When is the Death Penalty not enough?

reply to post by wildtimes

Thank you for that clarification of what you meant. I feel much better now. I was starting to get a bit anxious thinking this was the round about way to find a way to 'understand' and 'help' this 'misguided' soul by claiming legal insanity. Surely that will be tried if a lawyer gets his hands on the guy and gets a not-guilty thrown in somewhere before his future client goes on CNN to confess to the whole world. lol.....

Give the clarification, I can't find a way to disagree at all. Leaving legal loopholes out? Yeah, I suppose it's impossible to call what this man did sane in any way we'd know the term. That raises an even larger question. If he's this far gone, what signs would have or should have existed before he turned to the most creative form of serial killing I've yet heard? Would there have been any signs at all? It's scary to think people like this can carry on and live amongst us without any outward sign for even those looking for it. :eek:

By the way, thanks for the time in replying here. It's helpful to have someone with Mental Health experience to cast some light on a case that screams problems in that specific specialty.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

If he's this far gone, what signs would have or should have existed before he turned to the most creative form of serial killing I've yet heard? Would there have been any signs at all? It's scary to think people like this can carry on and live amongst us without any outward sign for even those looking for it. :eek:

Eek is right!!

Yes, many people who harbor (and often keep secret) this type of behavior are also very skilled at "appearing" to be normal, and even smart, charming, appealing. It's all a sham....a "fakery" of being a nice person. Sometimes referred to as a "pseudo-self". They learn by observation how people are "expected" to behave, but never have the actual capacity to do it from a genuine warmth and openness to their fellow humans. It's all an elaborate act, and some even realize they are doing it....others are oblivious and just feed on the "reponses and rewards" they reap from their actions.

Lots of studies and reference materials available for understanding what is so far "understood" about psychopaths. They remain anomalies, however... the more the fields of psychology and sociology learn, the more they realize that any person with scruples and genuine motives can be bamboozled and baffled. A truly skilled antisocial psychopath is capabe of fooling the most well-trained and seasoned professional. As scary as that sounds, it is fact, nonetheless.

There might or not be "signs" early in life. There is the well-known axiom of the "diabolic trinity" (so to speak) in children's behavior: Bed-wetting, Cruelty to animals, and Fire-setting. But not by any means do all Psychos exhibit these behaviors.

EDIT TO ADD:
Also, it's possible he just "snapped" for whatever reason when he discovered he was HIV positive....and all the rage he had been ignoring for his whole life just finally broke the dam.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The death penalty should never be used. As humans, we should be repulsed by our own savagery.

The guy spread AIDS. Yes, that is horrible. Lock him up for ever (which should not be really that long). There was a guy here a couple of weeks ago that raped his girlfriend with a knife. THAT is more heinous, to me, than spreading AIDS (because of the brutality of the crime).

But something worse than the death penalty? Like what? Once you have taken their pulse away, what else is left? Killing their family? It is a question that is too absurd to give any real consideration to.

I use to be all for the death penalty but the complete failure of this supposed deterrent makes it impossible for me to get behind.

The "U.S. Death Penalty Facts" from Amnesty International really opened my eyes.

justice requires that he make reparations

crime: spreading AIDS

punishment: curing AIDS

he can be a guinea pig for the rest of his life
simples

and as a bonus the shrinks might want study him as well

Assume, there always will be certain people cable of committing more vile and cruel crimes then we thought possible, yesterday, is a given. First and foremost the death penalty is not a deterrent and never will be for many. So lets end this fiction that killing those in the name of justice will ever have any reasonable effect on those who do such things. By the way, the more callous the state in executions the more numb we are to the effect. Look at China, they line dozens up against a wall at a time and shoot them for everything from piracy to being bad civil servants. If you need an execution to convince someone they shouldn't do something, you already lost the argument.

