“Christine Aparece wished she had made up with her sister. They were not speaking when Chrisalee disappeared. "(I want to) tell her that I love her and that I'm always here for her, and I regret everything right now," Christine Aparece said.”
The reason that Christine won’t be making up with her sister is that the 23 year old woman is dead. She was raped and murdered by a piece of refuse with a human name, Dexter Johnson. There ought to be a special idiom for society’s rubbish like Johnson and the slugs who were with it when it killed Chrisalee and her 17 year old friend, Huy Ngo.
One of five people charged with multiple counts of capital murder in a violent crime spree that left four people dead said he is innocent, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday. Timothy Randle, 18, is being held without bond in the Harris County Jail, along with Dexter Johnson, 18; Keithron Fields, 17; Alvie Butler, 22; and Ashley Ervin, 17. Randle is charged with three counts of capital murder for the deaths of Sally Aparece, 23; Huy Ngo, 17; and Jose Lopez.
It would be a slur against our fellow inhabitants of planet Earth to refer to such murdering slugs as animals. Even trash is too good of a moniker for those who would carjack people of value, rob them, terrorize them and rape one of them while forcing the other to witness the torture before murdering them and dumping them in a field of dense weeds as though THEY were the disposable litter. Johnson and it’s accomplices are less than disposable…they MUST be cast off of the planet that humans occupy.
Johnson, the first of the trash to be tried, was recently sentenced to die for his participation in the string of violent crimes. The rest of them will be tried soon and there isn’t much chance that any of them will ever see the light of day again.
Over the course of my lifetime I’ve wavered on the topic of capital punishment but I have to say that if ever there were crimes that cried for the ultimate justice, these are those offenses and Johnson has more than earned his participation in an appropriate use of the death penalty.
There are just some crimes that are so monstrous that they cry for a swift and severe consequence and nothing less than death will do. There are times when it simply doesn’t matter whether or not rehabilitation is a possibility and this is one of those times. If sometime in the year 2014 some moronic Hollywood celebrity puts on a concert to save the murdering rapist who was convicted of killing the two young people. it would be an affront to decent people everywhere.
We’ll never know what the loss of these young people will cost our society because they were never given the opportunity to show their full worth. And these were most assuredly people who would have given back to us. A nursing student and an honor student and two other law abiding citizens have been robbed from us all before any of them had the opportunity to show the world what they had to offer. Instead, we are left with waste such as Johnson and those who helped slaughter the children of the Lopez, Ngo and Aparece families. Had they lived, perhaps one of them would have gone on to save the likes of Johnson and it’s mother who doesn’t believe that Johnson is guilty because she doesn’t “feel the vibe of a murderer” when she’s with her “son”. I bet the kids he assassinated felt that vibe and that’s all that really matters. It was their right to live that the jury was endorsing when they convicted the slime to die.
You know, I’m beginning to think that perhaps public execution wasn’t and isn’t such a bad thing. I for one would enjoy watching the state carry out it’s obligation to those kids when they “take out the trash”. I’d let my kids see something like that so that they would know that we put such a high price on life in this country that we are proud to eradicate those who would take it.
And…talk about a deterrent! I saw the movie ‘I Want to Live” with Susan Heyward when I was a kid and that scared the hell out of me. I had this hideous fear that I would be accused of a murder that I didn’t commit. It never occurred to me that I would be executed for a murder that I did commit…I can’t imagine ever killing a human being. But if we all watched our government fry those who have committed a heinous crime such as the crime committed by Johnson and it‘s co-conspirators, I know for damn sure that some kid somewhere would be so shocked that they would be terrified to ever take a life. Even those like Johnson who haven’t been raised with the slightest shred of humanity, compassion or decency still have some degree of self preservation. And if that’s what it takes to keep such garbage from treating the people of value the way that Johnson treated Chrisalee, Jose and Huy, so be it.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/9415235/detail.html
The reason that Christine won’t be making up with her sister is that the 23 year old woman is dead. She was raped and murdered by a piece of refuse with a human name, Dexter Johnson. There ought to be a special idiom for society’s rubbish like Johnson and the slugs who were with it when it killed Chrisalee and her 17 year old friend, Huy Ngo.
