[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9003]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           CRUEL AND UNUSUAL

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, raped for more than an hour, sometimes by two 
gang members at once, they cried out for help. Tortured by six gang 
members, they begged for their lives.
  As those gangsters strangled them with a belt, they clutched at it, 
hoping for air. The murderers, holding each end of the belt, pulled so 
hard, the belt snapped in two. Just to make sure that 14-year-old 
Jennifer Ertman and 16-year-old Elizabeth Pena were dead, the six gang 
members stomped on their necks with their boots.
  Five of the killers were sentenced to death by separate Texas juries. 
Today, 13 years later, Elizabeth's parents and Jennifer Ertman's 
parents wait for justice and sob, wait for executions that were stayed.
  The Supreme Court believes participating in a brutal gang rape and 
murder just months before your 18th birthday makes you too young for 
the death penalty. So two sentences were commuted. Now the others have 
had their executions stayed by the same arrogant, elitist judges, who 
wonder if lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
  Mr. Speaker, maybe not today, maybe not the next day, but some day, 
judges will treat victims with the same concern and compassion that 
they treat barbarians.
  And that's just the way it is.

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