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Show It's time for society to make a decision Our society is coming of age, or should be. It is definitely time to take a look at our criminal punishment laws to see if they work or if they need to be revised. American law has become so 'sophisticated' that our courts arc running in circles. There is something sadly wrong with a system that causes a man to fight for his life while on death row for fifteen years. Of course, I am writing about the William Andrews case. How has it come this far? How have the laws gotten so out-of-hand that this could happen? Legitimate arguments are being made pro and con for the death sentence. After a person has been found guilty and sentenced sen-tenced to death is not the time to decide if we should have a death penalty. That must be decided once and for all, and we as a society must make that decision. People who do not believe in the death penalty are arguing that to kill is wrong. To kill a killer is to duplicate the act that the killer is being punished for. Some argue that killing Andrews An-drews will not do any good and will not bring back the dead. There is a valid argument about racial inequality in the current death penalty. Statistics prove that more people of minority races are given the death penalty than are whites. For example, Franklin, who was convicted of killing two black joggers, did not receive the death penalty. Surely, if any crime deserved such a penalty, it was the pipe-bombing murders Mark Hoffman Hoff-man admitted to. Yet he lives on. How can Andrews be put to death when it has not been proven that he 'technically' killed anyone when proven killers are allowed to live? Some people claim that there can be no cost placed on the value of life, so wanting a criminal put to death to save taxpayers' tax-payers' money is ludicrous. Others state that since Andrews was only 19 at the time of the crime, he was too young to be responsible for his actions, especially when that young age is coupled with the environment in which Andrews was raised. On the other hand, some people feel strongly that the death penalty should be enforced and especially so in Andrews' case. Some have said that William Andrews' pleas for mercy should be heard as clearly and with as much sympathy by the courts as were the victims' pleas as they were being tortured by Andrews. An-drews. Proponents of the death penalty claim that if it is issued swiftly in cases of this nature, it will definitely act as a deterrent deter-rent to other potential murderers. There is an argument that racial inequality does not enter into the Andrews' case and that it should not be compared to the Franklin or Hoffman case. Franklin's case contained extenuating ex-tenuating circumstances and involvement with another state. The Mark Hoffman case supposedly may never have come to court at all because of lack of evidence. If plea bargaining had not taken place, it is possible that there would not have been a conviction at all. Some of these arguments use the premise that conceivably there is an inequality in the System involving the rich and poor but not involving race. Taking it one step further, claims are made that jurists 'bend over backwards to avoid anything that even looks like racism. . It has been stated that Andrews did not do the actual killing, and that no other person has been executed who did not himself commit the actual murder. Opponents of this argument claim that it is getting a little too technical to say Andrews didn't pull the particular trigger that was the legal cause of-death. of-death. If left as they were, his victims would probably have died from the caustic liquid forced upon them by Andrews and his partner. Some arguments are formed around the fact that it costs thousands and thousands of dollars, paid for from the pockets of taxpayers, to keep a convicted killer alive and to fight the court battles. The court action in some cases has become a joke. - - Some admit that Andrews was young, but so were some of his victims. Why should he get better than he gave? These are all valid arguments. The problem is, we are debating whether or not we should have the death penalty when we already have it We as a society must make a final decision. If the death penalty is part of the law, it should be enforced. en-forced. If it is unacceptable, it should not be the law. Our system has a problem of re-defining laws, and then go- CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE |