Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Zoosman's Anti-death Penalty Disaster

 To: All Members, The Knesset

Subject: Rebuttal: Anti-death Penalty Nonsense or
Zoosman's Anti-death Penalty Disaster

Re: Rebuttal - 8 Reasons to Vote Against Israel’s Death Penalty Bill this Hanukkah, Cantor Michael J. Zoosman, MSM, BCC  Co-Founder: L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty, Blogs, The Times of Israel, Dec 12, 2025,

From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom

Preface

Zoosman's 8 Reasons is a normal anti-death penalty screed, meaning parroting anti-death penalty groups, with no fact checking, no vetting and no critical thinking and avoiding all pro-death penalty experts or pretending that is the case, what I call anti-death penalty FEMS (fraud, error and/or mis-directions) (1).
======

Method: I quote Zoosman and reply as Sharp
Zoosman uses the death penalty in the US for some of his examples.

1) Zoosman: "The death penalty will increase – not decrease – terrorist attacks."  

Sharp: The more dead terrorists the fewer terrorists. Unchallenged. There are countless dead terrorists, now,all martyred, with no rational that more martyrs will make things worse. Without executions, terrorists have murdered how many Israelis and Jews? Without executions there was October 7th, the worst slaughter of Jews since WWII. 
      Anti-Semite terrorists need no additional hatred nor incentive to murder Jews. With or without executions the terrorist goal is all Jews murdered. Is any of this news to Zoosman? No.

2) a) Zoosman:  "The death penalty risks executing the innocent": "The reputable Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) . . . "  finds that "since 1973 in the United States, over 200 death-row prisoners have been exonerated . . .".

Sharp:  The "reputable" goes to Zoosman's lack of credibility. He did not fact check, nor vet nor use critical thinking. The DPIC frauds of the high number of the "exonerated" and released from death row have been well known since 1998, at a fraud rate of 71-83%, depending upon study. (2)." 
      To have any credibility, how did Zoosman not know this? I have no reason to believe Zoosman has more credibility, elsewhere, and we only have to look at what's next: 

b) Zoosman "Image:  The grave of George Stinney, Jr., a boy executed in 1944 and exonerated in 2014." 

Sharp: Stinney was not nor can be exonerated. At the 2014 hearing, the judge, specifically stated that she was not ruling on guilt or innocence. Again, Zoosman's aversion to credibility.

"At Sumter County courthouse in January, 2014 Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen stressed that her job was not to establish the guilt or innocence of George Stinney, who "may well have committed this crime", but to determine whether or not he received a fair trial." " . . . George's confession, and a handwritten note from a Clarendon County deputy stating he confessed and had led them to the murder weapon – a 15 in railroad 
spike – was proof enough of his guilt." "George Stinney was executed at 14. Can his family now clear his name?", The Observer, 3/22/2014

Much more here:
George Stinney, Jr.: No Exoneration

3) Zoosman: "Jewish tradition makes the death penalty virtually impossible." "For murders to be eligible for death, two eyewitnesses needed to have caught them in the act and warned them ahead of time that their action would result in the death penalty."

Sharp:  a) We have many more accurate ways of determining guilt in many crimes, which are much  more accurate than eyewitnesses. All murderers have been warned that the death penalty may be, rarely, given within murders, therefore, those requirements have been met, plus additional safeguards which go far above Jewish tradition (3).
          b)  The deterrent effect of severe sanctions and severe negative incentives has never been negated and cannot be. Execution is the most severe sanction and one of the most severe negative incentives. Since 1997, 24 studies have confirmed the deterrent effects of the death penalty/executions (4).

Nobel Prize Laureate (Economics) Gary Becker:
“the evidence of a variety of types — not simply the quantitative evidence — has been enough to convince me that capital punishment does deter and is worth using for the worst sorts of offenses.” (NY Times, 11/18/07)

"(Becker) is the most important social scientist in the past 50 years (NY Times, 5/5/14)

4) a) Zoosman: The death penalty would not bring “deterrence.”   

Sharp: a) based upon Zoosman's full writings, on deterrence, within the referenced, he has no understanding of deterrence. 

Zoosman writes: "Meta-studies have concluded that when it comes to deterrence, there is no demonstrable link between the presence or absence of the death penalty and murder rates."

Sharp: It's because you can't use murder rates to determine deterrence. Example:  If Iceland and its capital Reykjavik have the lowest crime rates in the world, does that mean that every other country and city have no deterrence, because they all have higher crime rates? Of course not (4).

Zoosmman, please start your re-learning curve, here (4). If consistent, he will not.
  
b)  Zoosman: "As renowned anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot has reminded the world, “Israel’s death penalty would bring darkness, not deterrence.” 

Sharp: Why would you use Zivot as an expert on deterrence, which he is not, when he is so bad on other death penalty topics (5)? FEMS.

