What kind of society do we live in where a man hangs himself to avoid the death penalty?

[Gravitycollapse]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/04/justice/ohio-inmate-death/?iref=obinsite

CNN) -- Facing lethal injection in a matter of days, Ohio murderer Billy Slagle apparently hanged himself in his prison cell early Sunday, state corrections officials said.

Slagle was discovered in his cell at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution just after 5 a.m. Sunday and pronounced dead about an hour later, said Jo Ellen Smith, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. He was to have been put to death Tuesday, Smith said.

Slagle had been on death row since 1988, convicted of murder after stabbing a neighbor to death in her Cleveland home. Ohio's parole board voted 6-4 against his petition for clemency in June, and Gov. John Kasich denied his request on July 24.

The refusal came despite the rare support for a commutation from Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty, whose office recommended Slagle's sentence be reduced to life in prison without parole.

Certainly not a society for which I am particularly proud.

[Pelican]

1. What are you mad at specifically?

The DP being used?

The fact that someone didn't have eyes on this guy long enough for him to hang himself?

The fact that the family got "cheated?"

[Gravitycollapse]

3. I'm ashamed of the fact that we'd rather condemn a man to die rather than try to rehabilitate.

[pipoman]

16. I have met many, many prisoneers who

I hope never are turned loose on society again. Rehabilitation simply isn't an option with many who are in prison..and I identify as a fairly devout civil libertarian.. The DP? It is irrevocable 'justice' in a system which is forced to revoke 'justice' by the undeniable truth occasionally..

[Gravitycollapse]

18. I never said rehabilitation always works. Don't put words in my mouth.

You speak as if our justice and prison system is designed to rehabilitate. It is not. It is designed to dole out petty vengeance. The two concepts are mutually exclusive.

[pipoman]

19. Wow..lashing out? Why?

Because you know not of whom you speak?

Maybe reread my post and take out all the shit you read into it, eh?

[NuclearDem]

11. "The fact that the family got "cheated?""

They did, or you did?

[Pelican]

24. I was wondering if that is why the OP was tweaked...

Doesn't bother me either way. Dead is dead...

[NYC_SKP]

2. That is what I would prefer to do. Of course we should have no death penalty.

OTOH, it's consistent with our overall backwardness.

[flvegan]

4. The kind where revengeseekers get robbed of their bloodlust fulfillment.

No winners here.

[Gravitycollapse]

5. The man won his freedom at an extremely high price.

But, you are right, there were no winners. There is only another death. And to have that be the result of the prior death is very unsettling.

[Just Saying]

6. Sadly,

We live in a society where this man broke into his neighbor's home and stabbed her 17 times with a pair of scissors.

I'm against the death penalty but I don't have a lot of pity for this man. He got 25 more years of life than his 40 year old victim had.

[Gravitycollapse]

7. So is the state mimicking individual murderers or individual murderers mimicking the state?

Maybe a bit of both? They probably feed off one another.

Nothing really gets the point across from "thou shalt not kill" quite like killing someone. Or, you know, suiciding them. The latter is probably a little cheaper.

[Just Saying]

12. I find your post confusing.

So it's the state's fault he broke into his neighbor's home and stabbed her 17 times with a pair of scissors?

As I said, I'm against the death penalty, but he wasn't executed. He took his own life. I don't blame him for going on his own terms.

[Gravitycollapse]

14. It's the state's fault he's dead.

[Just Saying]

20. So his crime had nothing to do with it?

Or the fact that he hung himself?

How could the state have handled this better, in your opinion? What should have happened with this man?

Slagle, now 44, murdered his 40-year-old neighbor Mari Anne Pope in her Clinton Avenue home during a burglary. He stabbed Pope 17 times with a pair of scissors as two children she was babysitting watched.

Pope prayed during the attack, the children said.

"I feel Billy Slagle is now responsible for the lives of three people: [Mari Anne], my son and his own," said Lauretta Keeton, the mother of the witnesses.

Keeton's son committed suicide in 2002 and was "troubled his whole life by what he saw Slagle do," she said.

More details at the link:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/08/convicted_murderer_billy_slagl.html

[MrSlayer]

9. He cheated the hangman.

It's an ages old method of sticking it to the man one last time. Going out on your own terms.

I don't have a problem with it.

[petronius]

10. It struck me as very bizarre that a pre-execution suicide-watch was a standard

practice. I can see that it makes a weird sort of sense, but it does make my head spin...

(And my preference would be no DP, in any circumstances.)

[Journeyman]

13. You should know the story of Robert Pierce who died in San Quentin in 1956. . .

I'll let Evan S. Connell explain:

Robert Pierce, awaiting execution at San Quentin prison,
contrived to slash his throat with a shard of glass,
precipitating a frantic quarrel among the authorities:
some insisted that he be executed before he bled to death
while others thought he should be taken to the hospital.
Presently, with gouts of blood bubbling from his neck,
he was carried into the gas chamber. Witnesses screamed,
vomited and several fainted. The decision had been reached,
officials later explained, because at the time of death
the prisoner probably would still be alive and therefore
conscious not only of his crime but of the retributions
justly demanded by the Sovereign State of California.

Evan S. Connell, Points for a Compass Rose, 1973

With an accomplice Smith Edward Jordan, Pierce killed an Oakland cabdriver in a seven-dollar robbery turned murder. The man, Charles Rose, died after being struck several times by the butt of Pierce’s gun.

After his conviction, Pierce spent his time in prison writing All of God’s Children Got Rhythm, but the manuscript was confiscated by prison officials and was lost.

The previous day, Pierce vowed to put on a show for the other death row inmates, saying, “It will take two guys to get me in that chair, ’cause I’m going to go out fighting, kicking and screaming.”

Pierce was a contemporary of Carl Chessman. They shared the Row together, but not a cell, and not even near each other, as Pierce was too dangerous to be kept with the other condemned prisoners; they kept him penned in a special section dubbed the "Iron Curtain."

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/202686.html

[Gravitycollapse]

15. Yes I remember reading that excerpt.

[Posteritatis]

17. "Cheating the hangman" is hardly specific to American society. (nt)

[Rex]

21. Sat on death row for 25 years?

Why?

[darkangel218]

22. The death penalty and the " death row " simply should not exist.

[Rex]

23. Yes it sounds like cruel and unusual punishment imo.

25 years is a long time.

[Just Saying]

25. I think I read the average time on death row is 14 years.

Ohio had delays because of how they were executing and I believe changes were made with the drugs or something.

And I'm sure he went thru all the appeals and everything. The prosecuted tried to get his sentence commuted to life in prison.

[Rex]

26. I can understand appeals and why not

You have nothing to lose. But 25 years, wow I had no idea they sat in holding that long.