One of five people charged with multiple counts of capital murder in a violent crime spree that left four people dead said he is innocent, KPRC Local 2 reported Tuesday. Timothy Randle, 18, is being held without bond in the Harris County Jail, along with Dexter Johnson, 18; Keithron Fields, 17; Alvie Butler, 22; and Ashley Ervin, 17. Randle is charged with three counts of capital murder for the deaths of Sally Aparece, 23; Huy Ngo, 17; and Jose Lopez.
It would be a slur against our fellow inhabitants of planet Earth to refer to such murdering slugs as animals. Even trash is too good of a moniker for those who would carjack people of value, rob them, terrorize them and rape one of them while forcing the other to witness the torture before murdering them and dumping them in a field of dense weeds as though THEY were the disposable litter. Johnson and it’s accomplices are less than disposable…they MUST be cast off of the planet that humans occupy.
Johnson, the first of the trash to be tried, was recently sentenced to die for his participation in the string of violent crimes. The rest of them will be tried soon and there isn’t much chance that any of them will ever see the light of day again.
Over the course of my lifetime I’ve wavered on the topic of capital punishment but I have to say that if ever there were crimes that cried for the ultimate justice, these are those offenses and Johnson has more than earned his participation in an appropriate use of the death penalty.
There are just some crimes that are so monstrous that they cry for a swift and severe consequence and nothing less than death will do. There are times when it simply doesn’t matter whether or not rehabilitation is a possibility and this is one of those times. If sometime in the year 2014 some moronic Hollywood celebrity puts on a concert to save the murdering rapist who was convicted of killing the two young people. it would be an affront to decent people everywhere.
We’ll never know what the loss of these young people will cost our society because they were never given the opportunity to show their full worth. And these were most assuredly people who would have given back to us. A nursing student and an honor student and two other law abiding citizens have been robbed from us all before any of them had the opportunity to show the world what they had to offer. Instead, we are left with waste such as Johnson and those who helped slaughter the children of the Lopez, Ngo and Aparece families. Had they lived, perhaps one of them would have gone on to save the likes of Johnson and it’s mother who doesn’t believe that Johnson is guilty because she doesn’t “feel the vibe of a murderer” when she’s with her “son”. I bet the kids he assassinated felt that vibe and that’s all that really matters. It was their right to live that the jury was endorsing when they convicted the slime to die.
You know, I’m beginning to think that perhaps public execution wasn’t and isn’t such a bad thing. I for one would enjoy watching the state carry out it’s obligation to those kids when they “take out the trash”. I’d let my kids see something like that so that they would know that we put such a high price on life in this country that we are proud to eradicate those who would take it.
And…talk about a deterrent! I saw the movie ‘I Want to Live” with Susan Heyward when I was a kid and that scared the hell out of me. I had this hideous fear that I would be accused of a murder that I didn’t commit. It never occurred to me that I would be executed for a murder that I did commit…I can’t imagine ever killing a human being. But if we all watched our government fry those who have committed a heinous crime such as the crime committed by Johnson and it‘s co-conspirators, I know for damn sure that some kid somewhere would be so shocked that they would be terrified to ever take a life. Even those like Johnson who haven’t been raised with the slightest shred of humanity, compassion or decency still have some degree of self preservation. And if that’s what it takes to keep such garbage from treating the people of value the way that Johnson treated Chrisalee, Jose and Huy, so be it.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/9415235/detail.html
posted by Meg Kelso | 3:23 AM
15 Comments:
Hi.
Hmm, I have par hasard found your article.
It's a difficult-to-discuss topic. However, let me verify some facts (from what I've understood).
* Dexter Johnson is 19.
* Dexter Johnson was in the gang.
* Dexter Johnson is convicted for rape and two violent murders.
(I hope I'm not missing anything here)
I completely understand that that's some serious crimes. However,
you make it as if he is the evilest of all evils.
Say, Hitler and Stalin are responsible for deaths of like 50 million people.
If we get back into the history, people like Alexandre have probably killed hundreds thousands of people too.
However, these men are even respected by some people now.
Now, that's far more serious than the crimes.
Now, please understand that people have different backgrounds. That makes them do things.
Dexter Johnson is not even over 20, he has had some bad influence in his childhood (again, am I missing something here?) and he has commited all these crimes in one night. They weren't planned. He was in a group.
Again, from that, I'd say that death penalty might be too drastic in this case. He might have gotten a life-sentence or something.
Well, that's my original thought. I don't know much details.
