adam: The United States’ Uniform Code of Military Justice still provides for death as the maximum penalty, even during peacetime, for rape.
I put that comment in there about “even during peacetime” because there tend to be a number of “punitive articles” which have one maximum penalty during peacetime and a different (more severe) maximum penalty during wartime (declared war, not what folks think we’re doing now).
I’m sorry, but in my mind, rape is just a millimeter away from murder. It’s a horrendous and heinous crime, just like murder. You’re right Blalron, a rape victim remains living–but what do you think her quality of life will be like after such a heinous crime? That’s a good question, wring, how could you justify giving a rapist a taste of his own medicine if you don’t advocate prison rape? Yes, a dilemma here. Well, we kill people who killed people…why can’t we rape people who raped people? I know it’s horrible to say, but rape is horrible and I think rapists should be punished severely. So I guess you could say I don’t advocate prison rape for non-rapists, but the child rapists who get raped in prison deserve it, without a doubt! Now that’s justice! Or we could solve the whole problem by just castrating the rapists. Take away their weapon.
I’m a little disturbed by some people’s attitudes here toward rape, as if it isn’t all that serious. I’m surprised at how shocked people are when a stiff punishment is given. Why isn’t the severity of the crime of rape taken seriously enough?
Hopefully better than that of the vicious bastard who raped her, he’ll be in prison for a very long time, which isn’t exactly peaches and cream.
birdgirl: In case you haven’t noticed it yet,
[ul][li]NOBODY deserves to be the victim of a rape. That tosses out your comment about “without a doubt.”[/li][li]Castration is also mutilation and is a heinous crime itself.[/li][li]Not all jurisdictions kill people for killing other people.[/li]Not all of us who think it’s wrong for rapists to get raped in prison or for murderers to receive the death penalty consider rape to not be a heinous crime.[/ul]
who is claiming that rape isn’t serious?? not I.
as for your assertion that castration will = no more raping, well, you’re flat out incorrect. One does not need an actively working penis to commit rape.
I also wonder exactly where your ‘eye for an eye’ sort of justice ends. you wish the murderer to be killed. what if they murder more than one person? we can’t kill him more than once, so he gets the 2nd murder for ‘free’ as it were?
the rapist should get raped. so then the person who drives drunk and maims some one should be maimed in the same way, then, right?
gosh, what to do about the theif? if they still a car, but don’t have one to steal back, what do you do?
What do you do with cases like this where 17 years later, we find that the rapist was actually innocent (not just ‘not proven’, but actually didn’t do it)? Tell him ‘sucks to be you’?
please just admit to yourself that when you say ‘they got what they deserve’, you are actually advocating that the prisoners effect sentence on each other, and stop trying to pretend to yourself that you’re not advocating rape.
Monty, part of me agrees with you. But rape is so extremely heinous that all my “sense” goes out the window! Well, if we can’t kill them, castrate them, or allow them to be raped, what else can we do that would match the severity of the crime? Life in prison just doesn’t cut it in my eyes. So, what should we do then? What punishment will fit the crime?
We can imprison them thus removing them as a danger on society.
What a moronic statement. Just because someone doesn’t think that the death penalty, or retributive rape, is appropriate for a rape victim, how is that trivializing or rape or not taking it seriously?
Some people don’t believe in the death penalty, period. I’m one of them. Are we, then, guilty of not taking murder seriously?
And i’m surprised that no-one has yet mentioned what i think is an extremely important argument. The fact is that the way in which the justice system has been administered in the United States has led to people being put on death row who were not even guilty of their crime. The scandals over issues of improper evidence procedure, inadequate due process, etc. that hit the news over the past few years have made it much more difficult to argue that the current system is a good one.
Even many people who support the death penalty in principle have conceded that the system, in many cases, was failing to provide justice. Unfortunately, there still seem to be some people out there who’d prefer to see someone–anyone–get the lethal injection, even if it’s the wrong person and the real criminal goes free. This is what people often tend to forget in the rush to judgement: if you convict an innocent person, the injustice is effectively doubled, because not only is the wrong person in jail (or dead), but the guilty party is still roaming the streets.
Of course, some people will march in and say “Well, this guy is different; he’s been convicted beyond any reasonable doubt.” Well, so had those people who have since been released after new evidence came to light.
For those advocating rape as a state-sanctioned sentence, why don’t you lobby your local representative to have such torturous punishment reinstated. Who knows, maybe they’ll even give you a viewing room so you can watch and jerk off. Jerkoffs.
What’s a crime you can think of that almost every person (who doesn’t want the death penalty banned) would think deserving of death, just from the sheer horror of the crime itself?
