Lindy Lou Isonhood grew up in a town where the death penalty was a fact of life, part of the unspoken culture. But after she served as a juror in a capital murder trial — and voted "yes" to sentencing a guilty man to death — something inside her changed. In this engaging and personal talk, Isonhood reflects on the question she's been asking herself in the 25 years since the trial: Am I a murderer?
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I don’t necessarily agree with her political opinion but on a personal level I can appreciate that she shared her story.
Kenneth Markert …Of course a Liberal would sympathize with a criminal like that. Yet she would happily imprison somebody for “hate speech.”
+AManWithaWoodenleg2 The death penalty doesn’t work. It doesn’t reduce violent crime, it doesn’t save tax payers dollars, and innocent people have been executed through the death penalty.
+Goobian It does save money, an execution is far more cheaper than taking care of a prisoner. Cost of housekeeping a prisoner is far higher than an execution.
Extraordinary crimes need extraordinary measures.
+sunnyjjng It costs more to pay wages to everybody during the court trial. Do you think a maid cleans up after them? They are paid pennies a day to maintain the prison themselves.
+sunnyjjng Death Row doesn’t lower violent crime. Sociopaths are at peace with death and are curious how death will feel. So trying to scare them with death is rediculious.
Wilcher met Katie Belle Moore and Velma Odell Noblin at a Scott County bar and at closing time persuaded the women to take him home. Under this pretext, he directed the women down a deserted service road in the Bienville National Forest where he robbed and brutally murdered the women by stabbing them a total of 46 times. Thereafter, Wilcher was stopped for speeding by the Forest Police Department between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. He was alone and was driving victim Noblin’s car. The victims’ purses and one victim’s brassiere were on the back seat. Wilcher was covered in blood; he had a bloody knife in his back pocket that had flesh on the blade. Wilcher explained his condition by telling the policeman that he had cut his thumb while skinning a possum. The officer followed Wilcher to the hospital, where Wilcher’s wound was cleaned and covered with a band-aid. Another officer was called to the hospital to observe Wilcher, the knife, the car, the purses, and the brassiere. The officers left the hospital on an emergency call. Wilcher went home. The next morning, he abandoned Noblin’s car at an apartment complex. Wilcher also threw the victims’ purses and some of the victims’ clothing in a ditch. He was arrested later that day. The victims’ jewelry was subsequently found in Wilcher’s bedroom.
I agree with you I do have one question if anyone had killed your granddaughter will you still fill the same I myself can’t find it in me to agree with the death penalty as long as there possibility of parole
+abdi shakir not taking revenge is not caring for the victims. Not killing perpetrators of crimebdoes not absolve them of consequences. An eye for an eye is very unenlightened thinking which thankfully most people have evolved from.
Melanie Stewart That’s where we differ. I do not respect the rights or dignity of a murderer/rapist. They deserve to die. The moment you rob another person of their life, your life should be forfeit. You relinquish your human qualities.
+Melanie Stewart then what should we do to the killers?
+Matthew Hysler that’s ok. I realise that beliefs like yours come from a place of lack of understanding on the subject and really come from a place of ego, nothing more. No offence intended. However, I must add that one of the main reasons the death penalty is wrong is that there are too many innocent people wrongly convicted for anyone to never execute someone who has not committed the crime. It could even happen to you.
Melanie Stewart I love how you’re inherently convinced that you must be right, and I must be wrong. If i’m coming from a place of ego, then you’re coming from a place of arrogance and perceived moral superiority.
The death penalty is a necessary and just punishment for many individuals, and it warms my heart to know that many mass murderers and heinous rapists have been brutally fried to death in a chair. Crying and twitching. I hope their soul finds purity one day but in the realm we live in, they deserve death.
How did all jurors vote on the death penalty at the ballot box originally and was this question asked during selection? Yes, everyone is blameworthy who voted this way for the death penalty and religion is once again distorting reality.
Personally, I think killing should only be used as a last resort. It should not be used as a form of justice. Our government, ideally, should be designed as an example of how our society should behave. When there are other solutions available that don’t involve killing, we should choose that option first. That is what an ethical society should do. Our justice system should not lower itself to the behavior of the worst in society.
That being said, there are of course other reasons to not support capital punishment, errors in the final judgment, the extra legal costs often costing more than putting someone in jail for life, etc.
Regardless of if you’re for or against the death penalty, mental health care and counseling for jurors involved in it is a really great idea.
So they don’t have to feel bad taking part in a murder?
You were a victim too, and a true Christian as opposed to all those hypocrites in our government. Some years after, unfortunately, your experience, a CONSERVATIVE midwestern governor banned the death penalty after DNA evidence cleared MANY of the accused of their crimes. I feel bad for you, but admire your good heart, openness to rethinking, and LIVING your faith.
