• moonriver said on Jul 22, 2009....

  hi wired girl.
  officially, and in my rational mind, i am against the death penalty.
  not just because intentionally taking a human life (even in justified combat or self-defense) always diminishes our humanity in some subtle way, but also because of pragmatic reasons:
  even the worst criminal monster can be made to be of more value to society alive than dead, so long as they are handled by appropriate institutions with a humane scientific and social mindset, not a police-penal mindset.
  (think of hannibal lecter in silence of the lambs, or the marietta mangler in con-air... :-)
  
  
  having said that, i concede that i have another unofficial, irrational stand, which agrees with you.
  and that is to apply the sisyphus penalty (or maybe even the prometheus penalty) to the worst offenders of heinous crimes against humanity.
  but even here, a part of me refuses to apply this noble punisment by the gods to monstrous criminals.
  i'd rather have them lined up against a wall, shot with a merciful bullet between the eyes, and be done with it.
  but that's just the outraged me, the emotional me, the irrational me talking... :-)
  
  

• gingersoul said on Jul 22, 2009....

  WW.....i agree with Moon....rational and emotional side of me differs on this topic too....
  
  I agree with the idea of giving everyone a fair opportunity to redeem themselves and so on.
  
  But....when i think about the reaction i might have if someone would hurt my daughter or any of my loved ones......i just see red, and no Ethical principle helps me in dissipating the blood rage and the need of vindication.

• Weird_World said on Jul 22, 2009....

  hey moonriver,
  i don't know about the sisyphus penalty or the prometheus penalty in terms of law...though i can understand it in terms of Greek mythology...eternal endless punishment kinda thingy, i think...(i will check it out afterwards on the net)...
  i precisely mean that...but in my most rational state of being...there are some situations which no matter what cant be forgiven...i am not going to go into irrational and rational about it...
  i do happen to consider human life precious, but someone who with any thought can take it, might as well not deserve their own...
  
  WW
  

• Weird_World said on Jul 22, 2009....

  hey gingersoul,
  there are crimes in the society which no one, or rather no shrink can justify...
  when a crime comes across which can make a detached viewer also feel like puking, then what about the individuals related must be undergoing...
  
  at times we need to forget being rational, and think in general terms of irrationality after all God did create us as emotional freaky people, and controlling tendencies (aka rationality) is a gift of "evolution"... :-)
  
  WW
  
  P.S->hey moonriver, my sister was asking me why you tend to term me as "wired girl"??...and now i am also curious...and i got curiosity related issues...
  
  

• gingersoul said on Jul 22, 2009....

  WW.........i am going to bet Moon calls you in this way because its an anagram of Weird....wired.....;-)

• superbozo said on Jul 22, 2009....

  When it comes to some of the crimes you mention I agree to a degree. I think the only reason I have against the death penalty is in the miss-carriges of justice that have happened over time. I think of the Guildford 4 who were wrongly convicted of terrorism for over 15 years in the UK. People who would probably have been put to death only for time to prove their innocence. In fact the reason that the UK got rid of the death penalty was because of the uproar caused when Derek Bentley an intellectualy handicapped person was hanged for the murder of a policeman who was actually shot by a juvenile who he was with. Theres a movie called "Let Him Have It" That details the story. I know there have been similar miss-carriges here in Australia and am sure that the same has happened in the States.

• moonriver said on Jul 22, 2009....

  hi wired girl.
  i get what you mean, and like superbozo i will tend to agree with you in the worst criminal cases.
  (like, in such cases i can suspend rational judgement for a while and just let 'im have it in the guts, you know, give the poor miserable motherfucker bastard a helping hand on his way to hell... :-) 
  you don't have to sound apologetic for your position, my friend. 

  (and i know you aren't... you've been known to tangle unapologetically with the best of Sc... :-)

  
  

  oh, about my calling you "wired girl."

  ginger is right, in a sense. 

  wired as an anagram of weird.

  but it's more than that.

