Our opinions align pretty closely on this one. Thirty bills and I took a spanking in the spanking thread, but I think we gave as good as we got. I was thinking of you the whole time, figuring you aligned but thinking it would be hilarious if you took the bleeding heart position lol
Our opinions align pretty closely on this one. Thirty bills and I took a spanking in the spanking thread, but I think we gave as good as we got. I was thinking of you the whole time, figuring you aligned but thinking it would be hilarious if you took the bleeding heart position lol
Live by the sword, die by the sword...
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
Our opinions align pretty closely on this one. Thirty bills and I took a spanking in the spanking thread, but I think we gave as good as we got. I was thinking of you the whole time, figuring you aligned but thinking it would be hilarious if you took the bleeding heart position lol
If not wanting to beat my kids makes me a bleeding heart, so be it.
Our opinions align pretty closely on this one. Thirty bills and I took a spanking in the spanking thread, but I think we gave as good as we got. I was thinking of you the whole time, figuring you aligned but thinking it would be hilarious if you took the bleeding heart position lol
If not wanting to beat my kids makes me a bleeding heart, so be it.
You've also got daughters. I can tell you that raising my son was significantly different than raising my daughter. All I needed to do was raise my voice and that was enough for my daughter. For my son, however, this wasn't exactly the case. He was infinitely tougher to discipline in comparison.
So... if your experience raising your daughters has been like mine... I wouldn't be feeling to self-righteous never having to resort to swatting them on the behind. Presented with the challenges a young male might present, you 'may' have developed a different perspective than the one you currently possess.
I've had this conversation with multiple people since this MT discussion. Hardly conclusive about anything, all admitted to swatting their son's behind at some point or another- NEVER feeling great about it, but doing it feeling as if it needed to be done.
Have felt that when parents hit their children they are doing it to relieve stress more than correcting bad behavior.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
Have felt that when parents hit their children they are doing it to relieve stress more than correcting bad behavior.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
I've "raised children" and understand what callen is getting at. Most of the "swatting" I've witnessed was done out of parents' frustration in the moment, not as a thought-out approach to discipline.
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
Have felt that when parents hit their children they are doing it to relieve stress more than correcting bad behavior.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
I've "raised children" and understand what callen is getting at. Most of the "swatting" I've witnessed was done out of parents' frustration in the moment, not as a thought-out approach to discipline.
Of all the things that could occupy our time, I really feel that debating this issue shouldn't be one of them. I asked my son if he ever remembered me swatting him on the bum- I did on three occasions (and none in public- I'm surprised you have witnessed parents doing it). He can't recall any of the times. It's a stretch to suggest that incidents such as these are traumatic for a child.
It's a tough job parents have.
* And no... he hasn't suppressed a swat on the behind from his dad and, all modesty aside, he's an awesome kid- I mean really awesome. Further, we have a great relationship. My wife and I did something right.
Have felt that when parents hit their children they are doing it to relieve stress more than correcting bad behavior.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
I've "raised children" and understand what callen is getting at. Most of the "swatting" I've witnessed was done out of parents' frustration in the moment, not as a thought-out approach to discipline.
Of all the things that could occupy our time, I really feel that debating this issue shouldn't be one of them. I asked my son if he ever remembered me swatting him on the bum- I did on three occasions (and none in public- I'm surprised you have witnessed parents doing it). He can't recall any of the times. It's a stretch to suggest that incidents such as these are traumatic for a child.
It's a tough job parents have.
* And no... he hasn't suppressed a swat on the behind from his dad and, all modesty aside, he's an awesome kid- I mean really awesome. Further, we have a great relationship. My wife and I did something right.
I'm sure he's an awesome kid. Any why would I suggest he would have suppressed it? That would be ridiculous. Forgotten, sure, if he was little.
Since you've questioned it, I've seen parents swat kids at parks, shopping malls, and probably other places.
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
Have felt that when parents hit their children they are doing it to relieve stress more than correcting bad behavior.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
I've "raised children" and understand what callen is getting at. Most of the "swatting" I've witnessed was done out of parents' frustration in the moment, not as a thought-out approach to discipline.
