more interestingly: this guy wasn't much of a student, but once he was arrested he started to learn the legal system and came to know it so well that he was able to use literally every point he could find to delay the trial and therefore the conviction... presumably without caring that he was wasting taxpayers' money. what kind of person does that? probably a selfish, manipulative one who has no remorse whatsoever about what he did. that's one reason death penalty is more costly than life imprisonment, by the way. suspects just have way too many rights for their own good. why do people insist on treating these people like humans and let them die with "dignity"? why can't we just stuff them all into a giant oven and turn up the heat? (oh, and congrats on finding out who the originally-unnamed serial killer is, etc. and to everyone else: i'd resume some of my old arguments, but at this point i really couldn't care less. :/)
I'd imagine one who doesn't want to die? Which would include pretty much every human being on the planet. Because of the danger of executing innocent people? You seriously want to through out due process and fair trial? Just "turn up the heat"? And all the innocent people who get hogmarched to the gallows are fine, because it saves a few pounds? Does that not sound even slightly ridiculous to you? THIS is why there should be no place for the death penalty in our society.
I actually think the story of Ruth Ellis the last woman to be hung in the UK is a perfect illustration of why death penalty has no place in our society. My grandfather actually knew Albert Pierrepoint (the last hangman in the UK), he lived near them- I really wish my Gran hadn't burned almost sixty years worth of my grandads diaries they included a wealth of UK history from 1916-1972.
Don't you just hate it when we give our suspects so many rights? I mean, it's like, soooo inconvenient. I really believed that your previous post was about as ludicrous as you could get, but you've actually moved up yet another level. I can't quite decide whether or not you're serious though, and I have this nagging suspicion that your posts are actually a running joke of some kind. On balance, that would be preferable.
We live in a civilized age, my friend. An age where we try our damnest to not be like the animals they are. How would we be any better than the convicts we're killing? It's just revenge for revenge's sake. Roasting them or depriving them of oxygen will not bring their victim(s) back. Like it or not, they are human beings as well. If the problem is because something's a bit off in their head, then we need to discuss a way to fix it, make medications to treat people with that kind of problem. That will help folks in the long run. Of course, I talk like this because I have not been a victim of crime (thankfully). However, I did have a friend in highschool who's mother was killed one night by a crazed gunman. Knowing that the prick was in jail was good enough for me.
Umm... yeah... this. Kind of a weird thing to have to point out. "Well, I could appeal this thing and live a few more decades, but that would cost taxpayers money so I'll just die instead." I'm sure there are people who'd do that, but not many. Dollars, man, dollars. We ride Hummers, execute our criminals, and spend dollars and cents, not pounds and crumpets.
I'm sure there are a few guilty ones out there that would prefer the easy way out over decades of time in a cell.
I would tend to agree with the questions over the integrity of poptarts' position. This is someone who was originally contemplating visiting a monstrous serial killer on death row. Now she's expressing nothing but the case for vitriolic retribution (oven, turning heat up, lol) in every case. It's a good way to highlight the anti-capital punishment position though. Indeed there have been many more people here expressing cogent reasons against it than baying for blood. A good outing for the anti-death penalty lobby overall.
Having said that over a period of over eighteen months I was a victim of over thirty seven crimes perpetrated by the same people - several could very easily have resulted in serious harm to my children or pets. Right now I am not a fan of the amount of rights some of our criminals have - everything in the court system has gone in their favour. After discovering I have ME - one of the defendants has contracted it - turns out he has more rights than me trial has been put back several times but when I asked for the same consideration it was not granted (I was barely able to walk on one of the twelve occasions I have been to court and only one case been heard). My husband's work is getting antsy. Then to top it off last week I was not allowed to have lunch with my husband as he gave evidence before lunch, I was kept in effect under guard during lunch time to stop us colluding. However case was adjorned until 22nd April in the middle of the prosecution witnesses giving evidence. So no chance of them colluding is there. I am honestly against the death penalty but would not weep for the death of these people on any level.