  
  

  i'm this perennial optimist, see, and if i can get away with renaming people to reflect my optimism, i do it.

  there's this sc blogger who calls herself killingme4u.

  i've always made it a point to call her "living girl" instead.

  so, for me, you're not really weird.

  you're just wired a bit differently from the rest of us.

  all of us are, actually... :-)

  
  

  
  

• UnicornForm said on Jul 22, 2009....

  death for death,lie for lie!

• Weird_World said on Jul 22, 2009....

  hey superbozo,
  believe me i am not interested in hanging everyone who walks along the gray shades of morality...i just have a problem with the super-black kinda people...
  i do understand your opinion about miscarriages of justice...well as i did mention that i happen to believe that human life in itself is precious...so my heart breaks for people who end up paying with their lives because some four-letter-word kinda people got it wrong...and it happens everywhere, mostly in the third-world/developing countries in one of which i do happen to reside in... :-(
  
  hey gingersoul,
  i thought so too...but moonriver does have his tendency for "depth"... ;-)
  
  hey moonriver,
  you give the most awesome compliments...muah,muah... :-)
  
  WW
  
  P.S.->my views on death penalty are a direct consequence of reading "Anne Frank" at the tender age of 13...
  
  

• Weird_World said on Jul 22, 2009....

  hey UnicornForm,
  going the Islamic way of life??...eye for an eye??...
  sadly in serial murder cases, it ends up being one life for several lives taken... :-(
  
  WW
  

• mobil said on Jul 23, 2009....

  They won't do it again if you kill them, that's a fact I can live with.

• speaking_up said on Jul 23, 2009....

  I wonder how the super-black kinda people (was that a coincidental accident of wording?) got to be the way they were.  When they were babies they were not fed and neglected.  When they were children they were abused and mishandled by family members.  When they were teenagers they were rejected by the school system because they did not know how to cope 'normally.'  When they were adults the anger, the rage, the psychotic thinking took over their souls and they reached out and killed.
   
  My second argument against the death penalty is the disproportion of blacks to whites getting the death penalty.  We are a human society, not a robot one where no mistakes can be made.
   
  My third argument is that most people for the death penalty could not actually KILL the perpretratoor themselves...these weaklings are perfectly happy to let someone else kill, but they themselves cannot.
   
  My forth argument is the study done by a female psychiatrist out of Belleveiw Washington who studied many if not most people on death row, she did her tests and this and that.  Then she studied the volunteer executioners (all death penalty punishments are carrried out by volunteers) had EXACTLY the same psychotic and anti-social personalities as those of the ones to be executed.
   
  My fitth argument is that the US is only one of SIX countries who still carry this barbaric system out.  I would hope we would be more civil than that...
   
  My sixth argument is that too many times police and prosecutors are so damn sure they got their man, they mold the evidence to find for guilt.  This is a fact proven over and over again.
   
  No, serial killers should never be free (never mind all the other people op wants to have killed).  However, if we are to be a humane society we would not judge and while keeping the public safe, save our own damn souls for thinking somone else should be dead by the hands of the state - when we have no idea on how this person got to be where they are in the first place.
   
  If you believe in the death penalty, you are no better than the person you want to die.  You think a sort of person should die, just as the killer thought a sort of person should die. 
   
  Go fuck yourself with your holier than thou attitude.

• Weird_World said on Jul 23, 2009....

  hey mobil,
  thank god...
  
  hey speakingup,
  oh wow...how did my blog end up in racism claptrap is a question i would love to have answered...sorry my dear, i am not American, so i cant fall for the "kinda black" thingy...i am my brown, i live around brown people, color is the last thing which comes in the spectrum of my existence...
  oh yeah...sure a hard life is just the excuse of being a criminal??...wake up smell the coffee, no one's life is not a fairy tale...as much as i know about fairy tales, and as much as i know about people...and then how to you excuse all those people who end having a good life even if they had lousy roots??...how are you justifying their existence of being "normal people"...
  my holier than thou attitude comes from the simple fact that i am not American...in my country we don't cook, gas, hang every lowly criminal who passes through the justice system...in India believe me we are more choosy in "state-sponsored-killing"...
  get over it, the entire world is not USA...
  