The discussion is about those who are deterred, not those not deterred.

5) Zoosman: "The death penalty is racist.: "75 per­cent of the cas­es involve the mur­der of white vic­tims, even though about half of all homi­cide vic­tims in America are black."

Sharp: Typical nonsense. How? Why? Willful ignorance or FEMS. Either seem to work well with Zoosman. White victims are the dominant group in capital, death penalty eligible murders (6). Zoosman is unaware that "all homicides" are not death penalty eligible (6). No surprise. About 1% of murders result in a death sentence, in the US. 

6) Zoosman: "The death penalty often results in physical torture, and always is psychological torture for individuals counting down to their execution day."

Sharp: Possibly, 1% of lethal injections are botched (7), with less than that, feeling any pain. 
         Any psychological torture is the fear of death, which is, totally, the fault of the murderer and is just Zoosman providing more proof why the death penalty is more of a deterrent than a life sentence (4). Life is preferred over death and death is feared more than life, What we prefer more, deters less. What we fear more, deters more. Unchallenged (4).

 c) Zoosman: "Telling a human being the date and time on which she or he is to be put to death is a level of inhumanity and torture without comparison in this world." 

Sharp:  The opposite is the case and Zoosman reveals the anti-death penalty norm, that they value murderers more than their innocent victims (8,4).

Quaker biblical scholar Dr. Gervas A. Carey: “. . . a secondary measure of the love of God may be said to appear. For capital punishment provides the murderer with incentive to repentance which the ordinary man does not have, that is a definite date on which he is to meet his God. It is as if God thus providentially granted him a special inducement to repentance out of consideration of the enormity of his crime . . . the law grants to the condemned an opportunity which he did not grant to his victim, the opportunity to prepare to meet his God. Even divine justice here may be said to be tempered with mercy.” synopsis: “A Bible Study”, from Essays on the Death Penalty, T. Robert Ingram, ed., St. Thomas Press, Houston, 1963, 1992. Dr. Carey was a Professor of Bible and past President of George Fox College.

d) Zoosman:  "Albert Camus concluded:   “But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared?"

Sharp: Camus' idiocy.  It is as if Camus never heard of the premeditated murders of millions, with Mao, Stalin, Hitler (8).
           Camus calls execution premeditated murder, meaning he has no moral understanding. Legal executions are no more murders than legal  incarcerations are  kidnappings, legal fines are theft and legal community service is slavery, meaning, of course, not at all (8).
          The premeditation is known as the due process of law, which Camus condemns (8). Of course.

7) Zoosman: "Many execution methods are direct Nazi legacies, including firing squad, gassing, and lethal injection."

Sharp: Zoosman is, totally, unaware, that it is not the method of execution, but why it  takes place. Blind. The Nazis murdered 11 million innocent "undesirables". The US, in the modern era, 1973-2025, has executed 1600 guilty murderers. Zoosman appears to see no moral distinction (8).

8) Zoosman: "Executions inevitably become a political tool, creating a recipe for moral disaster for any so-called “civilized” society."

Sharp: The US has executed 0.2% of her murderers in the past 53 years, likely the most invisible tool in the political toolbox. 

9) Zoosman: "The death penalty violates the human right to life.  As outlined in the Third Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.”

Sharp: Zoosman's non thinking, again. Only those who obey the social contract, the laws, have those rights.  All countries incarcerate those who violate the social contract, so liberty may be taken away, without violating the Declaration, just as taking life with executions. As we all know, the security of the person cannot exist without law and order, laws, law enforcement and sanctions, which often means taking away the life and/or liberty of those who violate the social contract, the laws.

In Closing

Zoosman has the ethical obligation to present this to the membership of his organization, L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty.

Will he?

FN

1)    Research, w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone in a public policy debate and which rebut all anti-death penalty claims.
      The media/academic norm is to use anti-death penalty material, refuse to fact check or vet it and avoid all pro-death penalty research and experts or pretend that is the case. How will you know that is true? Read on.
a) The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
b) Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro-death penalty experts are included)
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2022/01/students-death-penalty-research.html
and
600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
http://prodpquotes.info/ 

2) The Death Row "Exonerated"/"Innocent" Frauds 
 71-83% Error Rate in Death Row "Innocent" Claims, 
Well Known Since 1998

3) Texas Death Penalty Procedures
and
THE DEATH PENALTY: LEAST ARBITRARY & CAPRICIOUS SANCTION
Both the guilty & the innocent have the greatest of protections
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-death-penalty-neither-arbitrary-nor.html

and
and

5)  Dr. Joel Zivot's Anti-Death Penalty Nonsense: A Compilation

6)   RACE & THE DEATH PENALTY: A REBUTTAL TO THE RACISM CLAIMS

7)  Rebuttal: Botched Executions
and
Much more detail, here:
Academic Disaster: Law Professor Corinna Barrett Lain
aka Do Ethics Matter: The University of Richmond?