I’m thinking of the famous murders dramatized in In Cold Blood. A family of four, if I recall correctly, were all suspended on walls opposite eath other, then tortured, raped and killed in front of each other. I honestly can’t bear to recall any of the details, or read about that crime to learn them. I do know the perps died, and I think it would be an outrage if they’d been allowed to live on the State’s tit after that crime.
I can’t imagine how anyone could think the rape of an 8-year-old is any less horrifying. The man deserves death. I hope he gets it.
I am also torn about this one. In theory I only favor the DP for capital murder, but…well, if this man is put to death I just can’t see myself out marching the streets in protest.
From the article cited in the OP:
(Italics mine)
I find this interesting because I’ve often heard it suggested that juries wouldn’t be so eager to impose the DP if they had the sentence of life w/o parole as an alternative. Not in this case, apparently.
The bastard raped an 8 year old girl and now he’s headed for death row?
Go Louisiana!
here, here!
Yes Blalron, a rape victim can still “live life” and it may “be better than the vicious bastard who raped her”.
But there will never be a day in the victim’s life that they don’t, at some point, think about or remember the attack(s). Perhaps you have been a victim yourself and it’s * not* like that for you. If so, you are unusual.
My opinion holds.
Damn, when was the last time you read Capote? None of the Clutters were raped. None of them were suspended on walls, or anything even close to it. Herb and Kenyon were killed in the basement, while Nancy and the mom (whose name I can’t recall at the moment) were killed in their bedrooms. The only thing you could call torture was Dick knocking Herb around a bit in the course of trying to find the location of the safe that didn’t exist. Remember this was a robbery-gone-wrong, not a thrill killing. Perry didn’t even want to kill anyone, but Dick insisted that no witnesses be left alive.
I’m not excusing their crimes in any way, but the fact remains that this particular case wasn’t nearly as gruesome as your faulty memory made it out to be.
Okay, let’s break this down.
The crime: an act that likely took less than an hour, but will quite possibly mentally scar the victim for life.
The punishment: decades upon decades in prison, physically seperated from everyone the perp knows and loves. Crappy prison food every day for the rest of his life. Surrounded by the scum of the earth. Locked up in a cage like a rat. And just like there will never be a day that the victim doesn’t remember the horror of the rape, you can bet your ass there won’t be a second that the rapist doesn’t realize he’s in prison.
Until you spend a few decades in prison, I don’t think you can really appreciate whether it “cuts it” or not. I think it does.
Wow, how embarrassing. Thanks for the correction, and I apologize for posting misinformation.
I think I’m remembering something that actually happened, though – the suspended-on-walls thing is what stands out in my memory. Perhaps it’s a case (other than the Clutter case) which Capote described?
As jjimm mentioned at the beginning of this thread what would stop future child rapists killing the child if they were sure that the state would kill them if they were caught?
I’m anti the state killing people BTW
wring, I certainly do not have any scources that I can immediately point to, as far as giving testimony to the fact that a pedophile cannot rehab himself, but this is the general opinion of interviewees whenever a crime like this one has been committed. The deep-seated nature of the drives which control these individuals tend not to respond to treatment, especially “talk therapies”. IANAP, but when psychologists, etc. start talking in terms of treatments such as castration or food additve therapy (salt-peter for example), it seems to indicate that they have run the gamut of ideas.
I am glad to hear that there are some cases where rehabilitaion has taken place, but I am equally as hard to convince of this fact as yourself.
Furlibusea, I am very sorry for what has happened to you, and it may be true that the system has been set up in order to serve themselves and that these, “Mandated” appeals do take place, but that they are there in order to impede a process to which there will always be opposition. I don’t understand why, if one is convicted by a jury of their “peers” (hmmm), that that is not good enough. I know very little about law, but are appeals mandated in other situations or just this one?
Finally, I advocate the death penalty only in cases where there is little or no debate as far as the guilt of the perpetrator…Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, etc. There are plenty of cases in which there still remains doubt, and I am not a ghoul. I just can’t stand it when I hear about this shit. It has gotten so that I try not to watch the news because there seem to be so many of these cases.
Thats’s some pretty goddamn awful logic you’re using there, Not A Well Woman. First you say:
Then you say:
Well, the legal system requires people to be convicted only if they are guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. So, in legal terms at least, anyone who has been convicted is, by definition, guilty. Not just the Jeffrey Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys of this world. As you said in the first quoted passage, isn’t a jury of their peers good enough for ya?
I can speak only for myself here.
Mine is pretty damned good. No nightmares, no flashbacks, no problems with men, no lasting injury. Just a bad memory I don’t think about much.
-catsix,
survivor of a gang rape 6 weeks before her 21st birthday.
IOW, no, you don’t have proof of your assertion, but you’re just happy as a clam to repeat them again.
I suggest that you do a bit of research - you could begin even, by checking out the other thread in the Pit where actualy, like real live, data was cited.