And its not hard hard to keep someone locked up in a little box for the rest of their life. Can someone at some future time get out of that box based on legal bull s***? Sure its possible. Its up to us to make sure they never do. I do not see it as that difficult to keep the real monsters in a cage forever. I did make an OP a while ago where I stated the ability for us to be able to rearrange and remove and replace memories is coming. The ability to organize human thought at the core neurological level is coming, faster then most realize. It in concept has some value in criminal justice. As a civil libertarian it scars the hell out of me.

if you all want worse punishment than the death sentance because of what he did, then what do you think he thought when he was told he had HIV and was infected by somebody else?

you see when people do things we all go into a rage and want revenge, we want to hurt them more than they hurt somebody else or us, but maybe that kind of thing is exactly what this man was doing in the first place to create this situation.

what he did was wrong i am not saying it is not, but it is that type of thinking that needs to stop, as it only leads to worse crimes and more hurt being caused.

he was probably thinking along the same lines as most in this thread, if the person who gave him HIV did'nt tell him, then maybe he felt justified in his own mind to do the same and was thinking like everybody here, "well they hurt me, so i can hurt them" or in the threads case "well he hurt them so we can hurt him".

there is nothing more that can be done, we should not reduce ourselves to barbarians just to feel he has got what he deserves.

reply to post by lifeform11

Would you clarify something for me, please?

if you all want worse punishment than the death sentance because of what he did

there is nothing more that can be done

but it is that type of thinking that needs to stop, as it only leads to worse crimes and more hurt being caused.

Are you saying that the death penalty is the perfectly appropriate penalty in this case? Or, are you saying that death is too much of a penalty?

we should not reduce ourselves to barbarians just to feel he has got what he deserves.

I don't know about the barbarian part, but giving someone what they deserve is the best and only moral reason for criminal punishment.

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

The death penalty should never be used. As humans, we should be repulsed by our own savagery.

But something worse than the death penalty? Like what?

On your first point, I do disagree, despite coming more to dislike the whole capital punishment system here than I ever have before. In some cases, deterrence isn't the point. Outright vengeance is, and I'm fine with those cases. The ones I feel fall into that smaller subset are the child killers or family annihilator types who never thought or really cared what happened to them anyway....but why support the monsters for decades more? A waste. Those are probably well under half of what is one Death Row though.

With your main point...I really am 100% serious in asking what should come beyond the Death Penalty. I don't mean some sense of afterlife or reincarnation, as one member made a thread on a week or so back, but in a real sense. Is there something we can do similar to the outright dungeon type prisons that existed in most nations right into the mid 20th century? That strikes me as a possible answer.

We have Florence Colorado, but that is a pretty poor deterrent when few even know what makes that prison different. Then there is the fact we only have a couple that fall into that class. It sure cannot be argued that Death, or the chance of it had 0 deterrence effect here. After all, the guy willingly turned himself in..that should say it all. So what else can be done with the monsters among us that IS miserable enough for life that others may be deterred...WITHOUT getting into torture or the sick garbage that made THEM monsters to begin with?

This sure is the case to make a person wonder, eh? There must be a better way to handle the two legged animals who hide among everyone else.

reply to post by charles1952


well i do not agree with death as punishment, but he has been judged and sentanced, i am not saying there should not be any punishment, of course there should and it has been done. wishing for extra punishment or revenge outside of what the courts have judged, is what i am talking about. and the reason why i am is to show this guy was thinking in the same way others are.

he was given HIV, he was probably upset about it, so he saw what he did as some sort of revenge or justice in his mind, then people get upset about what he did and do not feel death is enough punishment and call for some sort of revenge they see as justice in their mind.

if thats how most of society thinks then the cycle of people doing what they think is justice will continue.

there are many examples of it thoughout society, mostly minor inccidents but then you will get one like this.
"he scratched my car so i'll scratch his" "he cut me up in his car so i will cut him up in mine" "somebody gave me HIV and said nothing so...."

what he did was wrong, but wanting worse than he already got through the courts is just the same eye for an eye stuff, which might sound like a good thing to some untill everybody starts acting like it, like the guy in question.

the thing about the death penalty or eye for an eye as punishemnet is it teaches an eye for an eye is acceptable, but it not always is.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

The death penalty should never be used. As humans, we should be repulsed by our own savagery.

But something worse than the death penalty? Like what?

On your first point, I do disagree, despite coming more to dislike the whole capital punishment system here than I ever have before. In some cases, deterrence isn't the point. Outright vengeance is, and I'm fine with those cases. The ones I feel fall into that smaller subset are the child killers or family annihilator types who never thought or really cared what happened to them anyway....but why support the monsters for decades more? A waste.

Those are probably well under half of what is one Death Row though.

With your main point...I really am 100% serious in asking what should come beyond the Death Penalty. I don't mean some sense of afterlife or reincarnation, as one member made a thread on a week or so back, but in a real sense. Is there something we can do similar to the outright dungeon type prisons that existed in most nations right into the mid 20th century? That strikes me as a possible answer.

