Posted on 04/22/2005 11:19:32 AM PDT by halieus
OCALA, Fla. — A convicted sex offender apparently committed suicide in despair over signs posted in his neighborhood calling him a child rapist.
Clovis Claxton (search), 38, was found dead by his father with one of the signs beside his body. It was less than a day after his release from a psychiatric hospital.
His mother blames Marion County (search) Commissioner Randy Harris (search) for her son's death. Harris proposed putting up flyers in the neighborhoods of sex offenders to alert neighbors.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It's working
That's why God gave us the death penalty, so that we could remove the pos vermin from society permanently, yet not have to provide for it either, when the funds and food could be better used for decent people.
Christ can genuinely change people but I would do well to keep my children away from the genuinely changed.
Make that everybody's children.
To date, however, not one pedophile has been changed or cured.
Permitting them free roam in society is an outrage and nothing short of offering up children for their taking.
Sacrificial lambs.
If those gangs are taken out of the picture, people in lazy government agencies will find more productive employment than having coffee and dognuts all day long. It's part of welfare reform. All government employees are actually on welfare and tend to get a lower center of gravity as time goes by. BS their way up the ladder and irritable when they have to actually do something.
"Well, if the guy was 20 and was convicted of statutory rape for consensual sex with a 17-year-old, I think the treatment was way too harsh. I think "those details" could make a huge difference. We just don't know."
Whenever one of these Meghan's law cases come up, someone brings up this concern. But if you look at the way nearly all Meghan's law bills have been written and implemented, neighborhood notification is only for high-risk offenders. Most states don't even include statutory rapists in their databases. It's perfectly safe to assume that this guy's neighborhood was notified for a reason.
"The fact that he took his own life over the incessant hounding leads me to think maybe he wasn't necessarily a monsterous baby-raper, as so many here are presuming him to have been."
Jeffrey Dahmer (sp?) told investigators that he felt terrible guilt over his crimes and often contemplated suicide as a way to stop his compulsion to kill. A guilt-ridden monster is still a monster.
Sounds like a self-governing solution...it is a start anyway.
"That's a problem with the listings and the label "sex offender." There's a huge disparity in their offenses and their danger to the community, but all get the same level of label."
NOT true. Folks, go read your state's Meghan's law statutes.
It's a start.
I've looked through my local database and I think it did give information about the crime. I'm not positive, and I don't remember what the web site was. Maybe someone else will chime in.
If you'll read Genesis 4, you'll see that the purpose of that mark actually was to protect Cain from vigilante justice.
Dan
Punish offenders for crimes that happen, not for ones that might happen and we're scared of. That's the price of freedom and a just judicial system. The alternative is far worse when you look on down the road.
It's no picnic to look like the one supporting molesters, as you can see, but once we allow these frightening cases to change OUR liberty interests (once you change the molester's, you change your own as well), the die is cast, and 100 years from now your grandkids willl have one very big fight on their hands.
It is not reassuring to learn that YOU know 8.8 out of ten will reoffend, yet you seem sympathetic towards the 100% class, more so than the victims and our decent society.
It's not a comparison problem. I'm not asserting their rights over anyone's. I'm trying to point out that advocating the establishment of reflexive life sentences, of permanent differential treatment after incarceration, and of imposing punishmets before a subsequent crime has been committed by an ex-con are all extremely dangerous ideas, and ones expressly forbidden by the Founders. Molesters suck, but an anti-Constitutional Judicial system sucks worse.
I have small to no sympathy for the 12% you seem inclined to stand up for.
Personally, I want the government to respect the rights of all citizens. Amongst those 12% can be falsely-accused innocents. (as this thread attests, emotionalism supercedes logic where this subject is involved... get 12 like that on a jury, and you stand no chance whatsoever, innocent or not.)
As to youir criticism of medical science, I see no factual support.
Look at any psychiatrist's cure rate. If their patient's leave their offices "cured" (which is what would happen if it were an actual science), that's a success. If they have higher than a 12% rate of success by those terms as a field, then I'll eat that 3 week old pizza in the fridge.
