Why I support capital punishment.

This is not intended to start a debate on whether capital punishment is Constitutional, whether it violates anyone’s civil rights, whether it’s moral, legal or otherwise generally bad. It is just a simple statement of fact. I want the person I’m about to talk about to die. Soon. In unspeakable agony.

My sister sent me an email yesterday. The Nurse Practitioner (Joanne) that she sees on occasion, who is also a social friend of hers that she mountain bikes with, was found raped and beaten to death in her home on Monday. Joanne lives alone in a resort community about 10 minutes away from my sister. Her car was missing as well.

I emailed my sister today to see if she found out anything further about Joanne, and apparently they have caught the guy who did it. He was arrested in Minnesota trying to cross the border into Canada, not through a specific manhunt, but simply because he was driving (Joanne’s car, btw) without a license. He is a previously convicted rapist who was living with his parents RIGHT NEXT DOOR to Joanne. When they searched his parents’ home, they found a list of names that he’d made, ostensibly women that he intended to rape. Joanne’s name was on the list.

I want this unfathomably fucked up individual to suffer as Joanne suffered, but I’ll settle for a needle in his arm, or a quick fry. Or, even better, for some fellow prisoner to stick a shiv into his eye-socket and give him an instantaneous lobotomy while he’s incarcerated, awaiting trial.

He broke his contract with society once and was given a chance to redeem himself. I hope he never gets the chance again.

Fuck. :mad:

I think I’d rather see him go to prison for life with no chance for parol or time off for good behavior. That way he could be raped and beaten every day for the rest of his sorry little life.

The intense anger over such low life scum just overwhelms every other thought, doesn’t it? When I hear these stories, I feel thoroughly sickened. To hear that he’s a previous offender just compounds the anger. Yes, inside, I’d love to watch the Ted Bundy’s, Charles Campbell’s, Charlie Manson’s, etc., die just as described, in public to boot. When I step back, do I feel the same way? Close enough.

Yes, I want capital punishment. No, not for revenge. For justice. Someone who commits premeditated murder forfeits all rights, specifically right to life. Life in prison is still life. I don’t want these monsters to relive their horrendous acts for their sick gratification while a family deals with the anguish left behind. I don’t want these monsters to endlessly spend our money appealing sentences hoping for that one lenient judge somewhere along the line. I don’t want these monsters to turn their inhumanity against anyone, ever again.

I want the world safe from a repeat of their actions. I want to forget they ever existed. I want them extinguished like a bug. Gone. Finito. Kaput.

I used to be really against capital punishment. How can we punish someone for taking a life by taking their life? But then I started to read stories like this one. And even worse ones. Seven-year-old girls raped and beaten to death. And now I think… how can we run the risk that the person who did such a thing ever do it again? I don’t think such people should be given the chance to redeem themselves. They must be removed from this earth.

Perhaps this isn’t the right place to pose this but it has struck me occasionally that seriously messed up people can re-offend in this way because they do actually want to be caught and to die.

I just wondered if there was any evidence that self-loathing/self-hatred played any role in the psychology of these people ?