juveniles and the death penalty

The death penalty is completely barbaric. It provides absolutely NO deterrent for future crimes, and how exactly does murdering a defenseless prisoner show people that murder is wrong?

There is also too much room for error and government abuse for capital punishment to be legal.

...oh, and it's cheaper to keep someone locked away in prison for life than it is to execute them.

 

I disagree.
Life in prison is barbaric, and only serves to punish the deviant.
It sure as hell deters that one serial killer from any future murdering.
The present system would need a major overhaul with many changes to help reduce the chance for error, and I would only accept it for repeat offender murderers. Still, there is bound to be mistakes.
Expensive...how much does a burlap sack and some rocks cost? or a bullet?
Murdering a defenseless prisoner or not is not going to show people squat.
If they cant figure it out on their own, that is their problem.
It is not hard for me to see that the murder of innocents is wrong.

 

An excellent example Blackie....supports my contention that it is a deterent for the deviant we murder.

 

I'm all for euthanasia for prison lifers, but it should be the prisoner's choice, not the state's.

So would keeping them in prison for life.

So we should just accept that? Any mistakes in this area whatsoever are unacceptable.

Nothing. It also doesn't cost anything to piss all over the Eighth Amendment.

 

Just because a prisoner claimed he'd get out means he'd actually succeed? Why are you so eager to believe the prisoner in this case? Isn't it possible that he was just running his mouth? I think there have only been two prison breaks in the United States in the past decade.

 

I don't want to give him the chance to try.
You have a bigger heart than I when it comes to serial killers, and I commend you for it. I am glad he was killed.
People get killed in jail all the time, so they would not need to escape to reoffend.
If someone has a history of doing something as then says they will try to do it again, you doubt them?
I dont.

 

The difference between an adult and a juvenile's conception of murder can be a great distance. To judge,convict, and execute soley on the mental idea of killing alone without further investigation is purely an ethnocentric, self aggrandizing point of view. Please take into consideration what our children are exposed to on a daily basis. It does not take a great intillect to see the influence of current societal trends. The line between a 'just' murder and one that is unjust is often blurred no matter how much the parents try to drive the point home. The average 'juvenile' lives today in a world that is replete with violence and murder. It sells and it promotes, period. The problem goes far deeper than a surface scan based upon ones own uprbringing. The reality is that children are bombarded with a complex paradox over justifiable murder everyday. Rather than treat the source of the problem, legislation dictates to merely make a show and provide the illusion of an end. The process is broken,biased, and serves no greater meaning than a tool of leverage. "Blind justice" in this case carries meaning only in it's perfectly accurate description.

 

People talk about all the violence juveniles are exposed to in culture, but I'm going to say it again, teenagers know that killing is wrong, a 16 year old knows just as much as a 30 year old that killing someone is wrong.

 

I suggest making it the same age as the age you can go to war. If you are old enough to die for your country, and kill for your country, you're old enough.
It would be consistent.

 

Agree, 18 is good, same thing for drinking and gambling.

 

I'll be excited and grateful once they do away with capital punishment for ALL ages.

 

On one hand, I'm strictly against death penalty. If taking someone's life is a crime, then death penalty is one too. On the other, I would love to torture child rapists to death myself. No mercy for the merciless.

What I am concerned about is how it seems like your skin colour affects your chance to be sentenced to death dramatically. It can't be that all crimes that would result in being killed on the jury's orders are committed by black people. It can't be. Then how come almost everyone in death row, even in the "civilised" 21st century, is black?

I cannot support an institution that takes lives, and even less if it's so selective about its victims. I applaud this no-death-penalty-for-minors development, but am afraid more is needed.

 

The death penalty for all ages is completely immoral because it doesn't not take human error into account. If even one innocent person has been killed by the state, the death penalty cannot be justified - and an absurd number of prisoners on death row have been proven innocent.

The death penalty for children is simply barbaric. When children kill, society has failed. We should blame our sick society as much as we blame the teenagers who commit murder - we created this situation, afterall.

 

No.

There has been a lot of bullshit surrounding this issue, clouding the air about how juveniles "aren't mature enough" and therefore cannot be punished as adults would be for serious crimes (capital ones like murder).

Who the fuck is so stupid as to think that a 17-year-old is not old enough to form clear and mature intent to murder?

Shit, at TWELVE I knew that if I murdered someone, it would be wrong, and there would be consequences. (I never even considered whether I was or was not eligible for the death penalty -- I just knew that murder warrants the death penalty.)

Now we have a Supreme Court decision that says a person who is 17 years and 364 days old cannot be executed. Make that kid 17 years and 365 days old (18 years) and suddenly, they think, by magic he IS mature enough to be responsible for the crime of murder and can be executed. That is madness.

Murderers are shit. They should be executed, so that we can be rid of them. No second tries, no "b-bu-but he can still eventually work for years and years and maybe possibly theoretically be a 'productive member of society' once again"... I don't wanna hear that bleeding heart shit. If you want to be allowed to be a productive member of society, fuckin START by not murdering anyone. Don't murder someone and then claim that all you want to do is be a productive member of society when all you want to do is save your own fuckin' pathetic ASS!

-Jeffrey

 

That is a grossly inaccurate characterization.

I am no expert on the bible, but as I understand it, even the bible quotes god as calling for executions. And the commandment that people like to cite is "thou shalt not murder," but was later mis-translated as "thou shalt not kill," and there is a world of difference.

