Gary Ridgeway and the death penalty (disturbing and depressing)

[ripdog]

Where do I start? Gary Leon Ridgeway confessed to murdering 60 women--and his life was spared. He said that strangling them was more satisfying and personal, not to mention less of a mess than shooting them. He also admitted to going back to the grave sites days later and having sex with the bodies. He would leave the victims jewelry in the ladies bathroom where he worked and would get a charge out of seeing his co-workers wearing the stuff later. He wanted to have sex with and then stab his mother, telling investigators how he would get aroused when she would change him after he wet his pants. To my knowledge, other than breaking down when his lawyer asked him if he wanted to admit to the killings, he has not shown any remorse. If anyone deserves the death penalty, it is this guy. I was starting high school when his victims bodies were beginning to surface in and around the Green River, southeast of Seattle. The murders that were attributed to him kept growing through the 80's.

After 10 years I figured that the killer had moved on or died, and that the case would never be solved. My wife grew up with the Green River Killer too. One day she came home from work and I told her that they caught the Green River Killer. It was huge news to us.

Now that he's plead guilty and his life has been spared, the letters of outrage are pouring into the op-ed column. Just like Ted Bundy (and Robert Yates) before him, people want to see him die. I wouldn't shed a tear for this human being, but is the death penalty the right thing for him? I don't think so. The first thing that gets me about the death penalty is that it's not about justice in any way--it's only about revenge. Going further, who does the death penalty deter? You and I? Yes, but not Bundy, Ridgeway, or Yates. It doesn't have the desired effect on those that it needs to effect most--antisocials like the three mentioned previously.

Now comes the good (not really) part--there's another murder case taking place just North of Seattle that has been on hold until the Green River case got dealt with. In that one, a guy and a couple of his buddies kidnapped his ex-girlfriend, tied her to a chair, beat her, raped her,and then took her out into the woods and shot her. Snohomish County began prosecuting it as a capital murder case, but the defense got wind of a possible plea deal for the Green River killer and got the case held up until that played out. Now it looks like the death penalty is dead in this state.
If Gary Ridgeway's life can be spared, who could we possibly find that is worthy of death? Is it because his victims were prostitutes? I think so. It's kind of stunning, that it has come to this after so many years. As a younger kid, I really despised Ted Bundy. I felt a kind of connection to him becasue his first victim had lived in my neighborhood. He was so vicious. I thought that his death would be satisfying, but it wasn't. From that day on, I knew that I wouldn't derive any pleasure from the deaths of those who seemingly deserved it. I woke up late on the day that Timothy McVeigh was executed and turned on CNN to hear the news. I was saddened. I don't think I'd feel sad about Ridgeway going to the gallows, but I didn't expect to feel my stomach burn the way it did when McVeigh was killed, so who knows. Death just seems too easy to me. It's the route that cowards take after they kill their wives or children. Locking them up with the rest of the psycho murderers seems like more of a punishment. Here are a couple of links to the case, if you're interested.

Settle Times Article (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/greenriverkillings/)

Everett murder case delayed (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/144334_deathpenalty17.html)

[adios]

Excellent post IMO. FWIW New Mexico had it's first execution in many, many years not too long ago. The killer, Terry Clark, had kidnapped, raped, and murdered a nine year old girl. To make a long story short Clark lived a life of isolation after being convicted. Clark chose to end his appeal process, thus hastening his execution. My take from interviews with Clark was that dying was preferable for Clark than leading a life of virtual isolation.

[daryn]

the death penalty deters no one. i am not arguing for or against it here, but just saying that it does not deter. i don't murder because i think it's wrong. i could never commit murder.. regardless of the penalty.

[Boris]

For what it's worth, the decision to spare Ridgeway's life was made after consulting with several of the victims' families. The reasoning being that Ridgeway agreed to provide information that would provide closure for many of the families.

I also read an article where a lawyer type said the Green River Case was extraordinary and went to argue that sparing Ridgeway would not be the end of the death penalty in Washingtion. Not that any ever got executed (by the state at least) there anyway.

[elwoodblues]

Situations like this often make people argue against plea bargains --- and it is an understandable reaction. This case is absolutely sickening.

