Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

"This is the worst thing that I've ever seen in my career," said Johnson, a 33-year veteran of law enforcement. "The brutal force used against the victims ... it's indescribable."

Rehabilitate my ass. You're goddamn right it's about revenge. I'll be watching for a jury of the people of Florida to do the right thing and fry that guy.

*moves to Castro's Cuba*

[ asinine one liner not really germane to anything ]

*kills Nicky Wire*

In which case, the fault would appear to not solely be the murderers', strange to say.

i hate to joke about this stuff, but has anyone seen a picture of the cells there? its almost as bad as a studio apartment in manhattan.

xpost Impartiality is virtually impossible to begin with on any high profile case; the only answer to that is to shut down the press completely on reporting crime--whether or not the cop said a damn thing, people still could read the story and see for themselves that it is an absolutely horrific case, so I don't see how the cop per se is causing a problem for the prosecution.

my brain is addled from too much cream of broccoli soup.

hstencil: ok, that's kind of what i was thinking. got ya.

xxx-post

Yeah.

If you kill someone with a baseball bat, does it really make the crime any more heinous if you also smash the teeth into tiny pieces? I mean presumably the people were long dead by the time they got finished with all the teeth, right? Sure, it indicates some kind of insane rage, but is it really a more heinous crime that your regular run-of-the-mill death-by-bludgeoning?

Anyway I think there are two ways to look at why that's an indicator of it being "different": the insane rage part. It indicates, I suppose, either the person is completely insane and mentally ill (well, I guess you'd have to be but hopefully you know what I mean), which I guess would actually make them ineligible for the death penalty. Or it implies they just really get off on torture and abuse and death, which is really heinous. Run-of-the-mill bludgeoning/shooting/etc you still have that possibility of like heat-of-the-moment or OMG that was actually a one time thing, I think, in some people's minds...

Of course the whole dynamic is fucked because I think getting off on bashing in people's teeth with baseball bats IS a sign of being completely mentally ill so the whole "mental illness" conundrum is a false one.

TOMBOT, aren't you being a little defeatist?

it happens, sometimes.

xpost

Meanwhile, having read a book last week about Stalin's time in Russia and the millions dead there thanks to him, I will more than happily concede that I'm rather glad to be here now rather than there then, for instance. At the same time, it reaffirmed the sheer unabiding hatred I can have for the species as a whole -- but that in turn fighting against the death penalty is a way to sublimate that hatred and turn something positive out of it. There have been enough horrors committed in this world already, I am not keen to add more fuel to the fire.