I certainly respect you and your point of view. But, I disagree. I am not one of the whack jobs who respects Hitler or Stalin. As I said, I have wavered in my stance on capital punishment but when I read about this story...I put myself in the place of the kids that were murdered and the families who miss them. I know that we shouldn't use emotion when making such decisions but I can't help it. It angered me to the point where I absolutely find this crime worthy of execution.
Once again, I respect your opinion. Thank God we live in a place where we can all share our thoughts without fear of government retaliation. Stalin (who killed MANY more people that Hitler) would have never allowed us to be so open with our thoughts.
God bless America!
Meg
Meg,
Don't forget to include Mao Zedong, the ruthless leader of China.
He led the killing of more people than Stalin and Hitler combined.
This comment has been removed by the author.
The poms had the idea, ship the criminals to a lonely island and leave them their.
Lara,
I actually thought of that myself. There should be a place on this planet for the decent people to live without the fear of being terrorized by trash like Johnson. The only problem that I can see with that is that they could conceivably build a raft/boat or something like that to escape. Or, the decent humans could become ship-wrecked on the island that we dump the garbage. But, I'm sure that we could figure something out. I personally don't care what happens to them...they could be starved, beaten or outright tortured and I would sit back with a bowl of pop-corn enjoying the show.
Meg
SolarisGal, it would be better if you covered all of my points and not just some of them.
Still, my responses to that, however:
* A 19 year old might still be a child (you probably know that some people grow up faster and some people grow up slower). Children are too young to fully understand what they are doing. Anyway.
* That's not totally true. In certain social conditions people do not act on their free will. It's probably their responsibility, though, but, eh, it depends...
* It's not what I originally meant. But Hitler and Stalin might not have been the best analogy. Anyway, we're not living in this "an eye for an eye" kind of society any more.
* "Thou shall not kill", huh? Noone can bring those people back and they won't contribute to the society anymore, right. However, killing some kid for what he has done, while he was maybe not fully aware of that he was doing or maybe on social pressure, won't do anything good for the society either.
Yet, I do not know any of these people personally nor do I know the real situation. I can't reasonably judge, therefore.
Finally, sorry, this can become an infinite discussion and I do not really have the time or the will to continue it. I am not going to do that, therefore. However, I fully understand that opinions may differ.
Anonymous,
Let me clear up your facts:
*yes, dexter johnson was 19. but age is absolutely no justification for carjacking, robbing, raping, and murdering anyone. period.
* dexter johnson was not in a "gang". it was him, his cousins, and close friends that committed these crimes. if you call a group for friends and family a gang, then we're all in a gang. if anything, dexter johnson was the ringleader of this group of thugs.
* dexter johnson and his friends have killed 4 people, carjacked and robbed a dozen people, and raped 1 woman in a 1-2 month period before they got caught. who knows what other crimes they committed.
* these crimes were all planned. they called the carjackings and robberies their "job" - a way of getting money. and when they realized their victims can identify them, they killed them.
and from that, the death penalty is not too drastic for this case.
it may not bring back all 4 victims back, but it give a sense of closer for 1 family to know that the murderer of their daughter, sister, and friend has not gone unpunished for his actions
and as far as your comparison to hitler and stalin... that's a little far fetched. they may have been responsible for the deaths of millions, but of that number, how many did they personally rob, rape, a pull the trigger at the heads of their victims? still a high number, but given time to freely do their "job", dexter johnson and his "gang" could add more numbers to their "resume".
I am an Englishman and I oppose capital punishment in all its forms, as does my country's government.
There is a fundamental paradox in killing a man in recompense for the killing of another: We cannot preserve the sanctity of life if we sanction its destruction in any form. What I fear America has not yet learned is the importance of not allowing the abhorrent and evil behaviour of others to draw one into actions which go against the righteousness and moral rectitude for which a nation should stand. In vengeance you bay for blood, but how will the witnessing of a death teach your children that the taking of life is wrong? We cannot say that all life is there to be taken and judged by God while at the same time being perversely drawn into committing some sort of quasi-legalised form of murder ourselves.
Of course execution will bring finality, but it will also bring a bitter closure, not a happy one. Johnson will leave this Earth and his crime will fade into history. In England we imprison murderers and they remain in the news as a constant reminder of our need for vigilance in creating a better society - we no longer simply wash our hands of criminals while bloodying also them by exercising a power which is not ours to hold. The judges who hand down the death penalty will one day be judged and whose authority will they cite for their actions? The United States of America is many things, but an annointed judge of men's souls it is not. The only way to enforce the idea that killing is wrong is to do away with the death penalty.
