Quote :

"What if he had run out of bullets and could no longer shoot anyone, would killing him then have been morally justified?"

Morally? Yes. Too bad it wasn't me (or better yet, before he killed those people).

Legally? No.

1/10/2011 9:54:36 PM

The insanity defense is commonly misunderstood. There are not as many cases as the public thinks where people actually make the insanity defense, and a very small number of those where it's argued actually get a favorable ruling.

In the CURRENT legal system, there is virtually no way that this Jared guy will be ruled to be insane. Granted, this is from what I know of the guy. His ideas are extremist, and the killing is absent a coherent political message going along with it. Does he have any shot at the insanity defense? No way Jose. I would easily put money on it.

So, can people stop talking about this in a way that doesn't fit the context, kkthx.

1/10/2011 10:19:14 PM

Quote :

"I dunno, I can't answer this. I'm not a psychiatrist or sociologist. It's above my pay-grade. But, and I'm just shootin' from the hip here, maybe we can find a way to notice the behavioral traits at a young age, get our school administrators educated on how to identify and deal with this type of student. You know, just generally equip ourselves with a enough information to nip it in the bud. In general, more information is always better, in my opinion. And for the record, I never suggested that we force anyone to take medication/psychiatric evaluations. That's a gross overreaction, and I don't think anyone here would support that. I don't really even know why you assumed that I would jump to such an extreme position. So no, to answer your question, I don't want "our society to be like that." I just don't think we should throw our hands in the air and have such a defeatist attitude about it all. If there are viable options worth exploring, why wouldn't we?"

But that's the question: are there viable options? Do you think a paranoia of this severity is treatable with voluntary counseling? I don't. If someone is fucked up enough to blow away a congresswoman and 6 innocent bystanders including a little girl, I have a hard time believing some counseling and an after school program would have done much good. He most likely needed extensive therapy and probably medication, but with his paranoia I doubt that he would have willingly taken pills from the establishment. That's why I "jumped to that conclusion."

What if the only treatment that would have been helpful would have been incarceration and forced medication? Having yet committed no crime, but showing clear warning signs of severely unbalanced behavior and capability for a crime like this, should we do something? That's what I'm worried about. The "we need to model his behavior so we can catch it in other people" scares the shit out of me, way more than isolated gunmen that go on a rampage every year or so. Suddenly we're profiling anyone weird or wearing a black trenchcoat. (which was exactly what happened after Columbine, by the way).

I'm unconvinced we have anything to learn from him that would have prevented this in any way that doesn't mean radically changing our notions of privacy and freedom. Learn what you can (as Grumpy points out, we will through the process of convicting him) and then destroy him like the animal that wounded 14 people and killed 6 people including a little girl should be destroyed.

1/10/2011 11:45:42 PM

Quote :

"What if the only treatment that would have been helpful would have been incarceration and forced medication? Having yet committed no crime, but showing clear warning signs of severely unbalanced behavior and capability for a crime like this, should we do something? That's what I'm worried about. The "we need to model his behavior so we can catch it in other people" scares the shit out of me, way more than isolated gunmen that go on a rampage every year or so. Suddenly we're profiling anyone weird or wearing a black trenchcoat. (which was exactly what happened after Columbine, by the way)."

You're jumping to a lot of weird and wild conclusions here, none of which are justified really. Already fMRI experiments can classify schizophrenics with a high degree of accuracy. More quantitative techniques like this could be used to understand and explain criminal behavior, and even to classify propensity for such behavior. This is different than qualitative behavioral analysis and a hell of a lot more objective.

Some measurements will be really bad at classification, such as the fashion example you put forward. We should just avoid using these.

1/10/2011 11:55:13 PM

Quote :

"Some measurements will be really bad at classification, such as the fashion example you put forward. We should just avoid using these."

You're ignoring his far better point here. Even if we discover ideal measurements, how do we gather them without serious violations of privacy? How do we employ them in a meaningful way without profiling people before they commit a crime?

Even if we gather great information from all these people, what good is it outside a purely academic context?

