<p>DukeEgr93 - If the UNC Board of Regents have any pull with the NC Governor - now is the time to use it. Since crime is spilling from Durham to Chapel Hill it’s obvious steps need to be taken.</p>
<p>And Duke administrators need to stop putting their heads in the sand and maintain the increase in Duke police patrols on and around campus. </p>
<p>I don’t like to speculate, but when I read about the robberies of Duke employees and students around campus I can’t help thinking the area was targeted for the $300+ robbers would get in cell phones, MP3 players and cash. Then did it escalate to knocking on doors of apartments as in the case of Duke grad student Mahato who was murdered in his apartment? That case made headline news in India</p>
<p>It didn’t appear that the robberies around campus were taken seriously until a student was murdered. The day Mahato’s body was found a Duke student wrote in the Chronicle of fearing for his life.</p>
<p>And did the robbers/murderers target Chapel Hill since police presence around Duke was increased after Mahato’s murder?</p>
<p>There are many factors here and I don’t live in the NC area. But I do know if it happened to University students in my area I’d be doing whatever necessary to make certain it never happened again.</p>
<p>Prosecuting a death penalty case costs far more than warehousing an inmate for life. Executing the murderers will not undo the crime. All of that being said, I would volunteer to pull the switch on this one.</p>
<p>You’re right, lorlei. Executing them doesn’t “undo the crime,” but it’s no reason to have them live out there lives in a prison-- most likely a better life than they lived on the streets. That said, gangs are now killing each other in our prisons, too. All fine with me, since that will assure they don’t get out.</p>
<p>I assume the majority of the death penalty costs is housing them on death row for a decade or more and going through appeals; hence, my suggestion of simply executing them in the courtroom right after the conviction.</p>
<p>As an aside, I read in the paper this morning that efforts to contact the 17 year old Lovett’s family have been “unsuccessful.” They’re simply not responding or acknowledging him. Just thought I’d mention that since you said earlier that we can’t presume to know how these 2 were raised. Well, I think this lack of response gives some indication. Even kindly old Grandma Lovett who runs the daycare center (where parents of children “obviously trust her” and where the swat team had to go in and lead them all out of the daycare?) hasn’t answered the phone or gone to see him.</p>
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<p>Westcoastmom: Good point, and I think this will now–finally-- be the case. NCSU students were also targeted during that same week when Eve was killed, which is unusual for that area-- students held up by gunpoint and robbed-- 2 separate incidences. I find that a little too much of a coincidence for me, when you also take into consideration Lauren Burk’s murder during that same time period (though in AL).</p>
<p>WCM - I think for the past several years, Duke officials were somehow convinced that the Duke and Durham police were mainly needed to protect Durham from Duke students. I believe the events of the last several moths will help set the priorities better given that loud parties, while an annoyance, do not equal murder.</p>
<p>Most of the victims of the start-of-the-year robbery sprees were Hispanic workers; the assumption is that many of them are either here illegally or are here legally but are easily scared into believing they cannot report crimes. Having Police Chief Lopez has started a process of understanding that crimes can in fact be reported.</p>
<p>If Duke can get rid of the notion that we can’t offend Durham by saying Durham has real problems, and if Chapel Hill gets rid of the notion that “it can’t happen here,” then hopefully we, Central - which has had some of its own students murdered, NC State, and the other local colleges and universities can work together to put the necessary pressure on local and state government to protect the citizens - even or perhaps especially the transient ones. UNC and Duke each invite thousands of people from out of state to come study in the Triangle each year; we have to make sure they are welcomed and protected.</p>
<p>I also posted this on the UNC page. Perhaps other parents might share some of my feelings, so decided to post here, too…</p>
<p>I can’t get over the sadness of this story. Two young, promising lives snuffed out. I keep thinking how the parent’s funeral seats could have been occupied by any of us. Makes my hugs just a bit tighter and longer. Not that I think parents can accept all the responsibility for the way their kids turn out, but I’m really thankful that I had good role models in my life and that my DS/DD have made good choices in their lives. </p>
<p>The piece that jumps out at me is the contrasting lives of the two segments of the population involved here. Two young people who had bright futures, great goals, already had accomplished some pretty amazing things in their young lives and who, no doubt, had loving parents/other adults in their lives who had inspired them to work hard and do good work. Contrast this picture with the lives of the two suspects who were, at least on the surface–from what we know, aimless and up to no good. I hurt for the rutterless young people, too–who on some level thought their only options in life were to take advantage of other people, with little or no thought given to the consequences. NOT that I would dream of defending their actions…It’s just so unfortunate that a young person takes this path, sees himself in such a dim light so early on and ends up making choices that ruin his own life and the lives of so many others. Just a sad, sad thing. Can’t help but wonder where we as a society have gone wrong…</p>