yes, that was poorly-worded. i meant to point out that he's so sly and probably has no regrets he doesn't deserve a second chance. i've mentioned before that while some people are unjustly convicted, there's usually no doubt that serial killers are guilty. just from quickly scrolling down the list on wikipedia, most of the current inmates are guilty of multiple murders. THIS is why there should be no place for the death penalty in our society.[/QUOTE] there should be no place for murders on our oh-so-civilized society. if you still choose to do the crime, though, you do the time. sarcasm and personal attacks do not become you. see, that's the thing with you people. you people assume that "we" need to be the bigger person - the "better" person with "high morals." me, i'm not interested in that at all. honestly, i don't care if killing the murderers won't bring won't bring back any of the victims - that's beside the point. all i want is to see them suffer and feel humiliated, much in the same way their victims have suffered and felt humiliated - preferably more. i want them to feel the pain and the fear. if they'd slitted their victims' throats and they died after a few seconds, i want to slit their throat and miss the main artery so they'd die a slow and painful death. if they beat their victims to death with a blunt object, i want to beat them with a similar object - badly enough for them to bleed all over but not so bad that they'd die almost immediately. if they cut off their victims' body parts while they were still alive, i want to first pull their teeth and nails with pliers before i proceed to cutting off their body parts. if they sincerely regretted what they'd done after they experienced all this then more power to them, but if sorry alone is enough then we wouldn't have prisons to begin with. admittedly customized punishment wouldn't save as much money than if we stuck with the giant oven idea, but if i had it my way this is what i would do. what can i say? i have an unconventional opinion and i'm not afraid to express it. and i find it odd that people who vehemently defend serial killers were quick to suggest that i'm a "troll" - someone who can't possibly be serious. the only thing this says is you have no idea what people who aren't like you have in their minds, which include but definitely are not limited to criminal minds. so maybe, your position on death penalty is based on wrong assumptions about "human nature." and i'd stay on topic, but no one else is.
What's best for everyone on a societal level is rarely what feels best for people on a personal level. I think this is a cornerstone of the anti-capital punishment argument and is the answer to "What about the rights of the victims?" What one person calls 'despicable rights for criminals' I might call 'necessary safeguards for everyone.' If criminals choose to abuse these safeguards, which they do, it makes the safeguards no less crucial for everyone who might be wrongfully accused of a crime. (Elgaisma - sounds really awful what you've been put through. I can't believe how horrible people in communities can be to each other. When I first moved to Edinburgh a couple of days later I woke up to forensics people in white suits outside my flat with cordoning police tape covering the whole block. A man had tried to ask his neighbour to turn down his music and been stabbed multiple times. Amazingly, he managed to crawl to the nearby police station and lived. It was truly the worst possible welcome to my neighbourhood and unprecedented in it's viciousness. It's actually a nice enough area of students and young professionals. A place where murder is a viable solution to neighbourly disputes though...)
The area I lived in although the roughest area of town was not bad for crime. I grew up there. It is just one family consisting of a son of 17, a woman of my age around mid thirties and her partner who i guess is about thirty. Of the 72 antisocial behaviour reports for one year we accounted for 66. Sad thing is despite on many occasions people seeing them - they are facing two fairly minor charges. They could carry prison time but it's unlikely.
@Poptarts Why consider studying a sociopath on death row? Wouldn't your own psychology be a good place to start?
Wow, what year is this? 410 AD? Shall we also dig underground well-like prisons and stuff as many convicts as we can in before sealing the entrance shut? Really, what could this possibly achieve?
This thread has become disgusting. Suggesting (and agreeing with!) torture as a control mechanism--or using torture just as a form of revenge-- is not and never will be the answer. Anyone who tosses such ideas around carelessly obviously has no understanding of what it truly is. Thank goodness that you don't --but how upsetting it is that, as writers, it seems like there isn't the slightest grasp of the true meaning of the word. Threads like these are illuminating, but terrifying. It wasn't too long ago I saw someone encouraging pedophilia. And now we have people suggesting torture as a form of social control. It makes me sick. I suppose it is the stereotype that writers tend to be a bit unhinged... but, please, leave that to your fiction. Where have all the moderators gone? Hellooooooooo. I suppose closing it for its level of grotesqueness is subjective, but there's no relation to the original post at all anymore. Where did all the "This thread is closed" super-power posters go?
At this point I am convinced he is a troll and is just taking you guys for a ride. Then again perhaps not.
Whilst I share your distaste (and also that of the poster who followed you) regarding poptarts' contributions to a thread that she actually started, it has been an interesting debate, and overwhelmingly, the other posters involved have made good points, and did it in an intelligent and respectful manner. I don't see why anybody would, or should, want to remove all that with the click of a mouse. And it was a thread which always related to capital punishment, so it really hasn't wandered significantly from the original point at all.
I was joking, dude. All good fun; nothing to get outraged about. Aw, come on man, we need less of that here, not more.
Hmm so much for tolerance - whilst Poptarts views may not be ones I entirely share (although if I could torture and put my previous neighbours in an oven that would be nice - even the ten year old tortures animals) - I am not sure why he/she can't hold them. And Forfoot was joking - at this point Charlotte rolls eyes at lack of humour allowed on this site. Just because you don't agree with a position does not remove someones entitlement to hold it and express it.
