Wow. Tookie.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

Taking someone's money would require repayment, breaking someone's things would require their replacement, causing someone to lose their life would require you to lose your own.

But if you take the killer's life, you can't give it back to the victim. Your analogy fails.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

But if you take the killer's life, you can't give it back to the victim. Your analogy fails.

Not at all because the role of the judicial system, ideally, is adjudicate such cases, based on facts, and apply the sentence based on the situation. That's why there are so many flavors of prosecution for taking someone's life.

Also, I'm not taking the killers life. The justice system is taking his life as part of a well known and documented process of redress. That's why we put them there in the first place.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by Brianna

May you never, never have to test that comfortable theory. As I mentioned earlier, I say we should have let him live and suffer. You don't seem bothered by that concept, HM.

One of the aspects of justice that I diverge from Lady Sidhe, OnyxCougar, and others on is this whole suffering thing. Suffering, or torture for that matter, induced by the state is not justice. If someone has been appropriately sentenced to death then that sentence should be carried out as swiftly as is practically possible. Don't leave the guy to suffer waiting, don't leave the citizens carrying his tab, just do it. The decision has been made but justice is not served until it is carried out.

[Trilby]

[quote=Troubleshooter]One of the aspects of justice that I diverge from Lady Sidhe, OnyxCougar, and others on is this whole suffering thing. Suffering, or torture for that matter, induced by the state is not justice. [quote]


Dude. Suffering and torture ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

I was going to say something mean here, but, I won't.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by Brianna

Dude. Suffering and torture ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

I was going to say something mean here, but, I won't.

How do you differentiate between,

Originally Posted by Brianna

I say we should have let him live and suffer.

and torture?

[Radar]

Justice dictates that those who murder people in cold blood die for their actions. To claim anything other than this only shows that you don't comprehend the meaning of the word "justice".

It doesn't matter if it stops other people. It only matters that it stopped this one. It doesn't matter if he is a danger to others in the future. It only matters that he murdered someone. It doesn't matter if he has reformed, found god, changed his ways, etc. All that matters is he took the life of others and as a result must give up his own life in return.

This is justice and there's no avoiding it. Nothing will change this fact and no amount of attempts to paint it dirty by calling it vigilantism, thuggery, or vengeance will make it any less justice.

In fact if you look up the word justice in the dictionary, it should have a photo of "Tookie" Williams with needles in his arms while getting his lethal injection.

[Rock Steady]

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Besides Jail, the court ordered me to pay "resitution to the victim". I had to pay the City of Mountain View $2,200 to replace the light pole. I know of cases of restitution to people injured in DUI accidents.

When you settle w/o trial, you can agree in plea bargain to things that would be illegal for a judge to sentence. For example, sentences including AA Meetings have been thrown out in many states on Freedom of Religion, but are in many plea bargains. You can't sentence someone to take Anabuse, but they can agree to it to avoid trial.

Restitution is not so clear.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

--snip--

"Objections to the death penalty seem to me without wisdom, on three counts.

First, those who object to the death penalty are unable to distinguish a rightful killing from a wrongful one.

Wrong. As usual, you presume much and understand little. The ability to distinguish a rightful from a wrongful killing is not a prerequisite for opposition to the death penalty. It is in no way a condition for opposition to the death penalty. It is neither sufficient nor necessary. Nor does the contrary argument apply, that opposition to the death penalty precludes the ability to distinguish rightful from wrongful killing. Neither point has any causative influence on the other.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

In this, these people completely miss a moral point that has been clearly understood since the Bronze Age. No one of any depth of wisdom speaks against killing an unlawful, murderously inclined attacker in self-defense, and what is the death penalty but extending that inalienable right to society at large? If killing in self-defense is right, so is execution.

More baloney. Why? Because state execution is not killing in self defense, it is in the most deliberate way imaginable, pre-meditated killing. No one with with any sense considers premediated killing self defense; it's murder. Look it up.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Second, the objectors do not appreciate the value of damage control. Dead murderers murder no more, period. Isn't that what we want? I want murders to stop more than I want murderers to keep breathing. Is this somehow not sensible?

Damage control? Oookaaay, you're off to a possibly good start, but you trip and fall on your face right away in your extrapolation. You and I agree that stopping murders is desirable, sensible. But if the prevention of murder is what we're striving for, and killing is our method (how freakin orwellian is that "logic"?), then why stop there? Sure, some murderers kill again, but a much much larger pool of potential murderers can be found in the general population. Of all the people who commit murder, most of them are first timers. Why not just abort them all? Or if bulk killing is your emphasis, then how about assasination? Think how many deaths would be prevented then! Absurd, you say. Yeah, killing to stop killing is pretty absurd.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Third, opponents of the death penalty are unwilling to fight evil to the last extremity; their commitment to human goodness comes short of mine, and short of what it should be. This lapse is deplorable, and I say it is insupportable. Why demand that evil not be fully atoned for? Where is our valuation of four innocent lives wrongly taken, in [all this] 'Save Tookie'? Nowhere that I can see."

