Maybe I should go first. -- Final End

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Date Posted: 05:07:16 07/19/03 Sat
Author: The Serpent
Subject: Maybe I should go first.
In reply to: The Serpent 's message, "What is everyone's feelings on the Death Penalty?" on 04:19:37 07/16/03 Wed

First let me answer an enevitable question. Of course we should care for the victim. Of course I believe there should be much attention paid to the victim. Compensation and consolidation. Something in our society I know to be a given. Maybe I've taken it for granted? But on the other hand, we capitalize on the criminal. We give them away to the media, so they can pour as much blood and butter on the convicted criminal as they want. Even to the very point of giving the criminal some sort of cult following. Murder and violence is suddenly "hip" in our society. This is examplified by the state. They are allowed to kill. Which, to a small following, might turn the criminal into a martyr. Suddenly the media and the state is held accountable for the criminal becoming an icon. After all, it's poetic justice to die by the hands of your enemies. Which is probably the most insulting form of "justice" you can give the victim.

And up until DNA testing, more than twenty people, who have been on death row for nearly sixteen years, were suddenly being let free because they were found innocent.

This tells me that your prejudice nature, "guilty before proven innocent," mentality would have us let an innocent man be put to death.

Why in the hell does it make sense to be pro-death? Just so we can feel good about killing the man we thought murdered somebody we loved? Does this bring closure?

Closure reminds me of the lawyers after the whole Columbine shooting incident where parents allowed themselves to be straggled by lawyers; suing the schools, suing the sheriff, suing the other parents; as though they had some secret underground mission to kill their children; just so the parents can enrich carpet bagging litigation crocodiles who claimed they can bring them closure.

The two kids who did the shooting killed themselves. Did they bring about proper justice? Or did the fundamentalists and the lawyers do that for them?

I'm so hurt and angry, instead of getting to the root of the problem, and since I can't kill anyone, I'll pimp my daughter's tragic death to Christian extremists, and cash in. Or I could make money by suing everyone's ass off, as though it'll bring closure.

Let's get serious for a second. There ain't no such thing as closure. All the law suits, all the religion, and all the happy death-sentences in the world are not going to reverse the fact that people have lost loved ones to violent crimes. People that were a part of them. No little magic closure is ever going to bring them back and make everything all better. The loss, the longing, that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach will never truly go away. Nor should it.

Also, if you don't know by now, we do live in America, where the official word is: "innocent until proven guilty." You're not officially a criminal until proven so. When they are proven so, that's when you decide on their fate.

Personally, I believe the criminal should be thrown behind bars. Although, statistically most violent crime is over hard drugs or to get money for drugs. So, for them, drug rehab as well. On that issue, we should legalize some drugs so the mob can't price them. Violent crime will go down.

Domestic violence and/or murders should be handled by throwing the killer(s) directly in jail. Teach our kids communication rather than competition in schools and home. There's this case where a child's dad beat another child's dad to death in a school locker room in front of all the kids. How do you teach no violence then? Or how do you teach no violence when the state has a license to kill? Sometimes people who kill feel justified in their actions. Just like the state. As if the murderer(s) served some sort of justice for themselves or those around them. Charles Manson says stupid shit like: the president can send men over to Vietnam to kill people, so Manson has no problem using people to kill.

He's still alive, by the way. And, as far as I know, there's been no other murders committed by him or his "family," who is also very much alive.

However, people keep telling me the only thing we can do for the victims is kill the person who hurt them and/or killed one of their loved ones? That's it? I still don't see how killing their attacker will somehow compensate and bring closure for the victims' life long trauma. That still takes me back to the Columbine shooting incident where the kids killed themselves. There's no justice in that. But, instead of getting to the root of the problem, we (the microwave age) like the quick and easy way out.

Obviously threating with the death penalty isn't doing a damn bit of good. You kill one murderer (innocent or not) there's, potentially, five hundred more murderers and rapists out there.

Not to mention the ones being born if we carry-out on this same road.

Wouldn't we rather prevent a crime rather than think of the punishment, when the damage (that should have never happened in the first place) is already done? And instead of over populating prisons with tons of small-time drug offenders and prostitutes, we fill them up with the real bad guys. And those bad guys are obviously rapists, murderers, hard drug dealers (not the buyers), and child molesters. And take our tax money outta the prisons, so those bad guys can live in the shit hole they created in other people's lives.

It seems, when we think of the Death Penalty, the usual targets always come to mind; Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, Allen Lee Davis, Karla Faye Tucker, & Aileen Wuornos. Just to name a few of the most popular. Also, there's Wanda Jean Allen. A woman who had shot and killed her lesbian lover in 1988.

Wanda Jean Allen was hit by a truck and stabbed in the temple as a child. Her IQ was knocked straight down to 68. However, by monkeying with the law, somehow it got out that she made it not only through high school, but through college. Thus, intelligent enough to be fully aware of her actions.

In the case there was supposed evidence of her graduating a certain college, with by further investigation, there was no record of her ever attending any college, and she in fact dropped outta her high school. Any doctor would have considered her mentally challenged. A threat to herself and those around her. Where, now, she should be sitting in a mental institution, but is now dead by lethal injection.

Maybe we're not always thinking about those popular people put to death. Maybe those miscellaneous people who have been charged with killing. But, until 2000, didn't truly have just trials. In Texas, particularly, people have been put to death for stealing a car.

But, yet again, our prejudice, "guilty before proven innocent" outlook on life would have us killing someone we loved if the news said they were guilty.

With the death penalty being around, they could possibly kill off anyone they want to.

No other civilized country in the world has the death penalty, and their murder rates aren't nearly as high as ours. China has it. But I can't think of anyone else at the moment.

Some people still can't see past the black & white issues. You're either guilty or innocent. And this is where I go back to; guilty or innocent by our (infallible?) justice system?

If putting people to death stopped murder, or rape & murder, then why hasn't it stopped yet?

It's a slap in the face to a true victim, when we put to death those who invaded and destroyed their life. A form of death penalty has been around since time itself. Has this stopped anything? Why does this "evil" continue to invade our daily lives? We keep riding on that 86 while another criminal is born. I care about the long term affects. Not the short term gains. Prevention has always been known to be worth an ounce of cure. Why do we insist on taking primitive steps of law & justice just to end up back in the same corner?

People talk about caring about the victim. And we must ride over the same waves over and over again with no true results, just so we can wake up to another morning with the same old shit going on. What about the victim to-be? Should we continue on the same road or insist change?

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Replies:

I oppose it -- Drummond, 23:42:04 08/14/03 Thu