Without plea bargains, our criminal justice system would absolutely collapse. Each side benefits from every plea agreement that is reached. I completely understand the need for plea bargaining, but there is still something that doesn't sit well with me about a system that punishes someone more severely if they defend their rights (guaranteed by the Constitution) in court than someone who plea bargains.

[ripdog]

This case gets more disturbing every day. I read a letter to the editor today that claimed that Ridgeway would tell his struggling victims that if they would stop resisting, he'd let them go. Once they stopped... The case that's taking place in Everett is truly galling as well. The defendants mock the grieving family from their seats at the defense table--it's truly maddening. I hope all of their lives are spared and they get passed around the prison as currency.

[ChipWrecked]

I was a juror on a capital murder case. We sent the defendant to Death Row. I think about this guy every day, and the decision we made. I hate the fact that we were asked to do this. I voted for death for these reasons:

1. This is the request of the people of the State.

2. His crime was so terrible, even the judge cried during testimony.

3. The killer gets an automatic appeal. The decision the jury made is reviewed. If the State has a problem with our decision, it will be overturned.

Deter or no, I don't care. The State asked for this guy's life in payment for his crime(s); I was willing (if not happy) to oblige.

[MMMMMM]

Ripdog (initial post): "The first thing that gets me about the death penalty is that it's not about justice in any way--it's only about revenge."

Ripdog: "The defendants mock the grieving family from their seats at the defense table--it's truly maddening. I hope all of their lives are spared and they get passed around the prison as currency."

So you are in favor of terrible punishment, including prison rape, as revenge--just so long as it's not the death penalty. Your view is no better, morally speaking, than the views of those who favor the death penalty solely for revenge.

[MMMMMM]

I believe the Green River killer should be killed but not for reason of punishment. Just as a terribly vicious dog must be put down, Ridgeway is too dangerous to be allowed to live. I don't believe in the death penalty as punishment nor do I think it should be applied for crimes such as a single case of first degree murder. This however is a case where the killer is psychologically/psychiatrically sick to the point of being impossible to cure, and he will always present a danger to others as long as he lives. Serial killers never get "cured" nor do they ever lose the overwhelming urge to kill.

Ridgeway should be killed to protect others and for no other reason. Dogs with rabies must be put down and while Ridgeway is (arguably, perhaps) human, he is as demented and more dangerous than a dog with rabies. He should have been told he is irredeeemably sick and too dangerous to be allowed to live and taken out and shot.

I don't think there is value to incarcerating him for life nor would I wish to see him suffer in prison for 40 years. According to psychologists, serial killers never get better. Just kill the poor bastard.

[Cyrus]

I agree with most everything you wrote in your post.

One thing about the death penalty and severe punishment in general, such as long prison sentences, whereby it has been shown that they have the opposite effect to the intended rehabilitation and reintroduction to society.

There's the aspect of collective closure, in meteing out death, which isn't far, for better or worse, from the concept of revenge. Revenge is always senseless, since it never corrects the past, it zactually enforces a past action's effect. But revenge also provides humans with a sense of justice without which they are left in a truly cold and heartless world, permeated by injustice and non-existence of any morality whatsoever (morality is strictly a human construct).

So, I see the death sentence, as meted out by our "advanced" western democratic civilisation (as opposed to past wholesale and arbitrary slaughter of defeated opponents) as evidence of the desperate need to secure an ideal cosmos that's ruled by logic and morality, whereas we deeply and rightly suspect that such a world does not exist.

In extension, I see the ability to move beyond the need to kill (in an organised, legal and justified fashion) as a primary idnication that a society is moving (with difficulty and fear) out of childhood and into maturity.

--Cyrus

PS : This doesn't affect the way individual humans would react. It should be accepted that I would rabidly seek out the killer of my daughter in order to rip his guts out like a dog's! Which is why I must not be allowed to be part of the killer's trial jury (a routine in some backward societies).

[Ragnar]

Daryn states, "the death penalty deters no one." I disagree. To examine the effect of deterrence you must consider those who have not been deterred. However, you must also consider those who have. Bastiat called this the problem of the seen and the unseen in the economic context.

It is extremely difficult to determine who has been deterred because that is unseen. I do know that career criminals consider whether there is a possibility that they will be executed before committing crimes. They say that they don't commit crimes which call for death, not because they don't want to be executed, but because they want to be in the general population and not on death row.

Ragnar