Of all the things that could occupy our time, I really feel that debating this issue shouldn't be one of them. I asked my son if he ever remembered me swatting him on the bum- I did on three occasions (and none in public- I'm surprised you have witnessed parents doing it). He can't recall any of the times. It's a stretch to suggest that incidents such as these are traumatic for a child.
It's a tough job parents have.
* And no... he hasn't suppressed a swat on the behind from his dad and, all modesty aside, he's an awesome kid- I mean really awesome. Further, we have a great relationship. My wife and I did something right.
I'm sure he's an awesome kid. Any why would I suggest he would have suppressed it? That would be ridiculous. Forgotten, sure, if he was little.
Since you've questioned it, I've seen parents swat kids at parks, shopping malls, and probably other places.
I believed you, I was surprised. I don't think I've ever seen a parent swat their kid's behind in public. To be honest, I've seen instances where I was hoping for a swat given the way their child was acting (running the show, throwing a tantrum, parents left standing there useless as everyone else tries to ignore the screaming child inside a public place).
At least take the kid from the venue for likely another timeout so that people don't have to deal with your problems. I'm really not sure which is worse- a screaming child because they can't run around a restaurant and hide under other people's tables.. or a relentlessly barking dog.
Our opinions align pretty closely on this one. Thirty bills and I took a spanking in the spanking thread, but I think we gave as good as we got. I was thinking of you the whole time, figuring you aligned but thinking it would be hilarious if you took the bleeding heart position lol
If not wanting to beat my kids makes me a bleeding heart, so be it.
You've also got daughters. I can tell you that raising my son was significantly different than raising my daughter. All I needed to do was raise my voice and that was enough for my daughter. For my son, however, this wasn't exactly the case. He was infinitely tougher to discipline in comparison.
So... if your experience raising your daughters has been like mine... I wouldn't be feeling to self-righteous never having to resort to swatting them on the behind. Presented with the challenges a young male might present, you 'may' have developed a different perspective than the one you currently possess.
I've had this conversation with multiple people since this MT discussion. Hardly conclusive about anything, all admitted to swatting their son's behind at some point or another- NEVER feeling great about it, but doing it feeling as if it needed to be done.
Parenting is not an exact science.
not all girls are angels. not all boys are devils. but I know what you are talking about. But I don't believe gender to be the deciding factor if hitting them is to be used. I'm not self righteous. I just have a belief. I firmly believe that my nephew could easily be controlled by voice alone. I have seen his reaction to being swatted. And it's not good.
I held this perspective even before I had kids. A personal philosophy doesn't change by circumstance. that's weak.
Have felt that when parents hit their children they are doing it to relieve stress more than correcting bad behavior.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
I've "raised children" and understand what callen is getting at. Most of the "swatting" I've witnessed was done out of parents' frustration in the moment, not as a thought-out approach to discipline.
I agree. it's almost always done in the heat of the moment, not after a cooling down period and discussion with a spouse. it's administered while angry. I don't administer any punishment while angry. I wait until I calm down to decide on the result of the behaviour. do you spankers wait until you are of cool heads? I doubt it.
I haven't swatted one of my kids for like 18 years.When I did I told him he was getting a spanking and would have him think about that for a couple hours while he was banished to his room.The anticipation would usually work more so then the open handed ass smack itself.Parental Psycological warfare very effective.
why don't they stop with the fucking injections already if they keep fucking them up, and just use a gas of some sort. how about carbon monoxide? painless. you just go to sleep. or a bullet to the brain. if you're going to kill someone, at least fucking do it right. not just for the inmate, but it must be pretty gruesome for the doctors, etc, to witness and/or be involved in that.
BY NOW MANY have read and been moved by the extraordinary mea culpa published in the Shreveport Times by a man named Marty Stroud III, who more than 30 years ago sent Glenn Ford to die for a crime he did not commit.
“How wrong was I,” wrote Stroud, who as a young prosecutor convicted Ford, a black man, with the help of an all-white jury in Louisiana’s Caddo Parish. Stroud’s murder case against Ford was bankrupt on its face — at trial, a key witness admitted in open court that her testimony had been a lie. Yet Ford didn’t stand a chance. His court-appointed lawyers had never handled a criminal trial, let alone a capital case. He was sentenced to die, though fortunately never executed. After decades spent fighting to prove his innocence, Ford was was finally cleared after the DA’s office revealed it had obtained exonerating evidence. But by the time he was released from prison last year, at 64, Ford was sick with cancer. Doctors say he has just months to live. Ford has spent his last days fighting for financial compensation, which the state has so far denied him. In his anguished letter to the Shreveport Times, Stroud said that Ford “deserves every penny” for his lost freedom and expressed deep remorse “for all the misery I have caused him and his family.”
