Originally Posted By Elderp <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10283003/" target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10 283003/</a> Not a great number to be remembered by. It was all over the BBC today.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Is that all? No wonder it is ineffective. If you are found guilty of murder in the US and get the death penalty...you are really receiving a Life sentence.
Originally Posted By Fe Maiden I like this little gem: “He made one mistake and now it’s costing him his life,†said Kenneth Smith, 35, who visited with his wife and two children. “A lot of people get a second chance. I think he deserves a second chance.†Yeah, what the heck, it was only one mistake killing those two people and maybe even his son if he had gotten the chance. I can relate, I've made a few mistakes too. Just last week I forgot to take out the trash. Good riddance.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper A tiny part of me would like him to get life imprisonment because child rapists get the royal treatment in prison. One mistake. Yeah, sure. It was premeditated, calculated and evil. And, while he has been in prison awaiting trial he wrote a letter to his brother telling him he did and and going on about how he would like to beat up some other people as well. I understand the father not wanting to go through years of appeals and I respect his feelings but if that was my child you better step aside because I am pulling the trigger myself.
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "A tiny part of me would like him to get life imprisonment because child rapists get the royal treatment in prison." If this guy was a child rapist then that part escaped me. Capital punishment is the type of punishment that is meant as a deterrent. It obviously didn't deter anything in this case. Granted, what Kenneth Boyd did was unconscionable. However, that is also my opinion of the death penalty.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Oh, I'm sorry, I confused this guy with the guy in Florida who just got the death penalty for kidnapping, raping and murdering that girl oustide a car wash. Capital punishment would be more of a deterrent if the criminals thought they might actually be killed as a result of their crime. But the endless appeals and the track record suggests otherwise.
Originally Posted By cmpaley My view on the death penalty: 2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor. If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically non-existent."
Originally Posted By Fe Maiden <<I understand the father not wanting to go through years of appeals and I respect his feelings but if that was my child you better step aside because I am pulling the trigger myself.>> I remember years ago an incident where, this guy molested this young boy, I'm not sure if he ended up killing the boy, but they caught the guy in some other state and the authorites were bringing him back through the airport and the father of the victim hid amongst the crowd and shot and killed him. It was all caught on tape, in fact from one of the cameras you could see the father with his back turned to everyone pretending as if he was talking on the pay phone. As soon as the large crowd came by he pushed his way through and shot him. I don't recall if the father was punished. I was around 10 at the time so someone may remember this a bit better.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I wouldn't kill the guy in the airport but I'd want to be standing right in front of him...looking him in the eyes...when I flipped the switch. I'm not hiding behind a curtain.
Originally Posted By planodisney My being in favor of the death penalty has nothing to do with it being a deterent. I believe it is absolute justice for the crimes committed, whether it deters a crime or not.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan It is a deterrent. Studies prove that 100% of executed murderers never kill again.
Originally Posted By ecdc "Capital punishment would be more of a deterrent if the criminals thought they might actually be killed as a result of their crime. But the endless appeals and the track record suggests otherwise." There's zero evidence that capital punishment acts as a deterrent. It's the wishful thinking of death penalty supporters who feel the need to exact revenge. I think part of the problem with the debate is that death penalty advocates assume that those of us opposed to the death penalty have all sorts of sympathy and feel bad for people like the guy in Florida. Not true at all. Some of these people, on a personal level, I could care less about. As one human to another, I don't care whether that Joseph Smith guy lives or not (and let me tell you, as a Mormon, it's really weird to keep seeing that name in the press!) But there's larger issues at work here than my base desire for revenge and my indifference to some scumbag's life. 1) Take a survey of who's on death row. It isn't people like OJ Simpson and Robert Blake. Rich people get off (unless it's as obvious as Scott Peterson) or at least get life in prison. Death row is littered with poor minorities. 2) Those people who tend to favor the death penalty also to be quicker to convict. Hence new evidence that a man executed in Texas may have been innocent. Those willing to exact the ultimate punishment are working more off emotion than logic and reason. 3) The system is flawed, and there can be no guarantee that innocent people aren't put to death. The governor (Republican, I might add) recognized the problem and commuted all the sentences to life in prison.
Originally Posted By ecdc Wow, sloppy post. #2 Those people who tend to favor the death penalty also *tend* to be quicker to convict. #3 was the Governor of Illinois.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Not that it matters, but Bill O'Reilly is against the death penalty. I always found that interesting.
Originally Posted By Beaumandy Guess so. He thinks we should build these huge prisons in Alaska and make these life term prisoners do hard labor.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper I'm Catholic and I am vehemently for the death penalty. You can't put all Catholics in a box as much as non Catholics and Catholic leaders would prefer. Accoring to the church I shouldn't have one child and one on the way because I should not have chosen to pursue fertility treatments for me and my wife. How was my post #2 sloppy ecdc? It wasn't. My post #4 jumped the gun a little but, in my defense, the Tampa case was settled yesterday as well and the accused was given the death penalty.
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder Here's an interesting take on capital punishment: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C apital_punishment</a>
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "Capital punishment would be more of a deterrent if the criminals thought they might actually be killed as a result of their crime. But the endless appeals and the track record suggests otherwise." I can see why you'd think that, but check out the wikipedia link I posted and see China, for example.
