Liberal panelists meltdown over Trump death penalty quest

There was a time when people wanted the death penalty to be mandatory for any murder, but the Supreme Court blocked that in the 1970s.

The issue of the death penalty in DC was blocked not long after, and voters have regularly made it clear they don’t want the death penalty in DC.

Well, Trump sent them all into a tizzy, announcing he wants to bring the death penalty back to DC.

It’s over

A Supreme Court ruling in 1972 established that it was unconstitutional to have a mandatory death penalty.

In 1981, DC formally abolished the death penalty.

About a decade later, it was put back on the ballot, and voters overwhelmingly rejected it, and the issue had been settled, until this week.

Trump decided to bring back the death penalty as a way to make DC safer, and it has created quite a buzz.

I Want It Back

As far as I know, Trump has always supported the death penalty, but to make it mandatory is another game altogether.

Trump stated, “I don’t know if we’re ready for it in this country. We have no choice.”

Robin M. Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, looked at it from a different approach, stating, “It would be a tremendous investment of taxpayer dollars. Because death penalty cases are many times more expensive than other criminal cases that do not seek a death sentence. Capital cases are much longer, take much longer to complete.”

She later added, “If [Trump] were to seek a death sentence in every possible case, even though violent crime is down in D.C., there would still be enough of those crimes, enough prosecutions, to completely overwhelm the legal system.”

The meltdown

We all know how sensitive the media is to TDS, and boy, did they get a bad case of it here.

MSNBC’s Chris Jansing stated, “Well, I think, if you look at the research, there is no indication that that works to stop people from killing people.”

She continued, “But I wonder [about] the politics of this, Stuart, because of his support and there’s some recent polls I think from Pew [Research], Gallup, legit organizations that show that the support in the United States for capital punishment is at a five-year low, it’s still around 50%, but it’s at a five-year low. We are the only western civilized society that has capital punishment. But obviously [Trump] thinks there is big political gain for this.”

I agree about the deterrent factor, but for a different reason. I believe it does not work as a deterrent because in the rare instances the sentence is carried out, it takes decades to play out, so the shock and awe factor is gone, and many people do not even remember the original crime. With the DNA evidence as it is today, convict, and send them right to the chamber. I am not saying it will stop all murders, but if you know that if you get caught, you could be strapped down a few months later, well, yes, I think that would stop some people.