I'm just trying to figure this out. First you say there is no reason to kill a person in cold blood. But then you say you believe in the death penalty. Didn't you just give a reason to kill someone in cold blood? A father watches his daughter get raped and then proceeds to kill the rapist in the heat of the moment. Should dad get death penatly?
The law is what the law is. If there's a death penalty, give it to him since the crime was heinous. If there's not a death penalty for the crime, throw the book at him. I have no beef with capital punishment, but you can't make an ex post facto law to make his crime a capital punishment one and use it on him.
It's not about restitution. It's about justice. It also gives that person an opportunity to live. At some point people forfeit that right. Ed O.
I don't know where you get your legal theory from. Or, to be honest, whether you're bothering to read my posts because you keep confusing the different bullets in lists. Emotionless and objective is fine. I'm all for that when it comes to applying the law. How does society MAKE laws without emotion and purely objectively, but without applying cost-benefit analysis? Do we roll dice to figure out what the law should be? Ed O.
Emotions change from day to day. Its very dangerous to base the formation law on human emotions because what's a law one day, may not be the next and so forth and so on. Its even more dangerous to make emotion part of the sentencing process. Two crimes will then be judged and punished differently based on the emotional aspect of the crime, which is wrong.
I agreet that at some point people forfeit that right. The questions is at what point? I disagree with you in that I don't think it should be a simple you do this crime you die. I would prefer a system that looks at each individual case and the system making a deep and through analysis before making that kind of decision.
At what point? When the law says the penalty can be death, and when a prosecutor convinces a grand jury to indict, and when a prosecutor convinces a 12 person jury by unanimous vote that the person is guilty. And yeah, emotion or just about any other thing that can go on in a court to sway the jury is in play.
The Death Penalty should be used only to punish crimes in which another person loses their life. The only time you forfeit the right to life is when you are knowingly and willingly (that would exclude the mentally ill as they do not have the capacity to make those decisions) taking the lives of others. Rape is not a capital crime.
In Oregon, you have to convince a jury not only are they guilty but also they deserve the death penalty.
and for the record, I am against Sex Offender registration. I believe it is probably an easier life within prison than to live in society as a sex offender. If they're that bad, just lock them up longer instead of leaving them open for burning at the stake by the witch-hunters. http://www.economist.com/node/14164614?story_id=14164614
We agree on both of those things. That's a fair perspective. I would rather have set rules that take individual biases out of the equation as much as possible. (Which is why I'm confused by El Presidente's responses to my posts.) Ed O.
Its just selectively enforced only for sex offenders and no one else. Why not register every felon then? I'd sure like to know if my neighbor is a thief, so if anything is missing I can just call the cops to search his house. The purpose of the justice system is not to harass people for the rest of their lives, to dictate where they can and can't live and to receive death threats.
The question was more of a "what point should that be", not what is that point now. if we were just going to go by the legal system (which can be a flawed system), it would be no fun talking about this stuff. For instance, I'm actually for the death penalty for some rape cases . . . but I understand the law in Oregon doesn't allow that and it's not a possiblity now. Should it be a possibilty?
I'm tired and bored of debating capital punishment. What I've been thinking more about lately is how the media has changed men in America because of the way stories like this get hyped. If you travel to other countries, it's perfectly natural to rub a kid on the head even if you don't know him. I love wrestling with my two boys, but after they get a little older I guess that's over with. I don't think I'd even wrestle with my best friend's sons. No adult man dare be seen in public even close to a stranger's kid. I know a male librarian, and he says he's ridiculously cautious about never going anywhere even close to a kid if the room is empty. If I saw a kid out crying in the street, I'd probably walk the other way because the last thing any adult male wants is to be seen anywhere near that. A hysterical parent or neighbor can destroy your career, family, everything..... I realize there are shitty people out there like this guy, but it's sad that we all pretty much behave as though 99% of strangers are just like him.