<p>The Daily TarHeel just posted that a Durham judge has asked Gov Easley to push for anti-gang legislation, after presiding over the first court appearance of Lovett today.</p>
<p>I’d love to know why he set a bond for Lovette; granted, it’s at $3 million, but why? This was a court appearance for Mahato’s death; his court appearance for Eve Carson, in Orange County, will be today at 3pm. Atwater is held without bond.</p>
<p>“I assume the majority of the death penalty costs is housing them on death row for a decade or more and going through appeals; hence, my suggestion of simply executing them in the courtroom right after the conviction.”</p>
<p>Well, that would be a sensible idea if we always, or even usually, had the right guy. </p>
<p>I don’t get the $3Mil either. Feels like if it took two standoffs to apprehend Lovette, and he’s being accused in a murder/robbery for the Mahato case, there’d be no chance of letting him bail out. Maybe that’ll happen in the Orange County case, and Brown contacted the judge in Orange County to give them priority in setting remand?</p>
<p>So now I find myself wondering if the combination of this soundbite and actually setting a bail were nothing but pandering to the electorate of Durham County. Perhaps I am just that cynical after the last two years of Durham “justice.” I hope Orange County does a better job this afternoon.</p>
<p>OK - my current understanding is that you cannot hold someone without bail unless you are planning to seek the death penalty or they have a bail violation; and in North Carolina, you cannot seek the death penalty for people who committed crimes when they are under 18. That’s what I’ve been able to figure out about the $3M…</p>
<p>Wow…just checking the day’s news (down and out today fighting a UNC brand of flu ldgirl brought home with her).</p>
<p>I’m just astounded Lovette rec’d bail; thanks to dukeegr for explaining that one. In our state, a 17 year old is death penalty eligible.</p>
<p>Okay, another identifiable thing that needs to change. 17 years is old enough to join a gang, cause criminal mayhem, commit gun crimes, kidnapping and murder in a manner that meets death penalty requirements. So 17 should be old enough to suffer the consequence.</p>
<p>And I despise the comments made by that Durham judge. Dismayed to realize dukeegr and janie are likely right and we are witness to the start of another grand show of catering to the masses for votes. Good Lord if that is true.</p>
<p>ldmom: Yes, I’d like to see that changed, but a quick Google search suggests that this isn’t even true in TX anymore.</p>
<p>A Supreme Court ruling in 2005 throws out the death penalty for anyone under 18, which would eliminate it everywhere. The 19 states that still allowed for it did include NC (and Texas). I gather this was upheld(?); if so, no states are allowed to do it now-- sadly.</p>
<p>that Lovette was using a cell phone stolen from Abhijit Mahato who was murdered January 18th. So, for over a month he was using Mahato’s cell phone. I thought in this day and age calls could be monitored, numbers traced and position of the individual using the phone triangulated.</p>
<p>It makes me wonder why there wasn’t more of an effort to find those involved in Mahato’s murder through the cell phone. Or was it because the Durham police were complacent, thinking they had caught the murderer, Stephen Oates on January 24th?</p>
<p>It’s almost as though the Durham police wanted to placate the representatives of the Ambassador from India who expressed concern for the safety of students from India in the United States as Mahato was the third student murdered. Two other students from India were murdered in December in Louisiana.</p>
<p>WCM - I was totally shocked by that… I remember reading early on that the police knew the cell phone had been taken; one would <em>think</em> an order would be entered to monitor communications on it… On the other hand, the police did not do a particularly thorough job of investigating Abhijit’s workplace so, who knows. </p>
<p>We know from earlier cases that Durham knows how to track cell phone usage so…grr.</p>
<p>When all the dust settles there will be more second guessing and blame to go around than I think we will be able to imagine. The possibly shoddy Durham PD police work after the Duke murder, the hard to imagine lapses in the Durham county parole system, clerical errors in the court house and on and on…all of which left these two monsters out on the streets…</p>
<p>Sadly, the what ifs won’t bring back Eve but why not start asking the hard questions and holding these people accountable as well?</p>
<p>You know, I was really “happily” surprised at how soon after Abhijit’s murder Durham PD had caught two “persons of interest” and seemed to have strong cases. Only now is the full realization of how incomplete that had to have been settling in. eadad - agreed about getting the hard questions going. For Durham, we have a new police chief who’s promised a more active role (versus our previous chief, who was gone for months at a time; and an assistant chief, who apparently struck his children (!)).</p>
<p>It also seems as if the link in this case was made by the Chapel Hill PD, not Durham’s, so part of the questioning should involve, “How can Durham learn how to do what CHPD is doing?”</p>
<p>I agree, eadad. I only wish that the Chapel Hill police had been on the Mahato murder, instead of Durham. Certainly, they found Eve’s cell phone (at a Chapel Hill shopping center), because they had the good sense to go through her cell phone provider, and working with them, they managed to find it there.</p>