Stroud’s apology made headlines across the country. The National Registry of Exonerations called it “uniquely powerful and moving.” In a culture that shields prosecutors from having to answer for even the most outrageous miscarriages of justice, Stroud’s letter is indeed an astonishing read. Though no substitute for accountability — he denies any intentional misconduct — Stroud lays bare the hubris that drives state actors to aggressively pursue even the most questionable convictions. “In 1984, I was 33 years old,” Stroud writes. “I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning.” Stroud recalls going out for drinks to celebrate Ford’s death sentence, which he labels “sick.” Not only because Ford turned out to be innocent. But because today Stroud believes that, as a fallible human being, he never should have had that kind of power to begin with. The death penalty, he writes, “is an abomination that continues to scar the fibers of this society.”
Stroud’s dramatic conversion, his revulsion at the memory of toasting a death sentence, echoes a story told by a different man, former Florida prison warden Ron McAndrew. On the morning after overseeing his first execution in 1996, McAndrew went out to the “traditional breakfast” with the execution team, at a Shoney’s in Starke, Florida, just 15 miles from the death chamber. “Everyone in the restaurant knew who we were and what we had just done,” he wrote, “there were even a few ‘high five signs.’” He spotted the defense attorney who had tried to save the life of the man he had just helped execute. “I saw my own sickness on her sad face,” McAndrew wrote. The ritual felt wrong. “It was my first and my last traditional death breakfast.” Later, Esquire would publish a profile of the former warden. It was titled “Ron McAndrew Is Done Killing People.”
Others who once operated the machinery of death have reached similar epiphanies. Two years ago the Guardian published a sobering Q&A with Jerry Givens, a retired executioner who killed no fewer than 62 prisoners for the state of Virginia. Givens, a clearly traumatized man, said taking the job was the “biggest mistake I ever made.” Today he serves on the board of Virginians Against the Death Penalty. Former Georgia warden Allen Ault, who presided over five executions and now speaks out against capital punishment, says he has “spent a lifetime regretting every moment and every killing.” Jeanne Woodford, who gave the order for four executions as the warden of San Quentin Prison, later became the executive director of the abolitionist group Death Penalty Focus. In 2013, the New York Times ran an obituary for a warden-turned-academic who oversaw three executions at Mississippi’s Parchman Farm. It included his nagging belief that one of the men may have been innocent. In its headline, the Times remembered him as “Donald Cabana, Warden Who Loathed the Death Penalty.”
These are transformative figures. Their accounts, while powerful on their own, are important in the space they create for others to change as well — perhaps even some still working inside the system they have since disavowed. As Americans increasingly question the death penalty amid new exonerations and botched executions, we can probably expect — and should encourage — more of these stories.
Yet as these narratives become more ubiquitous, they also expose a nagging hypocrisy. If we are drawn to such expressions of penitence and moral clarity, if we see them as brave or enlightened or even noble, why don’t we grant people in prison the same potential for change? Why have we abandoned rehabilitation, once supposedly central to the mission we call “corrections,” and replaced it with the longest sentences on the planet? Why do we give people who do bad things so few pathways toward redemption? Is it too much to consider that murderers in prison are as complex and human as people who kill in the name of the state?
