3 states vote in favor of death penalty

Posted by | November 9, 2016 12:31 | Filed under: News Behaving Badly Politics


This is not a good sign for abolishing government-sponsored killing.

Last night, Nebraska voted to bring back the death penalty. A slim majority of California voters, given the choice between abolishing state-sanctioned killing and speeding it up, opted for the latter: Proposition 66, which deprives death row inmates of certain appeals processes, passed by 51 percent. Meanwhile Proposition 62, which would have abolished a practice abandoned in all other Western countries, got only 46 percent of the vote in a state so liberal that it legalized marijuana last night.

Oklahoma, which has a less than stellar record in administering the death penalty—prison officials have a long and sordid history of botched executions—voted to entrench capital punishment in its state constitution, declaring executions free from intervention by state courts that might deem the state’s execution tactics cruel and unusual punishment.

This begs the question: how exactly do all these states plan to kill people given the shortage of lethal injection drugs?

Thanks to a successful activist campaign, mainstream pharmaceutical companies no longer provide US Departments of Correction with drugs to be used for executions. The European Union forbids the sale of death penalty drugs, so companies based in Europe have to actively ensure their drugs don’t end up in the death chamber needle; many drug manufacturers force their distributors to sign contracts pledging not to sell their drugs to US prisons for use in executions.

The lack of death penalty drugs has led states to turn to a wide array of unconstitutional and inhumane tactics. A handful of states have passed secrecy laws that shield the identities of small-scale compounding pharmacies that agree to make the drugs. Others have experimented with drug cocktails that have led to deaths “akin in level of pain and suffering to being buried alive, burning at the stake,” death penalty critics have argued.

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Copyright 2016 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

83 responses to 3 states vote in favor of death penalty

  1. Bunya November 9th, 2016 at 13:39

    …and I’ll bet those that voted for the death penalty are also Christian fundamentalists. These are the “save the fetus/kill the baby” crowd.

    • crc3 November 9th, 2016 at 13:47

      Double standards are the norm with those fu*kers….

    • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 20:25

      It is not related. Unborn babies are innocent. They are not serial rapist-killers.

      • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 20:27

        #alllivesmatter.
        Or had you forgotten?

        • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 20:34

          I am not a twidiot.

          • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 20:46

            If you say so.
            (Odd way to insult the president-elect, though…”Twidiot”? Gotta remember that one.)
            What say you about the MANY death row inmates that have been found to be innocent of the crimes they were convicted of? Suppose (just suppose) you, or a family member, were charged and convicted of a death-penalty crime, even though you KNOW you/they didn’t do it? Would you go before the firing squad, or lay upon the gurney, secure in the knowledge that the system should work the way it does, and that the GOVERNMENT has the right to take the life of a citizen, even if they are wrong in your case?
            No, I suspect you would blubber on about your innocence and how unfair it all was, right up until the phenobarb hits you, then you would know nothing.
            (Not much of a difference from now, IMO…)

            • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:17

              True. Trump should not have been using Twitter. I do not know if it is true, but heard that his staff actually took his phone from him during the last weeks so he would not Twitter.

              • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:41

                Such fact may have elevated him to the highest office in the land.
                Which leads us to my only point in all of this; that people are unpredictable, many times untrustworthy, and often very wrong.
                “People” also run the government, state and federal.
                This is why a life sentence is, to me, better than a death sentence; people are very often wrong, and there is NO taking back a death penalty once it has been carried out.

                • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:40

                  Both candidates used Twitter. They needed votes, and there are millions of Twidiots across the nation, people who have no interest in REAL issues like corporate taxes, decentralization of education, Supreme Court nominations, etc.

                  Those are the people who are interested in grabbing sentences in which Hillary used obscenities and Trump made vulgar remarks about women. Ask them about the criteria each candidate would use for a court nomination, and they have no idea.

                  But they vote, all the same.

                  • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:26

                    AHA!
                    At last we agree!
                    Peoples is stoopid!

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:49

                      The vote should be changed in two ways:
                      1. Increase the voting age to 25.
                      2. Have a simple test to be eligible.

                • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:41

                  Yes, too bad if a mistake is made. But almost all deserve to be fried.

