Almost all of them sign confessions and are asked to pay private penalties -- five times the amount of whatever they stole.
We hoped to encourage further action, but no letter was ever answered, and to my knowledge no merchants ever faced private penalties.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the private Death Penalty Information Center, said Mexico's active legal support had probably contributed to a decline in death penalty cases in Texas.
But motoring organisations have also warned about the rise of private operators issuing penalty tickets as they turn away from clamping.
Just hours before Abraham Lincoln "put on his hat and headed for Ford's Theater," on April 14 , 1865 the president is said to have spared a mentally incompetent Army private the death penalty for desertion.
It also costs billions in lost productivity, wasted talent, public penalties, private settlements, and insurance costs.
One of the largest sites, operated by a private anti-death-penalty group in New York called Refuse and Resist, describes the inmate as "a prominent radio journalist" being punished because he "allowed the angry and anguished voices of the oppressed onto the airwaves".
Plus, most educational loans, both federal and private, allow for penalty-free prepayments.
Germany and the other EU member states decide for themselves the appropriate mix of civil penalties, criminal penalties and private rights of action.
Assembly Bill 880, recently introduced in the California Assembly, would impose a penalty on private employers with 500 or more workers who have employees that enroll in Medi-Cal.
