no early parole here

[vancity_cowboy]

AFP
Friday, Aug 19, 2011

JARRATT, Virginia - A man convicted of the 2001 rape and murder of an 88-year-old woman was executed by lethal injection in the US state of Virginia on Thursday, according to an AFP journalist at the execution.

Jerry Jackson, 31, was pronounced dead at 9:14 pm (0914 Singapore time Friday), confirmed Larry Traylor, communications director for Virginia’s Department of Corrections.

It was the first time Virginia used the anesthetic pentobarbital in the three-drug cocktail injected into prisoners during execution.

Pentobarbital is generally used by veterinarians when euthanizing animals, but due to a shortage of thiopental, the anesthetic normally used in US lethal injections, a number of states have changed their execution protocol to use pentobarbital.

Family members of the victim, Ruth Phillips, were not present at the execution, which was Virginia’s first of the year, and the 32nd execution in the United States in 2011.

Jackson made no final statement before he died, and Traylor said the prisoner did not want authorities to share what his last meal was.

Jackson had exhausted all routes of appeal. Last week the Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, refused to commute the death sentence to life in prison, and on Thursday the US Supreme Court did not stop the execution.

Jackson broke into Phillips’s home in Williamsburg on an August evening in 2001. He raped and killed the elderly woman by suffocating her with a pillow, then he stole $60 to buy marijuana, according to the Virginia public prosecutor.

Jackson confessed to the crime shortly after his arrest.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/08/18/Va-executes-rapist-murderer/UPI-16361313669423/

just a couple of more years of conservative majority and we might be able to do this too :clap2:

 

[HankQuinlan]

Nice work at allaying the fears of those of us who suspect the "hidden" right-wing agenda will make itself known. If you were a member of caucus, I am sure you would have a severe talking-to in your immediate future for not sticking to the official line.

 

[Unpossible]

just a couple of more years of conservative majority and we might be able to do this too :clap2:

Never gonna happen.

 

[HankQuinlan]

Hank, do you REALLY think that the political balance in Canada will be so far to the right that a Conservative Politician won't need moderate voters to vote for them?

I really don't think it will be. Just sayin' that posts and opinions like this one won't help the Conservatives project a moderate agenda. And, if public opinion polls continue to show a majority in favour of the death penalty, I wouldn't trust them to stick to their currently stated platform if they think it will get them votes.