As for Sadam Hussein, my country's government opposed his execution on the grounds that it was inhumane and that in pragmatic terms executing people always carries the idea of martyrdom. All that Sadam's hanging did was to humanise him - in the end this tyrant became a frail and scared old man as the world watched him suffer a botched execution.
A man's time on Earth is sacred and should be cut short by no man. If we want to make society safe then that, of course, is the job of the judiciary and a lifetime's detention seems like a good deterrent to me. We must not, however, become as base as the criminals we are dealing with by resorting to an eye for an eye mentality. In the end it is unacceptable for your society to go on promoting itself as the moral paragon of Western civilisation whilst you insist on consistently compromising your supposed moral values for the sake of vigilante revenge. Your bank notes proclaim that 'In God We Trust', well then perhaps you should stop making such cardinal decisions on his behalf.
Not one single European country has the death penalty and it is in contravention to the universal declaration of human rights, and yet the US persists hot-headedly in pursuing this archaic and uncivilised method of punishment. Is it worth all those innocent lives lost? men who did no wrong, so terminally punished that no real acquittal was possible. If I were American, I would be ashamed of my government for upholding capital punishment and, before you call me a wishy washy liberal, I don't think it is too liberal to stick within our worldly remit and leave the final judgement to God.
The very fact that there is debate over whether the death penalty should ever be applied provides enough doubt to warrant its abolition.
Many of you seem to think that somehow these criminals could go on being a menace to society - I fail to see the problem if they are behind bars. As for the taxes paying to incarcerate them, well we cannot simply kill people to save money - it has to be approached with the utmost gravity.
I sincerely hope that certain states in the US come to see how much more effective avoidance of capital punishment is in giving an administration the moral fortitude to uphold the best usages of humanity.
god bless.
To the kind British Gentleman who commented below....I must say that you have given a thoughtful, insightful and thought-provoking essay regarding capital punishment. I must thank you for reminding me why people should not be ajudicated with the slightest degree of emotion. I appreciate the time you took to write.
Thanks again,
Meg
Dear Meg,
you're quite welcome. I strongly believe that the abolition of the death penalty could be one of the defining moments in your country's history. America is a great nation in so many ways, but it is the death sentence which perturbs us over here in England. If only it were gone then we would feel even more of an affinity with the American people and America's strengthened human rights position could be used as a force for good.
best wishes,
Ollie
Ollie,
Somewhere on this blog I write in opposition to the death penalty, believe it or not. My point was that it's not worth the fews lives that we DO take to have the entire world think of us as murderers. For that matter, it isn't worth being wrong...and we HAVE been wrong in the past...to lower ourselves to killing another.
BUT...if we ARE going to do it...this is one case where it would be deserved. Unfortunately, we aren't consistent enough with our application of the death penalty. We lose some of our credibility...then to think that we can't speak out against abortion if we aren't strong enough to save the lives of a convicted murderer.
Meg
I cannot agree with you, although I take your point. There can never be consistency in the killing of criminals. You said earlier that we must not allow our emotions to cloud our judgements and I thought that was an excellent point and yet now you suggest that this case is an instance where the penalty is applicable. That seems a bit specious to me because it still allows judgement to rest on subjectivity, be that the emotions of the jury, your emotions, or simply having to rely on what is essentially an unwritten scale of what makes one murderer worse than another. I'm afraid it's a no compromise situation; you either decide that it is wrong because you cannot judge with absolute confidence and because it is not our right to take life, or you decide that you are willing to risk cardinal sin by taking a life in 'recompense' for another. (I'm a pretty liberal Christian by the way so don't read this as a didactic sermon). Please look at it like this: If the death penalty does anything, it achieves vengeance on those who have done wrong. What is worrying, however, is that the only reason it is done is to satisfy those left on Earth. Laws satisfy the populus by punishing people in part to make society safer (imprisonment suffices here), and in part to gain revenge (this is where killing comes in); this means that anyone who supports the death penalty is using killing as a form of revenge, revenge brings pleasure and so these people are glorying in the pain, suffering and ultimately the death of another human being. I cannot, as a person let alone a Christian, condone such barbarity. We should be trying to rise above animal instincts to use our gift of conscience to do what is right. The most sickening thing is that people over there can go and watch an execution, something we Brits (at least my friends) find utterly utterly disgusting. It's not enough that these people are losing everything in the world, but they are not even afforded the dignity of passing on in private, instead they have media wolves waiting to report the gory details to the sick people at home who want to get a kick out of witnessing a man's death in revenge. All of this is hidden cynically behind a frankly bullshit argument that 'justice is being done' and 'people should see justice being done'.(On that point, your courtrooms would be much more efficient at delivering justice if they wern't televised - When I saw Judge Judy I thought it was a joke, then I saw a 'real' case being broadcast and realised that your whole legal system is a joke). I don't want to sound harsh but you all sound like pretty intelligent people so why do you put up with crap like this? Your lawyers talk in generalities and focus on ad hominem diatribes and circumstantial evidence, none of which is even allowed in a British courtroom.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are LIFE, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This doesn't even mean anything to you? I know your President can't stop contradicting himself (that's when he's making sense in English at least) but surely some of you can see that your political infrastructure just seems to bully its way from place to place and from policy to policy without being answerable to any of its original tenets or even to the laws in your constitution (I refer to illegal rendition and the camp at Guantanamo bay).