We have Florence Colorado, but that is a pretty poor deterrent when few even know what makes that prison different. Then there is the fact we only have a couple that fall into that class. It sure cannot be argued that Death, or the chance of it had 0 deterrence effect here. After all, the guy willingly turned himself in..that should say it all. So what else can be done with the monsters among us that IS miserable enough for life that others may be deterred...WITHOUT getting into torture or the sick garbage that made THEM monsters to begin with?

This sure is the case to make a person wonder, eh? There must be a better way to handle the two legged animals who hide among everyone else.

Have you ever heard of Cameron Todd Willingham ? If not, read the entire article. Absolutely heartbreaking. Personally, I will not consent to such actions be perpetrated in my name anymore. Outside of my own logic, this story is a primary reason why i am against the death penalty.

But even more, and to your second point, who is the death penalty for? In the case of your HIV patient....why do YOU feel the need for something beyond death? Why is vengeance YOURS? Were you a victim? Unless you and I are victims, we have no right to demand any thing as punishment, only to demand that the offender be sequestered from society.

Now, imprisoning the real criminals like this would be FAR easier if we didn't fill our prisons full of drug dealers and hot check writers. But i digress...

Originally posted by DerepentLEstranger
justice requires that he make reparations

crime: spreading AIDS

punishment: curing AIDS

he can be a guinea pig for the rest of his life
simples

and as a bonus the shrinks might want study him as well

Outstanding idea. I really oppose the death penalty. On a side note, i am not a fan of Nazi medical testing either. But this is far superior to a death penalty for a patient who is doomed to die anyway.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


howdy BFFT

i wasn't thinking about vivisection or whatnot

but he could be used to test a potential cure

just imagine the emotional roller-coaster if he becomes the first AIDS victim to be cured...

knowing he'll be in jail for a now suddenly prolonged life

i'm against the death penalty for a variety of reasons
the real mass murderers never go to jail or get the chair,noose, or whatever.
if AIDS really is a manufactured bio-weapon you can be sure that those who have the blood of everyone who died of AIDS are never going to be punished.

you never see any millionaires getting the DP only po' folk, usually [but not always] colored.

then there are all the cases were somebody innocent was [or almost was] executed

remember how prince shrub [Bush] made fun of Karla Faye Tucker? how many people did he have killed 150 or so? and that was as governor, as POSUS he long ago joined the hitler leagues, and is still scoring points for mutilated and mutated children

Bush Isn't A Moron, He's A Cunning Sociopath


by Bev Conover, Online Journal Editor And Publisher, December 5, 2002

If any of us are to have a future worth having, the world's leaders, the members of Congress, the US corporate media and people of all political persuasions who value freedom and democracy had better start seeing George W. Bush for what he is: a sociopath and a passive serial killer.

Psychiatrists tell us that all serial killers lack the emotions that make us human; that they have to learn to emulate those emotions in order to get by in society. Hence, a charming, well educated fellow like Ted Bundy who is known to have murdered 15 women and may have killed 36 before he was caught.

While Bush is no Bundy, when it comes Bundy's education and acquired charm, and to our knowledge has never personally murdered anyone, it has been evident to us that there is something missing in George W. in terms of his lack of compassion and empathy. As governor of Texas, he set a record in signing death warrants-154 in five years. He even made fun of the way convicted killer Karla Faye Tucker begged for her life.

If we believe the psychiatrists, a sign of a future serial killer is a child who delights in torturing and killing animals. George W., as a child, did exactly that. In a May 21, 2000, New York Times' puff piece about the values Bush gained growing up in Midland, Texas, Nicholas D. Kristof quoted Bush's childhood friend Terry Throckmorton: "'We were terrible to animals,' recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. 'Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,' Mr. Throckmorton said. 'Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.'"

the current POSUS, kingoreo, seems intent on not being left behind.

those who advocate the DP are actually demanding that The State
be given power of life and death over the people.
i do not acknowledge or grant such a power to anybody,
however if anybody were to claim such a power and attempt to exercise it on me and mine,

I would d teach him The Superman, as i put said person down like the mad dog [s]he is




did you know that the ancient Hindus believed in the death penalty for murder for humanitarian reasons?

a murderers karma for said murder was to be immediately paid off, leaving it for the next life would accrue "interest" and might affect others.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

Have you ever heard of Cameron Todd Willingham ?