8) 30 Examples: How Death Penalty Abolitionists Value Murderers 
More Than Their Innocent Victims:
AKA - Full Rebuttal of Sir Richard Branson & His Death Penalty Comments
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2023/04/full-rebuttal-of-sir-richard-branson.html 


Partial CV
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Sunday, December 28, 2025

George Stinney, Jr.: No Exoneration

George Stinney, Jr.: No Exoneration  

From Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom   

Preface  

      This is just the typical and normal reply to the anti-death penalty movements typical and normal lying about exonerations. 
      I compiled a number of sources confirming that, below, in a manner that anyone can fact check and vet.
      It's a little sloppy, because of a deadline.

 ======  

As of 12/28/2025, I have found no updates since 2014.   

1) "At Sumter County courthouse in January, 2014 Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen stressed that her job was not to establish the guilt or innocence of George Stinney, who "may well have committed this crime", but to determine whether or not he received a fair trial."   
      " . . . George's confession, and a handwritten note from a Clarendon County deputy stating he confessed and had led them to the murder weapon – a 15 in railroad spike – was proof enough of his guilt."   
      "George Stinney was executed at 14. Can his family now clear his name?", The Observer,  3/22/2014  

2) "However, back in 1995, WL Hamilton, George's seventh grade teacher, who is black, told the Item  newspaper that he had a temper and had got into a fight with a girl at school, scratching her with a knife.",  The Guardian, March 22, 2014,

3) " . . . the sole evidence against Stinney was the circumstantial fact the girls had spoken with Stinney and  his sister shortly before their murder, and the testimony of three police officers, who testified at a trial  which lasted barely two hours, that Stinney had confessed to the murders. He was executed by electric  chair."   

4) "According to the accounts of deputies, Stinney apparently had been successful in killing both at once,  causing major blunt trauma to their heads, shattering the skulls of each into at least 4-5 pieces. The next day, Stinney was charged with first-degree murder."   

NOTE FROM Dudley:   
There is this odd claim, just below, which I have seen several times:   

      "It was later found that a beam with which the two girls had been killed weighed over twenty pounds. It was ruled that George wasn't able to lift the beam, let alone swing it hard enough to kill the two girls."   
      I am unaware who ruled on this and how they determined that he could not use a 20 lb spike or beam to a degree causing lethal trauma to the head. It seems reasonable that it is, easily,  possible.
      Also, it rather odd that a 15 inch railway spike weighs 20 lbs, but a 7 inch one weighs 1/2 lb. But maybe  the descriptions of the murder weapon are not accurate or are, otherwise, in question.   

I have seen three different versions of the murder weapon.  

5) "George Stinney was put in a small room where three aggressive investigators worked hard for his confession. Landmark Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona hadn't yet been decided, so Stinney was not entitled to an attorney during his questioning. It has been reported that the investigators offered Stinney ice cream if he would confess to the murders - a chilling testament to a 14-year old's inability to comprehend the gravity of situations like his. No notes were taken, and the investigators emerged after a few hours with a confession that may or may not have taken place."   

Note from Dudley:   

I have seen no proof that no notes were taken, only that no notes have been found, nor is there any evidence  that Stinney was an idiot and did not understand the gravity of the situation, --  black kid, two dead white  girls, 1944 South Carolina --  only confessing because he was offered ice cream, which all seems fabricated, just for the story.  Does anyone believe that?   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/21/1178154/-The-Ghost-of-George-Stinney-Jr-How-The-Justice-System-Hasn-t-Evolved-As-Much-As-You-Think#   

7) George Stinney, Execution & Innocence 
Dudley Sharp, 12/28/2025 

      Based upon the available evidence, there is no establishing George Stinney as an actual innocent convicted or executed  ---  unless the case, now, involves only uncorroborated and unconfirmable evidence presented by defense counsel, with no rebuttal and/or no presence by a challenging prosecutor, which has not transpired since 2014.
      If Stinney's conviction is overturned, I suspect there will be no new trial, for obvious reasons -  there is no defendant, no available evidence and the 3 police officers who testified as to his confession, are dead.
      Since 2014, there are, alleged, alibi witnesses, who might come forward -- possibly one of Stinney's siblings and/or a non relative. Nothing has advanced since 2014, which should be telling. It should be noted that false alibi witnesses are common, particularly with family, and others pop up like daisies in the springtime,  with controversial death penalty cases (1), such as with Troy Davis, as many others' (1).   
      It's a huge red flag when "Activist George Frierson " . . . hopes that clearing Stinney’s name would make people think twice in other death penalty cases like that of Troy Davis . . ." (1).   
      Not paying attention to facts and evidence or making up facts and evidence is not a good foundation for credibility, as we saw in the Troy Davis case (1), as with many others' (1).   
      There are other allegations, of a death bed confession, of an alternate suspect,  in the murders of the two girls, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8.          Allegations are not truth, so we'll have to wait and see. Nothing since 2014.
      It is beginning to sound quite familiar to other false claims, by anti death penalty folks (1).  
      The Stinney family could have appealed to law enforcement in Pinewood or appealed to the Governor, directly or by phone,  and, thereby, avoided the threats in Alcolu. I have seen no evidence that they attempted to do so in the 66 years after the murder, or, much more importantly, within the 81 days from Stinney's arrest to his execution.   

