Megan Smith/Charlotte Observer's Anti-Death Penalty Nonsense
To: Gov. Roy Cooper and Staff
Megan Smith, ArtSpace Charter School, staff and teachers
The Charlotte Observer, all editors and reporters
bcc: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Staff
Senate/House Committees and staff - Justice, Judicial, Public Safety, Corrections, PrisonsAttorney General Josh Stein and Staff
North Carolina Sheriff's Assoc.
NC Office for Victims of Crime
Parents of Murdered Children
Media throughout North Carolina
Subject: Charlotte Observer's Anti-Death Penalty Nonsense -
a 597 word op/ed submission was provided the Charlotte Observer
Re: I lost my parents to murder, and I want Gov. Cooper to commute all NC death sentences, BY MEGAN SMITH, Charlotte Observer, 12/27/2022
I encourage you to read this, first
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
1) Murders
The main being the murder of her two parents, Terry and Lucy. Horrific . . . and I am very sorry for her loss.
HUGE OMISSIONS BY MEGAN SMITH
"torture and mutilation" "horror beyond all imagining”
"dispassionate and calculated"
Lucy Smith, 51, and Terry J. Smith, 50, were tortured for hours, prior to being murdered by Landon May and by the Smith's adopted son, Michael Bourgeois, Megan Smith's step-brother.
Bourgeois tells us he "loved" Lucy but that Terry was a little strict.
Lucy suffered more than 160 separate injuries during her hours of torture (1b):
Let that soak in.
She was sexually assaulted, cut 51 times, shot in the head, beaten on the left side of her head with a claw hammer, suffered blunt force trauma to her forehead, had 17 fractures to her skull, had a TV dropped on her head, and was eventually smothered to death. She suffered defensive wounds to her hands and arms (1a-c).
For hours
Terry had been stabbed 47 times, his neck was slashed at least five times, he was shot five times and then was asphyxiated or strangled. He had no defensive wounds. (1a-c).
For hours
. . . each of the murders “was carried out in a dispassionate and calculated manner, each victim was tortured and mutilated, and each murder showed an exceptionally callous disregard for human suffering.”, stated Judge Nichols (1c).
Bourgeois’ actions “are among some of the most chilling, depraved and heinous acts that I have reviewed in all my years as a judge,” (1b).
“It was a crime of horror beyond all imagining,” (1b)
A Continuing Liar/Murderer, Forgiven by Some Family
In a 2017 re sentencing hearing, friends and family testified as to why Bourgeois should get a reduction in his sentence, because of his good behavior (1b).
Bourgeois expressed, regarding his butchery, “Everything was moving so quickly,” “I didn’t want to be there, and yet I couldn’t stop from doing the things I was doing.” (1b).
He blamed “peer pressure” for the crime . . . ". (1b).
Just one, major problem. Bourgeois was lying.
Assistant District Attorney Travis Anderson took exception when Bourgeois said he was “coerced” to kill his parents". (1b)
During cross-examination, Anderson reminded Bourgeois that he testified in 2002 that the murders were his idea. He read from a transcript in which Bourgeois said his friends “were shocked” by his plan and urged him to leave his parents alone." (1b)
This lie could, hardly, be more meaningful, as it shows that Bourgeois was manipulating his family and they refused to see it, even though this blatant lie was a clear indicator. Prosecutor and judges see false rehabilitation and lies by sociopaths, all the time. Families, like these, are, often, blind to it.
Bourgeois, lying about his culpability . . . It, simply and obviously, could not be worse. His supportive family, willfully, intentionally blind?
Research sociopath, psychopath and manipulation (2).
Sentencing
There were additional crimes (1c). They confessed to everything.
May was sentenced to death. Following that 2017 re sentencing hearing, Bourgeois is eligible for parole when he is 97. Bourgeois, because of his age, was not eligible for the death penalty.
2) Survivors Harming Survivors
The second being that Smith's anti-death penalty efforts will be harmful to those who support the death penalty, whose loved ones were murdered in a capital, death eligible crime.
