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Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 11:58 pm
by Bicycle Bill
Imprisoned 'Dating Game Killer' Rodney Alcala dies in California
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A prolific serial torture-slayer dubbed “The Dating Game Killer” died Saturday while awaiting execution in California, authorities said. Rodney James Alcala was 77. He died of natural causes at a hospital in San Joaquin Valley, California, prison officials said in a statement.
Alcala was sentenced to death in 2010 for five slayings in California between 1977 and 1979, including that of a 12-year-old girl, though authorities estimate he may have killed up to 130 people across the country. Alcala received an additional 25 years to life in 2013 after pleading guilty to two homicides in New York. He was charged again in 2016 after DNA evidence connected him to the 1977 death of a 28-year-old woman whose remains were found in a remote area of southwest Wyoming. But a prosecutor said Alcala was too ill to face trial in the death of the woman, who was six months pregnant when she died.
Investigators say his true victim count may never be known.
California’s death row is in San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco, but for years Alcala had been housed more than 200 miles away at a prison in Corcoran where he could receive medical care around the clock.
Prosecutors said Alcala stalked women like prey and took earrings as trophies from some of his victims. “You’re talking about a guy who is hunting through Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it,” Orange County, California, prosecutor Matt Murphy said during his trial.
Earrings helped put him on death row, though Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed a moratorium on executions so long as he is governor. The mother of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe testified at his murder trial that a pair of gold ball earrings found in a jewelry pouch in Alcala’s storage locker belonged to her daughter. But Alcala claimed that the earrings were his and that a video clip from his 1978 appearance on “The Dating Game” shows him wearing the studs nearly a year before Samsoe died. He denied the slayings and cited inconsistencies in witness’ accounts and descriptions.
California prosecutors said Alcala also took earrings from at least two of his adult victims as trophies.
Two of the four women were posed nude after their deaths, one was raped with a claw hammer and all were repeatedly strangled and resuscitated to prolong their agony, prosecutors said.
Investigators said one victim’s DNA was found on a rose-shaped earring in Alcala’s possession, and his DNA was found in her body.
He had been sentenced to death twice before in Samsoe’s murder, but both convictions were overturned. He was charged in the slayings of the four adult women more than two decades later based on new DNA and other forensic evidence. After the verdict, authorities released more than 100 photos of young women and girls found in Alcala’s possession in hopes of linking him to other unsolved murders around the country.
“There is murder and rape, and then there is the unequivocal carnage of a Rodney Alcala-style murder,” Bruce Barcomb, the brother of 18-year-old victim Jill Barcomb, said as Alcala was sentenced to death.
So here we have a guy who was found guilty of multiple murders in the 1970s, brought to trial, and because of a bunch of legalistic mumbo-jumbo as well as the public themselves waffling over whether or not to actually EXECUTE someone, even after a sentence to do so had been passed, managed to live in prison on the public dime for almost forty years until 2010.
Then, he was AGAIN found guilty and sentenced to death — again. But he still managed to live for another eleven years to die in his sleep in a prison hospital, when at the very least he should have been pushing up daisies since 2011.
I suggest that a special panel be set up to go over the laws and penalties for violating them, and remove any such penalty that society is unwilling to carry out. What good is sentencing someone to death for murder if they're going to outlive the executioner?
-"BB"-
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 12:15 am
by Crackpot
Good riddance the guy was a complete tool.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 12:17 am
by Crackpot
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:59 am
by dales
In CALIFORNIA there is by any real standard NO DEATH PENALTY.
It may be on the books but hasn't been carried out in decades.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:42 pm
by Big RR
I wouldn't argue against taking the death penalty off the books in the entire US.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:47 pm
by BoSoxGal
Big RR wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:42 pm
I wouldn't argue against taking the death penalty off the books in the entire US.
And join the rest of the civilized world?
Never!
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:22 pm
by Bicycle Bill
BoSoxGal wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:47 pm
Big RR wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:42 pm
I wouldn't argue against taking the death penalty off the books in the entire US.
And join the rest of the civilized world?
Never!
Judging from the number of senseless, random killings (and other crimes) in America in any given year, as well as the sheer amount of death-dealing weapons in the hands of the public — many of whom you would have to admit are less-than-qualified individuals, I would question whether or not we are part of the civilized world in the first place.
