I’m not against removing a killer from society permanently. I am against how the death penalty is unequally applied, from an economic, racial, and gender standpoint. I am also against how some DAs have shown themselves willing to railroad a suspect and to actively fight against exonerating evidence.
John Allen Muhammad is a waste of oxygen, and I’ll not shed a tear for him. I just hope that a well-to-do white man, or a woman, in the same circumstance, would receive the same penalty. Unfortunately, I don’t think he or she would.
I am opposed to the death penalty. Although this was a heinous crime, and deserves punishment, and there is no doubt that the man is guilty, I think the state should have the will to not dirty its hands by executing people. We’re no safer with him dead. There’s no point to it, and in fact it tarnishes all of us that as a state we respond to violence with more violence.
It would have better satisfied my love of symmetry if he’d been executed by being shot. The needle works, though. Count me among those who typically oppose the death penalty due to mistrust of the state, but don’t really mind that this shitbag got put down.
What is the cost of a vial of cyanide, 6 rounds of ammo, 2 minutes of electricity or 10 feet of rope? Certainly a hell of a lot less than maintaining someone for 30 or 40 years. Wasn’t there a thread a few years ago about the cost of maintaining a prisoner per year … at something like 20 000 US …
And prisoners already can work, prison industries make furniture used in government facilities, they work in call centers … no clue but they used to make license plates …
When you include the cost of appeals and everything else that goes into it, executions are more expensive. This has been reported over and over again for years.
Allowing rape and torture of prisoners is simply ridiculous. I can stipulate that it could easily be possible for certain people to be so depraved and horrible that they deserve to be raped and tortured.
But how do we determine who those people are? How do we administer that punishment?
It’s not that criminals don’t deserve to be tortured, as that the rest of us deserve to live in a society where the Government doesn’t have the right to rape and torture people. We deserve to live in a society where nobody is allowed to torture anybody.
If this means we should automatically kill women who kill their kids, what about postpartum psychosis? Andrea Yates thought she was protecting or helping her kids by sending them to heaven. There are no absolutes.
It’s not a question of deserve…it’s a question of reality. Can you prevent prisoners serving time in prison from beating each other up? Stabbing each other? Murdering each other? Raping each other?
AFAIK, the answer is…no. You can (attempt) to mitigate such things, but unless you put each prisoner in isolation cells (cruel and unusual punishment, no?), you just aren’t going to stop them from happening.
And if they ARE going to happen, I can’t see how they couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy than this slime ball. I’d rather have seen him spend years in such a situation than go to the expense and effort to give him an easy and painless death. To me, even leaving aside the fact that it costs more, this guy deserved to rot in prison for a few decades.
I’m glad they caught him, I’m glad they convicted him, and I’m glad they croaked him. One of his kills was 5 miles from my house, at the gas station in Manassas.
Even though he was downstate, at 9p I flicked the lights on and off a few times. (Yes, I know it was an injection, not the chair… )
I worked with a guy whose daughter was killed by Bundy. Bundy’s death did not bring her back. He did not feel better when Bundy died . He suffered the rest of his life.
Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.
Thou shalt not kill.
What’s heinous about the execution? He got a very peaceful death, which few people get. He knew the consequences of his actions just as he knew he would die if he jumped off a cliff. He got what he knew he would get. He may not have pulled the trigger but he was responsible for his own death.
So you commit any crime and go to prison, you get what you deserve? How about the people who go to prison and aren’t guilty? We find more and more of those every year, people put away for life (or worse, for death) who are exonerated completely by DNA evidence, or recanted witness statements. Just their bad luck that they’re not just robbed of their freedoms, but also security in the most intimate aspects of their persons, too? Can’t stop it, consider it part of the penalty they have to pay for having a shitty lawyer or being framed? Or, even in the case of the guilty, how does that work? Your sentence for burglary is time in prison and being sexually violated daily for five years. Have fun with that.
You’re suggesting that prison should be a place of tyranny by the strongest or most fearsome prisoners, the ones who won’t be satisfied with serving their time and getting out, but have to continue to be brutal and inhumane while incarcerated. Does that make any sense, especially if the victims of prison rape are to be released at some point, and are to be expected to be able to re-enter society and function amongst normal people again?
And by doing so they compete with law abiding citizens; they cost jobs, and lower wages. And they provide a reason for the government to be not too particular about whether or not the people they toss in prison are guilty.