Killer wants to die.

http://www.legalreader.com/archives/003713.html

This killer supposedly wants to speed up his date with the needle, Or is this a ploy to delay or prevent getting it?

Seems to me if he wanted to die, let the jury do their job, then drop all appeals?

From your link:

(underlining mine)

IANAL, but this automatic appeals process is probably in place for a reason. What if it turned out, during the appeals process, that Chapman didn’t actually carry out the crime that he admitted to? That would mean that the state would have killed an innocent man.
LilShieste

You also have to consider whether he is of sound mind, etc.

Quite frankly, since the purpose of the death penalty is punitive, shouldn’t we NOT execute him, since that’s what he wants?

How about we tell him that we will execute him. We take him to the gas chamber, strap him down, shut the door and then turn on a fog machine. we then let him out and tell him that the gas chamber is on the fritz and we have to reschedule. Repeat this every couple days, alternating with electric chairs that give mild shocks (like a van de Graaf generator) or breakaway nooses.

This guy is a POS and should be put down.

I really, really like this idea.

Something about that could probably be described as “cruel and unusual”. I can’t quite place my finger on it, though.
LilShieste

Damn! I KNEW it sounded too good to be true. HAD to be a catch somewhere. :frowning:

After reading what he did, I can’t see why anybody would support letting him off the hook so easily by letting him die. That’s no punishment at all.

Personally, I wouldn’t put my finger on it at all. Unless I was checking for his lack of a pulse.

If that were the case, anybody could avoid the Death Penalty by asking for it.

And, depending on how this case ends, if someone wants to commit suicide they should probably just murder someone instead. That way, the state could “administer the suicide”, and the person wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of being prosecuted for “attempting” it.
LilShieste

So what?

Something kind of tickles my memory about this exact sort of thing. I seem to have a faint recollection that it has been specifically ruled unconstitutional (cruel and unusual) for the state to falsely lead a person to believe he is going to be executed (e.g. to stage a mock “last mile” or strap someone in a chair, etc.). Does this ring a bell with anyone else?

Life in prison with no possibility of parole is a more fitting punishment. Let him die of old age behind bars. Let his conscience, if he has one, be his torturer.

No one should be able to get off that easy.

Old joke Masochist says to sadist …Hit Me.
Sadist says NO

This sounds familiar…

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/gilmore/backlash_6.html

Gary Gilmore went through the same thing in Utah 30 years ago, except at the time nobody had been executed in the USA in (IIRC) 12 years.

Oh, I’m sure it is cruel and unusual and illegal.

Of course it would only be done to Scum of the Earth ™, so I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

How could you not lose much sleep over it, if the state was performing cruel, unusual, illegal actions on a human being? I’m not saying that this guy is innocent. I’m just saying that the separating line is starting to fade, when people take pleasure in the state-sanctioned killing of another person.

Of course, that’s substance for a different debate (the morality of state-sanctioned capital punishment). I apologize for the hijacking of this debate (the morality of state-sanctioned assisted suicide).
LilShieste

The death penalty is decidedly not punitive. It doesn’t serve to “teach the bastard a lesson” in any way; it has only two purposes: to serve as a deterrent to other criminals and to remove someone permanently from society so that they cannot harm us.

It seems to me that killing him doesn’t interfere with either of those principles. I would say that if you have a problem with killing this guy then you have a problem with the death penalty in general.