  WW
  

• speaking_up said on Jul 23, 2009....

  Weird....LOL, I know the whole world is not the US...please don't judge without knowing me.  Ummm, and it was a real nice avoidance of my other arguments against the death penalty...diverstion, I think they call your condition.
   
  Imagine this:
   
  Your brother was asked by his best friend to wait for him, which he did willingly because he trusted his best friend, and, they happened to be in a bad area while touring a different country.  The friend goes out for a time, your brother holes himself up in the rented apartment until they could get the hell out of the bad area they accidently found themselves in (they are in the US of A).
   
  Suddenly, someone is banging on the door demanding your brother opens it...he asks who it is, the guy says he is being chased by a gang and needs to be saved...your good brother opens the door for him, and the guy sits and waits for the bad scene to pass, for the gang to get out of the building.
   
  Once again banging is going on at the door.  This time the 'visitor' whom your brother let in brings out a gun and starts shooting through the door.  2 people are killed. 
   
  Your brother had nothing to do with shooting the gun, but he is an accomplish because he is there, and, he let the gang member in.
   
  The current law is is if one person commits a crime and is with someone also involved in the interaction (being in the room, letting the guy in, etc.)....
   
  Your brother, 10 years ago, when he was a kid and stupid, had a drug record, he was convicted of a felony drug offence and spent 9 months in jail.  In addition, he was convicted of beating his girlfriend (it was a trumped up charge so your brother plead no contest for a lessor offence, and he served only 90 days).
   
  Sorry pal, your brother is eligiable for the death penalty now.  And if an over zeolous prosecutor or police officer happens to take a dislike for your brother and his 'attitude' about the whole thing...it is not uncommon for them to make damn sure your brother is charged and convicted just as if he shot through that door himself.
   
  It's all too easy in the states, my friend, to get the death penalty not just if you are black, or blue, or pink...they have elected district attorneys and if they happen to be in a concervative area of the country, the pressure to get a death penalty for your brother is 10 fold.
   
  Do some research.  Figure out the unfairness of this punishment for yourself.  Educate yourself instead of coming across like some brainless redneck with no thought to reality what so ever.

• Weird_World said on Jul 23, 2009....

  hey speaking_up,
  nay it wasn't diversion...i don't believe in that tactic...
  call me a cynic, but what bothers me is the reality i happen to live, which is certainly not yours...so why should i even consider your arguments??
  USA is known for death-penalty, maybe its your government's health and population control policy, so don't involve me...its not me voting there,its people like you voting, so don't blame the rest of the world for not caring...after all its your mess, why involve us??
  i am not American, and i don't have much respect for USA for a variety of reasons also...yeah like trying to home-delivery democracy to a lot of parts of the world, etc, etc...so lets not go there...
  
  WW
  

• speaking_up said on Jul 23, 2009....

  And....who was it that said I was american?  You see, my friend...you don't listen...and you don't ask questions...you know it all already. 
   
  This will be my last comment to your hateful and angry post...I just cannot suffer fools.
   
  *shaking off the dirt*

• Weird_World said on Jul 23, 2009....

  hey speaking_up,
  yeah your first comment...started with racial profiling, went on to discuss some shrink in Washington, and then went on to drone more on the American judicial system...and then in your second comment i got a lecture on the American judicial system, yet again...OMG off course you cant be American, you must just be a America-phile...and i am deeply sorry to assume that you are American, but if you harp on about USA judicial system in two comments, what I am supposed to assume by the way??
  and no i wont listen to you?? i don't exactly happen to owe you anything...
  the only thing you have read here is what you want to read...and the last thing i am going to do is justify my views to someone who sheer interest is themselves (i me and myself kinda problem)...
  oh please...i prefer people like you to stay away from my posts...don't worry i will survive...
  
  WW
  

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