"If this does not qualify for the death sentence, then there is no case that would''

[Aeson]

Society has a right to defend itself from the things that go bump in the night....this guy, is one of those.

I agree. I just don't agree that the only way to protect ourselves from this man is to kill him.

A good point, Aeson, however, I do believe that the Death Penalty has its place in our arsenal, just as surely as war does (which is a non-discriminating "death sentence" for untold thousands of innocent bystanders each and every time we wage it).

The only benefit to the DP that you show is it costs us less money than to protect society from him in other ways. If we were to go to war to save money, I would be opposed to it, and I'm sure you would to.

The other argument for the death penalty is a better one, deterent. I'll agree that there are some people who fear death so much that it could keep them from committing murder. There are people who fear torture so much that they would be similarly hesitant. In both cases I don't think the ends justify the means though.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Imran. You mean that the number of homicides would increase by 18 X DPs if the DP was abolished?

I know I've killed 18 X the people in states where there is a moratorium on the DP.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Apparently a recent study has been done which shows that every DP results in 18 less homicides, based on post-moratorum stats in those US states.

Check out the Feb 2004, Scientific American. It had a detailed survey of all the various arguments and factors about what does or does not influence crime. It's mostly crime in general and not murder/DP specifically, but it's very interesting.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Velociryx
So...why should society have to bear the cost of keeping this fruitcake around?

-=Vel=-

Because there's lotsa people you could make that argument about, who are now walking around free men after they were exhonerated. If you start saying, well, this person is so obviously guilty we should execute him right away, where do you draw the line? There were lots of obviously guilty people who've been proven beyond a reasonable doubt not to have done the deed they were sentenced to die for.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If you start saying, well, this person is so obviously guilty we should execute him right away, where do you draw the line?

When the guy comes out covered in the victims' blood, I'd say we're pretty far from any ethical grey area in determining guilt.

[Space05us]

When the guy comes out covered in the victims' blood, I'd say we're pretty far from any ethical grey area in determining guilt.

yeah its not like he may have been holding his dead children and morning.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Imran. You mean that the number of homicides would increase by 18 X DPs if the DP was abolished?

According to the study the DP has a detterant effect whereby each person killed results in 18 less homicides.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Space05us

When the guy comes out covered in the victims' blood, I'd say we're pretty far from any ethical grey area in determining guilt.

yeah its not like he may have been holding his dead children and morning.

I don't think we have to worry about that in this case.

[Giancarlo]

Almost 52% Against the death penalty for this guy on this forum? Wow.. that's really messed up.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
According to the study the DP has a detterant effect whereby each person killed results in 18 less homicides.

So, if the DP was re-enacted in Quebec, 5 executions would bring the number of murders in the province to 0?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Check out the Feb 2004, Scientific American. It had a detailed survey of all the various arguments and factors about what does or does not influence crime. It's mostly crime in general and not murder/DP specifically, but it's very interesting.

I read that

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


So, if the DP was re-enacted in Quebec, 5 executions would bring the number of murders in the province to 0?

According to the statistics, yes, I'd assume so.

[Japher]

I started a thread on this, but I guess no one saw it.

Kidicious stated that this occured blocks from his house!

I'm for the DP, obviously

I say kill the guy, F' due process

[Velociryx]

You guys know me, and you know full well I'm not advocating wholesale slaughtering of people just becauase they're a bit...odd.

Hell, *I'm* a bit odd....the difference is tho, I don't walk out of my house with the blood of nine victims on my clothes, muttering stuff about being God. My oddness takes far more harmless directions (specifically as in "not causing the lives of others to come to a screeching halt.")

If the guy did it (and from what we've been presented with it seems more than fairly likely that he did), he's a menace. There are, as has been pointed out, numerous ways of dealing with a menace such as this, and if we look at them objectively, there's only one surefire way of seeing that this menace does not do it again.

We can try to rehabilitate him....I dunno about you, but I'm not thinking that'd be too successful. God-complexes are notoriously hard to get around, and I'd imagine that a therapist would spend lots of times spinning his wheels and getting exactly nowhere.

We could lock him up in a mental institution, and that'd work until some good doctor declared him magically cured, wrote a dissertation on the case, sold the rights to ABC so they could make a made-for-TV movie about it, set him free, and six months later we read about his next set of victims. Not exactly a cure-all.

We could lock him up in jail and never set him free....sorta an "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy, except that there's not yet been a prison that couldn't be escaped from, and there's no security system on the planet that absolutely cannot be circumvented. And besides that, yes, there is cost to consider.

If we had infinite resources, by all means, let's take a kinder, gentler approach, but in a society where resources are scarce, and decisions have to be made about how to make most effective use of them, I'd much rather see the dollars that'd be spent keeping this nutball under lock and key, spent elsewhere.

Once we solve all our other societal ills, sure, let's spend some coin keeping our nation's murderous nutballs comfortably tucked away someplace, but as long as there are other, better uses for the money, let's get this guy out of our collective hair once and for all.

These guys, despite some psychologists' claims to the contrary are not...ARE NOT victims. They *create* victims. I vote for pulling their teeth rather permanantly.

-=Vel=-

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Clearly the death penalty is a deterrent in some cases and not a deterrent in others. It is perfectly logical that the net effect of the death penalty is fewer innocent deaths overall. If you want to make an argument that the financial cost of administering the death penalty is too high relative to the estimates of lives that it save, be my guest. But spare me the bleeding liberal heartache. It is not relevant.

You are making the false assumption that DP is the default state.