UPDATE: Thank you all for sharing your insights with me; I'm definitely leaning toward opposing all together.
Lame but not without power, President Bush approved the military's request to execute a military death row prisoner on December 10.
"Pvt. Ronald Gray has been on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since 1988. A court-martial panel sitting at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, unanimously convicted him of committing two murders and other crimes in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area, and sentenced him to death...
In July, President George W. Bush approved the Army's request to execute Gray...
The president took action following completion of a full appellate process, which upheld the conviction and sentence to death," the Army said in the news release. "Two petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court were denied during the appellate processing of Pvt. Gray's case."
-CNN.com
No pun intended, the verdict is still out for me on how I feel about Capital Punishment. I do think the hypocrisy of the right in seeking to prohibit abortion yet supporting the execution of prisoners (on occasion, those who actually weren't guilty of the crime but were not exonerated until it was too late) is warped. As a pro-choice individual, I always fear that if we strike down capital punishment, we run the risk of striking down abortion as well--this Democrat-controlled government will take some getting used to!
Private Gray's crimes were heinous.
"Gray was convicted of raping and killing a female Army private and a civilian near his post at Fort Bragg. He was also convicted of the rape and attempted murder of another fellow soldier in her barracks at the post.
Both military and civilian courts found Gray responsible for the crimes, which were committed between April 1986 and January 1987. Gray pleaded guilty to two murders and five rapes in a civilian court and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life terms."
There are, however, similar (and worse) cases in which American soldiers raped and killed innocent civilians, like in Iraq... will they also be put to death or does this sentence only get served "at the pleasure of the President?" I don't like the cherry picking who dies, who lives, when the crime was the same. It's like Russian Roulette. That doesn't seem like justice to me.
What do you think?