I first heard the near zero rehab statistic from a doctor, who I would otherwise consider a do-gooder type. It therefore impressed me, since I would have thought she would want me to believe they could be rehabilitated. Her medical treatment for them, is lockdown. Lifelong.
Read that again. You honestly consider "life-time lock-down" to be a valid, viable medical prescription for a malady, rather than a knee-jerk emotional response to a scary situation? That's troubling, and probably a sign that you'll probably not "get" what I'm trying to communicate. I hope others do, even if they can't say so for fear of seeming "pro-molester".
You're right, I forgot about that. Not the way it's worked here in Utah, historically, though. In this case, this was NOT vigilante justice. Not that that's a bad thing.
Is it better to warn millions of potential victims than to let one sicko live because he can't deal with the shame of it all? I say yes.
OK, so here's a guy. Served his time. Let's posit he's genuinely repentant, for the case of discussion.
He comes up to you, says, "Hunter112, I want to make my life right. What else do I need to do?"
What do you say?
Dan
For one thing, he must NEVER be anyplace where his previous victims could ever be again. And frankly, if it were up to me to make the laws, he'd be asking that from prison, where he'd spend the rest of his days, guaranteeing that he'd never offend again.
I went to court ten years ago, losing everything I had to rescue my kids from a child rapist their mother was going to marry (she eventually did, after they turned 18). I don't have any soft spots in either my heart or my head for child molesters. I'd like to see them all tortured to death over the course of a week, until they died slowly, then put video of the best parts of it on the Internet as a warning to the rest of them.
Yes, I believe in vigilantism when it comes to this. We surrender our rights to seek our own justice to a society that in exchange protects us from the evil. Our society has failed the innocent most spectacularly in this situation. I'm an agnostic, but even if your God exists, he couldn't make a place in hell hot enough for a child rapist.
Thanks for a straight-up answer.
"Read that again. You honestly consider "life-time lock-down" to be a valid, viable medical prescription for a malady, rather than a knee-jerk emotional response to a scary situation? That's troubling, and probably a sign that you'll probably not "get" what I'm trying to communicate. I hope others do, even if they can't say so for fear of seeming "pro-molester"."
I get exactly what you are saying. You are advocating subjecting the decent society, to your roll of the dice, that a FEW will NOT reoffend.
We have locked up certain types of mentally ill people, in the past and present. It protects themselves and others.
In the short term, it can be done by any policeman. In California it is section 5150 and is defined as someone that poses a "risk to themselves or others."
In case you didn't know, judges can hold criminals, at the end of their sentence, for similar reasons. It is mental illness.
So with what I've just stated, do you find a pedophile to be different? The psychiatrist I met, as well as other competent medical experts consider pedophilia to be a "mental illness."
Lock em up.
In Genesis 9:6, God said to Noah, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." Immediately after Noah’s Flood, God authorized people to establish governments that would bring order and justice to society. Part of the authority given to a government is to execute its worse criminals with the death penalty.
Whether we like it or not, the Bible allows for the death penalty for certain crimes. Leviticus 24:17 says, "If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death."
God authorizes governments to use the death penalty on hard-core criminals. Numbers 35:16-21 affirms it. The Bible says the execution of a quick penalty serves as a deterrent to crime (Deuteronomy 13:11; Ecclesiastes 8:11). This same principle carries into the New Testament. In Romans 13:4, Paul says a policeman "is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
Paul said in Acts 25:11, "If I am guilty of doing anything deserving of death, I do not refuse to die." This shows that Paul believed in the legitimacy of capital punishment.
Absolutely, totally agree. Looked twice to make sure I hadn't written it myself!
Dan
I don't believe parents, in all cases, are to blame for the mental-illness problems of their children.
A malfunctioning brain is often more a result of genetics than upbringing.
I'm generalizing like you did. The facts of the case, the background we need to judge, aren't present in this news report.
My basic point is parents aren't always to blame for their children's actions, especially where mental illness is present, and pedophilia is a mental illness.
Good riddance if he raped a bunch of kids. Molestation is heinous but actual penetration of children is worthy of the death penalty. He imposed the death penalty on himself
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