To answer the OP: life imprisonment without parole, and all his parental rights should be taken away from him.
Sorry I’ll butt out here. I didn’t mean to argue Shodan’s case for him and it looks stupid that I have done so. I simply felt the need to point out that what passes for rational discourse at the SDMB isn’t always so. The way I learned to debate elucidator is scoring nothing (and he’s not unique in that amongst SDMB debaters). Take his most recent post
Par 1 : who cares, pointless ethnic gag.
Par 2 : brilliant summary of the self evident - if you don’t execute people they can get out of prison. Personally that’s why I favour capital punishment under some controls.
Par 3 : You can work that one out.
Winston - can’t (temporary) chemical castration also been seen as a medical treatment? Similar to an appetite suppressant used by an obese person, or sedative given to someone hysterical and violent?
Obviously, if he’s in jail and in solitary confinement, it’s not a necessary option.
I remember an episode of ST-TNG in which Riker was convicted of murder, in a society which had the ability to imprint the memories of one person onto the mind of another. Convicted murderers were imprinted with the death images of their victims, and once every fourteen hours they relived the death, feeling all the pain, fear, and so on that they themselves had inflicted. It ususally didn’t take long for them to suicide.
Once more unto the breach.
Yes I know lots of judicial errors are made and I believe we should do all we can to prevent the innocent from suffering.
Most murders where the murderer knows the victim aren’t crimes of violence, they are tragedies. I saw an English TV show some years ago about criminal investigation (no doubt some UK Doper will know it) and all the footage was real. It was heartbreaking, guys killed friends, partners or relatives because they were drunk or over a misunderstanding. Well I think “poor bastard, a few years in jail. learn some new skills, good luck when you get out.”
Ted Bundy, child rapists, serial rapists, wife beaters, guys who regularly assault people…different story. They have multiple “convictions”, they serve no useful purpose, they cannot be rehabilitated (if I’m wrong tell me of a convicted serial killer/rapist, child rapist who is an admirable figure and he can go to the top of the list). The best they can offer society is their death. They make the world a better place by leaving it. Would the world be a nicer place if Hitler and his boys had survived WWII?
I see the stories where the estranged husband kills his kids and then commits suicide and think “If only he had commited suicide first”. And I’d like an answer to that - in a recent case here the guy killed his kids but couldn’t subsequently kill himself…are the anti-death penalty group happy about this.
When my 2 sons are older I’m going to tell them: “Sometimes your head can get really f*cked up and you may feel inclined to do something you know is bad. If that happens and you can’t find it to get help…kill yourself.” I know as sure as shit that if I thought I was going to sexually assault my 2 month old son I’d rather kill myself. I think people should learn that that is their responsibility.
The world would be a better place if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold knew enough to write a teenage angst poem and blow their brains out in the basement.
Elucidator, I wanted to make a comment similiar to your first earlier, but had to hold back my fingers. Rationally discussing sentencing policies in this thread is akin to intelligently discussing George W Bush’s foreign policy in a thread where SomeUnamedPartisan finds coded evidence in the book of Revelations linking the Bush family to the Third Reich, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin, and Bjork.
I agree with you, but the phrase “baby rape” is seared across everyones mind, and it’s going to preclude consideration of many things: They’re not going to consider that the perpetrator is a human being like us all, potentially capable of redemption–easier to write him off has an inhuman monster; they won’t think of innocent people convicted of similiar crimes that would have been mutilated or killed by their rhetoric (McMartin, anyone?); they won’t consider that all their information on this crime is based on a short newspaper article that doesn’t go into any specifics; and they won’t consider what torture does to the torturer.
For what it’s worth, I think he should be safely (his and societies safety) be confined until he clearly understands the gravity of what he did. Upon release, he should be closely monitored such that any subsequent contact with children is cause for immediate re-confinement. He should pay child support until the kid is 75 or so.
Fry the fucker.
And I do mean the baby.
The US Criminal Justice System is flawed, yes. But let’s stick to this case in particular and not other cases or hypothetical cases. In this particular case, elucidator do you think that a confession and an eye witness still leave that much room for doubt? I don’t.
I’ve never heard of a confessed killer (with a witness to the crime) being exonerated after execution through DNA. Usually when someone is wrongly executed they have proclaimed their innocence all along, and I would suspect most people who are truly innocent don’t confess to something heinous that they didn’t really do. I’m sure there may be a few people who just aren’t mentally competent or who have been coerced into confessing but I don’t believe they are the majority of confessions.