1/11/2011 12:16:41 AM

Heck, I'm sure if we just got all the major tech companies to collude and work on the domestic terrorism problem we could (like healthcare) identify future crimes as well as the precogs. They could do it in an open process and let you know what all the input data was. And they could have a very helping, welcoming, and caring program for bringing those estranged individuals back into the fray of society.

And monkeys could fly out of my butt.

1/11/2011 12:24:52 AM

Quote :

"But that's the question: are there viable options? Do you think a paranoia of this severity is treatable with voluntary counseling? I don't. If someone is fucked up enough to blow away a congresswoman and 6 innocent bystanders including a little girl, I have a hard time believing some counseling and an after school program would have done much good."

It may not be treatable or curable (not yet, at least) but if we could have identified this dude at a younger age, we could have taken steps to prevent him from committing the act he committed. I'm not some raging-mega-hippy that thinks everything can be cured with an after-school hug and a milkshake. It is very likely that we don't have enough information to cure his disorder (yet), but we could at the very least make strides into identifying his behavior and say, making it harder for him to get access to a weapon. I think we could find behavioral traits that are indicators of mental disorders, much the same way we can find behavioral traits that are indicative of ADD or autism.

Quote :

"What if the only treatment that would have been helpful would have been incarceration and forced medication? Having yet committed no crime, but showing clear warning signs of severely unbalanced behavior and capability for a crime like this, should we do something? That's what I'm worried about."

I think there would have to be a lot of very bad diagnosis's and paranoid preventative measures before these extreme measures would even be considered. Frankly, I have more faith in society to not allow ourselves to resort to some sort of Minority Report style of extreme crime prevention. And should we somehow come to the conclusion that incarceration and forced medication is the only solution (I doubt this would ever be the case, but whatever I'll play along) then we would just, you know, not do that.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 12:49 AM. Reason : ]

1/11/2011 12:37:39 AM

Speaking of catching these sorts of things ahead of time:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0824904120110109

Quote :

"The suspect in Saturday's shooting rampage in which a U.S. congresswoman was critically wounded was unstable and had been known to make death threats in the past, the local sheriff said. "

1/11/2011 8:23:12 AM

Quote :

"You're jumping to a lot of weird and wild conclusions here, none of which are justified really. Already fMRI experiments can classify schizophrenics with a high degree of accuracy. More quantitative techniques like this could be used to understand and explain criminal behavior, and even to classify propensity for such behavior. This is different than qualitative behavioral analysis and a hell of a lot more objective."

And at what point being subjected to an fMRI could not be considered a gross and broad invasion of privacy?

Quote :

"Speaking of catching these sorts of things ahead of time:"

Yeah, and then we'll have a thread about someone getting visited by the Secret Service over a joke on a message board. Oh wait.

1/11/2011 8:50:19 AM

Quote :

"You're ignoring his far better point here. Even if we discover ideal measurements, how do we gather them without serious violations of privacy? How do we employ them in a meaningful way without profiling people before they commit a crime?"

First of all we don't even know what a preventative solution would look like to some of these problems yet. Some diseases appear to slowly change the ratio of white to gray matter in the brain via various mechanisms (schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder both appear to degenerate the brain tissue). There's a question as to whether or not this can be stopped; I'm not sure the mechanism by which gray matter degrades is understood yet. It could happen for a variety of reasons -- perhaps there's a genetic problem which leads to either the over- or under-production of a certain chemical.

Some problems could be prevented behaviorally early on (with good preventative care, which requires better and more accessible health care), or perhaps even medicinally (if we develop enough strictly medical tests to detect these sorts of illnesses, of course, going hand-in-hand with a behavioral assessment, more than likely). If someone is diagnosed as a schizophrenic via his behavior and then his brainscan is classified as schizophrenic by a computer algorithm (we already have this algorithm), then perhaps we can treat him more effectively sooner, and in a way that prevents a violent outburst.

Again, it doesn't require "profiling" anybody. We can decide as a culture where the line is for this sort of information gathering. Keep in mind now you can be diagnosed via your behavior and committed; the question is, how much information are people allowed to grant themselves in attempting to diagnose a person? All of the bad mechanisms should be considered at this stage, and nobody's suggesting that we read everybody's diary in order to accomplish total prevention. We might decide (as we do now) that total prevention is an unrealistic goal and that sacrificing our privacy in an attempt to achieve it is misguided. This is basically my position, but deciding just where the threshold is would be important.

