Just Another Reason I Support The Death Penalty.

[ciggy]

People like this don't deserve to live...just saying. :angryteet

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1222065782001/captives-found-chained-together-in-basement

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/19/police-investigating-philadelphia-dungeon-rescue-10-others-including-children/

 

[UTvols186]

WTF that is crazy and just wrong. To take advantage (and have them chained up) of disabled people like that if they were taking there disability checks.

 

[Tobacco Giant]

I live about 20 minutes from that building. I actually saw on a local news channel, some "expert" implying the suspect might suffer from some sort of personality disorder. How ridiculous is that?

 

[Farani]

Sad, sad story.

For the sake of argument, what about those who have been wrongly convicted and/or killed, who are later found to be innocent? How many innocent people would it be okay for the state to kill before a justification for the death penalty no longer exists? Isn't one too many?

 

[cartisdm]

For the sake of argument, what about those who have been wrongly convicted and/or killed, who are later found to be innocent? How many innocent people would it be okay for the state to kill before a justification for the death penalty no longer exists? Isn't one too many?

I don't know the percentage or number of times this has actually occurred, but is it any different than keeping them locked up in prison for a life sentence? Their life was still taken from them, one just took longer.

 

[ciggy]

Sad, sad story.

For the sake of argument, what about those who have been wrongly convicted and/or killed, who are later found to be innocent? How many innocent people would it be okay for the state to kill before a justification for the death penalty no longer exists? Isn't one too many?

I totaly understand what you are saying and agree. For me the death penalty would only be excepted with 110% proof which in many cases it's not. In this case however it's black and white.

 

[ChazHollywood]

I totaly understand what you are saying and agree. For me the death penalty would only be excepted with 110% proof which in many cases it's not. In this case however it's black and white.

The potential for uncorrectable mistakes is the one and only reason I'm anti death penalty.

If not for that there are plenty of people I'd like to see removed from society quickly and decisively.

-Charles

 

[cartisdm]

I totaly understand what you are saying and agree. For me the death penalty would only be excepted with 110% proof which in many cases it's not. In this case however it's black and white.

In theory, this works but how do you apply it in court? Can you tell one murderer "We are confident enough to send you to jail for life...but not enough to take your life directly" then the next murderer "We are certain you did and we're going to take your life immediately"? If there isn't enough proof to convict a guy, he shouldn't be going to jail.

(FWIW, I'm a fan of the death penalty...)

 

[Tobacco Giant]

In theory, this works but how do you apply it in court? Can you tell one murderer "We are confident enough to send you to jail for life...but not enough to take your life directly" then the next murderer "We are certain you did and we're going to take your life immediately"? If there isn't enough proof to convict a guy, he shouldn't be going to jail.

(FWIW, I'm a fan of the death penalty...)

DNA evidence is largely indisputable.

What I don't like is that the death penalty won't even be an option for these animals. I don't like the notion of an eye for an eye. It should be a life for an eye. The punishment and overall consequence for committing a crime should be greater than the crime itself - that is how we should work to deter heinous crimes like the one in the OP.

 

[Farani]

DNA evidence is largely indisputable.

So long as the lab doesn't make any errors. No tests are ever full-proof when there are human beings involved.

 

[Tobacco Giant]

So long as the lab doesn't make any errors. No tests are ever full-proof when there are human beings involved.

It doesn't make sense to set an impossible to meet standard - if that is where we're going, we'd have to change "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "beyond any doubt whatsoever" and convictions will be hard to come by.

 

[mwlabel]

With all of my work with the Special Olympics, stories like this make me rage. I hope karma bites those people right in the ass, and then goes to town on them.

 

[Farani]

It doesn't make sense to set an impossible to meet standard - if that is where we're going, we'd have to change "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "beyond any doubt whatsoever" and convictions will be hard to come by.

I don't mean for convictions, I just mean when you're talking taking another human being's life. If something is capable of making mistakes, and that imperfect thing is running a test that will determine if someone might live or die, then there will never be a 100% guarentee that someone innocent won't be killed. I don't see how this can possibly be looked past or ignored. As long as someone innocent may die, how can it be justified? For the good of the people? If you were wrongly convicted and sentenced to die, would you still honestly agree with the death penatly? The sane person would be enraged and feel wronged.

 

[CAJoe]

I am all for bringing back public executions. These people should be hung in the town square, send a message that this will not be tolerated. Someone who can do that to another human is a monster and does not belong in society.

 

[cartisdm]

I am all for bringing back public executions. These people should be hung in the town square, send a message that this will not be tolerated. Someone who can do that to another human is a monster and does not belong in society.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I heard that Florida is trying to pass a bill that will allow for Firing Squad executions.

Doesn't matter to me either way but I looked up firing squad stuff on Wikipedia after I heard it and I think there's only been like 140ish ever in the US. That doesn't seem like that many. I would've thought there'd be more...

