Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on January 10, 2007

Click here to view bill details.

I personally have read about scores of cases where kids were sent to prison for life and there adult counterpart who alot of times is guilty of the actual crime recieve less time than the juveniles who were just accessories.This law is well over due I mean we should not tie the hands of our courts with such rigid sentecing guidelines, diffferent cases and people warrant different punishments.I don't think we live in one size fits all world.

we already have mandatory sentencing guidelines in place that do exactly that, and then there are the guidelines that STOP the judges from doing exactly that. this is what happens when we try to legislate our problems away.

what happens when a juvenile goes on a killing spree? or when a juvenile starts selling drugs that poison other children? or when a juvenile wakes up one day with that irresistable urge to set his parents on fire? i haven't just read about these things, i've been to the crime scenes. i've worked the cases. maybe YOU want these kids released back upon us after a few years in hardened criminal university, but i don't.

It's about time our law maker have woke up. I support this bill and thank God we have we have people with common sense in our goverment who realize that is the reason we call them junvenils

tying the judges hands with mandatory sentences, then, in the next breath, you take away the very means of punishment that work best to keep the most heinous out of society. if parents don't want their precious children getting life in prison without parole, they need to keep them from murdering in the first place.

I understand that kids do terrible crimes and some kids may deserve life in prison.I just think that should be a option for a judge or jury not the must.I think our courts should have more room to examine a case and see if it merits life without parole.I mean I'm interested in justice.I read the reports on incarceration in America and we jail more people than any other country in the world and we are fourth on executions only China,Iran,and Saudia Arabia surpass our execution rate.The problem is as I said before it's not a one size fits all world. I have never seen any madatory sentcing guidelines work, the courts need the room to determine what's best for the person and society as a whole.

"common sense". I call it idiocy. Let's see if you still think this is "common sense" when a family member is beaten to death by a poor disadvantaged 17 year old. If you want "common sense" bring back the death penalty and be done with it. And no, 16 and 17 year olds should not be immune from that either.

a death penalty proponent in michigan???? whoo'da ever thunk it??? good to hear from you... we need more like you.

imagine what the libs will do with four years to think about it...

life in prison and the "adult" criminal getting a lesser sentence scenario would involve several stupidities. 1. the adult would have to convince the juveline to do the crime in the first place. 2. the adult would have to convince the juvenile to take the rap for those crimes, knowing that he could get life without parole. 3. the juvenile would have to be stupid enough, not to mention gullible enough to agree to the first two. now, i am the first to admit that SOME of the juveniles in this state are both stupid enough and gullible enough to make this work, but not ALL of them. i personally don't feel sorry for them if they are. by the way, if your jails are full of stupid, gullible juveniles, that means that your STATE is full of stupid, gullible juveniles. stupid and gullible juvenile offenders grow up to be either lifers in prison, or stupid, gullible ADULT offenders. either way, i have no problem with putting heinous juvenile offenders away for the rest of their lives. you would think that the DETERRENT EFFECT of life in prison would be enough to counteract this stupidity and gullibility, but DETERRENCE doesn't work on the stupid.

I am for the death penalty with one stipulation: no excuses if you kill somebody we don't care what your reason was...you too must be killed therefore those who pass this legislation must also die.

let's do all the murderers first.

is exactly Locke's point.

capital punishment is murder by the state on poor unfortunate multiple murderers?

The poster called Locke says murder is murder, no matter who does it, and all must be punished. Quite simple.

is every killing murder?

so, why aren't we punishing the murderers we have now? i don't consider life in prison without parole to be a very harsh punishment, especially when i have to pick up the tremendous tab.

rally round the liberal interpretation of every word in the english language. murder= the killing of any "innocent criminal" no matter how many innocent people they may have killed. innocent people= meaningless statistics that are to be ignored at all costs. innocent criminal= highest form of life for a liberal, there is nothing that a liberal wouldn't do to spare one's life. murder by a murderer= just what murderers do, nothing more than an inconvenience. murder by the state= the most heinous form of murder for a liberal. victim= a conservative myth, a non-existant entity to place precious murderers in jeopardy of being executed by a blood-thirsty state.

killing is murder. that's why the state condones self defense. that's taking the murder of murderers into your own hands. if you've read the previous threads, you'll undoubtedly get a giggle at the way certain death penalty opponents "played with words" and said that killing in self defense was "moral and legal" but killing as a punishment for multiple killings is not. if all killing is murder, as our poster is trying to make the other poster's position sound, then self defense is murder. period. you can't have it both ways. oh, by the way, if every killing is murder... so is abortion. own your words liberals. stick to your guns liberals. stop lying liberals.

letting locke reply for himself (herself?)

let's kill all the abortion advocates first, then we can go about killing the legislators who prefer the death penalty, after that, we can kill all concealed weapon permit holders. next, we can kill all cops, they carry guns and shoot murderers, so they must be murderers too. after this, we won't have to point the guns at ourselves, as the rest of the murderers will be more than willing to kill us off for free. locke, if only you understood how silly your position sounds, you'd retract it immediately. you sound like a famous death penalty opponent who will remain nameless.

"I am for the death penalty with one stipulation: [N]o excuses[.] [I]f you kill somebody we don't care what your reason was...you too must be killed[.]" Wow! The inability to think is, once again, on parade. The justification driving capital punishment has one of punishment. That's been pretty much obvious to everyone on this site. One might argue about the viability of the punishment as a deterrence, its feasibility based on the cost of its implementation or its justifiability based on retribution. But the fact that you are apparently unable to distinguish the concept of self-defense and justifiable homicide from premeditated murder renders your opinion absolutely ridiculous. Jim Arvada, CO

another troll heard from!

idea locke did just that and eloquently

Jim said: "The justification driving capital punishment has one of punishment. That's been pretty much obvious to everyone on this site. One might argue about the viability of the punishment as a deterrence, its feasibility based on the cost of its implementation or its justifiability based on retribution." Don't forget the demonstrable probability that innocent persons will be executed. That raises a fundamental question about justice.

Sure. That's a legitimate position. I might use the word "possible" as opposed to "probable," and we may disagree overall, but at least you've got a rational thought there. I just take issue with Locke's silliness: "[I]f you kill somebody we don't care what your reason was...you too must be killed[.]" That's just far left zealotry. Jim Arvada, CO

showing one demonstrable INSTANCE where an factually innocent man was executed? i've been asking for this for months, no one seems to be able to produce one. even our famous opponent. there goes your theory. COULD it happen? no. DOES it happen? NO.

trying to get us to believe that there are no factually innocent men in prison at all for any other crime, but there are hoards of factually innocent men marched off to the death chamber? please, i know you were educated in michigan public schools, but you CAN'T be that ignorant.

your cool logic may have touched more than my wild ravings. at least we agree again.

how many liberals stood up to "speak for locke". locke didn't want to speak up for himself, and still hasn't. now that the liberal zealotry has been exposed for what it truly is, the liberals don't want to speak for it now either. leave it to a liberal to confuse sillyness for eloquence.

is extremely conservative

do you know? doesn't sound very conservative to me. let's hear more from locke and find out for ourselves. i'd like to ask locke a few questions about his theory about murder.

is the model conservative

"model conservative"? with the inability to distinguish between murder and self defense, it certainly isn't mine. it may be a liberal's idea of a "model conservative" though, as in a conservative who thinks like a liberal.

is the prototypical conservative

what makes you think, in so few words that you have read, that the elusive locke is the prototypical conservative? explain yourself.

is a master conservative

still not answering questions, i see. that's okay, nobody wants to hear your opinion anyway.

that must make me more right-wing than john wayne.