Earlier this month, the state of Georgia came within hours of killing 47-year-old Kelly Gissendaner for the murder of her husband in 1997. Although her degree of culpability made her case controversial — the killing itself was carried out by a boyfriend — there was no question of her guilt. But as her execution neared, it was also clear that Gissendaner was more than the crime that sent her to death row. While incarcerated she became a student of theology and a source of strength to fellow prisoners. If someone was “being escorted across the yard with cut-up or bandaged arms from attempted suicides,” one former prison guard told the New York Times, others “would yell to Kelly about it.” She “could talk to those ladies and offer them some sort of hope and peace.” Yet as a matter of course, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole rejected Gissendaner’s clemency petition. Her contributions behind prison walls held no value to authorities in the outside world. Gissendaner is only alive today because of last-minute concerns over the efficacy of the execution drugs the state was set to use. Georgia still plans to kill her.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Even as more states abolish the death penalty, we have installed in its place different forms of permanent punishment, astoundingly long sentences that deny people’s ability to evolve — or even the human tendency to “age out” of crime. Today, one in nine U.S. prisoners, including people convicted as juveniles, are currently serving a life sentence, according to the Sentencing Project, and “those with parole-eligible life sentences are increasingly less likely to be released.” More people than ever are serving life with no possibility of parole — including thousands for nonviolent offenses, as the ACLU found in a major study in 2013. In Shreveport, Louisiana, where Glenn Ford was wrongly sentenced to die, a lesser-known man named Sylvester Mead was sentenced to die in prison after he drunkenly threatened a cop while handcuffed in the back of a police car. As I noted at The Nation, Mead’s own trial judge argued that his offense “does not warrant, under any conscionable or constitutional basis, a life sentence.” Yet “Mead’s prosecutor appealed multiple times seeking a harsher sentence because of his old convictions.” We can try to construe this as justice. But like Marty Stroud in 1984, this was a prosecutor bent on winning.
There are some signs that we are moving in a slightly more rational direction. California is releasing “lifers,” only a small fraction of whom are landing back in jail. The Supreme Court is chipping away at permanent sentencing for juveniles. Criminal justice reform is in vogue on Capitol Hill. President Obama recently told the Huffington Post he plans to use his clemency powers “more aggressively” to benefit nonviolent drug offenders. In testimony before Congress last week, before a task force charged with recommending improvements to the federal prison system, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project said it is time to get past “modest reforms” and boldly proposed that we cap federal sentences at 20 years. “How much punishment is enough?” he asked. “What are we trying to accomplish, and where does redemption come into the picture?”
If there is room for redemption at all — and if we are honest about addressing the crisis of mass incarceration — we must start by recognizing that the 2.3 million people we have put behind bars are no less human than the rest of us. That includes many who have done terrible things. What if we gave more prisoners a second chance, some meaningful shot at parole — an opportunity to redefine their legacy, like Marty Stroud did when he sat down to write to the Shreveport Times? What kind of human potential might they reveal?
Some have made efforts to answer this question. Just a few days before Stroud wrote his letter, the Los Angeles Times profiled a group of men in at San Quentin, who as part of a writing class, were asked to invent their own obituaries. “These were people who were best known for their worst decisions — stabbing a man to death, gunning down a bystander, robbing banks,” the Los Angeles Times reported. But their teacher wanted the group to imagine how they might otherwise be remembered — “What is your real value?” The resulting essays yearned for redemption. One man, convicted for a gang shooting, pictured himself getting stabbed to death while trying to break up a prison fight. Another prisoner, serving more than 30 years on robbery and firearms charges, imagined dying a free man, getting hit by a car when trying to help a stranger with a flat tire. His obituary boasted that he had “finished top of his class in Janitorial duties” at San Quentin, and said that he had spent his time behind bars focused on his future. In real life, the author died less than a year later, at 42, still behind bars.
“Looking back at that period of time in my life, I was not a very nice person,” Marty Stroud admits about the man he was when he sent Glenn Ford to die. Few seem to doubt his sincerity. How many people in prison would say the same about their own worst mistakes? Would we listen?
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
Even as more states abolish the death penalty, we have installed in its place different forms of permanent punishment, astoundingly long sentences that deny people’s ability to evolve — or even the human tendency to “age out” of crime. Today, one in nine U.S. prisoners, including people convicted as juveniles, are currently serving a life sentence, according to the Sentencing Project, and “those with parole-eligible life sentences are increasingly less likely to be released.” More people than ever are serving life with no possibility of parole — including thousands for nonviolent offenses, as the ACLU found in a major study in 2013. In Shreveport, Louisiana, where Glenn Ford was wrongly sentenced to die, a lesser-known man named Sylvester Mead was sentenced to die in prison after he drunkenly threatened a cop while handcuffed in the back of a police car. As I noted at The Nation, Mead’s own trial judge argued that his offense “does not warrant, under any conscionable or constitutional basis, a life sentence.” Yet “Mead’s prosecutor appealed multiple times seeking a harsher sentence because of his old convictions.” We can try to construe this as justice. But like Marty Stroud in 1984, this was a prosecutor bent on winning.
