Death penalty a divisive issue at Fresno State
By MAURICE O. NDOLE
Less than three weeks after California executed its first death row inmate
in three years, students’ views still remain divided about the death
penalty.
Debate about the death penalty was re-awakened after triple murderer Donald
Beardslee was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 19, more than 20 years
after he was convicted of killing two women over a drug debt.
Senior communication major Denise Baronian said she does not support the
death penalty.
“I’m against it because there is always hope for every human
being,” Baronian said. “When we take a life, we are playing
God.”
But Baronian said it would not be easy to have the same opinion if she
knew the victim of a violent crime.
“It is easy to say, until you’re in those shoes; [but] I believe
in the Bible which says ‘the battle is not ours, but it’s
the Lord’s,’ ” Baronian said. “God’s punishment
is worse than the death penalty.”
Of the 639 convicted criminals currently on death row in California, almost
5 percent are between 20 and 29 years old, according to the California
Department of Corrections Web site.
The state legislature re-instituted the death penalty in 1977 and revised
the penal code to include the sentence of life imprisonment without the
possibility of parole in the same year.
Senior biology major Ryan Malan said he supports the death penalty as
a punishment for serious crimes.
“I think it’s a cruel way of dying,” Malan said. “But,
if somebody murdered people, why do they deserve to live?”
Malan gave an example of convicted murderer Scott Peterson as a person
who deserved the death penalty for murdering his wife, Laci, and their
unborn child.
Malan said he would have the same opinion even if the convicted criminal
were a relative.
“It would be hard, but if he did the crime, he has to suffer the
consequences,” he said.
Junior animal science major Julie Padalino said she is against the death
penalty.
“I do think that taking a life because somebody took a life doesn’t
really teach them that taking lives is wrong,” Padalino said. “I
think if they’re jailed for life, that’s a harsher punishment
than death.”
History major Deric McQueen said he believed the death penalty should
be abolished.
“I believe in an eye for an eye, but I don’t think [the death
penalty] is right, even if it is done by government sanction,” McQueen
said. “There is always a chance that an innocent person can be killed.”
McQueen gave examples of Illinois, where innocent people were released
from death row after DNA testing and modern technology proved their innocence.
The Department of Corrections Web site lists a total of 639 people on
death row in California alone. Males outnumber females on death row by
a ratio of 40 to 1.
Male prisoners on death row are housed at the maximum-security facility
at San Quentin State Prison.
Females are housed in a maximum-security unit at the Central California
Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.
Fifteen people from Fresno are on death row in California.
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