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Reporting from Washington —
On the day Jared Lee Loughner was indicted for the shootings in Tucson, the top federal prosecutor in Arizona signaled that the government most likely would request the ultimate punishment.
But the federal death penalty process is filled with obstacles, and Loughner's execution would be far from assured if he is convicted.
The man is a nut. His acts have no ideological coherence at all.
So since he doesn't stand by a pre-configured ideology he shouldn't be executed?
I think we should go with Singapore's stance on executions. Execute murderers, attempted murderers, hostage takers, large scale drug traffickers, terrorists, violent gun criminals and people that break into homes while carrying a weapon.
A civilized society doesn't allow animals to run wild in their communities.
It's not hard to believe, that if he's locked up for life, his prison life will be the envy of many other prisoners.
I'd be extremely curious to see how much money he has amassed already in his prison & commissary accounts, by supporters, fans, women who fall in love with prisoners.
His shooting of the judge would probably bring in a big chunk of money, alone.
Anyway of finding out how much money has been donated to him already?
The gossip is that Loughner will plead guilty this week and receive a life sentence for his crimes.
Someone did mention that he conceivably could also be tried by the state of Arizona for murder. That's certainly an option. My hunch is though that its all part of the deal. Loughner's legal counsel probably wouldn't have recommended a guilty plea unless he knew his client wouldn't face capital punishment period. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens this week.
Randy seems to think that we shouldn't have an insanity defense because "civilized societies" don't allow animals to run wild in their community". My good man, that's why there is an option in the system called "life without parole".
Every country that he would recognize as "civilized" not only allows an insanity defense, but they also don't have the death penalty at all. Singapore maybe the only "sort-of" exception to that rule. I say "sort of" because until the last decade or so they would have been seen as a third world country.'
Just for the record, the death penalty has been abolished in Canada, all of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and almost 20 states in this country. I don't necessarily agree with that approach. However, in this case its pretty clear Loughner wasn't playing with a full deck. Its enough of an extenuating circumstance that based on what I know would prevent me from sentencing him to death.
A wise country would at least examine the relationship between having semi automatic firearms with magazines that hold 20 rounds or more of ammunition available in a manner that crazies like Loughner can buy them and homicides. However, we don't do that (and won't be doing that any point in the forseeable future). I have no reason to believe we won't see repeat offenses like this one.
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Good.
