Posted on 09/16/2002 1:46:27 PM PDT by Joe Hadenuf
Death
But...I thought it didn't matter WHAT you said--even if you are giving sworn testimony--as long as it's about sex!
What I do equate is the created worth of human life. Perhaps this is a factor you have not considered. I cannot prove this evidentally, but to borrow from your terminology, in her "swinging" lifestyle, how many of her OTHER children would you estimate that Brenda Van Dam deliberately had removed from their home in her womb by abortionist assault and butchery? What moral difference does it make which innocents are butchered, and why in your mind would such innocents not be equivalent?
Cordially,
This only sends a message if the decided-upon-sentence is administered swiftly. I don't think the prospect of 10=15=20 years on death row going through all the appeals is much of a deterent.
This, along with the following, (which oline writes) You can't steal a life you must pay for that life and he will...with his own...it is only fitting. are the two most common arguments used to support capital punishment. I shall attempt to explain below how I feel these are flawed.
1. "Deterrance" (or what kvcl proposed) has not been shown, in my opinion, to be a benefit of capital punishment.
I have seen no statistics from states that allow capital punishment that show their crime rates are lower than those states that prohibit capital punishment. In fact, I believe, (and I'm sure if I'm mistaken about any of this someone will show me) that Texas, which puts more convicts to death than any other state, still has one of the highest crime rates in the country.Of course, obviously, if someone is dead, they can't commit any more crimes. That is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about deterring future, possible criminals from doing the same or worse. I don't believe there are any statistics that show any significant difference between states that have capital punishment and don't. I'm always open to new information however, unlike some on this board, so, fire away if you have such data.
As a side note about the criminal put to death himself, and whether or not you can argue that his death alone justifies capital punishment (to at least keep the worse of the worse off the streets), after all the countless appeals they're given and most take, the cost alone to fight the appeals makes it unreasonable to suggest we should do such on a regular basis. The cost to the state, for one capital crimes defendant alone, can easily reach into the millions. For that kind of money, he can sit in a jail cell for the rest of his life and not tie up the courts in the first place.
2. "Justice". This is perhaps the most common argument used to support the death penalty.
It is derived from the belief that an "eye for an eye" is the only rule of law that can possibly work in a society, and even, the only rule that really has any moral justification. I would argue that not only are there alternatives that are morally superior, but also superior from an emotional standpoint. Many of you to whom this post is directed to now have written something much like what oline wrote, which I quoted above. You can't steal a life you must pay for that life and he will...with his own...it is only fitting. In effect, what oline and the rest of you are saying is, "He's taken a life, now he must pay for that life, with his own. There must be retribution here, we must 'get back' what we lost (which in this case was the little van Dam girl)".Again, as I said in my original post on this thread, nothing can "bring her back", so to say he must "pay" is not to say we can "bring her back", but that a certain amount of justice must be meted out, as a preventative measure, so that he and others like him will/may not do something similar. So how can he "pay"? Is his life suitable payment for the little girl's he (apparently) killed? Do you see where I am coming from now? If you don't, hopefully this next statement will clear it up for you: I haven't really followed this case, but, assuming he did do everything the prosecutors say he did, that makes him pure scum in my book. Also, I don't know Danielle van Damm very well either, but I'd be willing to bet she was NOT pure scum.
But that's what the "eye for an eye" among you are saying; you are saying that his life is equal to hers; that somehow his death can "equal out" the loss that her death caused. I would ask you each this, "How can the death of pure scum equal the death of a beautiful little girl?"
Please realize that I'm not some "bleeding heart liberal" who thinks the criminal has as much "rights" as his victim. Such reasoning disgusts me. But I would be willing to wager that many (if not all) people who are for capital punishment have themselves never spent a day in jail, much less the rest of their lives. Do you honestly believe that living in a 8'X 12' cell (even IF it has cable TV), BY YOURSELF, for the rest of your life is like some vacation? Is the idea of feeding, housing and clothing a known rapist, serial killer/baby killer repugnant to me? You BET it is. But you know what's more repugnant to me? Engaging in some kind of "trade" in lives, like some worthless scum's life is somehow equal to his victims' lives.
Actually, when it comes down to it, I'm being accused by some of you of being a bleeding heart liberal for being against the death penalty, when I think I could argue the opposite. I want the criminal to SUFFER as MUCH as possible! Do you honestly think that 30-40 years in prision (or whatever the natural life span of a monster is) ALONE, with no one but a guard that hates you to talk to, is LESS cruel than putting a needle in his arm as he falls asleep??? Some of you have suggested that the death penalty should be supported because some of these scum have even ASKED for it themselves. I would ask you, why do you think they asked for it? Was it because they were truly sorry, or because they didn't want to REALLY suffer?
