For all the opponents of the death penalty....read this

[indra]

I think you're probably not the only person who would be shocked at agreeing with me on this one.

And if you knew what I think about the judicial system, you might be even more shocked.

I'm actually not shocked as I know many people of wildly varying social and political views who are opposed to capital punishment. I just thought it was kind of amusing since we so often disagree vehemently.

 

[BVS]

I find it disturbing when I dont see crowds going to grieve with the family but grieve for a murderer.

Wow, you really don't get it.

No one is grieving for their lives, they are grieving for a vengeful nation. They are grieving for the fact that we've become the monster.

Something you have still yet to acknowledge in all my questions...

 

[melon]

Re: Re: Re: For all the opponents of the death penalty....read this

Why should they get the luxury of life when they killed this child in one of the worst ways possible?

You just said that death was "too good" for them. So, basically, you're saying that nothing will satisfy your palette for vengeance.

Life without parole is, for many prisoners, a fate worse than death.

Melon

 

[Justin24]

Wow, you really don't get it.

No one is grieving for their lives, they are grieving for a vengeful nation. They are grieving for the fact that we've become the monster.

Something you have still yet to acknowledge in all my questions...

We don't become the monster, we take care of the monster that's strapped to a table with needles in his arm. He's lucky it's not the Gas Chamber and that we have made it a little less painfull for them.

 

[melon]

We don't become the monster, we take care of the monster that's strapped to a table with needles in his arm. He's lucky it's not the Gas Chamber and that we have made it a little less painfull for them.

Again, there's increasing evidence that lethal injection is incredibly painful. It's just that completely paralyzed people can't express it.

You'd be better off pumping carbon monoxide into a room.

Melon

 

[Justin24]

Again, there's increasing evidence that lethal injection is incredibly painful. It's just that completely paralyzed people can't express it.

You'd be better off pumping carbon monoxide into a room.

Melon

Why shouldn't he suffer? Like he made a family or families suffer? He/she made his/her victims suffer.

 

[martha]

Why shouldn't he suffer? Like he made a family or families suffer? He/she made his/her victims suffer.

See Justin, it's posts like this that make people crazy when they try to discuss something with you. You ramble on about playing God, you make illogical assumptions about how people feel and believe so you can make a point, and then you use the same wording that you just used to criticize the other person's viewpoint to support your position.

You always want it both ways. I sometimes think you don't exactly know what you think before you start arguing, or you haven't thought it through completely. And then you're unwilling to back down, so you just keep posting, ignoring what people have said so you can continue to have it both ways.

 

[Justin24]

See Justin, it's posts like this that make people crazy when they try to discuss something with you. You ramble on about playing God, you make illogical assumptions about how people feel and believe so you can make a point, and then you use the same wording that you just used to criticize the other person's viewpoint to support your position.

You always want it both ways. I sometimes think you don't exactly know what you think before you start arguing, or you haven't thought it through completely. And then you're unwilling to back down, so you just keep posting, ignoring what people have said so you can continue to have it both ways.

I know what I am talking about when I speak. I know I wont change peoples minds here. You wont change mine, so let's leave it at that.

 

[Irvine511]

I want to know how many supporters of the death penalty would be willing to be the person who pulls the plug. The one who pushes the button for the IV flow.

My simplest reason for opposing the death penalty is that I could never, ever be that person. And if I can't bring myself to be that person, then I shouldn't expect other people to do my dirty work for me.

this is an excellent point, and the main reason i remain reluctantly opposed to euthanasia -- i don't think it's necessarily unethical to end your life if you are dying of a horrible, painful disease, but i do think it's unethical to implicate someone else in that decision.

i see no reason why the death penalty is any different.

 

[Angela Harlem]

morally and ethically, i think they're worlds apart.

 

[Irvine511]

morally and ethically, i think they're worlds apart.

but it does boil down to having someone else take your life.

 

[anitram]

Somebody also takes your life when they remove your respirator, and when they follow other specific DNR orders.

 

[Justin24]

http://www.myspace.com/savehasanshakur
http://www.myspace.com/elijahjoubert
http://www.myspace.com/freejoshmaxwell

 

[Justin24]

Somebody also takes your life when they remove your respirator, and when they follow other specific DNR orders.

So I am guessing your against assisted suicide.

 

[Irvine511]

Somebody also takes your life when they remove your respirator, and when they follow other specific DNR orders.

no, they are simply stepping out of the way and letting nature take it's course.

i have been through this issue extensively with my father, a physician, and he draws a big line between removing a feeding tube and actually injecting someone with a tranquilizer strong enough to stop someone's heart.

 

[80sU2isBest]

no, they are simply stepping out of the way and letting nature take it's course.

i have been through this issue extensively with my father, a physician, and he draws a big line between removing a feeding tube and actually injecting someone with a tranquilizer strong enough to stop someone's heart.

I agree with you 100%.

 

[anitram]

If we were letting nature take its course a good percentage of terminal patients would not be receiving anyting but palliative care.

In end-of life cases, where you are pumped so full of morphine that you are neither awake nor able to recognize your family anymore, is this letting nature take its course? And what is the difference between administering a dosage of morphine to preserve your dying carcass for 2 more weeks and administering a slightly higher dose for you to die that moment? There are plenty of people who do not want to live out their last days in that sort of agony. I respect their views.

ETA: Irvine, I agreed with you at one point. I shared your views and 80s views as well. That was before I took care of a terminal case. My views have since then changed 180 degrees. It used to be a matter of philosophy to me, but I see end-of life decisions to be a personal matter and after watching first hand what it is like to be dying for a long time in the worst possible of ways, I no longer agree with you. It's one of those few things that over the course of my lifetime I've changed my mind on completely.

