6 ms·

Personally I think cases like this are a great example of when capital punishment is acceptable. When a person shows that much contempt for the life and well-b

Personally I think cases like this are a great example of when capital punishment is acceptable. When a person shows that much contempt for the life and well-being of another human being, they really don't deserve to continue living...

malkia 17y ago
Burn the fuckin witch! Capital punishment is not enough for her...
vaporstun 17y ago
I look at it from a financial standpoint. When someone does something this vile, we (the people, by the courts) determine that they shall no longer have a right to their life. Whether that be by ending it via capital punishment or by keeping them incarcerated forever, they essentially no longer have a right to their life. It costs ~$48,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated (at least in MA where I am: http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-senate-bill-no-2210 http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-se...) If a court determines that someone will no longer have a right to their life and their remaining lifespan is, for example, 40 years, we will spend somewhere on the order of $2,000,000 to keep them incarcerated for their lifetime. Of course, that assumes the value of the dollar is constant (it isn't) and that the price of keeping this murderer in a maximum security prison is the same as the average cost of keeping someone incarcerated. (it isn't) When we are locking the door and throwing away the key, why not save the $2,000,000 keeping someone alive who we've deemed has no right to life anyway?
- Retric 17y ago
  When you include the cost of appeals etc we spend more than that (on average) actually killing someone. In the old days of trial > hanging your argument was more reasonable, but we also killed more innocent people back then.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    Are there any hard stats available on this sort of thing?
    - Retric 17y ago
      This is probably biased, but it lists several study's. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty
      - aarongough 17y ago
        Thank-you! Always nice to have some figures!
  - smallblacksun 17y ago
    That's just an argument against our current court system. We allow virtually unending appeals, even with no new evidence or reason for believing that the earlier trials/appeals were somehow unfair. Some states have (or had) mandatory appeals for capital cases, even when the defendant plead guilty and didn't contest the death penalty.
- yan 17y ago
  If a new method of testing evidence appears and the alleged criminal is cleared of charges, you can let them out of the prison. You can't un-kill them. edit: I heard of countless cases of young black men being incarcerated for murder in Texas in the 60's with police going quite out of their way to obstruct the justice process.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    I agree that's definitely worth consideration. I am nowhere close to being an expert on these things but I would have thought that most of the big technological leaps in the justice system are probably behind us. Fingerprinting, DNA matching, fibre analysis, ballistics... All of these things are pretty well established now. I agree that a lot of cases got turned on their head when DNA matching became available, but what technologies do you envision providing the same sort of disruption in the future?
    - yan 17y ago
      It doesn't always have to pivot on technology -- there will always be overzealous DA's and corrupt judges. Once again, I'm not for or against capital punishment, nor have I done sufficient research to form an opinion, but I can just imagine the Kafkaesque hell an innocent man or woman can be put through to be put on death row.
      - aarongough 17y ago
        Yeah, I can sympathize with that. I definitely would not want to be in that situation. I'm sure there's a workable compromise in there somewhere. I definitely think that most countries need to think about the crimes that they imprison people for. Imprisonment is super expensive partly because it's used so often. If only serious criminals went to prison, the social impact of imprisoning someone would be much greater and the overall cost would be lower...
    - ShardPhoenix 17y ago
      Brain-scanning based lie detectors with high accuracy.
- barrkel 17y ago
  Apart from wrongful convictions resulting execution, death penalties are also very expensive, as the costs of due process through all the appeals have to be paid.
RevRal 17y ago
We don't often learn something by killing, and it is barbaric. An ironic reflection of our own lust for blood. But, okay. Sure, it is satisfying since the "bitch has it coming." Capital punishment is the easy way out for the criminal and the society that reared the criminal. If the criminal is truly guilty, they always get the last laugh. At least in my mind. We, the taxpayers, front the money to satisfy our blood-lust. And we learn nothing in the end except, for a moment, we can feel the thrill of hooting and hollering over the carcass of an enemy.
- aarongough 17y ago
  I actually agree with you far more that my original statement shows. That being said I just can't see how keeping someone locked in a cage for the rest of their life is in any way preferable to just killing them. They are unable to contribute to society while incarcerated, incarceration is not shown to actually help rehabilitate them, and incarceration costs everyone else a lot of money... On the other hand: if capital punishment is used then it's pretty clear they'll never get the chance to re-offend. And in cases like this where the criminal has done something truly heinous I think that is the biggest plus possible.
