“To Kill Or Not To Kill”
“More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty” 1 Will criminals stop torture, rape, kidnapping, treason when they see the death penalty? The people of Texas still to this day use death penalty but others states may not because they do not believe in death penalty for criminals. There are several big cases in the state of Texas and those cases involve James David Autry, Ruben Cantu, also Lisa Coleman. Clayton Lockett was discovered to be in a gurney strapped down because he made a brutal crime for burying a 19-year old girl alive the giving himself a drug that epically failed, but 30 minutes after he had died of a heart attack. Attempting to put him in a penitentiary was never the option because he began to kick, twitch, and writhing and moaning in agony because of the injection he was given. Lockett never gave into making a smart plan to make murder, so the evidence that was given was very clear to see that he made the murder of Stephanie Newman. The execution was a huge but certainly a big success. Another case would be Christopher Simmons who was 17 years old when he and a friend gagged, robbed, and bound a woman named Shirley Crook. The two boys was to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up a victim, and tossing the victim off a bridge. The defendant Christopher Simmons confessed to murdering the victim Shirley Crook. His age, and thus impulsiveness, along with a troubled background were brought up as issues that Simmons claimed should have been raised at the sentencing phase. Under the "evolving standards of decency"2 test, the Court held that it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute a person who was under the age of 18 at the time of the murder.
Another following but more affective case is towards Lisa Coleman. The boys body had over 250 wounds, including a disfigured ear, swollen hands, a slit in his lip, and ligature marks around his wrists and ankles where he had repeatedly been restrained. The pathologist later concluded the cause of death to be