I say they feed HIM to the gator.

[Japher]

So we have no living object at all, nothing of commercial value, but something with a definite and known emotional impact on the family, and those objects are taken and destroyed with knowledge that their destruction will have an emotional impact. How do you treat that?

Exactly. Yet, isn't that what punitive damages are for? So the lady should get paid something. Also, the perp really needs some psycological treatment.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Winston


The minimum age to be eligible for the death penalty in Florida is 17, not 14.

I was talking about the general case of killing a human vs. killing an animal, replying to the argument that the law was being called upon to make no distinction between the life of an animal and that of a human being. The difference in range of penalties shows there's a very clear distinction.

[DanS]

So we have no living object at all, nothing of commercial value, but something with a definite and known emotional impact on the family, and those objects are taken and destroyed with knowledge that their destruction will have an emotional impact. How do you treat that?

The law has never sought to guarantee that people weren't rat bastards to each other. Or to even punish rat bastardness in general.

[Japher]

The law has never sought to guarantee that people weren't rat bastards to each other.

Good Simaritan Laws?

There ought to be more of those, especially ones that say don't destroy other ppls property... oh, wait we have that, and I certainly think that someones pet should be valued higher than some other goods... however, that is not the case.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Oerdin


what are the cercomstances? I mean are we talking about being on the Donner party having to eat fido or what?

That reminds me of a Gary Larson cartoon with three guys and a setter-looking dog in a life raft in the ocean, and one guy is looking all frantic and pissed off, holding the short straw, while the dog has one of the long ones.

The caption was something like "What are you compaining about, Ned? We all drew straws, and you lost."

My point was that (to me, at least) it's not an automatic value judgment.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DanS
So we have no living object at all, nothing of commercial value, but something with a definite and known emotional impact on the family, and those objects are taken and destroyed with knowledge that their destruction will have an emotional impact. How do you treat that?

The law has never sought to guarantee that people weren't rat bastards to each other. Or to even punish rat bastardness in general.

So, it's ok then, except just maybe a little incidental trespass? That's why I prefer the southern approach. What the law won't make right, a good tree and a rope will.

[chequita guevara]

At the age of 14, unless the boy was mentally defective, he would not be "curious" as to the effects of torturing an animal and feeding it to a preditor.

There is a word for people who do such things: sociopaths (previous known as psychopaths). People who can do such things to pet animals are lacking in the ability to empathyze. All serial killers are sociopaths. All sociopaths are pretty much violent and dangerous, though not al become serial killers.

This kids needs to be put in a psych ward and left there for the good of the community.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

I'd say this kid is comparable to a juvenile rapist.

Like others have said. Get a ****ing sense of proportion!

Unless you mean he raped the cat . Cats and humans are different things, don't cha know?

How is this out of proportion?

I'm saying that what the kid did to the family (who are, presumably, humans) is fully comparable to rape IMO.

If a rapist threatens to kill the victim's pet cat or dog if she doesn't submit: how many would comply? I suspect most would. Which would make pet-killing worse than rape.

I think the analogy holds up pretty well. Just as I wouldn't seek to punish a rape victim from killing her attacker in self-defense, I wouldn't punish a pet-owner using deadly force to defend the pet's life either (I certainly would). If the pet was already dead: this would be comparable to a rape victim killing her rapist after the rape (i.e. not in self-defense) and covered by diminished responsibility / temporary insanity etc.

I'm with MTG on this one. If I caught a person doing this to my cat, that person would disappear (one advantage of living in a rural area). This also has the advantage of removing a possible future threat to the lives of (human) friends and relatives. Illegal, but pragmatic.

[Skanky Burns]

[Chemical Ollie]

Curiosity killed the cat

I have three cats and they all kill other animals for fun. This cat was killed for fun, what's the difference?

Gators don't eat weed.

[Lincoln]

Let's see now. Reading this thread it becomes apparant that this is not a boy at all! He is a "rapist", "murderer", "psycopathic deranged killer" and he should be tortured to death for his actions. Only on Apolyton would we get such intelligent evaluations and conclusions. Cats are really not human even though the cartoons can make them talk.

All this reminds me of a church I attended once. Several people were going to a gathering afterword. Some of the poorer members did not have a car so they asked for a ride. Most were given a ride but some were left behind becuse of the dogs that occupied the front seats of several cars. It was kind of comical to see Fido in his seatbelt looking out the window as the human beings stood on the sidewalk -- rejected because of a dog. That is the American culture nowdays. "Dogs are people too, you know."

[Jack the Bodiless]

Let's see now. Reading this thread it becomes apparant that this is not a boy at all! He is a "rapist", "murderer", "psycopathic deranged killer" and he should be tortured to death for his actions.

Rapists, murderers and psychopathic killers are humans too (and, in many cases, teenagers). So they shouldn't be punished?

Using this logic: why is rape bad? No life-form gets killed at all! Nothing tangible is stolen, or permanently broken (bruises heal)...

And, to continue the analogy: there's a difference between advocating a legal death sentence for rape, and admitting that we would kill a potential rapist if confronted with one.

[FrustratedPoet]

I just killed a spider. It was crawling across my desk and I squished it with a book. It was no threat to me, I killed it simply because I hate spiders. I feel no remorse for killing it.

Am I a murderer? Should I be sent to prison? Am I in danger of being a serial killer?

Am I better or worse than the kid in the news story? Why?

btw, this isn't necessarily a troll. I'm curious about the answer.

[Gibsie]

Poet, it's lready been explained that lower invertebrates share few of the cognitive characteristics that make a cat able to know pain; in addition, there was a valuable bond between the owner and pet that was destroyed.

If you had trespassed onto someone's property to take their spider, then pulled its legs off one by one before putting it in the oven, then I think we would have cause to be worried about you and what you could be capable of.

[Arrian]

See MtG's point about invetebrates. You killed an insect. It's a bit different, at least to me.

It's a question of where you draw the line.

The differences I see here between stepping on an ant and what this little bastard did are these:

1) A cat is more intelligent & more capable of emotion/pain/etc than an ant.
2) The cat was someone's pet
3) The kid didn't just kill it. He tortured it and then killed it in an "interesting" way. Dunno about you, but that type of behavior sets of alarm bells in my head (not exactly to the extent that Che put it, but close).
4) Several people have raised the Chicken (or Rooster) issue: what if the kid had fed a chicken to the 'gator? Well, if he had beaten it and fed it to the 'gator in exactly the same manner as he did the cat, and the chicken/rooster was someone's pet THAT HE STOLE FROM THEIR FREAKING FRONT YARD, I would be having the same reaction. I might also be thinking "a rooster as a pet? Hmm, to each his/her own, I guess..." but that's beside the point.

This kid is a nasty little ****er, end of story.

-Arrian