8) Then, there is this:   

      There is a 70-83% "error" rate in the "exonerated" or "innocent" and released from death row cases, as alleged by death penalty opponents (1), and 100% false or unproven claims of innocents executed, in the many cases I have reviewed (1).   
      Does a  confirmed campaign of false "innocence" and "exonerated" claims make George Stinney just another lie in that series?   Of course not.  But both skepticism and reason should be in play.
     Few dispute that actual innocents have been executed, but proving it is another thing, entirely, much so today, as reviewed (1), much more so for a case 83 years old, whereby the main (known) witnesses, convicted party and evidence are no longer available.   
      To understate, Stinney was denied an adequate defense, none of which makes him actually innocent, any claim for which can never be confirmed or asserted,  honestly.   

9)  "According to a sheriff’s report, Stinney had confessed to the crime. It was a clear-cut case, as far as  they were concerned. A handwritten statement by H.S. Newman, the law enforcement officer on the  case, stated that Stinney had made a confession, and told the officer where he could find “a piece of  iron” that the teen placed in the ditch near the scene of the crime."
      "In a 2003 interview in The Herald, the arresting sheriff’s son, James Gable happened to  be in the back seat with the teen as he was driven to the Columbia penitentiary. He claims  that Stinney “was real talkative about it,” telling the sheriff’s son that he had not wanted  to kill the girls.(1)'   
"Unfortunately, case records, including the alleged confession are lost, and there are no  trial transcripts."  George Stinney: Was He Innocent?, By Dawn Levesque, Liberty Voice,  January 22, 2014 

10) "The movants filed a Writ of Coram Nobis.  This writ seeks merely to set aside the  conviction, not exonerate the defendant.(2)" " Stinney was not exonerated.  He was not  found “innocent.” . (2)"   
      "No articles I’ve seen make mention of the fact that Stinney was heard threatening to kill girls before girls were, indeed, killed.  One eyewitness also saw Stinney talking to the victims in the same place he made threats to kill other girls.   

Watch the video of an eyewitness who heard Stinney’s threat to kill girls. 
  
      "This inconvenient fact provides strong circumstantial evidence of murderous intent. (2)"  "Moreover, few of the articles mention that Stinney made three separate confessions to the  murder. (2)"   
      "When you learn that the evidence of Stinney’s threats and his three confessions were introduced as evidence at trial, the conviction doesn’t seem quite so outlandish." 
      "The execution of a 14-year old does not conform to modern jurisprudential standards,  but the law doesn’t operate to review convictions 50, 70, 100 years in the past using modern standards."  
George Stinney was not "exonerated", J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS, PJ Media,  12/22/2014   


11) In a message dated 11/27/2021 2:02:53 PM Central Standard Time, sharpjfa@aol.com writes:   

To: LETTERS, The State   
From: Dudley Sharp, 832-439-2113, Houston, Texas   
RE: South Carolina can't undo wrongful executions, Emily Bohatch The State (Columbia, S.C.) (TNS), Nov 27, 2021   

Bohatch stated:" In 2014, decades after Stinney's death, he was exonerated posthumously."   

No he was not. Such would be impossible.   

"In January, 2014 Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen stressed that her job was not to establish the guilt or innocence of George Stinney, who "may well have committed this crime", but to determine whether or not he received a fair trial."   
       The judge, rightly, found that the 14 years old, black Stinney was denied due process in 1944.   The police stated that Stinney confessed to the murders of two sisters, aged 8 and 11, and led the  police to the murder weapon, neither of which can be contradicted. Could be true.  Could be false.

FN

1)   The Death Row "Exonerated"/"Innocent" Frauds   
71-83% Error Rate in Death Row "Innocent" Claims,  
Well Known Since 1998

2) "New evidence could clear 14-year-old executed by South Carolina", David Edwards, THE RAW STORY, Monday, October 3, 2011 9:00 EST 
===============   

Research, w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone in a public policy debate and which rebut all anti-death penalty claims.
       The media/academic norm is to use anti-death penalty material, refuse to fact check or vet it or use critical thinking and avoid all pro-death penalty research and experts or to pretend that is the case.  How will you know that is true? Read on:
 a) The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
b) Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro-death penalty experts are included)
and
c) 600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
http://prodpquotes.info/ 
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