This and sentiment like it, frankly, seems to me like incontrovertible proof that no person should ever be willingly given the authority to decide whether another person lives or dies. A person who talks like this - who gets exclamatorily joyous over the prospect of some undisclosed vicious torture method - has also “removed himself from society,” in my view.
It repulses me, it fills me with disgust and shame, and it makes me angry. And that’s why I shouldn’t be in charge of what happens to a person like FriarTed, who stakes out a grossly hypocritical position and one entirely grounded in bloodlust, and fires the moral outrage centers of my brain. I’m not so fucking important that I think my personal discomfort over the actions of another person should be grounds for that person losing his life. The more visceral our reaction to a crime, the more circumspect we should be about our judicial response, not the less.
I don’t really see the difference in life without parole, and killing the person, and never have. The thing is, that makes me more likely to be okay with the death penalty. Unless I get into supernatural stuff, I can’t see why living completely cutoff from society is more humane than not living.
The only real thing that makes the death penalty worse is if you believe in a Hell, and that you are depriving the person of enough time to get penance and not go there. And, even as a Christian, I’m not sure I believe in the eternal torture version of Hell. To me that implies a cruel God.
Well, it depends on your definition of what “is” is…
I’m talking about a specific crime and these two specific defendants, not generalities. In case you haven’t noticed, I put this thread in IMHO, not Great Debates. And I am very very pleased that DEATH is winning the poll.
Bullshit. These guys are scum, and were caught in the act. There is no “evidence” to be considered, no “eyewitnesses” that may be mistaken. They were caught in the act of torching the house to cover their crimes, and were apprehended during the getaway, according to the reports I’ve read. I have no problem with them being taken out back and shot without any appeal. Hell, I’d have no problem pulling the trigger myself. The scum removed themselves from society voluntarily. Let them die like the vermin they are.
No, it doesn’t depend on that at all. You seem to think you can limit capital punishment to certain subsections of certain crimes, and it isn’t unreasonable to ask how you would limit it, given that these things have a habit of bleeding over.
Capital punishment is disproportionately used in certain situations - where the defendant is poor, and where the victim is white. When you talk about things like ‘really really depraved’, you have to realize that under our current society, the media sees depravity as a product of the social acceptability of the victim. A pretty young white girl gets killed, the killer is depraved. A homeless black man gets killed, well, life goes on.
I am glad you are baying for the blood of people that you don’t even know are guilty yet. And you wonder why people assume that you would not only rather limit appeals, but also shortcut the protections of the trial process itself.
Those who so violently support the death penalty and undermining the protections our judicial system grants to defendants are in some ways (hell many ways) worse than the murderers they seek vengeance on. Why? Because they drag the justice system down with them. The death of these victims was a terrible tragedy. The death of the justice system is a knife to the heart of the whole nation.
But there are people who definitely do not deserve to be kept alive. I think that anyone who is judged to have killed strangers for the sheer thrill of it and shows no remorse is a likely candidate.
Like I said in my first post in this thread, what people deserve is a completely separate question from what it is prudent for the state to do.
Besides, if you’re really interested in giving them what they deserve, then why do you want to let the worst people off the hook so easily by just giving them a shot and letting them go to sleep instead actually making them stay alive and pay for their crimes? Killing them is letting them get away with it.
You, uh, said bullshit and then didn’t address anything I said, except by way of inadvertent confirmation of it. I already understand that you are emotionally upset by the crime. I’m suggesting that the proper role of a fucking system of justice is not to determine who is “scum” or “vermin” based on how often how many people get how angry. There is a difference between how you feel and how the government should behave.
Because I don’t trust, for example, you with that decision as regards my own life. So I’m extremely hesitant to entrust anybody else’s to you, particularly when you’re at (what I hope is) your least rational, viz. when you’re so angry that you’re talking about summary executions based on thirdhand reports when you have no immediate connection to anybody involved.
At least you recognize that you’re completely outside the boundaries of the law.
Your statement that people should not be allowed to keep what they’ve taken from others with violence was ridiculous. This was simply a logical extension of *your *silly position.
Is it? So somebody who shoots a person in the head, killing them instantly, is worse than, say, someone who kidnaps a girl and rapes her for years before she eventually escapes? Thanks for telling me what everyone else in the country (or world) thinks about everything.
Can you? Perhaps you can point to where I’m being emotional.
Your argument was ridiculous and I was giving it exactly the level of respect it deserved.
1.) Being incarcerated for life without parole does not automatically mean spending that time in solitary confinement.
2.) Apparently the vast majority of people convicted of capital crimes disagree with you. Or can you provide evidence that people charged with crimes that are eligible for capital punishment seen the death penalty over life imprisonment, and that if they’re given life without parole that they constantly attempt suicide?
[offtopic]What a shock–something that implies the Christian God is cruel.[/offtopic]
Why? How do you determine who? And how do you keep the punishment scaling? If you think that there should be this kind of degree to punishment, how do you ever even it up? What do you do to the person who killed five innocents versus the person who killed one? The person who killed 10? 20? Who committed genocide?
There is no way to even the scales. More killing just undermines the entire system. To pretend otherwise is to cheapen the deaths of those who were murdered, playing like we can make everything okay again with a little bit of petty revenge. Murder is wrong, period, no matter whether it is committed by an individual or by the state.
Hell, if a dog killa a human being, it is often killed. And the dog doesn’t have the conscious that people are supposed to have.
I would accept life without patole if we could guarentee the prisoner would not escape, would not kill anyone in prison, and would not have any pleasure while in prison. Put them in a steel cell, with nasty tasting water and just enough nutritional supplement to stay alive. Let them have a floor mat, a washcloth and a toilet. NOTHING else. No Internet, no exercise equipment, no daylight, not even medical care. They live like that until they suffer a natural death.
And yet you can’t understand that it’s that difference in consciousness that makes it okay to kill a dog and not a human. Furthermore, you may have noticed that there are no prisons for dogs; the *only *way to prevent a violent dog from attacking another person is to kill it.
Also with dogs we try to look at why it behaved like it did. No such thought crosses the head of the ghouls who would sit by the electric chair knitting. They don’t seem to recognize that a society that institutionalizes violence might end up as a more violent society itself. That a state that runs a system that values minority and poor lives less than rich and white ones might be partially responsible for increases in crime.
I try and avoid the whole “respond before reading the thread” thing, but this is a no-brainer: Life in prison.
“I don’t normally believe in the death penalty, but in this case I’ll make an exception” is utter bullshit. If you don’t believe in the death penalty oh but wait except in this case, then I got news for you – you believe in the death penalty.