Certainly makes one think.
Good for her!
If I had my way, I would turn jails into places to get re educated and learn new skills to get you back in the work force, and you get 2 strikes, 2nd strike and your out meaning death penalty. But these strikes will not be for trivial crimes of course.
The problem with “strikes” is that there is no objectivity. There are people who killed for a good reason, which still is morally wrong. There are people who kill once but in a way which makes clear that society has to be protected from them. Also either of the strikes could still be a flawed conviction. There is no good way of applying a binary principle on an analogue reality, no matter how many incrementations one goes through.
Just got back from jury duty. They didn’t use us. I knew i wanted a 12 angry men moment if one oresented itself to me but nope. Just wasted my time. My unending sorror for the misunderstood went wasted.
Margaritas are great therapy.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. They should not forget the value of a person’s life.
+Brenda Rua Ok. Nice to talk. I could discuss this thing more details but I do not bore you. Genuine discussion is very rare on internet.:-)
+Brenda Rua It is not even just the presidents. It would be enough to make a certain percentage of the force up of rich white kids, right at the front lines. It would be a matter of months until the US will discover pacifism.
+Herr Schmidt Well you have a good point We have a prime example with el presidente Trompo and the fake bone spurs in his feet that allow a deferment from Vietnam But it is woorth pointing out a counter exaple of England in WW I, when th upper classes sent their men to front. I o not know if the oter powers did the same. But didn’t German and Prussia and Austria have a compulsory service for al men at that time?
+Brenda Rua The scale of the World Wars for european nations had a different scale. And the UK probably had too many aristocrats to keep the rich out of the line of fire as well. It is just the natural thing to do: everybody would use their influence to keep their offspring save. But when you look at the american wars, there was not a single conflict since their own civil war where they could not make relative comfortable choices who to send.
This certainty of being removed from the food chain makes is reflected on an economic level as well. They get sure to be too big to fail and have their personal safetynet, one level higher than everybody else. Which is why they don’t care how the poor people are getting along – they know that even if they lost half their IQ, they would never have to be among those.
+Herr Schmidt Yes, you could be right about the English. Their property system defaulted to giving all property to a single heir. The other sons went into the curch or military, more rarly into university.
Outside of the American Ciil war and bot world wars Ameria’s conflicts were wars of expansion and market. WW I had a substantial resistance both before and during the war. The president Wilson, supposedly an academic liberal proved to be authoritarian and no frien of liberty. Ironic that the boys thought they were fighting for liberty. Even more ironic is the black regiment in France.
If you are asked under oath, “If this man is guilty will you condemn him to death?” You can answer without lying, in the affirmative, because we are all innocent to exist and innocent of all our actions.
“A simple argument against the death penalty
The fundamental reason against punishment, whatever it may be, and the death penalty in particular, is so obvious that one must ask why no one seems to see it.
This reason is that no one has asked to exist.
We exist because our parents have desired us. We are all guests of this planet. Yet we are here to serve them, as they served their parents. They made us with the social agreement, that is to say that society authorized, and even strongly encouraged our parents to manufacture us.
We exist without having asked for it, and we exist with a body and an intellect that we have not asked for. We did not ask to be educated in such and such a way. Besides, we are born absolutely virgin of all cultural knowledge. We integrate the culture in which we bathe, whatever the geographical location and whatever the period. Our eyes are cameras, our ears microphones, our skin a tactile surface, and our nervous system an automatic signal integrator. This culture pervades us because we are forced to do so. We have nothing to do with it.
We are such that we are because society has made us such as we are, intelligent or stupid, fragile and mortal, victims or criminals. If you want to file a complaint, it is against society, but not against individuals. If a criminal is on your way with social weapons, it is because society has put him there and you are a potential victim fabricated fragile by society. Individuals were constructed, formatted, and knighted by society…”
http://argumentscontre.blogspot.fr/2017/05/argument-against-death-penalty.html
Accused shouldn’t have been executed,because it took 22 years for implementation..if the jury had such traumatic time,just imagine what the accused would have gone through waiting for his Death penalty.
We live in a society that has laws. Members of that society agreed to live by those laws or suffer the consequences. If one commits a heinous act of murdering another member of that society, the consequence is that person is removed from society…completely. And jurors are not murderers They are simply the means of helping to determine if the prosecution has laid out the case to convict a person.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
You should feel like a murderer if you let a murderer live. This woman don’t have the tools to be a juror. When a FBI agent can’t handle the job, the don’t change the rules they get somebody who can do the job.
Is it possible that the use of the popular jury in trials is related to the issuance of sentences of death penalty?