Read this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The judge should have given him the 60 years. The law should have allowed for the death penalty. Anyone who breaks into a house and rapes a 9-year-old needs to be dealt with decisively. Ideally, said decisive dealing will involve borrowing the GRU's blast furnace, but lethal injection, the electric chair, the gas chamber, or hanging will do.
The death penalty, in my view, is appropriate for those who rape children or rapists who give thir victims HIV. In the latter case, the victim is dead, it just will take as long as two decades for AIDS to claim their life.
This is not about proportionate punishment. I want deterrence via a sentence that is disproportionate - and which will be capable of decisively dealing with this kind of scum. As one death-penalty opponent said, "Still, if it's deterrence you want, nothing better prevents recidivism than capital punishment. Ted Bundy can't bother co-eds anymore."
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2 comments:
Just to be a tad sober, deterrence and recidivism in this context usually refer to others who might commit similar crimes. If the purpose of punishment is to get the creep who committed the crime out of the way, then by all means let's shoot every last one. But if the goal is to keep others from doing something similar, there is tons of evidence that capital punishment neither prevents others in the first place nor has any effect on repeat offenses in the second. Alas.
Years ago a liberal friend challeneged me on my stand on the death penalty. If I am to be as anti-abortion as I am, how can I rationalize putting anyone to death. I was uncomfortable with the death penalty before our conversations. After his challenge, I realized I could not in good conscience support the death penalty, accept for treason. (As far as I am concerned with treason, no quarter.) Anything else, no.
I don't think the death penalty is a deterrant. Perhaps it is the contrary. Unfortunately most people on death row become the cause celeb' of the hour. I think they have the luxury of knowing when, where, and how they are going to die. Why should they have that luxury? If a person who was to be excuted would be so without warning, in much the same way their victim had died, there might be something to it. But, to allow someone to become a celebrity defeats the purpose.
I don't mind admitting my Atilla the Hun's mindset has a difficult time with war. I suppose I am that pro-life. Frankly, I do not understand the mindset where it is wrong to put an unborn child to death but acceptable to put a live person to death.
The Pink Flamingo
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