society doesn’t need him as long as he’s a danger to anyone. Or perhaps forever, I’m not totally clear about my standpoint on lifelong sentences and redemption…

As for the world, I don’t think any human being has the right of life and death over any other.

Prisons are there for protecting society from potentially dangerous elements. And this is what they should be used for.
And now we’re talking about prisons, I don’t believe in punishment, either. It’s just about protecting the members of society, period. And providing help to those elements so they can have a chance at a decent life.

As for him being a scumbag... I don’t like to think about ANYONE that way. To quote someone else (I don’t remember who):

there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and scrambled minds

That’s my take on it. Fuck death penalty.

I don’t think death sentences aren’t any kind of answer to problems like this. It’s like answering violence with violence; it creates more violence.

I have no right to judge or decide who have right to live or not. And neither should anyone else have.

I don’t say that his act was right thing to do or any way acceptable. I just say that murdering someone cos someone committed murder isn’t any way more acceptable than the crime itself. There are other ways to punish these people for what they did.

_{I’m sorry. It’s hard to explain my thoughts sometimes in English, but I hope you got the main idea what I tried to explain.}

Do I need to explain why?

I used to be against the death penalty when i was a teenager.

As as adult, I hope it isn’t me being a little jaded or numb to certain issues…i honestly feel some people should just lose their turn.

Some crimes are so reprehensible that I can’t see what purpose the person responsible could have here. psychological research? perhaps some information that would help police get better at investigating certain crimes?

rapists, child murderers, pedophiles…they all seem like societal garbage to me.

Of course, the only problem with the death penalty is the few people who were wrongly accused and convicted.

for killing this useless piece of shit.

So to answer your question – no, we don’t need them. We need to rid ourselves of them.

If more of them were put to death – and quickly, not over a decade later – maybe there wouldn’t be so many of them.

for provocation’s sake.

Give it a rest already. If you are familiar with the arguments, then don’t ask.

Take a nap or something.

go unc, stirring up the masses. if i had a cheer, i’d give you one. you keep everyone here on their fightin toes, lol. xoxo.

If that were my daughter and grandson, or my sister and nephew, you would have to chain me down, ‘cause I would hunt the m.f. down and make him wish he was already dead. And I do feel that way sometimes just about these people that I read about.

But whether society should kill someone as punishment, that I am undecided about. I have a hard time endorsing the judicial system as a whole right now because it is not exactly (some people get off with a slap for major offenses _{William Kennedy Smith} while some get locked away forever for much lesser crimes. There are also so many people who are turning out to be innocent. And finally, society is supposed to be a sort of logical, objective balance point to the emotional or mob, frontier justice type of reaction to these things. Are we killing this person to satisfy someone’s need for revenge? Is it enough that he has been deemed violent and dangerous and has been separated from society?

I probably won’t reply to any point-counterpoint engagement here—no time. But I followed the thread a bit and thought I’d throw my two cents in. And that is that I just don’t have the answer.

lets them off the hook too easily. Keeping them in prison costs us a lot of money, but they do get to experience some hell similar to what they’ve caused.

I go back & forth on the question of capital punishment.

First, some statistics

I reckon the state is fucked up enough without legitimizing murder. Let’s not pretend it’s anything else, because that’s what it is. If you’re still cool with that, fine, but let’s not make out it’s logical or just, eh?

It would be far better, I think, to actually attempt reform rather than just killing people as some sort of revenge. I don’t know about the numbers in the United States, but in the UK two thirds of prison inmates have some sort of mental health problem and I think this is something that needs to be addressed. If folk are a danger to society they should be isolated and we should try to help them. We should look at why people commit crime and what we can do to prevent it (IMO a radical restructuring of all areas of society) rather than just writing people off as “evil” or “scum” and sticking a needle in their arm. But then, that’s a lot easier isn’t it?

the flowers didn’t need him and i empathize with them rather than him.

i guess the best argument against capital punishment is that there are innocent victims of it and that the families don’t really feel that justified afterwards. but at least if the knew the party was definitely guilty they could peacefully sleep at night knowing that in the end they got justice and someone tried to do something because at some level the ‘system’ was doing work somewhere. i know if this happened to me i would want that pathetic psycho dead and gone. sometimes i get labeled as bitter, but i do resent criminals.

i heard a good argument against the death penalty in rape cases. and that is that the victims would be more discouraged to come forward if they thought say their rapist father would get the ax.

but in this case he killed a child so that is less of an issue.

i personally don’t mind him dying for what he did at all.

maybe if the death penalty were enforced more often, people would think twice about their actions. i’m kinda p.o.’ed right now about other things so this answer may change in a few hours, tomorrow, or a year from now. but right now i’d love a to own a fryer myself. lol

I agree with the death penalty, Although I think it also depends on the circumstances. For example I think Revenge for something like the murder of a child does not deserve death,perhaps a prison sentence, but not death. I also believe in second chances so perhaps It would have to be a pretty serious crime to warrent death without a chance to change.
As a favorite comidian once mentioned, Perhaps a wrath of god penalty is needed. How about everytime there is a storm they go out with a lightening pole, and god decides if you live or die. Of course for this to work you would need to believe in god or luck or fate. Overall yes I believe in the death penaly for especially gruesome or violent crimes, especially those involving innocent children.

Thats about it for now although occasionally my mind changes.

But then again, I don’t think the world needs anybody.

Do I have any sympathy for him? Yes. I like to think of myself as an empathetic person, and I can imagine it must be so very frightening to sit on death row.

Do I feel he deserved his punishment? Absolutely. In fact, I feel he was let off easy. However, by killing that son of a bitch, justice, to some small degree, has been done.

I have my opinion on this. A strong and engaged one. One of those opinions so engaged that it gets hard to explain in another language than the one you speak as your maternal tongue.

Just to make it short and simple, it’s like if Texas was telling that man: “Hey, killing is bad! So we’ll kill you.”

Nonetheless, I agree that society doesn’t need pieces of crap like that man.