  - dschobel 17y ago
    In cases like this you can pretty much count on a 'life without parole' sentence though. I'd say 60 pitiful years in a federal penitentiary is far more cruel than a death sentence.
    - aarongough 17y ago
      I definitely agree that it's more cruel. Also, the person being in prison doesn't guarantee that they're not going to commit any more crimes, it just guarantees that those crimes are going to be against either other inmates or prison staff. Personally I think that in cases of super-long jail time they may as well just change it to a capital sentence.
      - 17y ago
barrkel 17y ago
I believe life without parole to both be a worse punishment than death, and one with a small means of reparation in cases of wrongful conviction.
- baguasquirrel 17y ago
  Yes, but I do not want to live with the knowledge that people like that are allowed to exist in the world. Punishment be damned, eliminate them from the gene pool. And if you really believed in human dignity, don't you believe that exerting that sort of punishment is not only cruel to the perp, but to the prison guards who have to handle them? And what of the money we spend on prisons instead of our children? A .45 only costs a few cents.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    The problem is wrongful conviction. The ability to repeal, in some small part, punishments due to wrongful conviction is worth far more than your personal need to know someone has been killed.
    - baguasquirrel 17y ago
      It's like the antibiotics problem. There's nothing wrong with capital punishment. The problem is that it's overprescribed.
  - cabalamat 17y ago
    > Punishment be damned, eliminate them from the gene pool. If you want to do that, you'd have to sterilise all their descendants.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    Punishment be damned, eliminate them from the gene pool. .. otherwise known as eugenics. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. In fact from the utterly callous perspective of evolution and the long term interest of larger society, this is the most clear and consistent position, IMO. It's mostly nature, not nurture, and we've all known that for a very long time, although it's still too taboo to admit. So people such as the criminal in the story are bad mutations to be rejected, along with any children. So that's what we'd do if we were really serious ...
gcheong 17y ago
I tend to go back and forth on this issue, but I would pose the question that if we made it mandatory that everyone had to serve out capital punishment duty (i.e. you get called to pull the trigger, inject the syringe, or whatever and if you refuse you risk punishment by death yourself) as we do for jury duty then would you be willing to do your civic duty? If you are, what does that say about us as a society? Do we go back to the good old days of public hangings and stonings? If not, then what is so different about paying tax dollars to support the killing of someone?
- aarongough 17y ago
  That's an interesting perspective actually. I'm not sure that I could do that duty in cold blood... If I was affected by the crime personally in some way then obviously it would likely be a different story. Perhaps we could have a 'jury of executioners'? 12 potential executioners get called at random, the majority of them have to agree that the death sentence is applicable, all while knowing that one of them would be called upon to do the deed at the end...
- easp 17y ago
  If we are executing enough people that capital punishment duty is actually a meaningful way to acquaint people with the gravity of taking another person's life in the name of justice, then our society is already repugnantly sick and violent. I think we are some distance from that, and I'd rather not move closer. Furthermore, I think the risk of such an experiment is that we desensitize the population to the taking of human life.
Tuna-Fish 17y ago
> When a person shows that much contempt for the life and well-being of another human being, they really don't deserve to continue living.. I agree. > Personally I think cases like this are a great example of when capital punishment is acceptable. I disagree. Because we can never have a good enough standard of proof, and since the state is us, when we execute someone innocent, (which has happened, and will happen again), it makes us all murderers who have no right to live.
JabavuAdams 17y ago
That's really not the point. If you create a system that can execute those who (arguably) deserve to die, you've also created a system that can, and will be used to execute innocent people. So, how many innocent people is it alright to execute for the (presumed) satisfaction of executing a few monsters?
JabavuAdams 17y ago
It's very important to look at these kinds of issues from a systems perspective. Complex systems have unintended effects. You're not allowed to say "the code will just work after I hit compile". :) For instance, how sure are you that the government is spending your tax money wisely? How sure are you that a company you invest in isn't engaging in some form of corruption. When you raise the stakes to killing another human, and in peace-time, at that, you'd better be sure that mistakes are not just unlikely, but impossible. Of course, that's ... impossible.