Quote :

"Even if we gather great information from all these people, what good is it outside a purely academic context?"

Because scientific knowledge of how the brain works requires degenerate and alternative cases. Brain science filters down to biomedical engineering and to medicine, both in terms of surgery and pharmaceuticals. It would be nice if we could treat the various bipolar individuals out there and make them happy, productive members of society rather than quivering suicidal messes (to an extent we can treat them but the treatments are far from ideal and take a long time to adjust). There are countless other brain disorders that would be nice to cure, not to mention the plethora of tools and advances we could base on a better understanding of the human brain. Not to mention the philosophical implications of such an understanding, which should change our view of ourselves and others over time.

Quote :

"But that's the question: are there viable options? Do you think a paranoia of this severity is treatable with voluntary counseling? I don't. If someone is fucked up enough to blow away a congresswoman and 6 innocent bystanders including a little girl, I have a hard time believing some counseling and an after school program would have done much good."

Keep in mind that your opinion means less than nothing, because it's based on something approaching full ignorance. "In my folk psychological and neurological assessment, it doesn't seem likely that this thing I don't understand can be cured with this specific treatment I dreamt up and attributed to you." How did you vet this post before hitting "Post Reply!"? I don't get it.

Quote :

"What if the only treatment that would have been helpful would have been incarceration and forced medication? Having yet committed no crime, but showing clear warning signs of severely unbalanced behavior and capability for a crime like this, should we do something? That's what I'm worried about."

Being forced into psychiatric treatment is not incarceration. The point of treating somebody is not to punish them.

Quote :

"And at what point being subjected to an fMRI could not be considered a gross and broad invasion of privacy? "

If I crouch in the town square and take a shit while singing Dixie at the top of my lungs, it's probably time to wheel me into the fMRI machine to see what's up.

1/11/2011 11:20:47 AM

Quote :

"If I crouch in the town square and take a shit while singing Dixie at the top of my lungs, it's probably time to wheel me into the fMRI machine to see what's up."

Super, let's let McDanger decide who is exhibiting behaviors that get them strapped into an MRI machine. Oh, and you can't move when you're getting scanned, so they obviously will need to be forcibly sedated.

Wait, my opinion arbitrarily means "less than nothing."

1/11/2011 12:17:21 PM

Arguing the specifics of of this is pointless, because it would never manifest itself in the totalitarian nightmare that you seem to think we're advocating. The point to get out of this is that there are things we can learn from these people and there are likely social changes we can make to prevent crime from happening. Like I've said before, I don't claim to know the exact way to do it, but I do know that killing criminals only perpetuates a culture of violence and teaches us nothing about the way they operate.

The arrogant vitriol in this thread is really disgusting, btw. On both sides.

1/11/2011 12:35:50 PM

Quote :

" Like I've said before, I don't claim to know the exact way to do it, but I do know that killing criminals only perpetuates a culture of violence and teaches us nothing about the way they operate."

It's not like we instantly execute people in this country. The average time to execution is 10 years. Do you need more than 10 years?

Why haven't we learned anything yet? Where are all the MRI scans? We clearly must stop killing people after decades because we haven't learned everything we can from them yet.

And lawl at "perpetuating a culture of violence." I'd argue that professional football "perpetuates a culture of violence" on a scale orders of magnitude greater than the few felons we do actually execute.

Which side of this argument isn't supposed to rely on appeals to emotion again, btw?

1/11/2011 12:55:50 PM

you guys are kinda on a tangent

1/11/2011 1:00:12 PM

^^
Yeah so my opinion here is that you and grumpy are not even willing to consider the other side, and all you are doing is arguing specific points that I don't claim to know all the answers to. I am not a psychologist. I've brought my opinions to the table and I have nothing else to say.

1/11/2011 1:15:30 PM

Quote :

"Do you need more than 10 years?"

Absolutely not in 100% of cases. Kill them all.

Quote :

"Why haven't we learned anything yet?"

We've never learned anything from studying criminals ever. Kill them all.