                  • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:25

                    “almost”
                    Hope for your sake that you’re not one of the remaining group.
                    Kinda.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:48

                      Won’t happen. I am not going to murder anyone.

                    • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:50

                      As I have stated before, your actually murdering someone isn’t a prerequisite for being arrested for said crime.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:52

                      I could get struck by lightening, too.

            • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:20

              Yes, too bad that the very few were found innocent. If one looks at their history, virtually all were degenerates, depraved. I know that does not warrant the death penalty but they sure warant upstandin’ citizens. You betcha!

              But there will be mistakes. I suspect many innocent people are in prison right now – for decades or even life.

              Yes, the state has the right to execute depraved murdering scum. Read the Constitution.

              • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:34

                ” If one looks at their history, virtually all were degenerates, depraved.”
                So, the times when these people were NOT depraved degenerates, yet were executed…these do not disturb you?
                (There was a man convicted and executed for his daughters’ deaths, in a fire that an “expert” said was clearly arson, and the police claim the man clearly started…except, no, he almost certainly did NOT start the fire, and it very likley was not arson. Imagine, although it will “surely never happen to you”, being charged,convicted, and executed for this.
                Just think on it.
                If you want to be further disturbed about the ability of government at the state OR federal level being able to kill a citizen, search “wrongful executions u.s.”

                • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:38

                  Look at their histories. In most cases they had a history of crime and depravity. Again (here we go with the repeating game!), that in itself does not warrant execution. But many dishonest and deceitful people try to present them as though they were cherubs, innocent babes in the woods.

                  • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:41

                    Again, does this mean that the murder of innocent people is justified because there are non-innocent people?

                    • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:37

                      There you go again! I did not “justify” innocent people being executed, even though it is extremely rare.

                      It is quite simple: Just because there are rare exceptions, it does not mean that it should be completely stopped. But I know that there are certain people who think that if something amiss happens, then we should make the ENTIRE NATION restrain and restrict themselves in order to prevent the remote possibility that it can happen even once again.

                    • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:33

                      Look, we cannot completely stop drunken driving, or murder, or rape; we do not have that level of control over people. Some things ARE beyond our grasp.
                      Thus, drunken driving/murder/rape will sadly always be a problem.
                      (These things are used here as examples, but I would trust you take my meaning).
                      We DO have control over who is executed within the prison system. We can control it…100%.
                      And yet, of the total number of people executed in the U.S., less than 100% are guilty.
                      Why? And why do you not see that this is a problem for FREE CITIZENS with Constitutional rights?

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:51

                      People are not executed for accidents or only rape, of course.

                      Some people should be executed.

      • Obewon November 9th, 2016 at 20:43

        ‘Four+ natural miscarriages precede each live human birth’-Facts debunk your Social Security ‘begins at conception fantasy.’ Either that or your God is an abortionist killing 30 B+ so that 7.5 B live now on Earth.

        • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:15

          Yes, there are miscarriages. Not uncommon. Cats meow also, and dogs bark.

          Any more insights?

          • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:18

            Humans kill other humans who aren’t a threat.

            • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:29

              Vicious depraved murderers deserved to be executed.

              • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:40

                Death to Cheney, then?
                He DID shoot a friend in the face, and has expressed nothing but satisfaction for causing the deaths of hundreds of U.S. service members….hell, he profited from it!
                You, citizen, are too willing to live under fascism.

                • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:34

                  It is not about Cheney, of course. But you go ahead and make a case for that. Take it to some international tribunal or court – across the Atlantic, in that Bernie Paradise.

                  • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:35

                    I’d slit his damned throat tonight, given the legal authority. Sadly, that will never be given to me.
                    Ad you will note that he cannot leave the U.S. without fear of arrest for war crimes…

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:51

                      I don’t know about Cheney.

                    • Obewon November 10th, 2016 at 01:03

                      Houston-based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton unit, pleaded guilty last year to U.S. charges that it paid $180 million in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the Niger Delta.

                      KBR and Halliburton, which was once headed by Cheney, reached a $579 million (Pleaded Guilty to USA’s largest SEC Bribery Felony Charge) settlement in the United States but Nigeria, France and Switzerland have conducted their own investigations into the case.

