SLEEPLESS ON DEATH ROW
THE DEATH PENALTY IS A JOKE ON YOU
By: Daniel Sargis, EtherZone
Last week two career criminals on parole invaded a Cheshire Connecticut home
and murdered three of its four occupants...after sexually pleasing
themselves with the victims.
The local news kept repeating that politicians, community leaders and
average citizens wanted to know "Why?". How could anybody do something so
"Unfathomable" to such nice people?
The answer lies with the supplicants.
Give me a good reason not to be a murderer...especially if you live in a
liberal State?
Look at a sampling of murder...Connecticut style.
Wikipedia sums it up the best, "Connecticut has executed one person since
the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. The
execution of Michael Ross in 2005 was the first execution anywhere in New
England since the 1960 execution of Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky, also in
Connecticut."
And, Michael Ross, demented sexual serial killer that he was, had to beg to
be executed.
Or take the case of Daniel Webb.
Webb was charged with: abducting Diane Gellenbeck, a 37 year old Connecticut
National Bank Vice President, from a parking garage on Aug. 24, 1989;
driving her to Hartford's Keney Park and attempting to rape her. When
Gellenback broke free, he shot her twice in the back. She then began
crawling away, calling for help. Webb followed her and fired three more
shots at her from close range...executing her.
Here is a snapshot of Webb:
Prior to the Gellenbeck murder, Webb's criminal record was already
appalling. Arrested 1983 for robbery. Convicted in 1984 and sentenced to a
suspended term and probation. Arrested 1984 and convicted of rape, unlawful
restraint and robbery. Given a four-year sentence. Released May 12, 1987.
Arrested Feb. 6, 1988 on charges of rape, kidnapping and threatening. Feb.
22, 1988, Webb arrested for beating and assaulting a woman on a highway
after faking an accident. May 28, 1988, Webb accused of robbing and beating
a woman as she parked her car. With his pants unzipped, he smashed the car
window with a wrench, hit the woman on the head and took a handbag with $23
before fleeing. June 14, 1988, Webb arrested for bumping a woman's car on a
highway. When she stopped, he smashed her window, pulled her from the car,
threw her against a concrete barrier, repeatedly threatened to kill her,
drove her to a school, ordered her to undress and raped her. Aug. 24, 1989,
Webb kidnaps, attempts to rape and murders Diane Gellenbeck.
Webb was sentenced to death in 1991 and "To this day, the taxpayers of
Connecticut are keeping Webb well fed and warm on death row as he appeals
his capital sentence and sues the state over his "Constitutional" right to
use ethnic hair and skin care products."
In the commission of a 1974 robbery, Ronald Piskorski and Gary Schrager
executed six people inside of New Britain CT's Donna Lee Bakery in under 30
minutes . Some of the executed were beaten to death with a hammer while
others were shot and some got a little of both. The killers made off with
$300 that night.
For executing six innocent people in under 30 minutes and then, after the
murder, "the two men walked into a party, laughing"...Piskorski and Schrager
were last seen farmed-out to Maine prisons serving life sentences.
In 1991, Connecticut State Trooper Russell Bagshaw was murdered when he was
shot (16 rounds in six seconds) by Terry Johnson during an attempted
burglary at the Land and Sea Sports Center in North Windham CT (Johnson
"expressed satisfaction with the murder in conversations after the fact").
The jury sentenced Johnson to death. BUT...the Connecticut State Supreme
Court overturned that sentence and gave Johnson a life term because the
crime really wasn't "especially cruel and heinous" enough for the Court's
liking.
The Court reasoned that because Trooper Bagshaw remained conscious for ONLY
five to ninety seconds and that he ONLY lived between one and fifteen
minutes after being shot (while drowning in his own blood) that "There was
no evidence that the defendant (Johnson) had a quicker or less painful
method available to him to cause death faster or with less pain." Therefore
it wasn't "especially cruel and heinous" and did not warrant the death
penalty.
This is only a very small sampling of murderer coddling from a very small
State. And yet...people keep asking "Why?".
