"If this does not qualify for the death sentence, then there is no case that would''

[Space05us]

The man needs to be locked in a mental home.

I dont know if its been said yet in this thread but if he was found guilty by reason of mental defect (insane) he would be sent to a mental hospital. And as soon as his doctor deemed him sane again he'd be back on the street. There's no such thing as an insane asylum anymore, they're "inhumane" or some bs like that.

I think he should either be given 9 life sentences without possibility for parole or the death penelty. Even if he pleads insane, if you cant control yourself enough to stop yourself from killing you dont belong in society.

[Space05us]

That sounds too simple. People who upload music on the internet while ignorant of the illegality are not legally insane as far as I know.

ignorance of the law is no excuse
if you dont see the 45mph sign and go 60 you get a ticket, there is no "oops, I didnt see it"

Its not that you have to be unaware of the legality of your actions, but that you have to be out of control of you body. The insanity defence is confusing, and that confusion is the reason why you can get off on insanity even if you perfectly sane at the time of the crime. You only have to convince a jury, you dont have to be right.

[Tattila the Hun]

Put him trough a nuclear reactor without shielding, then to prison without any healthcare.

Cruel? Yup.
Effective? Dunno.
Fair? Absofrigginlutely.

I mean, death is just... death. It's too humane for the likes of his.
Make them suffer. And by suffering, I don't mean no color tv, and no XBox for you. Put him inna hellhole someplace, where, with any luck, he'll spend the rest of his sickness-ridden, yet very, very long life. Life in prison should be life in prison, not 20 years. Forced labour, chaingangs. Human guinea pigs for pharmaseutical companies.

"See this, you would serial killer. This is you in 50 years. Not a pretty sight."

Jeez... He'll propably be fined or something...

[Sava]

deterence doesn't work... torture or DP would be a punishment... not a deterence...

[Space05us]

I mean, death is just... death. It's too humane for the likes of his.
Make them suffer. And by suffering, I don't mean no color tv, and no XBox for you. Put him inna hellhole someplace, where, with any luck, he'll spend the rest of his sickness-ridden, yet very, very long life. Life in prison should be life in prison, not 20 years. Forced labour, chaingangs. Human guinea pigs for pharmaseutical companies.

I can understand killing someone for thier crimes but physical torture is too much. How would you feel if you were found guilty of a murder you didnt commit and then were tortured for it? Maybe they'd slowly castrate you and then pull out your teeth and finger nails one by one as slow as possible and then an hour later they find new evidence and it turns out you're innocent. Then what?

[Aeson]

I am for the DP if it is voluntary. If not, throw away the key. The only case I see for the DP against the will of the criminal is cost cutting, and I definitely don't want our government killing people to cut costs.

[Aeson]

Maybe they'd slowly castrate you and then pull out your teeth and finger nails one by one as slow as possible and then an hour later they find new evidence and it turns out you're innocent. Then what?

An irreversable mistake... just like if you had killed them outright.

[Mr. Harley]

jimmytrick, you miss the point about the DNA evidence.

Also, many have taken the position that there should be a moratorium on the death penalty because DNA testing has proven that the innocent have been convicted. This is actually a reason to continue the use of the death penalty, as it demonstrates that a smaller percentage of the innocent will be convicted in the future.

The systemic problems in the judicial system of the United States have NOT been dealt with. DNA testing is not a fix, it's the canary in the mine indicating something is profoundly wrong. That is why I talked about prosecutorial accountability. What they can do, and then excuse it simply as a mistake, is frightening.

Read about the various "satanic - child abuse - cult" hysteria cases in the 1980's and 1990's. Read about the Demjanjuk case (Google it) and discover how this man spent almost a decade on death row in Israel because a US prosecutor DELIBERATELY withheld new evidence that came to light when the case was being finalized PROVING he couldn't be that man. Since my wife works with children, I've told her that if a prosecuting attorney ever decided that she was a child molestor (she's not, for any jerks who might want to make snide remarks), by the time we proved her innocence, if we were lucky, even with malpractice insurance, we would be bankrupt.