 

[Tobacco Giant]

I don't mean for convictions, I just mean when you're talking taking another human being's life. If something is capable of making mistakes, and that imperfect thing is running a test that will determine if someone might live or die, then there will never be a 100% guarentee that someone innocent won't be killed. I don't see how this can possibly be looked past or ignored. As long as someone innocent may die, how can it be justified? For the good of the people? If you were wrongly convicted and sentenced to die, would you still honestly agree with the death penatly? The sane person would be enraged and feel wronged.

What you're doing is taking what should be a logical discussion and putting an emotional spin on it. "What if this happened to you or someone you love..." etc., etc. I can do the same thing. What if someone you loved was brutally beaten and killed for no reason, wouldn't you want the people who did that to die?

I get your point of view, I just don't agree with it. The question we have to always ask ourselves is, "at what cost?" We can outlaw the death penalty at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, the emotional unrest of the victim's families, and possibly even more murders due to more killers who know that death will not be a consequence of their actions, among many other things I'm sure.

What is the cost of living in a society with the death penalty? The ever so slight possibility that 1 in a million people who are put to death was not guilty. We're not even talking about facts at this point, just an ever so slight possibility, given the extremely high standard that is required for convicted murderers to be sentenced to death.

The cost of not having the death penalty is much higher, IMO.

 

[cartisdm]

What you're doing is taking what should be a logical discussion and putting an emotional spin on it. "What if this happened to you or someone you love..." etc., etc. I can do the same thing. What if someone you loved was brutally beaten and killed for no reason, wouldn't you want the people who did that to die?

I get your point of view, I just don't agree with it. The question we have to always ask ourselves is, "at what cost?" We can outlaw the death penalty at the cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, the emotional unrest of the victim's families, and possibly even more murders due to more killers who know that death will not be a consequence of their actions, among many other things I'm sure.

What is the cost of living in a society with the death penalty? The ever so slight possibility that 1 in a million people who are put to death was not guilty. We're not even talking about facts at this point, just an ever so slight possibility, given the extremely high standard that is required for convicted murderers to be sentenced to death.

The cost of not having the death penalty is much higher, IMO.

I like this response :thumbsup:

 

[Farani]

These are the responses I would expect on this forum...which is good, because it reminds why I don't spend much time on any online forum.

And my last comment on this thread:

I am all for bringing back public executions. These people should be hung in the town square, send a message that this will not be tolerated. Someone who can do that to another human is a monster and does not belong in society.

How is hanging someone in public any less barbaric than what they did? Isn't the act in response just as monstrous? For centuries, capital punishment has proven itself not to be a determent. Forcing people to conform to a chosen morality through fear will never create a environment free of these acts. Raising people to think for themselves, and not condition them into patterns will lead to less of this.

 

[CAJoe]

These are the responses I would expect on this forum...which is good, because it reminds why I don't spend much time on any online forum.

And my last comment on this thread:



How is hanging someone in public any less barbaric than what they did? Isn't the act in response just as monstrous? For centuries, capital punishment has proven itself not to be a determent. Forcing people to conform to a chosen morality through fear will never create a environment free of these acts. Raising people to think for themselves, and not condition them into patterns will lead to less of this.

So putting someone in jail for the rest of thier life is more of a deterrent? People must pay for the crimes they do. Public executions display that you do the crime you will pay for it. There really is no viable alternative. There will always be monsters who will kill/torture/rape.

 

[criollo]

Here's something that happened where I live several years ago.

Two guys robbed a liquor store.

A few minutes later, their car was pulled over for speeding, by a cop who had no idea that this car was being driven by people who had committed a robbery.

The driver shot and killed the cop.

Other officers joined the pursuit, and to make a long story short: the killer was himself killed in a gun battle with police, while the unarmed accomplish was caught and arrested after trying to flee on foot.

Under Minnesota law, you can be given the death penalty if you were involved in a crime in which a police officer was killed. The accomplice was convicted and sentenced to death. During the trial, the letters to the editor in the local paper were filled with letters crying out for justice and therefore supporting the conviction and sentence.

So I thought to myself: what if the actual killer has been taken alive? What if he had received the death penalty and the accomplice had recieved a lesser sentence? I strongly suspect that most of those letter writers would have been perfectly satisfied with that scenario and felt that justice had been served. (Admittedly, I cannot ever know this, of course. But consider what your own reaction would be.)

But the murderer had inconveniently been killed, so we the public could not vent our anger on him. So his accomplice, who as I recall did not even realize that the killer was carrying a gun during the robbery, was the recipient of the public's wrath in the true murderer's place.

I concluded that in this case at least, the death penalty was less about people's sense of justice and more about a need for vengeance. After all, if a lighter sentence for the accomplice would have been considered a just sentence in the hypothetical case in which the killer survived , how can that lighter sentence NOT be considered just in the actual scenario in which the killer was dead? Either the accomplice deserves death or he doesn't, regardless of who else survived to stand trial.

We have a department of justice and a department of corrections, but not a department of vengeance.