I will, for the time being, leave aside your pompous ravings of your superiority, and your evaluation of my "commitment to human goodness".

Atonement is a big word, a big idea. If atonement is your goal, do you consider execution as atonement? I don't. What if, as in this case and others, if the condemned goes down to die continually protesting his innocence? What of the case of the conspicuous absence of remorse or contrition? Where is the atonement then? Can atonement be extracted? Or can it only be accepted? And how can you measure the fullness of atonement? You've selected a good and important aspect of this process, but you try to make it do something it can't do: be measured, be taken.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The long time on Death Row for the condemned actually isn't the minus some make it out to be. It is a measure of how carefully we try to ensure we're doing right -- this society tries to check its decision to kill some evildoer in the name of the public good in every way humanly possible. A couple of decades is not an unreasonable span of time for new evidence, exculpatory or condemnatory, to come forward.
--snip--

On this point, we agree. It is true that the long delay between sentencing and execution has some costs and complications, but it's worth it.

However.

I have an increasingly hard time imagining you as a real person. The high handed language, the raucous exclamations of your superiority, your blanket condemnations of everyone opposed to your postion, these make for incandescent campaign rhetoric, but it is not the language thinking people use to exchange ideas. You, hmm, your posts portray you as a training bot, a sparring mannequin to sharpen my own thoughts, my own ability to articulate my ideas. That's worthwhile and I'm happy for it. But I just can't get my head around someone who contends that opposition to the death penalty is evidence of a deplorable deficit in one's commitment to human goodness. You have got to be kidding me.

[xoxoxoBruce]

But I just can't get my head around someone who contends that opposition to the death penalty is evidence of a deplorable deficit in one's commitment to human goodness. You have got to be kidding me.

But he does make an excellent case for preemptive execution.

[Rock Steady]

Originally Posted by BigV

Wrong. As usual, you presume much and understand little. .... But I just can't get my head around someone who contends that opposition to the death penalty is evidence of a deplorable deficit in one's commitment to human goodness.

Yes.

[barefoot serpent]

Somehow I think Arnie was disinclined to grant clemency...

[Tonchi]

Ahnuld's reasoning was that the facts did not make him believe that there was a "genuine repentance" on Tookie's part. But in the interviews I read he made it sound like it was his "gut feeling" or perception of the circumstances rather than something quantifiable (...now WHO in the world would ever think that way.....?

At first thought, I would have been inclined to say the man had "redeemed himself" too, until something very revealing came out upon reading all the articles: namely that not one single time in all these years did this "reformed" man ask for television time or a podium so that he could appeal directly to the remaining Crips or all other adult gang members to give it all up, get out, turn themselves in, or any other solution which could have used his influence in that community to turn evil into good. And so there are now double the number of gang members in this country as there were when he got caught and convicted. He was not willing to give up his "dignity" by publicly humbling himself and pleading with others to turn back. If he really was such an all-out wonderful role model that Snoop Dog and all the other Black media whores wanted to eulogize him, where is the PROOF that he actually accomplished anything? I can nominate UG for the Nobel Peace Prize, did you know that? So it means nothing that other people with an agenda to push use his name in that context. What I want to know, and hopefully our governator as did as well, is where are the crowds of gang members coming forward to say that Tookie convinced them to dedicate their lives to helping their people through good works rather than robbing and slashing them? Not a peep has been heard along that line, instead we are just getting more of their "righteous anger".

[tw]

Originally Posted by barefoot serpent

I have the same shirt. But mine fits better. Apparently Arnie's wife does not iron.

[Beestie]

The sympathy for the perpetrator I see in this thread is mind-numbing. Its as though the pile of corpses and ruined lives are a sunk cost and don't factor into the evaluation.

No wonder I have to leave my knife in my car when I park in DC - apparently, its my job to become fodder for these worthless misfits in order to justify their state-mandated rehabilitation.

In Virginia, we just kill the bastards and move on. A simple examination of the relative crime rate between VA and DC is very revealing. And the argument that DC crimes are comitted with weapons obtained in VA is laughably ironic.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Beestie

The sympathy for the perpetrator I see in this thread is mind-numbing. Its as though the pile of corpses and ruined lives are a sunk cost and don't factor into the evaluation.

No sympathy here. That would be Happy Monkey. He gets all warm and fuzzy thinking of the human potential in people like the Tookmeister. Really! It's unfortunate that Took had to murder four innocents before he understood the true meaning of the word "Christmas", but he DID finally learn, right? That's all that matters. [sarcasm/off]