                      Interpol had an arrest warrant for former VP Cheney until he pleaded guilty. Haliburton shareholders payed $1.1 B+ in Bribery fines to free D!ck. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1203/Dick-Cheney-to-be-charged-in-180-million-Halliburton-bribery-case

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 01:29

                      OK, maybe Cheney is guilty of what you consider a “capital crime” and is not being duly punished. That is not a rationale for eliminating the executions of depraved, degenerate murderers, of course.

                    • Obewon November 10th, 2016 at 04:01

                      Ex-Haliburton CEO Cheney plead guilty to Felony Bribery! Leaching $1.1 B+ from shareholders to keep out of prison.

                      You know this isn’t Russia right? No US company may bribe ANY foreign or domestic firm. That violates U.S. Laws! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/55a3b46ca2f6c599aba7381a694aae43138c70093785c67e532e5dfd4dbe0338.jpg

                    • RightThinkingOne November 13th, 2016 at 18:11

                      Please pursue it in the American courts. Good luck.

                    • Obewon November 13th, 2016 at 18:55

                      Comprehension: HAL Ex-CEO & VP Cheney’s $180 M+ Bribery earned USA’s largest SEC fine in U.S. History! Total Cheney fines dumped on HAL shareholders, cost $1.1 B+.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 13th, 2016 at 19:29

                      If you are correct, the moral thing to do would be to pursue it in the courts. Let us all know how it goes.

      • arc99 November 9th, 2016 at 21:34

        No they are not serial rapist-killers But when they are born, they are people who need food, shelter, clothing, education and health care.

        Pro life means you make sure that whenever there is a need to provide those things that the family cannot, there will be a safety net. When the concern for life ends at the instant of birth, you are not pro life, you are simply pro forced birth.

        I have to wonder how many people know that the nation receiving the largest single annual amount of foreign aid is Israel. In Israel abortion on demand is 100% funded by the government. Fascinating there is nary a peep about this from people who insist their tax dollars must never be used for any abortion related activity.

        • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:36

          It is not the fault of society: Those people VOLUNTARILY CHOSE TO KILL.

          • arc99 November 9th, 2016 at 21:37

            It most certainly is the fault of society when we are the only western democracy on the planet which still practices the death penalty.

            • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:39

              No, Japan still does. Bravo Japan!

              • arc99 November 9th, 2016 at 21:43

                I pointedly said “western” democracy…

                • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:28

                  Japan is a western democracy. They have a treaty based on, essentially, the British model. They are an advanced nation, human rights are protected, and they are among the wealthiest on earth.

        • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:37

          Pro-life means to protect the innocent. Pro-death (not “pro-choice” which is really a euphemism to deceive) is killing the innocent unborn.

          • arc99 November 9th, 2016 at 21:39

            Nonsense. Protecting the innocent means you make sure they have the food, education, and health care they need without ranting about “socialism”.

            Pro choice is just that, no matter how much you attempt to obfuscate. Pro choice you support the woman’s right to choose, no matter what choice she makes. It is no different really than the first amendment.

            I as a 64 year old black man recognize that a Ku Klux Klansman has the exact same first amendment rights as I do. That does not make me pro Klan, that makes me pro first amendment. There is a difference.

            • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:31

              First of all, I haven’t the slightest interest in the color of your skin.

              Next, the term “socialism” is not necessary, and I did not say “socialism,” DID I???

              Next, your segue from killing the innocent unborn to declaiming that I am attacking “socialism” makes no logical sense.

            • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:32

              Well, if you can recognize the speech rights of the KKK, even though it would not recognize yours, then you surely must be able to recognize the rights of innocent unborn babies – their right to live.

          • Bunya November 10th, 2016 at 10:20

            So, It’s wrong to kill the innocent unborn, but it’s okay to kill them once they become babies. That explains why these crazy “pro-life” evangelicals are pro-war, anti-gun control and pro-death penalty.

            • RightThinkingOne November 13th, 2016 at 18:34

              The key word is “innocent.” The pro-death people kill the INNOCENT.