-"BB"-
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:34 pm
by Econoline
Good point.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:33 am
by MajGenl.Meade
Perfect example of a good death penalty - death by incarceration until dead
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 12:09 am
by MGMcAnick
MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑Mon Jul 26, 2021 1:33 am
Perfect example of a good death penalty - death by incarceration until dead
That's supposed to be how "life" in prison works.
Unfortunately it seems most lifers are out in 15 or 25 years depending on the state and crime involved.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:00 am
by Big RR
Of course, most, if not all, states have life without parole as well.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:42 am
by MGMcAnick
Big RR wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 1:00 am
Of course, most, if not all, states have life without parole as well.
Sure, and sentences of 300+ years to keep bad guys in until death. Whatever works is fine with me, but I still hear of "lifers" getting out well before they are dead.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 3:49 am
by Big RR
That's because a "life sentence" is a misnomer; life is the maximum term. Sentences are usually listed as a range with a minimum and maximum duration (I think some states permit good time credits to reduce the sentence below the minimum, while others do not. In NJ the minimums appear to be 25, 30, or 35 years (depending on the offense) after which the person is eligible for parole. Of course, life without parole does not permit release except for extreme circumstances (usually for humanitarian reasons, like releasing a terminally ill prisoner months before death, but some states do not permit this).
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:38 pm
by Sue U
Big RR wrote: ↑Sun Jul 25, 2021 3:42 pm
I wouldn't argue against taking the death penalty off the books in the entire US.
If we were a moral nation we would. We abolished it here in NJ in 2007. And statistics indicate that having a death penalty or not has literally no effect on the crime rate:
Of course, we in New Jersey live in an urban liberal hellhole of violent crime.
The death penalty is not a deterrent; it is purely revenge killing.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:39 pm
by MGMcAnick
Sue U wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:38 pm
The death penalty is not a deterrent; it is purely revenge killing.
Except that a murderer who is executed is highly unlikely to ever do it again.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 9:08 pm
by Sue U
MGMcAnick wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:39 pm
Sue U wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:38 pm
The death penalty is not a deterrent; it is purely revenge killing.
Except that a murderer who is executed is highly unlikely to ever do it again.
A murderer who is serving a life sentence (with or without parole) is also highly unlikely to ever do it again. (The point of the parole hearings is to determine whether the convict remains a threat to society.)
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:10 pm
by Bicycle Bill
Sue U wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 9:08 pm
MGMcAnick wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 8:39 pm
Sue U wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:38 pm
The death penalty is not a deterrent; it is purely revenge killing.
Except that a murderer who is executed is highly unlikely to ever do it again.
A murderer who is serving a life sentence (with or without parole) is also highly unlikely to ever do it again. (The point of the parole hearings is to determine whether the convict remains a threat to society.)
At a cost of how much per year to warehouse the scum vs the few bucks it would cost for the electricity to juice up Ol' Sparky, or the vial of chemicals or the box of .30-06 shells it would take to make it an absolute
certainty that they would never do it again?
You could even throw in a fancy-shmancy funeral for the dead sunuvabitch — nice casket, gravestone, and all — and still be money ahead.
-"BB"-
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:33 pm
by Big RR
Perhaps, but every estimate I have read places the cost of the death penalty as much higher than any other punishment.
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:53 pm
by Bicycle Bill
Big RR wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 11:33 pm
Perhaps, but every estimate I have read places the cost of the death penalty as much higher than any other punishment.
Only because of all the bullshit — the appeals, the psychological evaluations, the determination as to whether or not the person is in a sufficient mental state to understand what is going on, and so on and so forth — that leads up to it.
Say what you may, back in the Old West, when the judge said ,
"You have been found guilty of murder (or horse thieving, or cattle rustling, or whatever) and It is the sentence of this court that you be hanged by the neck until dead," you could bet your bottom dollar that it was gonna happen sooner rather than later, and the biggest expense was probably paying the undertaker for the pine box.
-"BB"-
Re: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:04 am
by Big RR
Bullshit? Being sure someone who is convicted is actually .guilty before he is put to death? Being sure that he is not insane and not subject tot he punishment? the desire to comply with the letter of the law when the sentence is carried out? That's bullshit? I don't know what country you lie in (or want to live in), but I'm proud the US takes these pains before it kills someone.
You honestly prefer to just rush things and get it done quickly and if they are innocent, too damn bad?