Liz Bruenig's Anti-Death Penalty Disaster - Another U of Notre Dame Production
Dudley Sharp
From: sharpjfa@aol.com
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Tue, Feb 21, 2023 at 6:07 PM
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AWAKE
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Subject: Liz Bruenig's Anti-Death Penalty Disaster - Another U of Notre Dame Production
RE: "Journalist Elizabeth Bruenig discusses death penalty", Isa Sheikh, The (ND) Observer, Monday, February 20, 2023
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, Houston, Texas, CV at bottom
1) Bruenig: “We actually make a point to try to get a hold of the most competent, most aware, most healthy people for execution. Their humanity is not a barrier — it’s sort of the point — we want to destroy it. These are lives worth taking."
Sharp: Bruenig reverses morals, ethics, facts and reason, in similar fashion, as the Church did within CCC 2267, by misplacing "dignity", when, that very same, CCC told the Church that she could not (1). It is the murderer who destroyed their own humanity, by the rape/murder of innocents, or other capital murders. You cannot find a judge or jury that gave a death sentence because the convicted party was "the most competent, most aware and most healthy of persons" - it is complete utter nonsense, on Bruenig's part. She has to know it.
2) Bruenig said "that arguments about how incarceration is so brutal that the death penalty might be preferable to convicts" . . . (misses a key point) - " . . . those sentenced to death almost entirely do not want to die . . .".
Sharp: True. About 99.9% of capital, death penalty eligible murderers do all they can to avoid execution. This establishes one of the primary foundations as to how and why the death penalty/executions is a greater deterrence than is life without parole (LWOP) (2).
No, those murderers were not deterred, that time, but it confirms a truism, for all of us:
Life is preferred over death. Death is feared more than life. What we prefer more, deters less. What we fear more, deters more (1). Rationally uncontested (2).
Bruenig didn't mention it. She can't. Why?
It would mean that anti-death penalty people feel the need to save all murderers, no matter how many ADDITIONAL innocents will be murdered, because of that. It is the primary reason anti-death penalty folks speak against the deterrent effect (2,3), which has never and can never be negated (2).
Well, wait a minute.
Two of the greatest anti-death penalty leaders have, both, admitted, that even if the deterrent effect of the death penalty/executions saved hundreds of thousands to millions of innocent lives, they would still insist on doing away with the death penalty, in order to save hundreds of guilty murderers (3). Really.
3) Bruenig said that arguments about " . . . the worthlessness of murderers who can no longer provide anything by living — (misses a key point) . . . that prisoners change during their incarceration." " the prisoner himself can’t help but change."
Sharp reply: That is untrue. Bruenig, as she must (?), leaves out major points. I am presuming she is not this ignorant:
a) Murderers, as all of us, have three methods of change, or non-change, which for murderers:
1) they can stay the same, bad for them, bad for us;
2) they can improve, in a range from still quite bad to a saint, bad or good, for them and us;
3) they can become even worse, bad for them and bad for us.
As, almost, all of us know, those are the, only, possible changes. Could Bruenig be unaware?
b) Also left out by Bruenig, is that judges and jurors are aware that all people can get better, worse and stay the same.
The primary duty of judge and jury, after they found for the guilt of the defendant, is to decide on the most just sanction, within the facts and the law, based within all the, admissible, facts of the case.
c) Bruenig thinks that a death sentence is given because the judge or jury finds the guilty murderer worthless, contradicting herself, within the same speech, wherein she stated: "these are lives worth taking."
Bruenig is not aware of why we give sanction.
A sanction cannot be a sanction unless we value that which we take away - money with fines, freedom with incarceration and life with execution.
If anyone considered the murderers' lives worthless, there would be no point in taking it away. Bruenig, clueless? She actually stated "these are lives worth taking."
4) Bruenig: "People appear, in other words, to be most likely to offend as youths and young adults and less likely to offend as mature adults."
Sharp: Nonsense. Bruenig seems to be unaware that:
a) 28 is the average age of a capital murderer.
b) our personalities are established at age 18 (4);
c) anti-social personality disorder, sociopathic and psychopathic behaviors have no cure (4);
d) " . . . most murderers studied could be considered at least “moderately” psychopathic.(5)";
e) " . . . people diagnosed as psychopaths do have higher rates of violence than other people; and f) "psychopathic criminals are more likely to re-offend than non-psychopathic criminals (5)."
Bruenig?
5) Bruenig: “Thanks to this sometimes decades-long gap between conviction and execution, I often meet prisoners on death row long after this change and many important changes have taken place." I meet them after criminal menopause."
Sharp: Most likely, in the majority of cases, as per para 4, Bruenig was fooled by sociopaths/psychopaths , who didn't have access to women and children to rape, torture and murder and/or to bread-winners to rob/murder.
NOTE: Responsible judges account for 113 executions, after 7 years average of appeals, prior to execution, in Virginia, since 1976,
6) Bruenig: “Oftentimes, the language of trauma is used to describe prisoners’ emotional experiences after their crimes, and studies have documented symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in men convicted of homicide, but this is also the realm of the soul."
Sharp: As per para 4, that would be the minority of cases. Of course, Bruenig, never, mentions
a) the suffering of the innocent murder victims and their loved ones, a common ant-death penalty omission, nor
b) the power of expiation, in regard to the soul (6), the greatest of reconciliation (6), inclusive of executions (7).
7) Bruenig goes on, at length, about Kenny Smith’s non-execution and the entire execution protocol, but, somehow had no spare time to mention Elizabeth Sennett, the woman murdered by Smith, in a murder, for hire.
8) Bruenig: "I need to be able to interface with the prison staff who can really be bullies to the family, who they also treat like criminals."
Sharp: When and where were the prison staff "really bullies to the family, who they also treat like criminals"?
NOTE: No response from Bruenig in nearly 3 years, 1/18/2026.
9) Bruenig: “To me . . . the idea of reconciliation depends upon everyday apologies to stay alive — so too does the idea of forgiveness depend on the possibility of change. " " . . . change depends on the possibility of tomorrow. The lives of people on death row are unique, but not uniquely fit for destruction, in my view. They’re in need of reconciliation and in need of forgiveness. We ourselves are too."
Sharp: Bruenig, known as a Catholic liberal. We have these omissions:
Death is, only, "destruction", if one has not been "saved". Forgiveness must be earned prior to our deaths, no matter what that death may be, if speaking of eternal salvation.
I am not sure what Bruenig means by reconciliation depending upon "everyday apologies".
It is, in fact, supernatural:
"Although often called Reconciliation in common usage, the term "penance" best describes the essential interior disposition required for this sacrament. In fact, there is a virtue of penance. This is a supernatural virtue by which we are moved to detest our sins from a motive made known by faith, and with an accompanying purpose of offending God no more and of making satisfaction for our sins. In this sense the word "penance" is synonymous with "penitence" or "repentance." (7)
FN
1) updated
The Catholic Church & The Death Penalty
13 (15) Factual Errors: 2018 CCC 2267 amendment
2) Deterrence, Death Penalties & Executions
3) The Death Penalty: Saving More Innocent Lives
4) What is the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy?
5) Are Murderers Unfairly Labeled Psychopaths? There is a robust link between murder and psychopathy. Scott A. McGreal MSc, December 17, 2018,
6) The Death Penalty: Mercy, Expiation, Redemption & Salvation
7) The Sacrament of Reconciliation: Rising Again to New Life
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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
