The Death Penalty

[trinacriabob]

The Yes and No are for crimes which, if convicted, would carry the death penalty.

As one reads the paper, they can't help but see all the heinous, unprovoked and sickeningly violent actions carried out by certain individuals. While I may bill myself as a liberal practicing Catholic, religion doesn't even come into this one. My feeling is that if it is legitimate to kill an opponent in combat to protect yourself, it is certainly ok to permanently anesthesize a monster who threatens a city, a state or a region.

Let's try to keep politics/religion out of this. Just your practical opinion. I don't apologize for mine.

[pow]

No, because there is always room for a mistake.

[Enzora]

Far more disturbing for me is the sickening way in which the death penalty is administered. I mean the way they choose who dies, not how they actually die.

Even without that, I have a problem taking another human's life, especially when it seems to imply that they're irredeemable monsters.

While we're at it, I really should go on a full rant sometime about how much I hate it when people dehumanize others to justify their own actions.

[Flybrian]

Even without that, I have a problem taking another human's life, especially when it seems to imply that they're irredeemable monsters. 

What's even sadder is that there are people out there in this world who are irredeemable monsters, a group of people whose actions are so henious, so damaging, so disgusting they deserve to forfeit their life. Its my personal belief that many if not most non-sexual criminals can be rehabilitated to varying degrees but people like child rapists, torture killers, and the like aren't worth the time or effort to keep around for anything.

[CSpec]

Besides the fact that there always exists the possibility of killing an innocent person, there's something creepy about a government that executes its own citizens.

[CARBIZ]

I used to be pro-capital punishment until too many high profile cases turned out to be false convictions - ten or 12 years later. Too often authorities are under pressure to get a conviction at any cost. YOu can't dig up a body and apologise 10 years after the fact.

[Snate]

Yep. If you are a murderer...you deserve to die.

I think life in prison is actually a harsher sentence though.

[Cory Wolfe]

If it's deserved, yes.

[trinacriabob]

Thanks for the comments. They have been very civil, attesting to the maturity of the C&G crowd.

I brought this up because walking through B&N, I noticed that Sharon Rocha, Laci Peterson's mom, has a book out. I cannot even imagine what she's gone/going through. How do you process that? Here is a situation where a jury, in which many of the people were highly intelligent, and in the liberal Bay Area no less, handed Scott Peterson the death penalty. They were able to see through all his lies and questionable actions to get there. I was sitting having breakfast at a hotel in FLL after returning from a March-April 2003 South American vacation to find that a war had broken out and that Laci and Conner's badly damaged bodies were recovered north of the Berkeley Marina in SF Bay.

I also brought this up because, a handful of summers ago, I was in Italy. Two absolutely horrendous crimes had taken place, both of them perpetrated by a group of middle to upper middle class teenagers who needed a thrill. One of them was that an elderly nun was cornered in an alley in a northern Italian town and stabbed to death. The other was that an 8 year old girl was tied to a barbecue grill in a park in a southern Italian town and burned to death...the papers went on to describe that she was a sweet natured child who was loved dearly by her neighbors. I kept asking myself: didn't their parents teach them the boundaries of propriety? these 2 events punctuated my trip with sadness. I'm sorry, I would have no qualms about letting the "drip" flow to any of these perpetrators. When you take actions like that, you give up a lot of rights...possibly your life.

Someone mentioned rehabilitation and change. I was driving home and thinking about that tonight. Psychologists establish that 90% of your self-esteem is "locked in" by the time you finish high school. Also, have you run into people from your past many years later, only to find that the interpersonal dynamics do not change much? I have. I think that some fundamental behaviors and personality traits are fairly engrained in some people. The extent of my troublemaking was limited to cloaking houses in eggs and toilet paper or trespassing at highbrow Beverly Hills hotels as a teenager to go "pool hopping" with my friends.

It's hard for me to have empathy/sympathy for people that have committed such unilateral and unfathomable acts.