Quote :

"I'd argue that professional football "perpetuates a culture of violence" on a scale orders of magnitude greater than the few felons we do actually execute."

Kill them all until we get rid of football first.

1/11/2011 1:19:01 PM

Quote :

"^^ Yeah so my opinion here is that you and grumpy are not even willing to consider the other side, and all you are doing is arguing specific points that I don't claim to know all the answers to. I am not a psychologist. I've brought my opinions to the table and I have nothing else to say."

Yep, and we're the ones making comments like "the other side are barbarians," "there's no convincing them," "you are unwilling to even consider," "the only reason anyone would do this is revenge", etc.

You are now arguing the person rather than the facts. Bravo.

^Their assertion was "don't kill because if you do we won't learn anything from them." I was merely stating that it's logical that we can both execute someone and learn everything there is to know about them, given the time we have in the US, making the assertion invalid. Typical "you're a monster" responses to follow.

1/11/2011 1:44:35 PM

Quote :

"learn everything there is to know about them"

You can never learn "everything" about anyone or any topic.

1/11/2011 1:50:21 PM

^^
If you had actually read my comments in this thread, you would know that I haven't said any of those things. Yep, I am arguing the person, because its blatantly obvious what you're doing, and I'm not going to waste my time trying to have meaningful discussion with a brick wall.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 1:52 PM. Reason : .]

1/11/2011 1:52:28 PM

Quote :

"You can never learn "everything" about anyone or any topic."

Sigh. Everything you can learn without the effort to learn becoming prohibitively expensive relative to the return. Effectively everything you can learn.

^lol, "I give up, but I'm not conceding anything. Even though this is entirely a moral discussion, I have declared by fiat that my morality is superior."

1/11/2011 1:58:15 PM

Quote :

"Everything you can learn without the effort to learn becoming prohibitively expensive relative to the return."

And your argument is that this point will always happen before the appeals process is exhausted? 10 years?

1/11/2011 2:06:49 PM

Quote :

"Again, it doesn't require "profiling" anybody. We can decide as a culture where the line is for this sort of information gathering. Keep in mind now you can be diagnosed via your behavior and committed"

Here's a teeming mass of contradiction. We don't have to profile anybody, but we can decide to and we already do. Essentially none of this information is useful unless we're going to use it to expand the number of people who are committed before they commit the crimes we seek to prevent.

1/11/2011 2:35:35 PM

Quote :

"Essentially none of this information is useful unless we're going to use it to expand the number of people who are committed before they commit the crimes we seek to prevent."

Or god forbid we learn something about how to treat it.

1/11/2011 2:37:18 PM

Maybe. One would hope we could use the ready supply of crazy people who haven't killed anybody yet. I was under the impression that there were so many of them there was a crisis in how to care for them.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 2:50 PM. Reason : I am not interested in possible treatments drawn at certain risk]

1/11/2011 2:50:15 PM

Quote :

"One would hope we could use the ready supply of crazy people who haven't killed anybody yet."

Well, they haven't killed anyone, so they are different subjects.

Aren't you the least bit interested in how someone can snap and start spraying bullets at people? There is definitely useful information we can gather there.

[Edited on January 11, 2011 at 2:58 PM. Reason : .]

1/11/2011 2:54:02 PM

Quote :

"We don't have to profile anybody, but we can decide to and we already do. Essentially none of this information is useful unless we're going to use it to expand the number of people who are committed before they commit the crimes we seek to prevent."

Can I just point out that a behavioral observation is not the same thing as age/race/fashion profiling? I think it's perfectly reasonable to to look at someone setting things on fire, and say, "he might be a pyromaniac" and equally unreasonable to look at someone in a trench coat and say, "he might be a pyromaniac."

1/11/2011 3:05:17 PM

Hey guyz, I have an idea of how we can reduce future shootings that doesn't use an fMRI:

Focus on the individuals who make death threats.

1/11/2011 4:38:53 PM

Quote :

"Super, let's let McDanger decide who is exhibiting behaviors that get them strapped into an MRI machine. Oh, and you can't move when you're getting scanned, so they obviously will need to be forcibly sedated. Wait, my opinion arbitrarily means "less than nothing.""