The issue over the death penalty cannot be one of picking and choosing appropriate cases for death or prison - there would be too much contradiction and subjectivity, not to mention the fact that KILLING IS A SIN and not something a government should do. Soldiers go into battle with a loaded gun, but they go praying to God that they will not have to use it and if so,only in the protection of their own lives, their friends lives and the freedom of others. the Texan administration freely dishes out the death sentence for no other reason than to get revenge. It cannot work as a deterrent because it is inhumane and therefore de-civilises your society and an uncivilised society will have more crime. If you do away with the death penalty then you educate people to the evil of killing, you let them no that it is NEVER justified, that it is NEVER our sober decision to say who lives or dies. A soldier reacts instinctively, a judge should deliberate - sadly I think your judges revel in acting like soldiers unnecessarily. If anywhere should act as an institution for measured and morally upright thought on the nature of humanity then it is the courtroom - not in the USA, sadly.
All societies have murderers, that is tragic but it doesn't unsettle me too much; I understand the different reasons (never a justifiaction) behind criminal motivation - some people are immature or mentally ill, others pathologically disposed to killing or intoxicated. What really disturbs me is that seemingly nice people with families and idyllic, neat little suburban lives can give any quarter at all to the idea of killing of a man. 'No man is an island, entire of itself' said John Donne, and he is right: If you condone capital punishment then presumably you would deliver the sentence and then presumably you would strap the man to the bed and then put the needle in and then watch the poison steal his God-given life. If you truly believe in the death penalty then you, as an active member in a democratic system, are to all intents and purposes an executioner. You cannot assume that your hands are clean just because you're miles from the execution chamber.
Every man has a chance at redemption and it is God's choice when his life ends. Taking away that time on Earth when a man can either strive for redemption or fall further into sin is a crime against God.
The argument works if you are not a Christian too - simply think about it in terms of the morality of humanism instead.
If you incarcerate a man then he is dead to society - he is not active in society so he is dead to it. This is all we can reasonably do because we do not even know the consequences of our actions if we kill a man - does the judge have a state ordered sanction for where
the convict will go once they've been 'fried' or injected?! Of course they don't. How on Earth can you say, then, that the punishment fits the crime if you don't know what the extent or nature of the punishment is?
I'm sorry if I was mistaken in thinking you shared my feelings and I hope you at least make peace with whatever you decide to take as your stance on this. Just listen carefully to your conscience instead of the emotionally provocative rhetoric of those around.
I meant what I said about America having the potential to be great, I just hate it when people are impetuous and forget that it is a far nobler pursuit to be working towards greatness than it is to rest on self-made laurels and pretend that you've already achieved it.
Best wishes,
Ollie
Came across this blog while searching for information about where my friend is buried. I have not gone to see him. I feel horrible for not having hung out with him the week befor his death. The last thing he had told me was "you might not ever see me again" what kind of a friend am i if i couldnt have taken the time out of my life to go watch him dance? have him teach me like he had promised me....
i just wanted to say this here because i had not told anyone and i guess...i needed to let it out.
Come anytime and do just that. I think you'll feel better after you do finally go to your friend's resting place.
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