There are some signs that we are moving in a slightly more rational direction. California is releasing “lifers,” only a small fraction of whom are landing back in jail. The Supreme Court is chipping away at permanent sentencing for juveniles. Criminal justice reform is in vogue on Capitol Hill. President Obama recently told the Huffington Post he plans to use his clemency powers “more aggressively” to benefit nonviolent drug offenders. In testimony before Congress last week, before a task force charged with recommending improvements to the federal prison system, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project said it is time to get past “modest reforms” and boldly proposed that we cap federal sentences at 20 years. “How much punishment is enough?” he asked. “What are we trying to accomplish, and where does redemption come into the picture?”
If there is room for redemption at all — and if we are honest about addressing the crisis of mass incarceration — we must start by recognizing that the 2.3 million people we have put behind bars are no less human than the rest of us. That includes many who have done terrible things. What if we gave more prisoners a second chance, some meaningful shot at parole — an opportunity to redefine their legacy, like Marty Stroud did when he sat down to write to the Shreveport Times? What kind of human potential might they reveal?
Some have made efforts to answer this question. Just a few days before Stroud wrote his letter, the Los Angeles Times profiled a group of men in at San Quentin, who as part of a writing class, were asked to invent their own obituaries. “These were people who were best known for their worst decisions — stabbing a man to death, gunning down a bystander, robbing banks,” the Los Angeles Times reported. But their teacher wanted the group to imagine how they might otherwise be remembered — “What is your real value?” The resulting essays yearned for redemption. One man, convicted for a gang shooting, pictured himself getting stabbed to death while trying to break up a prison fight. Another prisoner, serving more than 30 years on robbery and firearms charges, imagined dying a free man, getting hit by a car when trying to help a stranger with a flat tire. His obituary boasted that he had “finished top of his class in Janitorial duties” at San Quentin, and said that he had spent his time behind bars focused on his future. In real life, the author died less than a year later, at 42, still behind bars.
“Looking back at that period of time in my life, I was not a very nice person,” Marty Stroud admits about the man he was when he sent Glenn Ford to die. Few seem to doubt his sincerity. How many people in prison would say the same about their own worst mistakes? Would we listen?
Thank you ginme for posting this article. It touches on a number of important issues. I expect you, and the article, may be blasted anyway. I was shocked to read that 1 in 9 US prisoners are serving a life sentence. Sad to say, as the US contemplates capping the length of sentences, Canada's current Conservative government looks for ways to increase them, as well as eliminate the possibility of eventual parole for some offences, a change that many with actual knowledge and experience in the area believe will cause more problems than it solves. (And that doesn't even touch the issue of the recent changes in how those found Not Criminally Responsible are dealt with).
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
why don't they stop with the fucking injections already if they keep fucking them up, and just use a gas of some sort. how about carbon monoxide? painless. you just go to sleep. or a bullet to the brain. if you're going to kill someone, at least fucking do it right. not just for the inmate, but it must be pretty gruesome for the doctors, etc, to witness and/or be involved in that.
Since I'm against the death penalty, I'm much more in favour of just letting them loose in general population and seeing what happens.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
why don't they stop with the fucking injections already if they keep fucking them up, and just use a gas of some sort. how about carbon monoxide? painless. you just go to sleep. or a bullet to the brain. if you're going to kill someone, at least fucking do it right. not just for the inmate, but it must be pretty gruesome for the doctors, etc, to witness and/or be involved in that.
Since I'm against the death penalty, I'm much more in favour of just letting them loose in general population and seeing what happens.
as am I. I was speaking only in the vein of "if they are going to do them, then do them right".
pretty good chance vvhen a sick freakshovv is turned loose in general population, he could be tortured & go through a lot of bad, bad stuff. vvhat do you tvvo think about this vs' the state doing it?
why don't they stop with the fucking injections already if they keep fucking them up, and just use a gas of some sort. how about carbon monoxide? painless. you just go to sleep. or a bullet to the brain. if you're going to kill someone, at least fucking do it right. not just for the inmate, but it must be pretty gruesome for the doctors, etc, to witness and/or be involved in that.