There is no need for Ms. Smith to harm other survivors, in this manner, but she has chosen to do so, anyway, a standard anti-death penalty move. Cruel. (3) with the cruelty . . . continuing, as detailed:
3) 95-99% Death Penalty Support by Victim Survivors in Death Penalty Crimes
Non-scientific polling finds that those whose loved ones are murdered in death penalty eligible crimes support the death penalty by 95-99% , numbers easy to accept when scientific polling has found US death penalty support as high as 86% (4), within the general population.
4) The Death Penalty/Executions Protect innocents, in Three Ways. Better Than Life Without Parole (LWOP)
Enhanced Due Process: No one disputes that the death penalty has super due process, at all levels; pre-trial, at trial, within appeals and within the executive branch's considerations of commutation. That is reflected within 50 years of findings that guilty verdicts, in death sentences, are 99.6% accurate, with the 0.4% actually innocent being released (5), likely, the most accurate of all criminal sanction, meaning that actual innocents are more likely to be convicted and will die in prison. Not disputed.
The "innocent"/"exonerated" frauds: It has been well known, since 1998, that there has been a 71-83% fraud rate in the claims of the "innocent"/"exonerated", from death row, as detailed (6), with non-death penalty cases, also, infected by these frauds, by both the Innocence Projects and the National Registry of Exonerations (6).
Enhanced Incapacitation: No one disputes that living murderers are, infinitely, more likely to harm or murder, again, than are executed murderers.
Since 1973:
some 20,000 ADDITIONAL INNOCENTS have been murdered by those KNOWN murderers that we have allowed to murder, again - recidivist murderers (5);
some 500,000 ADDITIONAL INNOCENTS have been murdered by those KNOWN criminals that we have allowed to harm, again - recidivist criminals (5); and
some 3.5 million ADDITIONAL INNOCENTS have been raped, otherwise assaulted, kidnapped and/or robbed by those KNOWN criminals that we have allowed to harm, again - recidivist criminals (5).
Horrific.
POSSIBLY, we MIGHT have proof of actual innocents executed, as recently as 1915. Horrific.
Ms. Smith, where are the innocents at risk?
Enhanced Deterrence: The deterrent effects of all severe sanctions and all severe negative incentives have never been negated and cannot be (7). Death is feared more than life and life is preferred over death. What we prefer more, deters less. What we fear more deters more. Undisputed. Much more detailed, here (5), all of which support the deterrent effect and/or counter all of the points against deterrence, which fail under the slightest of scrutiny, as detailed, point by point (7).
Anti-death penalty leadership has stated that even if they knew that thousands to millions of innocent lives were saved by death penalty/execution deterrence, they would still chose saving the lives of guilty murderers by abandoning the death penalty (3), thus sacrificing those many innocents (5). Horrific and true (5).
5) Justice and revenge
Ms. Smith: "I disagree that justice is synonymous with revenge".
Who says that "justice is synonymous with revenge"? No one. She made it up, placing, together, two common anti-death penalty standards, as, also, with 6 and 8, below.
The death penalty is no more revenge than any other sanction, within the US. Neither judge nor juror can have any connection to the victims or defendants, negating a revenge component, as with the sanctions, which were pre-determined by others in the legislature, with the command that all defendants are presumed innocent and it goes on an on (8), negating all revenge components.
6) Closure
Of course, the death penalty/execution brings closure:
The closure of the legal issues and sanction;
The closure of an important chapter in the lives of the victim's survivors, whose loved ones were murdered and
The closure that prevents the murderer from, ever, harming or murdering any more innocents,
All closures which anti-death penalty folks "forget" - the last, being, particularly, important (9). to most of those who lost loved ones to murder, but not Smith.
Anti-death penalty folks, very often, state that the death penalty/execution does not bring emotional/psychological closure. It's just another made up bit of cruel nonsense.
