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Announcer: The David Pakman Show at www.DavidPakman.com.
David: Back on The David Pakman Show. Log on to www.DonateYourAccount.com/DavidPakmanShow,
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Louis: Yeah, like a million times.
David: No, no, but in all seriousness, I don't see your Facebook account on there.
Louis: No, I haven't done it.
David: You... you have to do it. This is pathetic.
Louis: I mean, I produce the show, isn't that enough?
David: No, you never post about the show, there's no writing about the show.
Louis: That's your job.
David: If you donate your account, then when I post, your account will post, too. That's
the whole idea.
Louis: But I don't post.
David: And you said... is this... I can't even tell if this is for real or not.
Louis: OK. OK, I'll get around to it.
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We had the Troy Davis execution last week. It looked like there was the possibility of
being spared, at least temporarily. Now, the Troy Davis case was a controversial cop-killer
case, where there were a number of witnesses claiming at the time of the trial to have
seen the *** go down, to have personal knowledge of exactly what happened.
However, seven of those nine key witnesses recanted their testimony. No *** weapon
had ever been recovered. Witnesses claimed that they were coerced by the police. Police
and investigators of course deny all of this, but there were definite questions about the
reality.
It looked like maybe Troy Davis was going to be spared; it did not happen. He was executed
last week.
Louis: Actually, this is kind of interesting, I mean, I know there were a lot of protests
across the country.
David: Yeah.
Louis: But I was driving through Amherst, and there was a huge protest right in the
town square.
David: Amherst, Massachusetts.
Louis: Yeah.
David: Let me fill in the blanks here for Louis.
Louis: Right, Amherst, Massachusetts. I think most of our listeners know we're in Massachusetts.
But right, Amherst Massachusetts.
And what seemed to be, of course, there's a lot of colleges in the area, I assume these
were either UMass students or Amherst College students. A very large group of them, all
with signs, chanting, yelling, screaming stuff.
David: Yeah.
Louis: Yeah, it was quite a sight.
David: And to no avail. And so now we... certainly there is doubt amongst many as to Troy Davis's
actual responsibility for that ***.
Now, simultaneously, another alleged killer was spared from his execution just hours before
he was set to be executed. The Parole Board in Georgia spared a convicted killer from
execution. He was going to die by lethal injection on Thursday, and they commuted his sentence
to life in prison. This was the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, and they made the
decision with less than three hours to spare before 47-year-old Samuel David Crowe was
to be executed.
Crowe was not present at the parole hearing. He had already eaten his last meal, and he
was about to go into the execution chamber. And the story is, in March of 1988, he killed
a store manager, Joseph Pala, during a robbery at a lumber company in Douglas County west
of Atlanta. Crowe had previously worked at the store. He shot Pala three times with a
pistol, beat him with a crowbar and a pot of paint. He plead guilty to armed robbery
and to ***, and he was sentenced to death the following year.
His lawyers presented evidence attesting to his remorse, OK, so in other words, he was
sorry he did it, and to his good behavior in jail, according to local media reports.
The lawyers also said at the time of the crime, he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms
from a *** addiction, OK?
So let's just look at this. And by the way, I'm going to... let me issue a disclaimer:
I'm going to mention this. I'm not saying that this was related to how this went down
and why things went down the way they did, but if I don't mention it, people will email
me saying it's relevant. Troy Davis was black, and Crowe is white, OK? I'm just putting it
out there. I'm not even speculating right now about whether it's a factor or not in
what happened here.
Let's think about this. One guy, seven of the nine witnesses who claimed that they saw
him commit a *** say actually after the fact they didn't see that. There's questions,
there's a specific other person who at least some are blaming for the ***, there is
no *** weapon recovered.
Louis: Davis maintained his innocence up until the second he died.
David: And Davis maintains his innocence. Right. No clemency, nothing.
On the other hand, we have a guy who admitted that he did it, and he is exculpated to...
well, to a life sentence, because he has been behaving well and he has admitted that he
feels sorry for what he did, he admits remorse. And also, hey, he was coked up at the time.
We can't kill the guy, he was coked up.
What's going on here? Something about this doesn't fit to me. What do you think about
this, Natan?
Natan: I don't know what to say. I mean, I can't say for certain what happened here,
but what I do... but what is clear, to your point about whether race is a factor, race
is a factor, maybe not in these specific cases, but in, you know, many other cases.
David: Sure.
Louis: I mean, this just seems to me like something that almost never happens. I've
never heard of this happening. I've never heard of someone who's about to die just getting
let off the hook for seemingly no reason.
David: Well, it does happen. And here are the reasons that they gave based on all this.
I am against the death penalty. You're against the death penalty, Louis.
Louis: Right.
David: What is your main reason, what's the most compelling argument you can think of
for you to be against the death penalty?
Louis: I don't really see much of a difference between life in prison and the death penalty,
and I think death... if death is the ultimate punishment, and in a lot of cases, you can't
know 100% if these people are guilty, then life in prison should be good enough.
David: Well, for me, it's every argument, every aspect. I mean, number one, time after
time, we see that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime being committed, OK,
so that's not... that's not a factor. The death penalty is irreversible. Life in prison,
people do get out sometimes. Sometimes...
Louis: Right, I mean, if evidence comes up...
David: If we're going to make the financially conservative argument, it's more costly than
incarceration. An execution is more costly than a life incarceration.
Louis: Is it?
David: Yeah. And it's a little bit outdated. I mean, really, every other country at the
level of development the U.S. is at no longer has the death penalty.
Louis: It is pretty archaic. Yeah.
David: By the way, they also have a different health care system, which also makes sense.
It's a little bit confusing that being so advanced, the U.S. seems to be very behind
both in health care systems as well as in the death penalty. And, you know, I really
don't think that if someone commits a ***, that then it is made equal, the victims are
made whole, the situation is made zero-sum, so to speak, by the state putting someone
to death, by the state killing someone, being in the business of killing people. For me,
there's no aspect of the death penalty that makes sense at this point, 2011, at this point
in time.
Louis: Yeah. I think it's... it is a bit archaic, and it... I guess it sends a bad message.
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