Since I'm against the death penalty, I'm much more in favour of just letting them loose in general population and seeing what happens.
What if 'what happens' is an inmate killed by the murderer?
Comments
Our opinions align pretty closely on this one. Thirty bills and I took a spanking in the spanking thread, but I think we gave as good as we got. I was thinking of you the whole time, figuring you aligned but thinking it would be hilarious if you took the bleeding heart position lol
Live by the sword, die by the sword...
If not wanting to beat my kids makes me a bleeding heart, so be it.
www.headstonesband.com
You've also got daughters. I can tell you that raising my son was significantly different than raising my daughter. All I needed to do was raise my voice and that was enough for my daughter. For my son, however, this wasn't exactly the case. He was infinitely tougher to discipline in comparison.
So... if your experience raising your daughters has been like mine... I wouldn't be feeling to self-righteous never having to resort to swatting them on the behind. Presented with the challenges a young male might present, you 'may' have developed a different perspective than the one you currently possess.
I've had this conversation with multiple people since this MT discussion. Hardly conclusive about anything, all admitted to swatting their son's behind at some point or another- NEVER feeling great about it, but doing it feeling as if it needed to be done.
Parenting is not an exact science.
Cmon Cal,A quick swat on the tush for impact is hardly a stress reliever.I don't believe any of us are calling for whippings with a cane or belt.If you got/have raised children then you would understand.
Thirty it's true.It was much different punishing the girls then my son.
I've "raised children" and understand what callen is getting at. Most of the "swatting" I've witnessed was done out of parents' frustration in the moment, not as a thought-out approach to discipline.
Of all the things that could occupy our time, I really feel that debating this issue shouldn't be one of them. I asked my son if he ever remembered me swatting him on the bum- I did on three occasions (and none in public- I'm surprised you have witnessed parents doing it). He can't recall any of the times. It's a stretch to suggest that incidents such as these are traumatic for a child.
It's a tough job parents have.
* And no... he hasn't suppressed a swat on the behind from his dad and, all modesty aside, he's an awesome kid- I mean really awesome. Further, we have a great relationship. My wife and I did something right.
I'm sure he's an awesome kid. Any why would I suggest he would have suppressed it? That would be ridiculous. Forgotten, sure, if he was little.
Since you've questioned it, I've seen parents swat kids at parks, shopping malls, and probably other places.
I believed you, I was surprised. I don't think I've ever seen a parent swat their kid's behind in public. To be honest, I've seen instances where I was hoping for a swat given the way their child was acting (running the show, throwing a tantrum, parents left standing there useless as everyone else tries to ignore the screaming child inside a public place).
At least take the kid from the venue for likely another timeout so that people don't have to deal with your problems. I'm really not sure which is worse- a screaming child because they can't run around a restaurant and hide under other people's tables.. or a relentlessly barking dog.
not all girls are angels. not all boys are devils. but I know what you are talking about. But I don't believe gender to be the deciding factor if hitting them is to be used. I'm not self righteous. I just have a belief. I firmly believe that my nephew could easily be controlled by voice alone. I have seen his reaction to being swatted. And it's not good.
I held this perspective even before I had kids. A personal philosophy doesn't change by circumstance. that's weak.
www.headstonesband.com
I agree. it's almost always done in the heat of the moment, not after a cooling down period and discussion with a spouse. it's administered while angry. I don't administer any punishment while angry. I wait until I calm down to decide on the result of the behaviour. do you spankers wait until you are of cool heads? I doubt it.
www.headstonesband.com
Thanks. that band is done. it imploded before the EP even came out.
www.headstonesband.com
Reunion tours are all the rage anyway.
www.headstonesband.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/us/oklahoma-execution-charles-warner-lethal-injection.html?_r=0
It's sickens me that it took almost 20 years to get rid of that scum
For the rape and murder of an 11 month old.
He uttered, "I'm not a monster." He is correct. He's more along the lines of a maggot.
Jesus.
oh my god. how fucking disgusting.
why don't they stop with the fucking injections already if they keep fucking them up, and just use a gas of some sort. how about carbon monoxide? painless. you just go to sleep. or a bullet to the brain. if you're going to kill someone, at least fucking do it right. not just for the inmate, but it must be pretty gruesome for the doctors, etc, to witness and/or be involved in that.
www.headstonesband.com
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/24/whogetsredemption/
BY NOW MANY have read and been moved by the extraordinary mea culpa published in the Shreveport Times by a man named Marty Stroud III, who more than 30 years ago sent Glenn Ford to die for a crime he did not commit.