              • Obewon November 13th, 2016 at 19:14

                Your GOP are well proven “The pro-death people..” ACA ObamaCare prenatal care reduced USA’s high infant mortality. Misuninformed folks like yourself are killers by GOP’s universal lack of reality e.g. 1) “The U.S. infant mortality rate is one of the highest among all developed countries.”-Pre-ACA 2011. http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/02/opinion/walker-infant-mortality/

                1 B) Beginning in ACA’s first year of 2014: Before the passage of what’s known as Obamacare, less than five percent of insurance carriers included maternal health services. Now women can receive prenatal care — which includes checkups and prenatal testing — without incurring any out-of-pocket costs.

                2) And by GWB43’s $7 T+ faux Iraq oil wars leaving 4,000+ US KIA, killing 200,000+ unarmed Iraqi women, babies and children.

                • RightThinkingOne November 13th, 2016 at 19:30

                  I refer to liberty.

                  Besides, with free-market reform, the quality would improve and cost would go down, of course.

              • Bunya November 14th, 2016 at 10:10

                Since you’re okay with killing people in prison, I guess that makes you “pro-death”.

                • RightThinkingOne November 15th, 2016 at 17:55

                  No, justice.

                  Killing innocent unborn babies is not justice. It is murder. Evil.

                  • Bunya November 16th, 2016 at 10:12

                    So, killing innocent people who were wrongly convicted is considered “justice” as long as they’re in jail. Got it.
                    I never understood the right wing justification for killing. If they kill babies in war, it’s considered “collateral damage”. If someone is killed in prison it’s considered “justice”, but removing something from the body that doesn’t exist yet, is considered “killing”. Interesting. Imagine all the potential babies that are “killed” by women every month – not to mention how many are “killed” by nocturnal emissions.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 16th, 2016 at 19:04

                      You have conflated unrelated things in a weak attempt to support your dogma.

                      Yes, it is justice to execute vicious first-degree murderers.

                    • Bunya November 17th, 2016 at 11:07

                      Since you’re so “pro-life”, I suppose you find justification in bombing clinics and killing doctors. After all, they’re no long fetuses.
                      .
                      You’re a truly uninformed male and sound very, very dangerous. I’m through with you.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 17th, 2016 at 18:04

                      The radicals like to portray the dishonest myth that the rare extremists represent the entire pro-life movement, while the pro-death group is responsible for terminating literally TENS of millions of innocent lives of unborn babies.

                    • Bunya November 18th, 2016 at 10:13

                      Save the fetus/kill the baby.

  2. amersham1046 November 9th, 2016 at 16:02

    Showing their true Christian values

  3. RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 20:24

    Bravo! More states should do this.

    • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 20:35

      Give the state the power to kill a human, and they will use it.
      How soon do you think it will be before some “well-meaning” soul realizes that the organ transplants from a prisoner who has been executed can save countless lives?
      How soon after that do you suppose the death penalty for too many moving violations, or being late with your taxes, will be justified, seeing as how extra kidneys and hearts are always needed?
      For a RWer who despises “Big Government®”, you’re awfully willing to let that same government kill at will, thus holding ultimate power over your destiny.
      (At this point, you’re expected to argue that a convicted person on death row deserves what is coming to them. Then I will point to indisputable proof that innocent people have been executed for crimes. Let’s not go there, eh?)

      • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 20:39

        An organ donation is voluntary. It would be up to the vicious murderer.

        We will adhere to our Bill of Rights, which is explicit in such a matter.

        You are wrong about the label, “right-winger,” and wrong about “big government.” It is not the SIZE of the government. It is limiting its powers. For example, the national government has no business getting involved with healthcare. None.

        • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 20:47

          But they CAN take a life.
          Double standard.

          • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:22

            No double standard. As I wrote (here goes the repeating game!), either they volunteer to give up their organs – as many of us do and is written on our drivers licenses – or they should be required to give their consent.

            I will not repeat that position a third time.

            • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:45

              Ignore the organ bit…it went over your head anyway.
              WHY do you think it is justifiable for a human-run government to end the life of a citizen, when mistakes in this area have been repeatedly and provably made?
              Cost? Morality? “Gotta teach people to stay in line!”?
              Why are you so afraid of a government wanting all of its citizens to receive healthcare, but so ready to allow it to kill those same citizens?

              • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:43

                All three.

                • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:23

                  Egotistical. Dangerous. Such thinking risks creating an underclass with little to lose.

                  • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:48

                    It is moral. If done correctly – limited appeals and executing them sooner – it will be less costly. And it deters first-degree murdering.

                    • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:56

                      “Moral”?
                      Tell me; would you strangle baby Hitler? Or shoot young Josef Stalin through the skull at Tiflis seminary while he ate his lunch?
                      Ask any three people who have ever killed another human about what is moral.
                      You may be surprised.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 01:26

                      Many war criminals from Germany and Japan were executed.

                      You are creating a strawman, implying that it would not bother me to have someone executed or kill someone.

                      Or your logic is utterly flawed: According to your “reasoning,” because it WOULD bother me, that means that degenerate, depraved, first-degree murderers should not be executed.

        • Obewon November 9th, 2016 at 21:01

          The founders passed a national HC bill by POTUS George Washington, and a tax to pay for it! You know that most all commerce was via shipping, right? in July of 1798, Congress passed “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seaman” –which was signed by President Adams — authorizing the creation of a government operated system of marine hospitals and mandating that laboring merchant marine sailors pay a tax to support it. A historian I spoke to yesterday said this showed that “the post-revolutionary generation clearly thought that the national government had a role” in subsidizing “government run health care.”

          Some folks pushed back with a good question: Wouldn’t it be expected for Adams, a leading proponent of federal power, to support this? What about founders like Jefferson who favored a weaker federal government?

          Well, Jefferson did support this plan, the historian, Adam Rothman, a Georgetown University history professor who specializes in the early republic, tells me. Rothman emails:

          Alexander Hamilton supported the establishment of Marine Hospitals in a 1792 Report, and it was a Federalist congress that passed the law in 1798. But Jefferson (Hamilton’s strict constructionist nemesis) also supported federal marine hospitals, and along with his own Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, took steps to improve them during his presidency. So I guess you could say it had bipartisan support. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011/01/newsflash_thomas_jefferson_sup.html

          • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:26

            Yes, that applied to people related to, or in, government work. They were considered military at that time. Different ballgame.

            • Obewon November 9th, 2016 at 21:33

              No these included all public and private sea merchants, as cited by SCOTUS constitutionally upholding the ACA mandate.

              “Mandating that laboring merchant marine sailors pay a tax to support it.”-Jefferson’s mandatory HC tax bill written by First POTUS George Washington and signed into law by second POTUS John Adams. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a70b3291560cf9c3cd21dbca66ca8cb79296f82e2ada833802891663f71dd093.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4dc007c5cb78c242340d17ebc90e93e98ba0308f25eb2e188add1fe66cb481e3.jpg

              • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 21:40

                It is not a matter of $. It is a matter of limiting the government. Left-wingers want the government to be mommy, guaranteeing health care, housing, and even food!

                • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:48

                  You want the government to “keep you safe” by killing people who are already locked away in prisons…explain the difference, please?

                  • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:44

                    No connection. No, executing depraved degenerates, or keeping them in jail for life – both keep us “safe,” of course.

                    • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:22

                      So why not go with the option that guarantees that the civil rights of ALL parties are upheld?

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 00:46

                      It is the right of our government to mete out an execution. Please read the Constitution.

                    • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 01:00

                      I have: it explicitly stipulates rights for all citizens.
                      I must beg off, RTO, as I need to rise in the morning to work, and pay taxes which, apparently, will build a wall of some sort.
                      Thank you for the dialogue, and good night.

                    • RightThinkingOne November 10th, 2016 at 01:27

                      I do not want to hold tutoring sessions here. Look at specific words in our Constitution. Two specific words, in fact: “Capital crimes.”

        • Hirightnow November 9th, 2016 at 21:53

          But felony prisoners have “given up” their rights…it is but a short step to “Their bodies belong to the state”.

          • RightThinkingOne November 9th, 2016 at 23:44

            I tire of repeating myself. I will not.

            • Hirightnow November 10th, 2016 at 00:36

              Learn the law…it will frighten you.

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