I've long held the same opinion on the death penalty, that is, it's too permanent. I wouldn't go for, but could understand exceptions for a sky-high proof threshold, ie video recording. But the way technology is going, I don't know how much longer even that will remain a safe standard.Durandal wrote:Like I said before in this thread, the dirty shit pulled by the prosecution in a publicly televised case really makes me question how just prior death sentence convictions were. Now imagine what the prosecution can do behind closed doors. One wrongful death sentence is one too many. For child rapists, jail for life is already all they deserve. I don't see the logic or benefit in running the risk of wrongly sentencing a person to death purely for us to feel 10 seconds of fleeting catharsis when we read a child rapist's death notice in the news. Nobody will weep for a child molester's death, but there isn't much of a difference between someone being permabanned from society vs. permabanned from life. At least with the former there's still the room to justly recover a person's life from an unjust clerical error.Sima Tuna wrote: I'm ok with dehumanizing child rapists. I don't care if they're conservative or liberal. I don't think there's any slippery slope to that. Rape a child = death sentence. Pretty easy to just stop there. Is it bloodlust to believe some crimes are so heinous that the criminal forfeits their right to life? I don't think so. Sounds like you disagree.
It seems we are in agreement that the current US justice system needs a patch or two.I simply mention that, in addition to all of this, Kyle's attackers were scum. Criminals with records of serious violent offenses. One of the attackers was convicted multiple times for child rape. And that is the one who, at the very least, should have still been in prison. It's a failure of our justice system that someone could be convicted of such extreme crimes and yet walk around free.
In any case, I often think of criminals like Ian Brady, infamous in the UK for his torture, rape and murder of several children along with Myra Hindley ("The Moors Murderers"). Brady spent the last couple decades of his life begging to be allowed to die, before finally expiring of natural causes recently. I'm agnostic, but that sounds like a better sentence than hanging him in the 1960s.
More recently there was Ariel Castro, who imprisoned three women in his home and habitually raped them. Convicted, necked himself in his cell. I'd rather he was staring at a wall 23hrs a day right now.
TLDR: Death isn't the worst thing in the world. Hell might be worse than anything in this world, but why gamble on its existence?