“How wrong was I,” wrote Stroud, who as a young prosecutor convicted Ford, a black man, with the help of an all-white jury in Louisiana’s Caddo Parish. Stroud’s murder case against Ford was bankrupt on its face — at trial, a key witness admitted in open court that her testimony had been a lie. Yet Ford didn’t stand a chance. His court-appointed lawyers had never handled a criminal trial, let alone a capital case. He was sentenced to die, though fortunately never executed. After decades spent fighting to prove his innocence, Ford was was finally cleared after the DA’s office revealed it had obtained exonerating evidence. But by the time he was released from prison last year, at 64, Ford was sick with cancer. Doctors say he has just months to live. Ford has spent his last days fighting for financial compensation, which the state has so far denied him. In his anguished letter to the Shreveport Times, Stroud said that Ford “deserves every penny” for his lost freedom and expressed deep remorse “for all the misery I have caused him and his family.”
Stroud’s apology made headlines across the country. The National Registry of Exonerations called it “uniquely powerful and moving.” In a culture that shields prosecutors from having to answer for even the most outrageous miscarriages of justice, Stroud’s letter is indeed an astonishing read. Though no substitute for accountability — he denies any intentional misconduct — Stroud lays bare the hubris that drives state actors to aggressively pursue even the most questionable convictions. “In 1984, I was 33 years old,” Stroud writes. “I was arrogant, judgmental, narcissistic and very full of myself. I was not as interested in justice as I was in winning.” Stroud recalls going out for drinks to celebrate Ford’s death sentence, which he labels “sick.” Not only because Ford turned out to be innocent. But because today Stroud believes that, as a fallible human being, he never should have had that kind of power to begin with. The death penalty, he writes, “is an abomination that continues to scar the fibers of this society.”
Stroud’s dramatic conversion, his revulsion at the memory of toasting a death sentence, echoes a story told by a different man, former Florida prison warden Ron McAndrew. On the morning after overseeing his first execution in 1996, McAndrew went out to the “traditional breakfast” with the execution team, at a Shoney’s in Starke, Florida, just 15 miles from the death chamber. “Everyone in the restaurant knew who we were and what we had just done,” he wrote, “there were even a few ‘high five signs.’” He spotted the defense attorney who had tried to save the life of the man he had just helped execute. “I saw my own sickness on her sad face,” McAndrew wrote. The ritual felt wrong. “It was my first and my last traditional death breakfast.” Later, Esquire would publish a profile of the former warden. It was titled “Ron McAndrew Is Done Killing People.”
Others who once operated the machinery of death have reached similar epiphanies. Two years ago the Guardian published a sobering Q&A with Jerry Givens, a retired executioner who killed no fewer than 62 prisoners for the state of Virginia. Givens, a clearly traumatized man, said taking the job was the “biggest mistake I ever made.” Today he serves on the board of Virginians Against the Death Penalty. Former Georgia warden Allen Ault, who presided over five executions and now speaks out against capital punishment, says he has “spent a lifetime regretting every moment and every killing.” Jeanne Woodford, who gave the order for four executions as the warden of San Quentin Prison, later became the executive director of the abolitionist group Death Penalty Focus. In 2013, the New York Times ran an obituary for a warden-turned-academic who oversaw three executions at Mississippi’s Parchman Farm. It included his nagging belief that one of the men may have been innocent. In its headline, the Times remembered him as “Donald Cabana, Warden Who Loathed the Death Penalty.”
These are transformative figures. Their accounts, while powerful on their own, are important in the space they create for others to change as well — perhaps even some still working inside the system they have since disavowed. As Americans increasingly question the death penalty amid new exonerations and botched executions, we can probably expect — and should encourage — more of these stories.
Yet as these narratives become more ubiquitous, they also expose a nagging hypocrisy. If we are drawn to such expressions of penitence and moral clarity, if we see them as brave or enlightened or even noble, why don’t we grant people in prison the same potential for change? Why have we abandoned rehabilitation, once supposedly central to the mission we call “corrections,” and replaced it with the longest sentences on the planet? Why do we give people who do bad things so few pathways toward redemption? Is it too much to consider that murderers in prison are as complex and human as people who kill in the name of the state?