If a man comes at me and my girlfriend with a machete, slashing through the air and screaming, "I'm gonna kill you!" is it wrong for me to kill him before he kills both of us?

Nope.

Not all killing is equal, therefore not all killing has to be considered wrong.

-Jeffrey

 

Uhh, by showing that if you murder, we are gonna take your life from you as a punishment.

This is not like a parent telling their kid that smoking is wrong and then lighting up their own cigarette, leaving the kid confused.

Everyone understands that the law says that murder is wrong (as we would all know even without the law), and then the law kills those who break the law against murder. That demonstrates the ultimate level of consequence for doing the "wrong" thing, murdering.

That line of so-called reasoning could result in saying that since we can't guarantee that tax money won't be misappropriated or misspent, "there's too much room for error for tax collecting to be legal."

"There's too much room for error or catastrophe for flying a 250-passenger jetliner above populated cities to be legal."

According to that logic, virtually nothing should be legal.

Capital punishment is not about "deterrent." It is about punishment, and it is about prevention. You punish a person who murders by taking away what remains of his life. You also prevent a known murderer from killing again: you already know he has the propensity.

There are states where the highest punishment is life in prison. But murders still occur there. So obviously life in prison is also not a successful deterrent to would-be murderers. Should we also ban life imprisonment?? (Duh.)

That's ONLY because of the practically lijmitless appeals (sometimes "automatic appeals"!) that we give to death-row prisoners. Bleeding hearts can't complain about the cost of appeals that bleeding hearts themselves demand that we give these shitbag murderers.

-Jeffrey

 

Let me see if I have this right:

The life of the first innocent victim is not worth killing the piece-of-shit murderer, but the life of the second innocent victim is?

What, we aren't sure he's a murderer the first time, but we're sure he's a murderer the second time?

Can you please explain your logic in making this statement? To me, it seems utterly illogical.

If your mother were going to be one of the victims, wouldn't you be rather pissed off if she were the second one, and you learned that the piece of shit who raped her and cut her throat was given 30 to life, got out in 25 for "good behavior," and went out to do it all again, this time to your blood? You'd say, "Why the fuck didn't they execute him the first time he was convicted of murder?! Why the fuck did we have to wait til he did it twice?!"

Really. I want to know how you reach this belief.

-Jeffrey

 

Wrong. I can think of a quick two just in the last couple of years. One was like a group of four (including murderers) in Texas, and the other was a guy who got busted out of prison by his buddy who flew a fuckin' helicopter in to get him. (They were eventually caught, though, because the schmuck crashed the helo.)

You don't know what you're talking about, apparently, making claims you can't back up.

Why are the "only two" prison breaks (according to you, anyway) acceptable? If these are breaks committed by murderers, and they get out and murder again, you find that acceptable? They can't possibly do that (break out, repeat murder) if they've been executed. (Unless you live in a Wes Craven movie.)

I remember a guy who was a paroled murderer back in like Illinois or Pennsylvania, and he was released, and he then moved to New York and murdered an old lady. (I used to remember his name...and hers.) This issue is not as simple as outlawing capital punishment. You would also have to somehow guarantee that there would be no release before the offender dies in prison. No one seems willing to concurrently outlaw capital punishment AND abolish any and all forms of parole for capital criminals.

Just about every murderer approaches these gullible, bleeding heart parole boards with a concocted story about how he's "got religion," "found God," and "truly is remorseful" for his crimes. And these bleeding hearts suck it all up and get all soft and let him go. And then he kills again. Big fuckin' surprise, assholes.

If I knew that EVERY SINGLE MURDERER would sit in a DANK CELL, with SHIT FOOD, and ZERO ENTERTAINMENT from now until the day he dies alone and afraid, I could support life in prison without parole as an alternative to the death penalty. But we have bleeding hearts who insist that we treat sick, depraved, callous murderers as well as we treat everyone else, which is itself sick and depraved. Murderers deserve death.

Actually, I think that what we should do is put every murderer into excruciating pain that will not end, and put a single-shot gun in his hand. Tell him that the pain won't end until he ends it. So this way he dies as a suicide, and goes straight to hell!

This way, everyone's happy.

-Jeffrey

 

I think that a lot of people forget that these young people don't just kill or whatever out of some blood lust. Society has failed on them and now we want to murder them? I work with (former) homeless youth in Amsterdam and I know guys who've done a lot of shit in their past.. they all have been victims of neglect, sexual abuse and what more.. they had to leave their 'home' in order to get away from that and the 'friends' they found in their life on the streets dragged them into the criminal scene. Ofcourse there are killers out there without a bad childhood and ofcourse not everyone with a shitty childhood becomes a criminal.. but there is more to it than meets the eye.. and if you have just a grain of empathy in you then you'd be able to see that these guys make the best friends you can wish.. and that with the right support they are very valuable citisens.

Don't forget that those 'criminals' have nearly always been a victim themselfs. Should we kill them.. or give them (and society) a better future by treating them and truly caring for them?

 

Funny to hear all these pro-death penalty folks talk about how evil murderers are, when they're here making these snarly, bloodthirsty posts encouraging the murder of other people. You're no better than "they" are. It's no wonder that even though we're one of the very few "civilized" countries that still use the death penalty as a form of punishment, we also have one of the highest violent crime rates in the entire world. It is not your place to decide when someone else's life should end, no matter what kind of complicated, twisted logic you try to excuse it with. Our justice system is supposed to be built for punishment, not revenge.

But I guess that's america for you.