or prision population or costs." the death penalty is not designed to manage crime, nor is it intended to manage either prison population, OR costs. these subjects are being 'inserted' into this debate to step away from the REAL issue. PUNISHMENT. the death penalty is the ULTIMATE punishment. designed to be used against the ULTIMATE CRIMINAL, the heinous murderer. not just your average, run of the mill murderer, but the killing machines we are seeing more and more often lately. the mandatory appeal process that death penalty defendants must go through is NOT perfect, but it is SO perfect at weeding out the innocent and punishing the guilty that the only way liberals can see to 'improve' it is to abolish it completely. this shows that their true intent is not to punish the inmate, (showing how soft they are on crime and criminals,) but to FORCE this state to continue to feed, house and clothe multiple murderers at the expense of the taxpayer, to the tune of $38,000 per inmate per year. or $104.10 a DAY.

"Capital punishment California style has become a small industry. Every February, organizers with the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice and California Public Defenders Assn. host a conference on death penalty issues in Monterey, Calif. This year's convention, titled "Executing Justice, not People," was held at a cost of $300 a head. More than 1,500 participants attended workshops on topics that included "What the Enemy Is Doing" and "Sexual Abuse of Our Clients When They Were Young." Among the tactics routinely discussed by attendees is how to prolong appeals. " lets see... 300 bucks a head, tims 1500 STATE PAID ATTORNEYS, that makes $450,000.00 of california tax money going to learning how to COST CALIFORNIANS MORE MONEY. i wonder how many michigan public attorneys go to these same type of conventions?

Society has always used punishment to discourage would-be criminals from unlawful action. Since society has the highest interest in preventing murder, it should use the strongest punishment available to deter murder, and that is the death penalty. If murderers are sentenced to death and executed, potential murderers will think twice before killing for fear of losing their own life. For years, criminologists analyzed murder rates to see if they fluctuated with the likelihood of convicted murderers being executed, but the results were inconclusive. Then in 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies. Moreover, even if some studies regarding deterrence are inconclusive, that is only because the death penalty is rarely used and takes years before an execution is actually carried out. Punishments which are swift and sure are the best deterrent. The fact that some states or countries which do not use the death penalty have lower murder rates than jurisdictions which do is not evidence of the failure of deterrence. States with high murder rates would have even higher rates if they did not use the death penalty. Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: "Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks." Finally, the death penalty certainly "deters" the murderer who is executed. Strictly speaking, this is a form of incapacitation, similar to the way a robber put in prison is prevented from robbing on the streets. Vicious murderers must be killed to prevent them from murdering again, either in prison, or in society if they should get out. Both as a deterrent and as a form of permanent incapacitation, the death penalty helps to prevent future crime.

Certainly is the resident internet TROLL’s bread and butter. Among one of this forum TROLL’s favorite techniques is to flood the board with its posts. Among the first 13 comments posted in this thread, we can count at least 9 produced by the TROLL. Look at posts 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 in this thread for examples of the TROLL’s work. The TROLL’s posts are worth recognizing for what they are for the purpose of ignoring them and to keep the thread from being mired down in the TROLL’s games.

Recognition of the real truth about the death penalty is rapidly emerging and increasing across the nation. Public and political support for the death penalty is waning, especially when the penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is provided as an alternative punishment for heinous crimes. Twelve states do not impose death sentences as a matter of law or constitutional prohibition; another two are operating under official moratoriums on execution; its own supreme court has declared unconstitutional the death penalty statute in another. Executions have recently been halted in 11 states, due to issues involving lethal injection. Bills to abolish the death penalty have been introduced in the legislatures of 13 states. An abolition bill in Maryland just recently was stalled in a state senate committee by a tie vote. One in Montana passed the state’s senate but was defeated in the state house of reps. A distinctly neutral and bipartisan panel that studied and held public hearings on the death penalty in New Jersey has recommended legislation to abolish the death penalty in that state. The New Jersey study commission conclusions are instructive because they reflect the state of real knowledge regarding the death penalty as it actually is applied in the United States today. In reaching its recommendation for abolition, the panel concluded that the death penalty is extraordinarily costly to administer; that it cannot be shown to create a deterrent to crime; that it in fact prolongs the pain of a crime victim’s surviving family and friends instead of providing healing closure in a timely manner; and that it creates an enormous and unacceptable risk of innocent persons being executed by the state. Conclusions reached in New Jersey are consistent with those arising from every serious examination of the death penalty in America during recent years. The balance of competing values invariably weighs heavily against the death penalty and in favor of other forms of punishment. Michigan does have and does not need the death penalty in its criminal code. Our state's constitutional prohibition against it should remain intact. HJR F should die in committee, as its predecessor did last year. It is out of step with the times.