I'm not suggesting I be the arbiter. But by all means, rather than engage the idea I'm proposing, let's construct ridiculous fictive scenarios that will never happen and pretend they're entailed by my view.

Your opinion isn't based on any scientific expertise or knowledge, but rather based upon "shooting from the hip" which means nothing with respect to cognitive neuroscience. Folk psychology really has no place in criminology, and I hope everybody realizes why.

Quote :

"The arrogant vitriol in this thread is really disgusting, btw. On both sides."

I'm sorry let me be more understanding and tolerant of people talking out of their asses with respect to brain science and mental disorders. Everybody's opinion doesn't count here by default. We're talking about an empirical scientific domain with quite a lot of knowledge already accumulated, much of which contradicts prevailing folk psychological notions.

Quote :

"Why haven't we learned anything yet? Where are all the MRI scans? We clearly must stop killing people after decades because we haven't learned everything we can from them yet."

This is partially a money issue. We lack fMRI data across the board, not just with pathological brains, but with perfectly normal ones. I know a few people who are currently trying to address this situation in a free and open way (creating a repository for NIFTI images).

Quote :

"Which side of this argument isn't supposed to rely on appeals to emotion again, btw?"

Probably the side which actually tries to uncover and address the causes of crime, which are both societal and neurological.

Quote :

"Their assertion was "don't kill because if you do we won't learn anything from them." I was merely stating that it's logical that we can both execute someone and learn everything there is to know about them, given the time we have in the US, making the assertion invalid. Typical "you're a monster" responses to follow."

This is just one reason of many not to kill people with the death penalty. Again I need to stress to you that as a layman you have literally no idea how long it takes to "effectively learn everything there is to know" about a person's mental disorders and the neurological mechanisms behind them. You don't even understand what the theoretical goals are and how they might be probed empirically -- yet you feel comfortable offering us your uninformed "logical analysis" which has no connection to reality whatsoever.

Quote :

"Here's a teeming mass of contradiction. We don't have to profile anybody, but we can decide to and we already do. Essentially none of this information is useful unless we're going to use it to expand the number of people who are committed before they commit the crimes we seek to prevent."

Clearly acting crazy will get you profiled for a psychological evaluation. The point is to learn more about the underlying neurological mechanisms of these psychological traits and how they objectively present themselves in the brain. This would allow for, overall, less subjectivity in the actual diagnosis of a mental patient and more control over misusing this system.

Quote :

"Maybe. One would hope we could use the ready supply of crazy people who haven't killed anybody yet. I was under the impression that there were so many of them there was a crisis in how to care for them."

There are a variety of reasons why somebody might lack the executive control to prevent killing other people. "Crazy" is not one category except in the broadest possible sense, and even then it's poorly defined currently (as "neurotypical" is hard to define).

Quote :

"Hey guyz, I have an idea of how we can reduce future shootings that doesn't use an fMRI: Focus on the individuals who make death threats."

The point of bringing up fMRI earlier was not to suggest that everybody should be subjected to an fMRI imaging session. The point is that there are various objective features and properties that a brain can carry which flag, reliably, a disorder. The point is that we don't need to rely on subjective testimony to commit someone, but we can demand more objective benchmarks. Of course we can't do any of this if we just kill every single violent loony out there.

1/11/2011 5:05:31 PM

Quote :

"Arguing the specifics of of this is pointless, because it would never manifest itself in the totalitarian nightmare that you seem to think we're advocating."

Quote :

"Again, it doesn't require "profiling" anybody. We can decide as a culture where the line is for this sort of information gathering. Keep in mind now you can be diagnosed via your behavior and committed"

It's worth noting that it is more difficult these days to get someone involuntarily committed in part because the authoritarian abuses being predicted were once a reality.

1/11/2011 6:03:22 PM

Quote :

"It's worth noting that it is more difficult these days to get someone involuntarily committed in part because the authoritarian abuses being predicted were once a reality."

Sounds like a great reason to improve our understanding so that we can more quantitatively and objectively decide if a disorder requiring treatment is present.

1/12/2011 1:12:52 PM

Fixing our "weed out" education system so that people don't drop out of college, become estranged, and shoot people. Just a thought.

