Whatever penalty the law allows, when it comes time to hand out the sentence I hope one question will have been raised, namely in what order was the family killed? Did the bound and gagged parents have to watch as their little children were slaughtered or did the children watch in sheer terror as their sole protectors in the world were murdered knowing full well they were next?
Goddamn horrible. No punishment can possibly fit this crime.
Why do you say something like this? Do you think that people opposed to the death penalty for whatever reason are by default rooting for the bad guys? The world is not black and white and if you give it some thought I am sure you will understand why this comment is so insulting.
And if you are curious, I am in favor of the death penalty because I believe some crimes are heinous to merit it, at least in theory. I do concur that the implementation here in the U.S. is imperfect, but it’s my opinion that some people are simply too dangerously deranged to be allowed to interact with society. I know there are other ways of keeping such people locked up, but I admit I get a small visceral satisfaction from learning that a convicted mass murderer has been executed. That is one of my flaws.
Common sense as in, having nothing to do with actual facts, data, or anything in the realm of numbers, statistics…anything that might back up your claim of “common sense”. Gotcha.
So if the Brutalization Effect theory is found to be satistically valid, the data proves out, and is proven to actually increases murder rates, it’s no concern of yours, no skin off your nose, right? Well, that’s…interesting. Morally deficient and utterly callous, imo, but interesting, I suppose.
The perpetrators of violent crimes have no right to decide whether someone lives or dies. That is why we punish them when they commit such crimes. What gives you the right? What gives you the right to decide the same thing we punish for?
What about when we get it wrong, when justice is miscarried, when a defendant is given a faulty trial? When the wrong person is put to death?
Somehow I doubt that bothers you either. Hell, they were prolly guilty of something, right?
Life in prison w/o parole means life in prison w/o parole. I know that not all states allow this, but if you look closely the states that don’t allow this sentence are those with the death penalty. TX, for example doesn’t allow this because ofprosecutors
No… no question. Merely a statement that you ignored what I already wrote and rather than actually addressing it, merely posted the same question, again. And then instead of actually debating, relied on gradeschool insults.
Were I to be uncharitable I’d say that you were too lazy to actually read the thread and then too lazy to do anything more than toss off a silly little insult when it was revealed that you hadn’t read the thread. But I’m a charitable kinda guy, so I’ll just assume that you don’t understand how a debate works and that using the word ‘stupid’ as your entire logical argument doesn’t prove any points except about you and your debating style.
No, actually, it doesn’t. PA, for instance, had many life without parole sentences commuted in the 70’s IIRC.
Another devestating factual rebuttal. I am again humbled.
The fact of the matter is that not only are your statistics meaningless, but they are merely fodder to support your opposition to the death penalty, which I would exist whether statistics supported it or not.
Now, why are statistics meaningless regarding the deterrant effect of the DP? Because they fail to account for the inpact of an entire society growing up under the belief that if they commit murder they abvsolutely will be killed in return, versus a society growing up as is the case now where some states enforce the DP, some don’t, and others don’t have it at all. Where executions, if they even occur, don’t take place for twenty or twenty-five years, and even then accompanied by the wailing of anti-DPers that the murderer has been ‘rehabilitated’ and is no longer a threat to society. (A specious reason for letting a killer off the hook if ever there was one; who cares if they’re ‘rehabilitated’: the people they murdered are still dead. Are we to say as a society that you can get away with depriving people of their lives and depriving their loved ones of them as long as you become a worthwhile person afterward?..in other words, making murder an ‘oopsie’ that you can make up for by becoming a good guy afterward? What kind of deterrant is that?)
In short, people in this country don’t grow up with the respect for life that a properly enforced DP engenders, and they don’t really fear the consequences of murder if they commit one and are caught. The punishment is too abstract, too far off, and too uncertain for it to have the same effect were it to be applied, and applied consistently, throughout the country for a generation or two. This is a large part of the reason why people ‘panic’ or otherwise decide rashly to kill someone they hadn’t originally planned on killing: they haven’t grown up with the respect for life the DP engenders in the back of their minds and they aren’t sufficiently convinced of the price they’ll pay if they’re caught.
As far as revenge is concerned, I think of it more as retribution than revenge. To me, ‘revenge’ is an attempt to even the score whereas retribution is the administration of justice. In other words, is a traffic ticket ‘revenge’ for running a red light, or is it society’s punishment (retribution) for having broken the law?
Jesus H. Christ. A fucking hand-wringer OP meets the kiss-of-death-penalty debate. This is the PIT, assholes, not a forum for your tiresome, endless wrangling over state-sponsored killing. Lynn, where art thou?
Oh. Well, I guess that explains the complete lack of murder of any sort for the entirety of human existence, right up until the first abolition of the Death Penalty, upon which murder rates exploded.
Oh, wait, no it doesn’t. Because that’s retarded. And factually incorrect.