malkia 17y ago

Burn the fuckin witch! Capital punishment is not enough for her...

vaporstun 17y ago

I look at it from a financial standpoint. When someone does something this vile, we (the people, by the courts) determine that they shall no longer have a right to their life. Whether that be by ending it via capital punishment or by keeping them incarcerated forever, they essentially no longer have a right to their life. It costs ~$48,000 per year to keep someone incarcerated (at least in MA where I am: http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-senate-bill-no-2210 http://www.massbar.org/legislative-activities/mba-memo-on-se...) If a court determines that someone will no longer have a right to their life and their remaining lifespan is, for example, 40 years, we will spend somewhere on the order of $2,000,000 to keep them incarcerated for their lifetime. Of course, that assumes the value of the dollar is constant (it isn't) and that the price of keeping this murderer in a maximum security prison is the same as the average cost of keeping someone incarcerated. (it isn't) When we are locking the door and throwing away the key, why not save the $2,000,000 keeping someone alive who we've deemed has no right to life anyway?

Retric 17y ago
When you include the cost of appeals etc we spend more than that (on average) actually killing someone. In the old days of trial > hanging your argument was more reasonable, but we also killed more innocent people back then.
- aarongough 17y ago
  Are there any hard stats available on this sort of thing?
  - Retric 17y ago
    This is probably biased, but it lists several study's. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty
    - aarongough 17y ago
      Thank-you! Always nice to have some figures!
- smallblacksun 17y ago
  That's just an argument against our current court system. We allow virtually unending appeals, even with no new evidence or reason for believing that the earlier trials/appeals were somehow unfair. Some states have (or had) mandatory appeals for capital cases, even when the defendant plead guilty and didn't contest the death penalty.
yan 17y ago
If a new method of testing evidence appears and the alleged criminal is cleared of charges, you can let them out of the prison. You can't un-kill them. edit: I heard of countless cases of young black men being incarcerated for murder in Texas in the 60's with police going quite out of their way to obstruct the justice process.
- aarongough 17y ago
  I agree that's definitely worth consideration. I am nowhere close to being an expert on these things but I would have thought that most of the big technological leaps in the justice system are probably behind us. Fingerprinting, DNA matching, fibre analysis, ballistics... All of these things are pretty well established now. I agree that a lot of cases got turned on their head when DNA matching became available, but what technologies do you envision providing the same sort of disruption in the future?
  - yan 17y ago
    It doesn't always have to pivot on technology -- there will always be overzealous DA's and corrupt judges. Once again, I'm not for or against capital punishment, nor have I done sufficient research to form an opinion, but I can just imagine the Kafkaesque hell an innocent man or woman can be put through to be put on death row.
    - aarongough 17y ago
      Yeah, I can sympathize with that. I definitely would not want to be in that situation. I'm sure there's a workable compromise in there somewhere. I definitely think that most countries need to think about the crimes that they imprison people for. Imprisonment is super expensive partly because it's used so often. If only serious criminals went to prison, the social impact of imprisoning someone would be much greater and the overall cost would be lower...
  - ShardPhoenix 17y ago
    Brain-scanning based lie detectors with high accuracy.
barrkel 17y ago
Apart from wrongful convictions resulting execution, death penalties are also very expensive, as the costs of due process through all the appeals have to be paid.

RevRal 17y ago

We don't often learn something by killing, and it is barbaric. An ironic reflection of our own lust for blood. But, okay. Sure, it is satisfying since the "bitch has it coming." Capital punishment is the easy way out for the criminal and the society that reared the criminal. If the criminal is truly guilty, they always get the last laugh. At least in my mind. We, the taxpayers, front the money to satisfy our blood-lust. And we learn nothing in the end except, for a moment, we can feel the thrill of hooting and hollering over the carcass of an enemy.