Quote :

"The point of bringing up fMRI earlier was not to suggest that everybody should be subjected to an fMRI imaging session. The point is that there are various objective features and properties that a brain can carry which flag, reliably, a disorder. The point is that we don't need to rely on subjective testimony to commit someone, but we can demand more objective benchmarks. Of course we can't do any of this if we just kill every single violent loony out there."

Don't know how we would "just kill every single violent loony", but anyway...

We could do the kind of objective assessments you refer to, and I doubt doubt the possibility of doing them accurately. But the real world has different needs. The problem for our nation lies in the behavior of 300+ million people, which is effectively culture. If alarms start to go off where someone thinks "this guy might kill someone, maybe I should try to get him help", then that would be the difference maker between senseless shootings happening and not happening. Any discussion of empirically analyzing the psychology someone seems to me concerned exclusively with cases that have already been identified as potential threats. Community is the real critical element that matters. The problem is more simple than we give it credit for, but it's also bigger than we give it credit for.

1/12/2011 4:16:51 PM

Wait did you just suggest our education system is too difficult?

1/13/2011 9:08:19 AM

The difficulty of the system is irrelevant. There exists a large population of high school and college dropouts. Making the education system easier sounds terrible, but increasing that population also sounds terrible. No, we shouldn't advocate either of these, we should advocate a system that gives a flying flip about its students.

1/13/2011 9:14:35 AM

http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2011/03/09/another-state-bans-the-death-penalty/

Quote :

"Another state bans the death penalty Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois is expected to sign legislation shortly that will outlaw capital punishment once and for all in America’s fifth largest state."

3/10/2011 6:13:47 AM

Number of people executed in 2010, per country

1 People's Republic of China Officially not released. In the thousands,may be up to 5000.
2 Iran 252+
3 North Korea 60+
4 Yemen 53+
5 United States 46
6 Saudi Arabia 27+
7 Libya 18+
8 Syria 17+
9 Bangladesh 9+
10 Somalia 8+

Pretty awesome company we have there...


Also thought this was interesting:



Blue - Abolished for all offenses
Green - Abolished for all offenses except under special circumstances
Orange - Retains, though not used for at least 10 years
Red - Retains death penalty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment

8/16/2011 9:35:07 AM

^ Now what is the % of total population by country? Using total sum is completely useless....

So the US put to death 46 people in 2010? Hmmmm. Thats less than 1 per state....how many actual murders were committed in 2010?

8/16/2011 1:01:49 PM

Or how many prison murders occurred in 2010?

8/16/2011 1:26:39 PM

^^ the point isn't the numbers, or rankings, it's the company on that list. You can look at the top 20 and the story is the same.

8/16/2011 3:56:29 PM

Support in all situations.

8/16/2011 4:36:59 PM

^ what about this one:

Quote :

"In October, 2008, a girl, Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, was buried up to her neck at a Somalian football stadium, then stoned to death in front of more than 1,000 people. The stoning occurred after she had allegedly pleaded guilty to adultery in a sharia court in Kismayo, a city controlled by Islamist insurgents. According to the insurgents she had stated that she wanted sharia law to apply.[34] However, other sources state that the victim had been crying, that she begged for mercy and had to be forced into the hole before being buried up to her neck in the ground.[35] Amnesty International later learned that the girl was in fact 13 years old and had been arrested by al-Shabab militia after she had reported being gang-raped by three men"

In general, do you support stoning women to death if they're accused of adultery?

Do you support executing juveniles?

Do you think people on death row should get appeals? If so, how many?

Do you support executing mentally ill people?



How do you feel about situations like this?

Quote :

"The Dallas Morning News renewed its call for a moratorium on executions in Texas because of the numerous errors in the state's death penalty system. The paper highlighted the cases of Michael Blair and Charles Hood as examples of how the system has broken down. Blair was exonerated in 2008 after 14 years on death row. DNA evidence revealed that he had not been the murderer of 7-year-old Ashley Estel in 1993, despite the fact that the jury had taken only 27 minutes to convict him, and that he may have been guilty of other crimes. Charles Hood remains on Texas' death row, even though the fairness of his trial was completely compromised by the fact that the judge and the prosecutor admitted to having an illicit sexual affair."

