US to stop executing "mentally ******ed"

[Patrick]

I don't have anything against the death penalty. But, killing them how they killed someone... I don't think that is right. Sure, it is fitting, but they should just be killed, period. I personally believe that the ultimate judgement for them will come after they are killed.

 

 

[Bitseach]

I agree with the ultimate judgement thing - they'll get their comeuppance in the end.

 

Leaving aside the morality of capital punishment for a minute though, if it must be done, it must be done humanely, IMO - a quick dispatch. The Chinese at least usually do it swiftly - a quick bullet in the base of the skull, often as little as 15min after judgement has been passed. Or beheading - that must be pretty quick. The electric chair is an absolutely obscene instrument of torture and it beggars belief that any civilised nation could use it. Talk about "cruel and unusual". Psht!

 

All these last-minute "stays" are also pretty cruel - you have (presumably) committed some horrible deed but now must meet your maker. However you might be saying your final prayers with the knowledge that this might not really be IT, you might be granted a stay, sometimes only for a few days or a week or so. Then it all (usually) starts again. This perhaps after waiting 10 or 20 years on "death row" - I don't know but the whole system seems a bit half-cocked to me.

 

I wouldn't be as against it all if it was fool-proof and if the whole system didn't seem to be so institutionally racist, and so apparently affected by the wealth (and therefore quality of advocacy) of the defendent.

 

 

[KickChick]

Take the quiz ... very interesting!

 

You all may learn something.....

 

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/DPQuiz.html

 

and for an informative powerpoint presentation on the "ethics" of such punishment (filled with lots of statistics concerning crime in U.S. and other countries as well) ... go to,

 

http://ethics.acusd.edu/presentations/AppliedEthics/Punishment/index_files/frame.htm

 

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[ This Message was edited by: KickChick on 2002-07-02 19:44 ]

[Bon]

Why kill someone so they don't have to suffer ?

 

Wouldn't they suffer more locked in a maximum security prison, no contact with anyone, just 4 walls and bread & water ?

 

 

[Blade13]

Well, some people actually PREFER the prison life. The food isnt that bad. They actually eat pretty well in there. Trust me, I've got a friend who was sent to prison, but has become my penpal. Also, my mom is a trooper and I've been in prisons plenty of times (On the good side of the metal doors, lol. Never in the jumpsuit). If you've seen the Shawshank Redemption, you understand how some people begin to prefer prison. Others are just lazy people who dont want to bother getting a real life and taking care of themselves so they go to prison where its done for them.

 

 

[Don Gwinn]

Why would "r e tarded" not be your choice of words? That is the proper medical term for the affliction in question. Would you refuse to say you re tar ded the timing on your car? Re tar ded means "slowed," which is the only accurate way to describe the problem with a re tar ded person's mind. They aren't insane, they aren't paranoid, they just think more slowly than other people.

 

Second, the problem is that mental illness is already a mitigating factor under the law. If it were possible to be so reta rded as not to understand that what you did was wrong, then your lawyer would simply move to have you found incompetent. If you are so ret arded that you cannot contribute to your own defense, same thing. So what we have here is a decision that protects people who are not very bright, but smart enough to plan premeditated crimes, smart enough to contribute to their own defense, and smart enough to know the difference between right and wrong.

 

I've long argued that what skews our view of capital punishment is the idea that it's punishment at all. It should not be. No, the state should not take revenge. But we SHOULD remove threats. Some people are too dangerous to be allowed to go free. If you can never let him go, you might as well execute him. Under our system, with our vast free legal resources and practically endless appeals, it would be difficult to execute an innocent man. It could happen, but it's so unlikely--Look, here's an example. In Illinois we currently have a moratorium on the death penalty. The governor is simply refusing to sign off on executions. You can still be sentenced to death, but you're safe unless a future governor starts signing the writs.

 

This was done because of Illinos' "abysmal" track record. We've had something like 13 people released in the last twenty years from death row when it was found out that they were innocent. What was ignored about that was that all those men were released within five years of their original trials in a process that takes at least 13-16 years to get from trial to execution. In other words, our system worked as well as any system ever could. To this day, no one has found any decent evidence that an innocent man has been executed in Illinois.

 

 

[Zin-Ju]

 

 

the reason its the word "retarded" is because if they have a low IQ they can just say there a bit backwards and didn't know what they were doing.

 

i dont think ******ed is the right word for it deranged is more like it.

 

 

[Bitseach]

Don Gwinn - regarding choice of words, here in the UK it is regarded as a pejorative term when applied to describing a person's mental capacities. Clearly it is still acceptable when referring to other aspects of life or medicine where there is not the same implied value judgement, eg IUGR is a well known medical term for Intra-uterine growth ******ation. No problem at all with this use of the word or for use with inanimate object such as one's car engine or referring to something that is "tardy".

 

 

[Don Gwinn]

It's considered pejorative here, too, by a lot of people. But in the states there was a mad scramble a few years ago to find euphemisms to replace all the words that had become pejorative even though they were accurate descriptions.

 

"Retarded" became "special" and "mentally handicapped."

 

"Handicapped," meanwhile, became "disabled" and, when that wasn't soft enough, "differently abled."

 

The problem was that these terms were not accurate. If you're handicapped, say you are in a wheelchair, you are not "differently abled." The inability to use your legs is a handicap. Nothing wrong with you as a person, but you do have a handicap. "Differently abled" makes it sound like you have psychic powers or the ability to fly.

 

The real problem, however, was predictable--people weren't making fun of -retarded kids because they thought the word -retarded had a funny ring to it. The word had nothing to do with it. The sorry sacks of pus were making fun of the kids for their handicap, and no matter what euphemism you substituted for the last "pejorative term" you couldn't keep up. They'd be chanting it on the schoolyard the next day with enough venom to make a kid cry. Changing the word accomplished nothing except to make communication more difficult and muddy the language further, which wasn't something English exactly needed in the first place.

 

 

[Kickingbird]

What the hell is this?! You can’t decide if someone should live or die by these standards.

 

It's like when people keep quoting the bible if their statements are ever questioned by the sane.

 

As well as saying an eye for an eye, the bible says an insolent child can be brought to the city gates and stoned to death. It says homosexuality is an abomination and it should be punishable by death. It says men can have more the one wife and slavery is acceptable.

 

For all I know, that reflected the best wisdom of its time, but its just plain wrong by any modern standard.

 

Society has a right to protect itself. It does not have a right to be vengeful. It has a right to punish but it does not have a right to kill.

 

Debating the legality of the death penalty becoming void if you are mentally disabled is a ludicrous and pointless thing to discuss.

 

And locking them way for the rest of their natural life won’t solve anything – a human being can learn to be better from yesterday but also sink if he is misdirected. A human being can open up his way of thinking to an infinite end.

 

You must ask – do you kill to change or to punish? - discussion for MA aswell me thinks.

 

We should be asking why these people are like this in the first place, why cant they stomache todays society, why they feel the need to kill someone in the first place.

 

Starter for 10....

 

In America, A child born this minute has a 1-5 chance of being poor. 44 MILLION people don’t have health insurance. The number 1 cause of death for a black man under the age of 35 is homicide. 3 million people are severing life sentences in jail right about now. Five million People are drug addicts. 13 million CHILDREN are in poverty. 3 and a half million kids go to schools that are literally falling apart. They need to spend 127 BILLION dollars on school construction rather than bullshitting those that still believe blowing stuff up is the way of freedom and democracy.

 

I’ve just finished watching the second series of the West Wing so I’m a little riled up right about now

Edited May 31, 2003 by Kickingbird