the FIRST post on this particular thread was from an OPPONENT. i notice the same plethora of falsehoods brought forward THIS time as were brought forward LAST time. don't you guys have any TRUTH in you?

determine why it wanted to abolish the death penalty, nor could it pinpoint where the money it SAID was being spent actually went. in other words, they were simply venting HOT AIR. california voted OVERWHELMINGLY to restore the death penalty,and i believe that if the PEOPLE of this state were asked to vote on this issue, they would too. the last legislature failed to put this issue before the people. i believe that this is bacause the liberals fear it's passage if put to a popular vote.

dropping from 68 percent in favor of the death penalty to 65 percent in favor of the death penalty is waning... NOT. in true michigander style, i'll tell you that if you don't want to live in a state with the death penalty, you should MOVE.

a european based polling firm did a survey of murder rates/methods of punishment worldwide. it amazed them that the united states was not on the 'top ten' list for the highest murder rates on the planet. it also amazed them that when the facts and figures were totalled up, the trend that came out was that whenever and where evr there were MORE executions, there were FEWER murders. this study encompassed twelve years of data. this study is not even mentioned by opponents, as it tends to prove them wrong.

the TRUTH. only pay attention to falsified facts and figures supplied to you by the liberal wing of the democratic party. THEY want you to have murderers living among you. THEY will discount you as soon as you become a victim to one of those murders. THEY will accuse YOU of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. THEY will forgive THE MURDERER for his deeds, but they WILL NOT forgive you for allowing yourself to be killed by him. lets put this issue TO A VOTE.

by the same firm also discovered, much to their chagrin, that wherever and when ever there is the liberalization of GUN LAWS, especially those concerning concealed carry by civilians, that the murder rate drops considerably. hmmm.... criminals fear death by armed citizens, but NOT death by 'the state'. that's what the liberals would have you believe. does that make sense? NO.

we see that our resident internet TROLL continues its thread flooding tactics, now accounting for at least 13 out of 19 posts on this topic. The latest detected TROLL posts in this thread are nos. 15, 17, 18 and 19. previously detected TROLL posts in this thread are 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12.

appeals and due process. they are all guaranteed by the constitution. would the liberals wish to change the constitution? they see the twenty or so year time span between sentencing and execution as a GOOD THING. there are thousands of cases where it takes, on average, FOUR YEARS for a convicted inmate to even get appointed legal council. they see that as a GOOD THING. streamlining the process, expediting hearings, setting realistic time constraints, and curtailing 'frivolous' filings would certainly go a long way in shortening the time span between sentencing and execution. heaven knows that our murderers here don't have access to any of these due processes, yet we pay some of the highest per inmate costs in the nation. it seems that we have two things 'out of control' here, murderers and spending.

can FINALLY COUNT. we're just SO PROUD... he can't READ the posts, or understand what they say, but he can certainly COUNT them over and over. what's going to happen when he runs out of "troll piddies"?

boy.. he managed to slip off one shoe, and not lose count. amazing.

