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Have at it then; if you are that sure in your conviction that police, witnesses, prosecutors, judges, and juries never make mistakes; your conscience shouldn't feel a thing when an innocent man is executed.
I am not saying that you are wrong but what does it have to do with this thread?
I have absoloutly no sympathy for criminals especially people who murder children or rapists or etc ... I think that they are the scum of the earth and they should be put under the jail .
I think there is a recent example that could further the debate, something that used to happen fairly regularly in the past.
Just yesterday, our local news had a story of a cold case file in another county finally being "solved." The police in that county had supposedly suspected the victim, a 25 YO male, had been murdered in a drug deal gone bad back in the 1980s. Evidence came to light recently that the murderer had died, and after a year or so his friends were talking. The "victim" had a long record and was a blight on the community. The perp had married a woman that the victim had repeatedly raped during her teen years. One night, he apparently had had enough, and went to the guys house and shot him. No one mourned the death, and later, when the murderer was drunk, he would relate the story to his friends. His friends never said anything to anyone else.
There is another aspect to this that will likely never be proven, that at least some of the police had an idea what had happened, and figured that justice would not be served by having the murder stand trial and go to jail or be executed.
We also don't know if the "victim" was making life hell for the wife, or a bunch of other possible factors.
We enter into a social contract with the government to resolve our major disputes. That is best expressed as a code of laws and fair and impartial judgment. With minor disputes, we take personal responsibility to get redress, and the government approves. In cases like this, real justice may in fact be to just let sleeping dogs lie. Executing the murderer would embolden criminals, the life of the wife would be made even more miserable, the cost to the taxpayers would be increased, and the publicity would be bad for the area.
In short, every situation is unique. Passing judgment sometimes isn't needed. I know, however, had I been on any jury, that I would likely have voted innocent or refused to convict, based on a flawed law.
I watched the movie 'Capote' online last night. It was the movie that covered the period of time when Truman Capote was writing his best selling novel 'In Cold Blood'.
History applauds this book as the first time when a sympathetic identity was given to criminals.....especially those who murdered innocent people. In this case it was a whole family in Kansas back in the 50's. I really wanted to feel sorry for the criminals who were eventually put to death by hanging....but it never trumped my outrage for what they did to this family.
Do you think, as a society, that it is healthy or unhealthy for us to see criminals in a sympathetic eye? Is this fair to their innocent victims?
Again, I'm not referring to someone who got locked up due to selling pot or writing a bad check (neither of which I think should BE in jail), but true criminals with no real remorse for terrorizing and killing innocent people. This isn't about the death penalty either.....it's about our own hearts and how we see these people.....and why?
First off, I am of the belief that a grudge is dead weight that drags us down. that being said a fair amount of understand has to go into the picture. Mankind, no matter how advanced, is primal and animalistic we just have some mental control over much of it. No matter the society, the people in it, the money distribution ther ewill always be dangerous people who will kill or otherwise cause harm - this is something ingraned into us , it is our nature and it's most likely here to stay. So on one hand I would say that a man is simply that, a human being with something savage not too far down. However, I feel a goal of humanity is to advance, probably not out of, but away from this primal nature and make use of the minds we have as animals. This being said, the primal nature of a brutal criminal is something that needs to be overcome, not simply reacted to. In short, I think there is usually room for some sympathy towards a criminal for the simple reason that he is a human being just like the rest of us. On the other hand, this kind of person usually doesn't do much good for a society and cannot be allowed to cause too much harm.
There's a ton of people on either side of the issue of innocent in jail and guilty out free...the system is more heavily weighted to exclude the first error. It shouldn't be considered for every case, but there should be beyond reasonable doubt and beyond any doubt.
I remember a case years ago where a guy had decades of sexual assault charges...mostly small to medium charges, as well as petty thefts, but would tape himself doing it. He kept getting into rehab/treatment programs (liberal area) because he had points of abuse and poverty in his childhood (as well as mental illness he would refuse to medicate). Then he started committing harsher crimes, with the last two as forcible rape (and 5 years in jail) and the last as rape, torture, and then murder so she wouldn't tell. Who knows if people had taken a harsher line over the years if it would have not ended with the damaging of two innocent lives because he was given nearly unlimited leeway in what he was doing.
At some point normal every day people need to be protected from those who wish them harm, and at some point those who do this must be taken out of society where they cannot live in it in keeping in the social contract.
Sympathy for criminals is destroying cities. Crime is outrageous. The authorities pick and choose which laws to enforce. PC is rampant. There are so many threads of people asking if the city they want to move to is safe. You never heard this stuff 50 years ago.
I sympathize with their pain. I was an abused child and I know pain.. However I made the choice to break the cycle and become a good person and citizen. It was a tough choice and I lived it every day because my abuse continued until I was 40 years old.
Therefore, I have no sympathy whatsoever with people who made the opposite choice to act out their pain and cause pain and injury to others. They deserve to be punished. I would even go so far as to eliminate them to cleanse the gene pool and break the cycle. I live in a very nice rural area, however within 3 miles of my home there are 13 registered sex offenders. Parents here don't let their kids out of their sight for even one minute. They shouldn't have to live that way.
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