Earlier this month, the state of Georgia came within hours of killing 47-year-old Kelly Gissendaner for the murder of her husband in 1997. Although her degree of culpability made her case controversial — the killing itself was carried out by a boyfriend — there was no question of her guilt. But as her execution neared, it was also clear that Gissendaner was more than the crime that sent her to death row. While incarcerated she became a student of theology and a source of strength to fellow prisoners. If someone was “being escorted across the yard with cut-up or bandaged arms from attempted suicides,” one former prison guard told the New York Times, others “would yell to Kelly about it.” She “could talk to those ladies and offer them some sort of hope and peace.” Yet as a matter of course, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole rejected Gissendaner’s clemency petition. Her contributions behind prison walls held no value to authorities in the outside world. Gissendaner is only alive today because of last-minute concerns over the efficacy of the execution drugs the state was set to use. Georgia still plans to kill her.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Even as more states abolish the death penalty, we have installed in its place different forms of permanent punishment, astoundingly long sentences that deny people’s ability to evolve — or even the human tendency to “age out” of crime. Today, one in nine U.S. prisoners, including people convicted as juveniles, are currently serving a life sentence, according to the Sentencing Project, and “those with parole-eligible life sentences are increasingly less likely to be released.” More people than ever are serving life with no possibility of parole — including thousands for nonviolent offenses, as the ACLU found in a major study in 2013. In Shreveport, Louisiana, where Glenn Ford was wrongly sentenced to die, a lesser-known man named Sylvester Mead was sentenced to die in prison after he drunkenly threatened a cop while handcuffed in the back of a police car. As I noted at The Nation, Mead’s own trial judge argued that his offense “does not warrant, under any conscionable or constitutional basis, a life sentence.” Yet “Mead’s prosecutor appealed multiple times seeking a harsher sentence because of his old convictions.” We can try to construe this as justice. But like Marty Stroud in 1984, this was a prosecutor bent on winning.
There are some signs that we are moving in a slightly more rational direction. California is releasing “lifers,” only a small fraction of whom are landing back in jail. The Supreme Court is chipping away at permanent sentencing for juveniles. Criminal justice reform is in vogue on Capitol Hill. President Obama recently told the Huffington Post he plans to use his clemency powers “more aggressively” to benefit nonviolent drug offenders. In testimony before Congress last week, before a task force charged with recommending improvements to the federal prison system, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project said it is time to get past “modest reforms” and boldly proposed that we cap federal sentences at 20 years. “How much punishment is enough?” he asked. “What are we trying to accomplish, and where does redemption come into the picture?”
If there is room for redemption at all — and if we are honest about addressing the crisis of mass incarceration — we must start by recognizing that the 2.3 million people we have put behind bars are no less human than the rest of us. That includes many who have done terrible things. What if we gave more prisoners a second chance, some meaningful shot at parole — an opportunity to redefine their legacy, like Marty Stroud did when he sat down to write to the Shreveport Times? What kind of human potential might they reveal?
Some have made efforts to answer this question. Just a few days before Stroud wrote his letter, the Los Angeles Times profiled a group of men in at San Quentin, who as part of a writing class, were asked to invent their own obituaries. “These were people who were best known for their worst decisions — stabbing a man to death, gunning down a bystander, robbing banks,” the Los Angeles Times reported. But their teacher wanted the group to imagine how they might otherwise be remembered — “What is your real value?” The resulting essays yearned for redemption. One man, convicted for a gang shooting, pictured himself getting stabbed to death while trying to break up a prison fight. Another prisoner, serving more than 30 years on robbery and firearms charges, imagined dying a free man, getting hit by a car when trying to help a stranger with a flat tire. His obituary boasted that he had “finished top of his class in Janitorial duties” at San Quentin, and said that he had spent his time behind bars focused on his future. In real life, the author died less than a year later, at 42, still behind bars.
“Looking back at that period of time in my life, I was not a very nice person,” Marty Stroud admits about the man he was when he sent Glenn Ford to die. Few seem to doubt his sincerity. How many people in prison would say the same about their own worst mistakes? Would we listen?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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