already! we see that our resident internet TROLL is very quick on the spew and send button in its efforts to flood this thread. before he last tally even could even be posted the TROLL had cranked out three more posts, numbered 20, 21, 23 and 24 here. The TROLL thereby accounted for 16 out of 24 posts in this thread (unless it sneaks in a few more before this can be sent). earlier examples of the TROLL’s work can be examined in posts number 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 17, 18 and 19.

show us how effective 'life in prison' is lowering murder rates in detroit and flint.

troll helping him, holding up 'troll piddies' for him to count. how many trolls does it take to count posts? why isn't he giving us the REASONS why they think that murderers deserve to live after they heinously take innocent lives. this is a question still unanswered by the troll from LAST YEAR. the answer is simple, but i want to hear it from the troll himself. they will say that all killing is bad, but they put inmates into cells to die every day. they 'restrain' murderers every day, allowing them to languish in a cell on our dime until the grim reaper decides to come and take them. they are PROUDLY HIPOCRITICAL, PROUDLY IGNORANT, AND PROUDLY LIBERAL.

faced with the prospect of telling the truth, the silence is deafening from under the bridge. not answering says, loud and clear, that there is no good reason for murderers to live. that is a point for the death penalty. answering with a vague, or misleading answer says, loud and clear, that by telling the truth directly, they would be shown to be liars or worse. another point for the death penalty. answering with rhetoric from the liberal wing of the democratic party says, loud and clear, that the poster has no independent opinion on this issue and is simply following the 'party line'. yet another point for the death penalty. you, troll, may not agree with the death penalty, but you cannot deny that the current system of life without parole isn't working. (well, you CAN, but you would be lying.)

booms out "LOUD AND CLEAR" from under the bridge.

from the left. it's amazing that their fingers are all over the keyboard until it's time to TELL THE TRUTH. let's see what devious tactic they try next.

This is an immoral idea. I oppose it vehemently.

so, it is moral to support murderers on my tax dollars, but not moral to put them to death for their crimes?

into a $38,000 dollar a year 'old murderers home'. let's provide them all the comforts of home. let's provide them geriatric care till we decide it's enough and let them die. they have broken the law. the law (and the people) say they must be punished. why are you against that?

silent. no reasoning for his dedication to coddling murderers at our expense. no reasoning for his dedication that all murderers must live. no reasoning for his dedication that we must all support and nuture every murderer for the rest of their natural lives. they will tell you that life in prison is harsh. what they won't tell you is that life in prison without parole is also JUST HARSH ENOUGH for burglars who are caught twice, rapists, and armed robbers. if life in prison without parole is SO HARSH, why is it also given to these lesser criminals? it says, LOUD AND CLEAR that the true motive of the opponents is NOT to punish heinous murderers, but to coddle them. it says, LOUD AND CLEAR that murder is now LESS of a crime, that the people that were murderered are LESS THAN CITIZENS, that their lives are LESS IMPORTANT THAN THE MURDERER'S. opponents of this bill don't have to say a word, their ACTIONS speak LOUDLY AND CLEARLY for them.

WHY do you oppose the death penalty? please define the system of morals (right and wrong) that allow you to believe that one who would kill MAY kill AND we must keep him alive and well for the rest of his life as punishment. we are being DOUBLY punished, once for having one of us, a law abiding citizen murdered, and once again for having to keep our law abiding citizen's murderer alive. is this what your morals tells you is RIGHT?

when caine killed able, God did not kill him immediately, he marked caine. that mark told the people not to touch caine, to leave him alone. that God would deal with him when all was said and done. God made caine WAIT for justice. God made caine THINK about what God had in store for him. God made caine BEG for justice to come upon him. God only saw fit to do this ONCE. God holds vengeance unto himself, but he allows his people JUSTICE. why don't we?

are still silent. none have come up with ANY reasoning for their beliefs that the murderers of our innocent citizens must be coddled and nurtured for the rest of their lives. why can't they? because THERE IS NO GOOD REASON.

It seems this is a quick answer to overcrowding etc. but it's not. Don't bring the death penalty back to Michigan. Do the research, it's costly and a step in the wrong direction. Come on Michigan!