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Post by Flitzerbiest on Nov 20, 2013 23:14:49 GMT -6
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Post by stevec on Nov 21, 2013 0:05:52 GMT -6
I have to be honest, if he had killed one of children, I probably would have wanted him executed. Now, I don't have a good reason why the state should have an interest in satisfying my need for vengeance. Do prisoners acclimated to prison life actually suffer over the course of a lifetime?
Perhaps being an atheist may have something to do with it, but if I had been convicted and had a choice between death and serving life sentence for murder, I believe I'd choose death. So would an angry relative and/or the state actually be doing me a favor by hastening my death?
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Post by showmedot on Nov 27, 2013 8:31:27 GMT -6
I have far more mixed feelings about levying the death penalty than I once did.
Yes, I know it's been explained numerous times that it costs far less in most cases to keep someone in prison for life than to execute them after all the appeals have been exhausted, considering how much a series of appeals can eventually cost taxpayers.
There is, of course, the possibility that the person convicted was not the perp and thus ought to be given life just in case evidence surfaces that supports hir innocence.
However, I'm not so sure I support plea bargains that give life to those pleading guilty of serial murder in particular. I will never ever forget the barely-suppressed delight on the face of BTK killer Dennis Rader during his televised sentencing hearing as he replied to the presiding judge's questions about why he did what he did to his victims. Rader was obviously relishing his time in the spotlight as well as the opportunity to explain how he stalked, tortured and killed his "projects," his word for his victims.
Agreed that it makes sense to incarcerate for life such people in the hope that we'll discover effective means of treating those with such evident mental disorders as Rader demonstrated. But when we cannot as yet do anything really to assure that a Ted Bundy won't escape and kill again, I just don't know but what execution isn't the best means.
Troubling thoughts arising, I admit, out of emotion rather than rationality.
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Post by showmedot on Nov 27, 2013 8:45:40 GMT -6
The case that comprises the thread topic is, to me, evidence of how little this country cares about effectively housing and caring for those with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses that may render the victim uncooperative with treatment efforts.
That an enormous percentage of those in U.S. jails and prisons are there because they are mentally ill is scandalous. Would we have had the VA Tech or Sandy Hook shootings if there were better access to resources and procedures for institutionalizing the obviously severely mentally ill?
One of the greater mistakes made in this country in the past fifty years, it seems to me, was thinking that medication will effectively render the most severely mentally ill able to function in society. It can be effective but sometimes unpredictably so as the person ages and certainly won't be if the person decides to quit taking it as so often occurs.
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Post by Flitzerbiest on Nov 27, 2013 11:45:21 GMT -6
Reagan created a huge mess in mental health, and we have never recovered from it.
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