Then they seem quite conflicted in this, I must note, trying to make it all bloodless and divorced from any individual responsibility.
Pick a better martyr. I’m not going to lose a moment of sleep over this piece of excrement.
Yeah, animals generally kill out of hunger or fear. They don’t have the intellect or possibility to understand the wrong they’ve done. People like Ed Kemper, Carl Panzram, and Paul Bernardo, just to name three. Do I think the death given to them should be unusually cruel? No, and I’m not happy about the mistakes made in Lockett’s death. If you’re gonna do a job, do it right.
Pjen, your posts on this subject isn’t doing your side any good.
To start with the morally evolved Europe schtick, guess what, the vast majority of people in the U.S. don’t give a damned about Europe. Europeans are not morally more evolved or whatever you think it is.
Honesty, your ‘all white people are racist’ post is rather funny in that I was creating a list in my head of people whose execution by the state I would be fully on board with. Guess what? Every single one of the people on that list is white.
John Wayne Gacy - murdered at least 33
Ted Bundy - murdered at least 35
Tommy Lynn Sells - 6 confirmed murdered, possibly as high as 70
Jeffery Dahmer - 17 murdered
Herb Baumeister - 11 murdered, possibly as high as 20+
Henry Lee Lucas - 11 murdered, possibly as high as 213
Gary Ridgway - 49 murdered
Patrick Wayne Kearney - 21 murdered, possibly 43
There is no question that the people in the above list murdered multiple people. There is no question that they murdered those people because they enjoyed doing so. The motive wasn’t money, or sex, or jealousy. The motive was that they simply liked murdering people. (Though many of the people got a sexual thrill out of killing, the motive wasn’t sex in the normal way of thinking). There is also no question that the murders on the list are beyond redemption of any kind. They will not repent for their crimes. They will not become rehabilitated and rejoin society as responsible people. They will never change.
The murderers on that list are broken in a way we do not really understand. Study them to find out what we can and then kill them as quickly and painlessly as possible. Killing them isn’t about revenge. The wreckage these murderers left in their wake is beyond horrid. The murderers cannot, in anyway, make up for what they have done. There is no point in keeping them locked up. They won’t change and they won’t ever get out.
I am in favor of the death penalty, but I also believe it ought to be used for extreme cases only. Cases where there is no question about guilt and where the crime goes beyond an act and is the essential to the murderers psychology.
Slee
No. It’s only comparable in your own (and Honesty of course) mind. But this won’t be any sort of watershed moment.
More civilized? Why is this rant not in the Pit??
I’m opposed to the death penalty, as I think most of the people who responded to this thread are on this board, but your condescension and attempted superiority really are laughable. Europeans have been slaughtering each other in job lots for literally centuries (hell, millennia), and had the death penalty for much of their history. They have zero moral high ground.
When and if the US decides to finally do away with the death penalty (and from what I recall it’s already dying off) it won’t be because of our European brethren and sistren, it will be because we decided to do it all on our own with our big boy pants on. It won’t be over this particular case, either, since only a few of the fervent are going to be on this guys side in any case, regardless of how he died. Thanks for your concern, however…that means a lot coming from a superior European. Really. 
Morality is subjective.
I start from the Golden Rule- do unto others as you would they do unto you. I value good life as the goal for everyone because I desire a good life for myself and believe you should do the minimum harm in any circumstance- hence Just Wars not aggression, limits on freedom to do harm etc. Killing someone is very rarely in accord with this.
From where does your morality come that the State should kill people without clear need?
But as noted above by a doctor (and I am a nurse) it would be possible to quitly anaesthetise someone. FGS I had an operation to fit a pacemaker last month under local anaesthetic. I was given midazolam- the first drug in the series in a very small amount followed by a local anaesthetic. I was aware of the first cut and said I did not like it- they pumped in more midazolam and I was out for an hour!
But there is a need for theatre and revenge that requires pain, but not too much, to be seen by the victims relatives and the mob.
At least with hanging in the UK, the last hangman said that from him entering the room to death usually took less than ten seconds- but that would not satisfy the ghouls. They want the Cagney walk from the cell to the death theatre, the long drawn out procedure so that people can see the punishment being administered. Maybe, unconsciously, those who desire death making are enjoying these botched executions.
