Death Penalty

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Ibby

Having never had to remotely consider the possibility, I would say, as a brash, angsty 21-year-old, that I'd take the death penalty over even a 10-year sentence. But I say that as someone who would be at particularly high risk of abuse, persecution, rape, and discrimination in GenPop, and as someone who doesn't honestly expect to survive past age 35 or 40 even outside prison, given the rate of trans* suicide, murder, and hate crime, and considering my propensity towards self-destructive addiction and depression. So, given those factors, I would say living for a few years on death row and then going, without lengthy illness or infirmity, sounds like a better option than even just ten years in general population.
But I say that as someone who has struggled for years with a lack of self-worth, with self-injury, and with the constant looming threat suicide, and as someone who has never actually faced my own mortality or the real threat of death. It's easy for me to be flippant about saying i'd rather be dead.
I know that it's unfair to those, especially the falsely accused, who face the real possibility of death, to say that i'd prefer that. and I absolutely know that the fact that I might lean towards preferring to die than to linger should not in any way affect whether or not I think the government should be executing ANYONE.

what the fucking fuck.

typography fails me here.

[Happy Monkey]

It's worth the cost of keeping 1000 Mansons alive if we keep one innocent person alive long enough to be exonerated.

[xoxoxoBruce]

You sound like Karl Rove.

[Happy Monkey]

?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

How do you justify the cost of keeping Charles Manson alive?

Entertainment value. When they trot him out every ten years on 60 minutes, his appearance and sound bites has us all talking for days.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

You sound like Karl Rove.

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

?

I could be wrong, but I think he's referring to the 1% doctrine

Vice President Dick Cheney describes the Bush administration's doctrine on dealing with terrorism:[3]
“ If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response. ”

[Happy Monkey]

But in reverse. That is saying it's better to kill innocent people than to let a guilty one live.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's exactly the type of thing Karl would say. An emotional slogan/sound bite that takes paragraphs to dispute. But you get just one from me.

The problem with you socialist pinko commies, is everything has to be squeezed into one-size-fits-all rules. It's a big country, and the population is diverse. What is right for NYC may not be right for Bumfuck, KS. What's right for a molested youth, may not be right for Charles Manson.

[Happy Monkey]

But, what's right for Manson is also "right", by law, for someone mistakenly thought to be Manson.