The system is broken. Nobody wants to fix it, and nobody wants to examine the issue of the best justice money can buy - usually in favor of the state, by the way, though it can favor the individual who is wealthy enough. I'm NOT saying that the guilty don't get convicted, nor that the innocent don't go free. But there are sufficient cases that do NOT end up that way that I, for one, do not have any desire to be on the receiving end of the attention of a prosecuting attorney "accidentally".

Until the systemic and procedural issues that let these miscarraiges of justice occur are dealt with, I will be opposed to the death penalty. Yes, genetic evidence gives me a better chance if the system "oopses" and comes after me (since I am a largely law-abiding citizen - largely since I will go slightly over the speed limit). I still have seen people ground up, and lose several years of their lives, fighting to prove their innocence in prosecutions that never should have been brought.

[Imran Siddiqui]

As for the death penalty the deterence argument has been pretty much done to death (forgive the unintended pun) - and the lack of any statistical evidence that anyone ever has been detered seems to me pretty conclusive.

Apparently a recent study has been done which shows that every DP results in 18 less homicides, based on post-moratorum stats in those US states.

I'll try to get the study. It was refered to in a class of mine and a website on it will be forthcoming by Thursday (hopefully).

[Velociryx]

I'm right there with Arrian, 'cept the 'fry him up' voice echoing in my head is calling a bit louder for me.

Why make society at large pay to keep this circus freak around till he grows old, deficates on himself and kicks the bucket? If he's found guilty, end him.

I can't imagine that any form of "rehabilitation" is going to change this character....given the (admittedly sketchy, in some ways) details we were presented with, does anybody genuinely think this guy's a candidate for rehabilatitive therapy?

So...why should society have to bear the cost of keeping this fruitcake around?

-=Vel=-

[Aeson]

I find the cost of supporting criminals in jail less daunting than the cost of our society using killing as retribution, punishment, or cost cutting. It undermines the premise that killing is wrong to enforce that premise through killing.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Apparently a recent study has been done which shows that every DP results in 18 less homicides, based on post-moratorum stats in those US states.

I'll try to get the study. It was refered to in a class of mine and a website on it will be forthcoming by Thursday (hopefully).

Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Imran. You mean that the number of homicides would multiply by 18 X DPs if the DP was abolished?

[Velociryx]

Double Post Hunted Down and Eaten

-=Vel=-

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Apparently a recent study has been done which shows that every DP results in 18 less homicides, based on post-moratorum stats in those US states.

I'll try to get the study. It was refered to in a class of mine and a website on it will be forthcoming by Thursday (hopefully).

Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Imran. You mean that the number of homicides would increase by 18 X DPs if the DP was abolished?

[Velociryx]

A good point, Aeson, however, I do believe that the Death Penalty has its place in our arsenal, just as surely as war does (which is a non-discriminating "death sentence" for untold thousands of innocent bystanders each and every time we wage it).

If that's "okay" by way of the moral compass, then state sanctioned murder of someone who is beyond reasonable expectations of rehabilitation has to be okay too.

Society has a right to defend itself from the things that go bump in the night....this guy, is one of those.

-=Vel=-

[Aeson]

Society has a right to defend itself from the things that go bump in the night....this guy, is one of those.

I agree. I just don't agree that the only way to protect ourselves from this man is to kill him.

A good point, Aeson, however, I do believe that the Death Penalty has its place in our arsenal, just as surely as war does (which is a non-discriminating "death sentence" for untold thousands of innocent bystanders each and every time we wage it).

The only benefit to the DP that you show is it costs us less money than to protect society from him in other ways. If we were to go to war to save money, I would be opposed to it, and I'm sure you would to.

The other argument for the death penalty is a better one, deterent. I'll agree that there are some people who fear death so much that it could keep them from committing murder. There are people who fear torture so much that they would be similarly hesitant. In both cases I don't think the ends justify the means though.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Imran. You mean that the number of homicides would increase by 18 X DPs if the DP was abolished?

I know I've killed 18 X the people in states where there is a moratorium on the DP.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Apparently a recent study has been done which shows that every DP results in 18 less homicides, based on post-moratorum stats in those US states.

Check out the Feb 2004, Scientific American. It had a detailed survey of all the various arguments and factors about what does or does not influence crime. It's mostly crime in general and not murder/DP specifically, but it's very interesting.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
So...why should society have to bear the cost of keeping this fruitcake around?