Actually, I have heard of him. Specifically, I'd watched a documentary episode on TV quite awhile back featuring the other Texas case and the overlap between the two. I believe this is likely as close to a provable case of having already executed an innocent man as we have to this point in America. What the Innocence Project has accomplished in freeing men by DNA...not technicality...made the likelihood of an innocent execution pretty likely...but I tend to agree that this one comes awfully close to outright proving it.

why do YOU feel the need for something beyond death? Why is vengeance YOURS? .

In cases of such extreme depravity, there is a need to remove a threat from society by whatever means is best to manage it. It isn't my vengeance, as much as it's what we have all empowered the Government to do in our name and generally...with our support, not to mention a guilty verdict by 12 normal folks. If the Government didn't do it when they were caught and actually let them out like this Norway shooter may someday be under the laws THEY have for mass murder, then it's....they....are a problem any one of us may be faced with doing something about (literally) at some future point.

I know... LWOP, right? Life Without Parole. Yeah, that is a thought...and on cases that are not absolute in proof, probably all that needs to happen. In which case, my thread here is asking how nasty we can make prison in day to day reality for the most extreme criminals among us.

On cases where DNA or comparable proof exists...AND other corroboration that has nothing to do with Eyewitness or other fallible methods exists, Death should then be considered. However, that level of proof already in hand, should be the MINIMUM requirement to even consider death, IMHO. As you note...men die on far less than that today.

Almost sounds to me like he openly was using biological warfare against the populace.

Firing squad is my answer.
Death is the ultimate punishment.
There is nothing you can do that is worse.

But that is just my own opinion.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


With the jockeying attorneys do with the jury candidates, the end result rarely is "of your peers". Regardless, societies perceived "need" to deal with this is only a perception. There is no "need". Nor is there a right. Making it a state action turns it into a distant, cold action perfromed by "them", not "us". It makes it all seem official, and therefore legitimate.

But is it? Or is it more just a fancy ritual to convince us that we are just and righteous in our actions? If so, is our justifcation any more or less valid than the Aztecs, who cut the hearts out of live humans to appease the Gods during a drought? Or the Quakers, burning witches to cleanse them of their sins? In each of these cases, society felt the need to shed bled to protect itself. And in each of these cases society was wrong. What makes the instance you are supporting any different? A different set of ritual rules? The use of the atheistic religion in place of shamanistic or Christian ones? Is there really even a difference?


I agree that, based on their actions, people get what they deserve. However, this is decided by a higher power, via the Law of Consequence. It is universal, fundamental, and elementary. No one escapes it. Action begets reaction. In the case of a rapist/murderer, the family is likely to seek vengeance. Or a lynch mob. In anarchistic systems, order still seems to find its way and people tend to get along. "Death penalties" are an "a la minute" affair, meted out as a reactionary consequence.

Castrate him

Starve him

Make him work his final days filling in all of these pot holes in our roads.................Naked...........(dose him up on amphetimines when death is close, just to get a few mores holes filled)

It is time to get midieval on these psycos......................

Seriously, prison scares very few criminal minds.

On topic, this man deliberately went out and infected as many people as he could with what eventually amounts to a death sentence in itself, despite all of the medications that are available, for whatever reason he had in his mind for doing this he is still by his own admission a mass murderer, and should be locked away until he eventually dies from the disease he willingly passed on to others.
Slightly off topic, but still on the subject of the death penalty, it is my view that people that abuse and kill children are, at the most basic level, endangering the survival of our species, and as such I truly believe that as long as their guilt has been proven beyond any doubt, they should be executed and their bodies used to reduce the growing list for organ transplants, as this would help many people who would die through lack of transplant donors, and also in passing it would mean that the perpetrator of such horrific crimes against children will serve a useful purpose to society.
Flame away if you wish, but these are my strongly-held beliefs.

Originally posted by liejunkie01
Castrate him

Starve him

Make him work his final days filling in all of these pot holes in our roads.................Naked...........(dose him up on amphetimines when death is close, just to get a few mores holes filled)

It is time to get midieval on these psycos......................

Seriously, prison scares very few criminal minds.

Exactly.

Listen, from the perspective of someone who provides leadership training, prison is akin to "pushing the string". The metaphor is about leadership. Take a piece of string and lay it on the table. There are two ways to make it go where you want: pushing it or pulling it. You will never find success when you push the string, as you make it collapse under your forward pressure. Instead, pull the string and it will slide around behind your finger, going where you want and maintaining its form.

Increasing our dickishness is only going to increase the failures seen in prisons. If some fails, more will usually fail worse.