Murder can generally be divided into three categories: (1) crimes of
passion; (2) crimes for profit and (3) crimes committed by pathological
deviants living on the fringe of civilization. Of course a single murderer
may belong in more than one group simultaneously.
For instance, a psycho may decide to murder somebody for a pack of
cigarettes (group 3 and 2). Or, a contract killer may also be pathological
deviant (group 2 and 3). A jealous wife may also be counting her
soon-to-be-departed husband's life insurance (group 1 and 2).
"Why" they murder isn't such a tough question. They murder because it suits
a need and they think they can get away with it. I wonder what percentage
of murderers would still commit the murder if they knew, with the certainty
of the sun rising, that they would be dead five seconds after committing the
murder?
The real question isn't "Why?". The real question is "What can be done to
reduce the murder rate?". What can be done to lend some real consequences
to the commission of the crime?
Maybe...the same thing that is done to reduce the incidence of people
putting their hands on hot stoves.
If there is a single deterrent that would resonate with all murderers, it is
the certainly of swift and severe consequences. Hanging around in an
air-conditioned death row and eating three squares a day while watching
"American Idol" on your in-cell television just doesn't make the argument
that murder doesn't pay...a swift execution does.
For that matter, the path to murder is usually littered by a long history of
lesser crimes that go equally light on the offender and serve to reinforce
the notion that crime does pay.
In the recent Cheshire CT murders of the Petit family, the two murderers
(Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26 and Steven Hayes, 44) not only were repeat lesser
crime offenders with long records...they were both recently released on
parole.
Robert Farr, chairman of the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Parole, said
that, "They were obviously individuals that had long and extensive records,
but they weren't violent records."
Yet, in 2002, when Judge Bentivegna sentenced Komisarjevsky for a string of
burglaries the judge commented, "What you do seem like is somebody who is a
predator, a calculated, cold-blooded predator that decided nighttime
residential burglaries was your way to make money."
Komisarjevsky was sentenced on December 20, 2002 to "an effective sentence
of nine years, plus six years of special parole."
That "effective sentence" turned into about five years of incarceration and
Komisarjevsky was arrested for the Petit murders just a few months after his
early parole commenced.
As Connecticut Victim Advocate James Papillo asked, "How many bites of the
apple do you get?"
With the murders just a week old, the Hartford Courant has already run two
stories about Komisarjevsky being "depressed over the loss of his teenage
girlfriend and struggling financially because of mounting costs related to
his 5-year-old child," and being "mentally abnormal with a predilection for
burglarizing occupied homes at night".
We all see: where this story is going; where defense attorneys will take it;
where bleeding-heart anti capital punishment advocates want it to go and
where it will end up.
It gets no more "especially cruel and heinous" than what Komisarjevsky and
Hayes inflicted upon the Petit family. Petit's wife was raped and
strangled; one of his daughters was raped; and both daughters (11 and 17
years old) were left to die after Komisarjevsky and Hayes soaked them and
the rest of the house in gasoline (which they supposedly left the house in
mid-crime to buy) and set the house ablaze. Dr. Petit, the husband and
father, barely escaped the burning house after being severely beaten with a
baseball bat about the head and tied-up in the basement.
All in the commission of what was supposed to be a burglary. Nothing that
Komisarjevsky and Hayes hadn't done before and before and before...and had,
for all practical purposes, been enabled to do by a State system soft on
crime.
Although both Komisarjevsky and Hayes have been charged with capital felony,
they will, in all probability, never see that sentence carried out...even if
they are convicted and those convictions stand. They will die of disease or
old age first.
And as they add their wit to the Connecticut death row and/or serve out life
sentences...the next time an innocent is savaged by a sociopath who will be
the first to stand up and ask "Why?" with a straight face?
---
Source : EtherZone
Daniel Sargis is a freelance writer from Connecticut and is a regular
columnist for Ether Zone - he can be reached at:
inosome@dansargis.org
We invite you to visit his website at:
www.dansargis.org
http://www.etherzone.com/2007/sarg080307.shtml
