Mike Farrell Quotes

There was quite a bit of racism in the American West. Not the last sentence referring to the complexion of the defendant.

Louis Eugene Walcott. Malcolm X had criticized Elijah Mohammed for sexual behavior with staff.

1st Baron Macaulay

Vladimir Lenin

This proverb only makes sense in the light of understanding the Arab concept of revenge—“blood.” In a rural desert environment where little can be expected of government, the Arabs have developed a law enforcement and peace keeping mechanism which while primitive from modern standards, nevertheless worked to some degree. It is that revenge—“blood” is a moral necessity and obligation of all people, and revenge is not limited by time or to the individuals involved in the first incidence. The immediate family are the first to extract revenge, but the extended family follows and often the entire clan. Sometimes revenge is tribal or even national. Anyone who fails to revenge a member in his group is not only a disgrace, but is a clear and present danger to the group because then they can be attacked with impunity. So revenge is a strong obligation of the group members and blood must be paid with blood no matter how many generations it may take. The only thing that keeps me and my family safe, is the surety what whosoever kills one of us will themselves be killed or if they die a natural death we will take revenge on one of the evildoers relatives. Crime must never pay!

Nathaniel Bacon had led a rebellion in Virginia and had routed the Governor’s troops and caused him to flee leaving control of Virginia to Bacon and his followers who were far more democratic and advanced. However Bacon succumbed to swamp fever, and his followers could not hold the colony together giving the Governor a chance to establish his authority. He then went on a vengeful reign of terror, executing all of Bacon’s followers he could get his hands on. With no danger to the authority of the Crown, King Charles felt that Berkeley had gone too far. The King’s father Charles I had been executed in the aftermath of the English Civil War, but he had executed far fewer than Berkely had done in Virginia.

This is the first appearance of the principle which guides law enforcement in most of America and the other industrialized democracies around the world. Texas and some other localities have rejected this notion and see the occasional execution of an innocent person the cost we must pay in order to preserve law and order.

In 1920 in the midst of a wave of anarchist bombings, two men in Braintree, MA were murdered in an armed robbery. Vanzetti and another political anarchist, Ferdinando Nicola Sacco, were charged with the crime. While anarchy was a non-violent philosophy for many, there was another movement imported from Europe who used bombings as a method of terror and protest to achieve their political aims. Vanzetti and Sacco were of the former type with no criminal record whatsoever but both were considered politically undesirable and part of the terrorist anarchist movement that had been striking in a number of cities. Most Americans saw little difference between the anarchists and the communists although there were foes. These anarchist men were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the robbery and murders despite what was very flimsy and contradictory evidence. In Vanzetti’s case, the evidence against him was the fact that 2 of the shell casings from the crime scene were according to the police fired from the same type of Colt pistol that Vanzetti owned. However, 300,000 other people owned the same type of gun, and ballistics scientific evidence later showed that the shells could not have been fired from Vanzetti’s gun. The case became a worldwide cause celebre with politics, police and judicial misconduct. Even today, there is no clear evidence of either their guilt of innocence (although there was even less evidence against Vanzetti), However, the trial brought more publicity to the anarchist political philosophy than the defendants could have imagined. It also called the finality of capital punishment into question and caused major examination of the police, prosecutorial, judicial systems and even the defense attorneys. The two men were electrocuted on August 23, 1927 amid protests the world over. See {625975} and {600317} for example.

Reacting after reading parts of the Pentagon Papers, a study on the history of the Vietnam war he had ordered:

He was describing a real case in Canada. There as well as the United State, for those who oppose capital punishment give as their main reason the mistakes made by the criminal justice system, and the innocent people who have been executed.

He was being cheered by a large crowd.

As this quotation demonstrates, capital punishment was approved in the Old Testament for criminals and hanging was a Biblically sanctioned method of execution.