 

[trevster2k]

Hey anitram, did you see this week in BC where a 76-yr old man shot his 80 yr old wife in the hospital and then shot himself. No details as to the motive yet. Apparently, the woman was set to be placed in a long-term care facility, the couple was described as a loving and caring. My thinking is that they discussed this end of life issue and it's possible that the solution was killing the spouse and themselves instead of being separated and one or the other dying a slow death. It would be extreme but last year an elderly couple who were living together in a seniors home were separated and the wife died away from her husband. This happened in BC too. He died soon after, of a broken heart IMO, I do think that loving couples who have spent decades together are linked and their life force is connected by their love for one another. I see it so many times when one spouse passes, the other suffers so much they almost lose the will to live.

Anyway, this could be the kind of drastic measures our medical system is driving the elderly to consider instead of lingering in a sterile hospital environment in a state which no one wants to be in. My grandfather had Parkinsons' and it ate away at his mind and body. I refuse to remember him the way he was during my last visit with him. He was delusional, unable to get out of bed without assistance, he lost something like 70 lbs, it was pathetic. He wasn't living, he was alive but not living.

 

[martha]

Hey anitram, did you see this week in BC where a 76-yr old man shot his 80 yr old wife in the hospital and then shot himself. No details as to the motive yet. Apparently, the woman was set to be placed in a long-term care facility, the couple was described as a loving and caring. My thinking is that they discussed this end of life issue and it's possible that the solution was killing the spouse and themselves instead of being separated and one or the other dying a slow death.

Don't confuse murder with romance. Frequently these men are horrified at the thought of having to care for themsleves for the first time since they were married, so they kill their wives, then themselves. Sometimes it's a mutual decision, but most of the time it isn't.

 

[Liesje]

I don't support the death penalty. I could support euthanasia if it was the patient's choice and the patient was of a sound mind and could make that decision.

But those two issues seem like apples and oranges to me. A person dying slowly, wishing for euthanasia is not the same as an otherwise healthy person intentionally taking the lives of others against their will.

 

[JCR]

It was a beautiful thing watching this thread morph into a discussion about euthanasia. I'm with anitram on this one. One's death is a personal thing...to have the freedom to choose how you step into the void is a choice that not all of us will be able to make. It's either BLAM , you're gone or you get to watch and feel yourself decay form disease or age. None of us is gettin' out of here alive...those of you agianst euthanasia need to meditate seriously about this issue. I've seen what AIDS and ahlzheimer's do to the mind and the body. NObody wants to be remembered as they were at their weakest and often delusional point.

*Hey, just a small question to melon: how is it that if one is paralyzed they can still feel the pain? The definition of paralyzed is absence of sensation.

 

[phillyfan26]

See Justin, it's posts like this that make people crazy when they try to discuss something with you. You ramble on about playing God, you make illogical assumptions about how people feel and believe so you can make a point, and then you use the same wording that you just used to criticize the other person's viewpoint to support your position.

You always want it both ways. I sometimes think you don't exactly know what you think before you start arguing, or you haven't thought it through completely. And then you're unwilling to back down, so you just keep posting, ignoring what people have said so you can continue to have it both ways.

He said he wasn't playing God by having the man killed, and then in the next post he said the killer played God by killing. What is playing God, and what isn't?

Then he says we make it less painful with injection, someone says it's just as painful, and he says, good they should have pain.

 

[BVS]

He said he wasn't playing God by having the man killed, and then in the next post he said the killer played God by killing. What is playing God, and what isn't?

Then he says we make it less painful with injection, someone says it's just as painful, and he says, good they should have pain.

I agree, there's a wanting it both ways he keeps going back and forth with his arguments. I don't know.

 

[yolland]

Hey folks, let's cool it with the public analysis of people's argument styles, please. Justin already gave his own reply to martha, and I think that should be the end of it. Thanks.

 

[Justin24]

I do not see anything wrong with the execution of a criminal who was found guilty and the evidence is 100% accurate. After what that criminal did he is no longer a member of society, he/she is a dangerous menace, who can still cause harm in the prison system even though there not on the streets anymore. I am tired of the well he/she is a human being argument.

 

[Liesje]

I do not see anything wrong with the execution of a criminal who was found guilty and the evidence is 100% accurate. After what that criminal did he is no longer a member of society, he/she is a dangerous menace, who can still cause harm in the prison system even though there not on the streets anymore. I am tired of the well he/she is a human being argument.

When is evidence 100% accurate? How can we be so sure?

Ever seen 'The Life of David Gale'?

 

[BVS]

I do not see anything wrong with the execution of a criminal who was found guilty and the evidence is 100% accurate.

But this is where you are wrong, there's no such thing as 100% accuracy...

 

[Justin24]

Never saw the film. might rent it this weekend. I saw Dead Man Walking. I had no remorse for Sean Penn's Character.

 

[Justin24]

So if nothing is 100% accurate then why not let Manson go? Richard Ramirez? Hell to bad we killed Gacy cause nothing is 100% accurate

 

[phillyfan26]

I am tired of the well he/she is a human being argument.

And I'm tired of some of your arguments. If you keep putting up a fight, you're going to have to get used to these arguments. Some people believe in human rights.

And the whole point is that people do make mistakes. If they were guilty, they suffer life in prison with the same exact scenario everyday, nothing to look forward to, no choices. A loss of freedom. And if they're found innocent, we let them go.

Nothing is 100%, and you act like it is, and then say you don't feel guilty about people who had to deal with that? I don't understand it.