Driving home yesterday, I heard Sean Hannity talking about why he supports the death penalty, and I think this is why most people (perhaps not most of you, but most that do) support it. He reasoned that because our justice system sucks so much, that is, we let the rapists and murderers out in so little time, that really the only "ultimate punishment" is to have the death penalty. He said, and this is as direct a quote as I can remember, "IF we could have it so that we WOULD have harsher sentences, then I'm not really sure we would need the death penalty, but for RIGHT NOW, it's the best we can have." I would argue that this is fatalism, this is simply resigning yourself to having the death penalty, because it would be "too hard" to do the RIGHT thing, the thing that you know you WOULD want, all things being equal. This is no reason to not believe in anything, in my opinion. Let's work to change the system of justice and GET these stiffer sentences. Build more jails! Do what it takes! But if you really are in support of something, and the only reason you don't is because it's "too much work" to do otherwise, that's a pretty pathetic reason not to believe in something.
In closing, I would like to thank the majority of you for not engaging in the petty, ad hominem style of debate that I have almost come to expect on FR. It was both refreshing and pleasing to see that perhaps I am wrong to believe that if I take a stance contrary to most conservatives, that I will only be treated with disrespect and even out right hostility, borne of a "knee jerk" reflex response, more than intelligence and civility. Bravo to you (and you know who you are) who have not fallen into that most distasteful mentality.
To the small minority of you who are otherwise: ..... (and yes I meant to leave that blank because you are not worth my time)
I am concerned here with consistency of moral outrage. Don't misunderstand me, the righteous indignation directed at David Westerfield is well deserved. I just think other types of murder and butchery deserve the same approbation.
What is the purpose of law in the first place? Is it not to serve justice? And what does justice mean, other than to give people what they deserve? As a thought experiment, what if the people through their elected representatives were to decide that all persons with the screen name of FreeTheHostages could be kidnapped, assaulted and butchered in private? Would it be right to consider such an act lawful?
Cordially,
I asked you this because I find it a hard thing. If I was DA or a cop and had a bad one up -- a violent man, a murderer, it would be very hard for me not to go for it. I only hope that my faith in the Providence and confidence in the system would counter the perception of a duty to remove a clear danger -- to preserve public safety and prevent future murder, that I would opt for the straight up road of full due process.
I will say, IN THE SUBJUNCTIVE TENSE, IF Brenda has had another of her children butchered by her actions, then she is no better than David Westerfield. Butchery is butchery. I admit openly that in advance that I have no evidentiary proof and that it is a wild guess. My judgment of their deathstyle is mine alone. However, I do know what they admitted to under oath, which is not nothing.
Cordially,
1. Child porn/rape videos
2. hair evidence
3. fiber evidence on her necklace, in the dryer lint, the trashcan etc.
4. palm print next to a bed
5. blood/dna on his own jacket and on his own carpet.
6. He had a drinking problem and dramatic change in personality: withdrawn, depressed etc.
7. he was forceful at least once w/his girlfriend
8. his girlfriend left because of the drinking problem
9. his own niece had acknowledged him putting his fingers in her mouth not once but twice. She bit him as hard and as long as she could.
10. his long strange MH journey ..which according to his own son's testimony, he had plannned to be alone that weekend.
11. His own statement was destroyed wrt: MH issue by fellow campers IE:weather/temp
12. His unusual behaviour at the cleaners..
13..oh yeah, susan l's comments about him harassing her over the phone cuz he was sitting outside her resident watching her kiss her date goodbye. She said it made her feel very uncomfortable.
This is just the top 13..
Hooray! Thanks for asking that! I do want to answer that very question .... you must have read my mind! Hooray!
The answer to all is YES! YES! YES! YES!
Let the Jury hear it all ... even "fruit of a poisoned tree" or whatever the legal term is for evidence acquired in an improper way. Let it be explained to them, that the evidence was so acquirred, that they the Jury has a duty to discount it.
Prosecute the cops, penalize the cops who so acquire evidence -- but don't hold back a thing from a Jury.
This is a radical idea, I know, in present time -- but I beleive it was the rule when a Jury was called out as the method of criminal trial in our Constitution.
It is crazy for a Jury to walk out a day after its cerdict and say "Gee if we had only known ..." what was obvious to everyone else, or even to a number of people if not everyone. Such filtering unavoidably creates a great distrust of the due process of the system. The Jury must seek to speak in accord with ALL the facts.
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