Here’s some good end-of-year news from the AP’s Meg Kinnard:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — For the second year in a row, South Carolina had no executions in 2013.
It mirrors national trends that have moved away from putting inmates to death. In a report that came out this month, the Death Penalty Information Center says fewer and fewer people are being executed nationwide.
Last year, the center says 39 inmates were executed in nine states. That represents a drop of 10 percent from a year earlier.
South Carolina last executed someone in May 2011, when 36-year-old Jeffrey Motts was put to death for strangling his cellmate. He was already serving a life sentence for a 1995 double murder….
I don’t know about y’all, but I had no idea…
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So what’s to happen – or when will it happen – to the 48 on death row?
http://www.doc.sc.gov/news/deathrowlist.pdf
Bit by bit, we become more humane….
Rotting in prison for decades is humane? I am sure the families of the victims love to know that killers get to to live.
Execute them and move on. It is a valid punishment for the worst crimes.
bit by bit, we become wussies.
So in 2014 will it be the third consecutive year that South Carolina had no execution in 2013?
I caught that too. Very annoying.
I had the same thought. It didn’t seem like much of an accomplishment that we didn’t have any executions in 2013, back in 2012…
Last night on the news, some guy said “we are hoping to find a comparison” or something similar. He was talking about comparing DNA from some bones they found to a bank of DNA of missing people. I presume he meant to say “we are hoping to find a match”. I hear these kinds of things all the time on local news, and it irks me. Am I the only one bothered by sloppy use of language?
/raises hand
You’re not alone. It drives me crazy. It’s one of the reasons I’ve had a lifelong aversion to watching TV news.
Not to disparage the TV people. While a lot of them may truly not know better, even a highly literate and articulate person who would never make that mistake writing may slip up on live TV. We can’t all be William F. Buckley on the air. Also, they have my sympathy in that they have a problem print (or nowadays, I suppose I should say “text”) journalists do not — having to pronounce the words and names correctly. Just the other day, my wife noted how this beautiful young lady on a local challenge, who is apparently new to the market, totally mangled a familiar local name. We word people only have to spell it right, and use it correctly in a sentence.
But while I can make excuses for them, it still drives me nuts, and makes watching or hearing such stuff highly unpleasant. I’ve spent all these years as an editor correcting errors before they go out, and to hear such errors and not be able to fix them is extremely frustrating. So it’s better for me not to watch/listen.
Also, having made those excuses, allow me to point out that the very best broadcast journalism is highly respectful of the language. I would stack the polished usage on NPR up against any print outlet you care to name in this country.
My dad and brother were editors. I am bothered by all manner of sloppy and bad usage.
For example, one is sentenced to die. One is bored to death.