He should be jailed for whatever the maximum term available for such crimes is. Killing him - although I can easily understand the impulse to do so - doesn’t help anyone; possibly, it’ll make the teeming millions feel better, or tougher, but that’s hardly a good enough reason. Finally I’m in full agreement with Elucidator that all the macho posturing about torturing him is just nonsense - anyone who could physically do anything like that would need locking up themselves.
Gomez paraphrased my argument more clearly than I stated it, I have no complaint.
Metacom - there probably is little enough chance of making progress when issues like “baby rape” are flying about, it touches upon an instinct too deep. Still, wasn’t looking to pick a fight, the issue was there, and I waded in.
don’t ask “whatsamatta you”, refers, of course, to Rocky and Bullwinkle. Unless moose are an ethhic group, your slur escapes me. (Unless, of course, you stretch the identity to Canadians, and hell, its always open season on Canadians, eh?)
Either that, or, being unable to contend successfully, you decided to go for a bit of the ol’ ad hominem. “Look! E. mocks Italians, I must be right!!” And this is the debating style you learned in high school, which standards I fail to meet? You’re welcome to them, and the horse upon in which you rode.
The Paul Ingram case had both a confession and eyewitnesses, and involved a father raping his daughter. You could easily write an article very similiar to the OP about it. The truth is more complex. Read the link.
(I’m not trying to say anything more then this: Confessions and eyewitnesses don’t always tell the truth.)
My apologies. In Australia “whatsamatta you” is a reference to Joe Dolce’s , rcently voted worst song ever Shaddap Your Face
This has been my position all along, but the problem here is the maximum term for rape of an infant is 7 to 10, whereas the penalty for stealing protected clams at the beach is 14 years. I don’t know how to interpret this other than to conclude clams are more worthy of protection than infants are. Our priorities are fucked.
A. DNA testing after the convicted was executed??? don’t know that there’s ever been a case where DNA testing was allowed to go on after the execution.
B. Re: confession - issue, most glaringly obvious was the case of Henry Lee Lucas who had confessed to a Texas murder (claiming quite a few others as well), was on death row for a killing that happened while he was physically in Florida. He wasn’t executed, though, but is still in prison on unrelated charges (ie false confessions happen).
RE: the OP - this person should get life in prison w/o chance of parole.
My apologies. In Australia “whatsamatta you” is a reference to Joe Dolce’s , rcently voted worst song ever Shaddap Your Face
This sort of crime is what the old French oubliette is made for.
I was convicted of sex crime.
I asked (more than once) for chemical castration. They wouldn’t do it. Why?
I’ve only been convicted once.
Yeah, our justice system needs some major overhaul.
Slainte - I take your point, but it remains flawed. The absolute truth of confession is an ancient myth, and in the era of plea bargaining, it has even less reliability. If the evidence was stacked against you, and there was a very strong probability of you being executed though innocent, wouldn’t you be likely to “confess”? As to “eye witnesses”, there is no variety of evidence with a worse track record.
For instance, as to confessions, in an interestingly parallel situation: you remember, I am sure, the horrible mass delusion that children in day cares were being sexually abused by Satanists? Not a word of truth to it, though lives were ruined. Last I heard, one man still remained in prison, largely because the poor sumbitch had broken down and “confessed”.
That said, I am not willing to extract this case in particular and exempt it from my general prohibition against savage and cruel behavior, regardless of the level of evidence.
Has anyone tried? Would anyone bother? The “innocence projects” that I do know about are far too busy trying to protect the living innocent, the wrongly executed are dead, they are quite beyond compensation. But they have, most assuredly, prevented the executions of condemned men who were convicted on eye-witness testimony. Eye-witnesses are very unreliable. This is certainly counter-intuitive, but it has been demonstrated again and again.
You suspect? Not exactly a firm assertion of certainty, now is it? And you don’t think people will confess to crimes they didn’t commit? Sure they will. Happens all the time. Or they just happen to enter into a conversation with someone in jail where they confess to the charges and specifications, and then take the trouble to lay out the circumstances of the crime in excruciating detail. To a complete stranger. Happens every damn day.
They aren’t the “majority of confessions”? You must have mis-phrased that, surely this is not a comfort to you? “Most of the people we kill are probably guilty, so OK, what the heck.”
Don’t ask Accepted. No hurt, no foul.
Masonite, I agree that the sentencing in this case is insane. As is the sentencing in the clam-pinching case, for that matter. We’ve got a little off-topic, I guess. But, to add my 0.02, even if the guy IS undeniably, unarguably proven to be guilty (if that’s actually possible; I don’t know enough about the case), he should still get no more than the maximum penalty available according to the law. Along with all the counselling and therapy that the system will afford. If there’s a chance that’ll he’ll reoffend, don’t let him out. Just don’t kill him.