8/16/2011 5:17:30 PM

You're right I don't understand how we can allow innocent people to be tortured, sexually assaulted, and killed. We need to abolish the barbaric practice of imprisonment.

Quote :

"the point isn't the numbers, or rankings, it's the company on that list"

sounds kinda bigoted to me.

[Edited on August 16, 2011 at 7:16 PM. Reason : .]

8/16/2011 7:13:27 PM

I'm in favor of the death penalty, but I don't think it should be the "go-to" punishment for all cases where it's technically on the table.

It's also not really a hot button issue for me...if we got rid of it, I wouldn't be all that bothered by it.

Furthermore, I do believe that if a jury decides on the death penalty, they should all be required to witness the execution, and/or maybe one of them randomly selected to throw the switch, or something. Put your money where your mouth is, you chickenhawk motherfuckers. I think if you sentence someone to die, you should really damn well mean it, and be held accountable for your decision.

8/16/2011 7:24:13 PM

it's bad enough for a jury to have to sit through a gruesome murder trial, but you want to waste more of their time by making them attend the execution?

8/16/2011 8:10:56 PM

Quote :

"In general, do you support stoning women to death if they're accused of adultery? Do you support executing juveniles? Do you think people on death row should get appeals? If so, how many? Do you support executing mentally ill people?"

You look desperate. That situation is wildly out of left field, and it's pretty clear to me that even if the girl did commit adultery, she still shouldn't have been executed, much less in the manner it was done. And it's likely that she did nothing wrong at all and I wouldn't be surprised if the alternate story were true.

Juveniles? I'd have a hard time executing a 10 year old... but once you reach an age where you're well aware that you're not supposed to kill someone, I see them in the same light as a 30 year old in that regard.

Appeals on death row? A couple would make sense. After that you're just wasting everyone's time and tax money.

Mentally ill people? Life imprisonment with decent treatment makes sense to me. It sucks, but you can't take the chance of repeated murders or what have you just because someone is retarded. I'm the same guy that would beat the piss out of someone picking on a handicapped person, but there's a certain value to reasonable safety. I also think there's a significant difference between being handicapped and ill.

8/16/2011 8:25:36 PM

wonder what God thinks about us finally killing UBL

even though it wasn't by sentencing him to the death penalty, per se

8/16/2011 9:34:47 PM

Quote :

"it's bad enough for a jury to have to sit through a gruesome murder trial, but you want to waste more of their time by making them attend the execution?"

They don't have to recommend the death penalty.

8/17/2011 8:59:04 PM

Quote :

"You look desperate. That situation is wildly out of left field, and it's pretty clear to me that even if the girl did commit adultery, she still shouldn't have been executed, much less in the manner it was done. And it's likely that she did nothing wrong at all and I wouldn't be surprised if the alternate story were true. "

That was for Smath, who said he supported it in 'all situations.'

Quote :

"Juveniles? I'd have a hard time executing a 10 year old... but once you reach an age where you're well aware that you're not supposed to kill someone, I see them in the same light as a 30 year old in that regard. Appeals on death row? A couple would make sense. After that you're just wasting everyone's time and tax money."

So how would you change policy then? you can'y put "once you reach an age where youre aware...." into the law books. there needs to be a number. how would you rewrite the law?

Speaking of numbers, would you say 2 appeals only and then you're done?

8/18/2011 10:37:30 AM

Why does there have to be a number? When we rule people mentally unfit to be executed is it based on a number?

8/18/2011 12:05:44 PM

Quote :

""it's bad enough for a jury to have to sit through a gruesome murder trial, but you want to waste more of their time by making them attend the execution?" They don't have to recommend the death penalty. "

if the death penalty is on the table, then the only other possible sentence is death in prison at an unspecified time. It's not like we're trying to rehabilitate anyone at that point. At least the death penalty ensures them a relatively benign and peaceful way to die, as opposed to the deaths suffered by lifers John Gotti and Jeffrey Dahmer.

8/18/2011 12:38:02 PM

I agree; personally I think I'd much rather be executed than rot away in prison.

8/18/2011 2:29:53 PM