My view is that the disgust they are causing is another nail in the coffin for judicial killing which year on year is losing popularity with your public.
But it is largely used on African Americans who kill whites. Whites who kill African Americans are most unlikely to die of judicial killing. The policy is institutionally racist.
The same attitude prevailed over the US’ generation late withdrawal from slavery. And no person in Europe was denied a vote because of the colour of his skin- remember that. The US may make claims to the sanctity of its constitution, but no European country has ever rated African descended people as 3/5 of the white man.
No, they were only denied votes for being poor, female, or Jewish. Which is clearly much more enlightened.
Really, the black people in French and British colonies were allowed to vote?
Damn! So it was only the Algerians and the Vietnamese who got the shaft!
Pretty sure a few women and/or poor people got denied in America too.
If we want to bash a European superiorist you should bring up the political strength of their racist-nationalists political parties and the incredibly disproportionate Muslim prison population.
Does former Illinois Governor George Ryan meet that standard? Not everyone whose sentence was commuted was innocent of capital murder.
We had a judicial branch employee who tried to get Harris County to put its capital punishment machinery on trial. He got slapped down hard by the appellate court and voters quickly got rid of Judge Fine. I thought it was too bad; the institution could use more judges with his background.
No person resident in the UK has ever been denied a vote because of the colour of their skin. People in the US were for over a century.
Colonial administrations (including the USA in the Philippines) were not democracies at all.
Much like in the US in the same period then.
I understand that the GOP is trying the same thing even these days against the poor and dusky skinned!
Something that we share with the USA again. That is the problem with democracy- you get people expressing their views. Damn!
Yeah, except the UK and France oppressed far more people of color well into the 60s than the US ever did.
If you think that Europeans are somehow seen as more enlightened or civizilized by their former colonial subjects then you’ve led a heavily sheltered life.
Beyond that, there are huge numbers of Muslims who’ve lived in many European countries for generations without being allowed to be citizens in the country that they and in many cases even their parents were born.
That’s hardly meant to excuse America’s actions but I was born in a country which had rulers imposed on it twice by the UK so pardon me if I find your arguments laughably stupid.
Plus, there is still the remedy available for someone who is determined to be convicted and incarcerated in error. There is no such remedy for an innocent person who has been executed. And that bit up-thread about “execute the people who carried out the execution” is just childish arguing for the sake of arguing; it’s not advancing a rational point in favor of capital punishment.
I’m not sure you understand the 3/5 thing. Counting them as whole people in the census was the pro-slavery position.
The 3/5 clause allowed slave states to completely disenfranchise people but then claim representatives in Congress on the behalf of 3/5 of them. It was unfortunately never enforced, but the 14th Amendment correctly lowered the “rating” to zero for disenfranchised males.
A few months ago, while visiting my parents near Atlanta, my father and I were watching the local news. A cab driver in the metro area got stiffed by a passenger. The cabbie got out of the cab and shot the former passenger. My father expressed his incredulity that the cabbie was arrested and charged with attempted murder. I told him that you just can’t go around killing people, especially for non-violent crimes. His response was, “Why not?” Of course, he also added a couple of statements to the effect that he didn’t care why not.
This whole debate–and, IMHO, it shouldn’t be a debate at all because, to me, it’s incredibly obvious what the right thing to do is–basically boils down to one side taking glee in “He did wrong, he must suffer.” And the more he suffers, the better. The other side holds to the idea that once the threat to society is removed, then the offender is no longer a threat to society.
Once the state incarcerates someone, the state is responsible for ensuring the person’s safety. That is true for many reasons, but the most important one, I think, is that the state should recognize the possibility of someone being incarcerated in error. A close second is that cold, calculated, deliberate killing of someone who is no longer a threat is lowering the state to the moral equivalent of the person the state is seeking to execute.
Have you ever been falsely accused of committing a felony? It’s not fun. And it’s not cheap. And some of those felonies, even when the proof comes about that you were falsely accused, well, the false accusation is enough to essentially destroy your life