aarongough 17y ago
I actually agree with you far more that my original statement shows. That being said I just can't see how keeping someone locked in a cage for the rest of their life is in any way preferable to just killing them. They are unable to contribute to society while incarcerated, incarceration is not shown to actually help rehabilitate them, and incarceration costs everyone else a lot of money... On the other hand: if capital punishment is used then it's pretty clear they'll never get the chance to re-offend. And in cases like this where the criminal has done something truly heinous I think that is the biggest plus possible.
- dschobel 17y ago
  In cases like this you can pretty much count on a 'life without parole' sentence though. I'd say 60 pitiful years in a federal penitentiary is far more cruel than a death sentence.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    I definitely agree that it's more cruel. Also, the person being in prison doesn't guarantee that they're not going to commit any more crimes, it just guarantees that those crimes are going to be against either other inmates or prison staff. Personally I think that in cases of super-long jail time they may as well just change it to a capital sentence.
    - 17y ago

barrkel 17y ago

I believe life without parole to both be a worse punishment than death, and one with a small means of reparation in cases of wrongful conviction.

baguasquirrel 17y ago
Yes, but I do not want to live with the knowledge that people like that are allowed to exist in the world. Punishment be damned, eliminate them from the gene pool. And if you really believed in human dignity, don't you believe that exerting that sort of punishment is not only cruel to the perp, but to the prison guards who have to handle them? And what of the money we spend on prisons instead of our children? A .45 only costs a few cents.
- barrkel 17y ago
  The problem is wrongful conviction. The ability to repeal, in some small part, punishments due to wrongful conviction is worth far more than your personal need to know someone has been killed.
  - baguasquirrel 17y ago
    It's like the antibiotics problem. There's nothing wrong with capital punishment. The problem is that it's overprescribed.
- cabalamat 17y ago
  > Punishment be damned, eliminate them from the gene pool. If you want to do that, you'd have to sterilise all their descendants.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  Punishment be damned, eliminate them from the gene pool. .. otherwise known as eugenics. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. In fact from the utterly callous perspective of evolution and the long term interest of larger society, this is the most clear and consistent position, IMO. It's mostly nature, not nurture, and we've all known that for a very long time, although it's still too taboo to admit. So people such as the criminal in the story are bad mutations to be rejected, along with any children. So that's what we'd do if we were really serious ...

gcheong 17y ago

I tend to go back and forth on this issue, but I would pose the question that if we made it mandatory that everyone had to serve out capital punishment duty (i.e. you get called to pull the trigger, inject the syringe, or whatever and if you refuse you risk punishment by death yourself) as we do for jury duty then would you be willing to do your civic duty? If you are, what does that say about us as a society? Do we go back to the good old days of public hangings and stonings? If not, then what is so different about paying tax dollars to support the killing of someone?

aarongough 17y ago
That's an interesting perspective actually. I'm not sure that I could do that duty in cold blood... If I was affected by the crime personally in some way then obviously it would likely be a different story. Perhaps we could have a 'jury of executioners'? 12 potential executioners get called at random, the majority of them have to agree that the death sentence is applicable, all while knowing that one of them would be called upon to do the deed at the end...
easp 17y ago
If we are executing enough people that capital punishment duty is actually a meaningful way to acquaint people with the gravity of taking another person's life in the name of justice, then our society is already repugnantly sick and violent. I think we are some distance from that, and I'd rather not move closer. Furthermore, I think the risk of such an experiment is that we desensitize the population to the taking of human life.

Tuna-Fish 17y ago

> When a person shows that much contempt for the life and well-being of another human being, they really don't deserve to continue living.. I agree. > Personally I think cases like this are a great example of when capital punishment is acceptable. I disagree. Because we can never have a good enough standard of proof, and since the state is us, when we execute someone innocent, (which has happened, and will happen again), it makes us all murderers who have no right to live.

JabavuAdams 17y ago

That's really not the point. If you create a system that can execute those who (arguably) deserve to die, you've also created a system that can, and will be used to execute innocent people. So, how many innocent people is it alright to execute for the (presumed) satisfaction of executing a few monsters?

JabavuAdams 17y ago

It's very important to look at these kinds of issues from a systems perspective. Complex systems have unintended effects. You're not allowed to say "the code will just work after I hit compile". :) For instance, how sure are you that the government is spending your tax money wisely? How sure are you that a company you invest in isn't engaging in some form of corruption. When you raise the stakes to killing another human, and in peace-time, at that, you'd better be sure that mistakes are not just unlikely, but impossible. Of course, that's ... impossible.