Is there anyone who lost loved ones to a murder, or anyone that was raped, that found emotional/psychological closure based upon any sanction given to the offender? Of course not.
Why would they find such closure when the guilty offender receives their deserved sanction for the undeserved horror forced upon their innocent victims?
It requires a total lack of empathy and thinking to believe such. Obvious. It's an anti-death penalty staple.
7) Harming the Murderer's Loved Ones
Ms. Smith is unaware that all criminal sanctions, negatively, effect the loved ones of the criminals, be that by fines, incarceration or execution or, simply, the social stigma, as well.
Forever, mankind has known and encouraged that sanctions should be a wake up call for the criminal's family, that crimes, not only hurt the victims, but all of society, inclusive of the criminal's family, all harms of which are, fully, the fault of the criminal, by their actions. Therefor, it leads by example to not become a criminal - a teachable outcome, somehow avoided by Smith.
Sanction can only be a sanction if we take away that which we value; time and labor with community service, fines with money, freedom with incarceration and life with execution.
Why do we sanction? Justice.
8) The Resurrection of the Innocents Murdered
In another essay, Ms. Smith says that execution of the murderer will not bring her father back, another bit of anti-death penalty nonsense. Who says that any sanction brigs back the innocent murdered? No one, yet, of course, this is another anti-death penalty staple, another bit of idiocy, showing no respect for the seriousness of murder, justice and sanction, another anti-death penalty norm.
Conclusion
Through her years of study, Ms. Smith did not find nor realize any of these, as is an anti-death penalty staple.
As a middle school teacher, possibly, Smith will teach her students to fully research, with fact checking and vetting, all with critical thinking, as their teacher did not (1-10).
Once you confirm that anti-death penalty claims are either false (10) and/or that the pro-death penalty claims are stronger (10), the only thing left is that they are demanding that all murderers must live, no matter the cost, inclusive of many more innocent deaths, as shown in para 4.
FN
1) from
a) "80-year-to-life prison term is justified for teen killer who tortured and murdered his parents, Pa. court rules", Apr. 12, 2019, https://www.pennlive.com/news/2019/04/80-year-to-life-prison-term-is-justified-for-teen-killer-who-tortured-and-murdered-his-parents-pa-court-rules.html
and
b) ‘Chilling, depraved, heinous’: Michael Bourgeois, who tortured and killed parents in 2001, gets slight sentence reduction TOM KNAPP | Staff Writer, Lancaster Online, Nov 3, 2017
and more details and their additional crimes, here:
c) COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA v.MICHAEL LEE BOURGEOIS Appellant
IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA No. 570 MDA 2018
Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence November 3, 2017
In the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County Criminal Division at No(s): CP-36-CR-0004224-2001, FILED APRIL 12, 2019
2) 11 Manipulative Ways Narcissists, Sociopaths and Psychopaths Sabotage Their Victims, By Shahida Arabi, MA, PsychCentral, January 26, 2019,
there are, countless, more.
3) Anti-Victim: Anti-Death Penalty Movement
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2014/04/anti-victim-anti-death-penalty-movement.html
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2014/04/anti-victim-anti-death-penalty-movement.html
Rep, RENNY CUSHING DEAD WRONG: THE DEATH PENALTY
Another Survivor Harming Other Survivors
4) Poll: Death Penalty
updated 9/29/2021
5) The Death Penalty: Saving More Innocent Lives
6) The Death Row "Exonerated"/"Innocent" Frauds
71-83% Error Rate in Death Row "Innocent" Claims, Well Known Since 2000
7) Deterrence, Death Penalties & Executions
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2019/04/deterrence-death-penalties-executions.html
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2019/04/deterrence-death-penalties-executions.html
8) Revenge and the Death Penalty
9) IS EXECUTION CLOSURE? Of course.
10) The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro death penalty experts included)
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3300+ pro death penalty quotes, from some of the greatest thinkers in history, inclusive of
600+ quotes from victim's families
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Partial CV, Dudley Sharp