-=Vel=-

Because there's lotsa people you could make that argument about, who are now walking around free men after they were exhonerated. If you start saying, well, this person is so obviously guilty we should execute him right away, where do you draw the line? There were lots of obviously guilty people who've been proven beyond a reasonable doubt not to have done the deed they were sentenced to die for.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If you start saying, well, this person is so obviously guilty we should execute him right away, where do you draw the line?

When the guy comes out covered in the victims' blood, I'd say we're pretty far from any ethical grey area in determining guilt.

[Space05us]

When the guy comes out covered in the victims' blood, I'd say we're pretty far from any ethical grey area in determining guilt.

yeah its not like he may have been holding his dead children and morning.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Imran. You mean that the number of homicides would increase by 18 X DPs if the DP was abolished?

According to the study the DP has a detterant effect whereby each person killed results in 18 less homicides.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Space05us

Quote:

When the guy comes out covered in the victims' blood, I'd say we're pretty far from any ethical grey area in determining guilt.

yeah its not like he may have been holding his dead children and morning.

I don't think we have to worry about that in this case.

[Giancarlo]

Almost 52% Against the death penalty for this guy on this forum? Wow.. that's really messed up.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
According to the study the DP has a detterant effect whereby each person killed results in 18 less homicides.

So, if the DP was re-enacted in Quebec, 5 executions would bring the number of murders in the province to 0?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Check out the Feb 2004, Scientific American. It had a detailed survey of all the various arguments and factors about what does or does not influence crime. It's mostly crime in general and not murder/DP specifically, but it's very interesting.

I read that

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


So, if the DP was re-enacted in Quebec, 5 executions would bring the number of murders in the province to 0?

According to the statistics, yes, I'd assume so.

[Japher]

I started a thread on this, but I guess no one saw it.

Kidicious stated that this occured blocks from his house!

I'm for the DP, obviously

I say kill the guy, F' due process

[Velociryx]

You guys know me, and you know full well I'm not advocating wholesale slaughtering of people just becauase they're a bit...odd.

Hell, *I'm* a bit odd....the difference is tho, I don't walk out of my house with the blood of nine victims on my clothes, muttering stuff about being God. My oddness takes far more harmless directions (specifically as in "not causing the lives of others to come to a screeching halt.")

If the guy did it (and from what we've been presented with it seems more than fairly likely that he did), he's a menace. There are, as has been pointed out, numerous ways of dealing with a menace such as this, and if we look at them objectively, there's only one surefire way of seeing that this menace does not do it again.

We can try to rehabilitate him....I dunno about you, but I'm not thinking that'd be too successful. God-complexes are notoriously hard to get around, and I'd imagine that a therapist would spend lots of times spinning his wheels and getting exactly nowhere.

We could lock him up in a mental institution, and that'd work until some good doctor declared him magically cured, wrote a dissertation on the case, sold the rights to ABC so they could make a made-for-TV movie about it, set him free, and six months later we read about his next set of victims. Not exactly a cure-all.

We could lock him up in jail and never set him free....sorta an "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy, except that there's not yet been a prison that couldn't be escaped from, and there's no security system on the planet that absolutely cannot be circumvented. And besides that, yes, there is cost to consider.

If we had infinite resources, by all means, let's take a kinder, gentler approach, but in a society where resources are scarce, and decisions have to be made about how to make most effective use of them, I'd much rather see the dollars that'd be spent keeping this nutball under lock and key, spent elsewhere.

Once we solve all our other societal ills, sure, let's spend some coin keeping our nation's murderous nutballs comfortably tucked away someplace, but as long as there are other, better uses for the money, let's get this guy out of our collective hair once and for all.

These guys, despite some psychologists' claims to the contrary are not...ARE NOT victims. They *create* victims. I vote for pulling their teeth rather permanantly.

-=Vel=-

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Clearly the death penalty is a deterrent in some cases and not a deterrent in others. It is perfectly logical that the net effect of the death penalty is fewer innocent deaths overall. If you want to make an argument that the financial cost of administering the death penalty is too high relative to the estimates of lives that it save, be my guest. But spare me the bleeding liberal heartache. It is not relevant.

You are making the false assumption that DP is the default state.