May 10, 2018
"We just figured might as well. It came down to might as well see how it feels to kill someone before we kill ourselves. We didn’t see no reason not to, we were about to die, what did we care for?"
From "Two teens made a suicide pact. But first, they wanted to ‘see how it feels to kill,’ police said" (WaPo).
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79 comments:
Then why not just fucking kill each other?
Best argument yet for the death penalty.
Why spend $1 million to keep these dirtbags alive for 60 years?
As they commenced their attack, Poss asked what they were doing, White confessed. “I’m sorry,” White told his victim.
Young, especially troubled people seem susceptible to extreme ideation: where the idea can displace the reality of the moment, which leads them into situations where they lack the internal self control to pull back from following through on some really stupid ideas.
“I wouldn’t mind taking a knife, shoving it into someones throat and just watch them choke on their own blood until they die.”
Alas, guns can’t be blamed.
Where does a person get these thoughts? Browse the Netflix options. The degree of gratuitous blood and guts is shocking. Consider also the preponderance of psychopathic anti-heroes. I blame Dexter. And Feminism, for diverting our gaze from the very real anomie experienced by young white males.
God help them.
I don't suppose that Clarence Darrow is going to be available to defend them.
Maybe there is another Truman Capote ready to tell their story.
But after they've been completely interviewed, I think their highest and best use would be as organ donors.
Strap 'em down. Light 'em up.
“What [the murderer] did was wrong, but in the end, he did right. … He confessed his sin.” - Defense Lawyer
He didn't do anything right. Send him to the power plant for disposal. We need the amps. We are letting amps rot in prison. That's the real sin.
Why not kill someone? After all, society doesn't put much value on human life so why should they? Just think of it as a really late term abortion.
AMAZING that they didn't follow through with their suicide pact immediately after their "experience" with murder. Why am I not surprised? Drama queens, cowards and psychopaths.......
Will the defense attorney’s pink Mohawk hurt or help with the jury?
Then why not just fucking kill each other?
That's not fair! One misses out.
Gag me with the drivel from a frustrated novelist -
"Poss was so at home with himself, he would often spill out from his family’s home wearing mismatched socks."
It'd be completely different if he had the usual teenage angst and was so not-at-home with himself that he would spill out from his family home wearing matching socks.
I wish Ann wouldn't link to articles like this. Seems like clickbait.
They'll be out of prison within twenty years. Looking on the bright side, they did not go forward with their plans to commit suicide. Maybe they learned a valuable lesson about the importance of human life after killing their classmate. That's what they can tell he parole board in twenty years. Let's just hope that society is sufficiently enlightened by then that their right to vote is no longer denied them.
"Browse the Netflix options. The degree of gratuitous blood and guts is shocking. Consider also the preponderance of psychopathic anti-heroes. I blame Dexter. And Feminism, for diverting our gaze from the very real anomie experienced by young white males. "
As Chuck's link shows, the Leopold and Loeb murder of Bobby Franks (damn Clarence Darrow for rescuing those two shits from the hangman) was also done for thrills and happened long before Netflix, popular anti-heroes, and feminism and widespread young white male angst. Leopold and Loeb came from comfortable homes and never expressed any desire to kill themselves. They were just evil little shits, like these two dirtbags are.
When I read of someone on Death Row who has been freed due to DNA evidence, I start having qualms about the death penalty. Then I hear of a case like this or the Golden State killer and I want the murderers fried. In the case of the Golden State murderer/rapist, well, he's fortunate he committed his crimes in lala land, isn't he? These two dirtballs are in Georgia, and so, despite the fact that they are minors, the outcome might be different.
"Best argument yet for the death penalty."
No, it's an argument against the death penalty. They felt free from having to care about anything, because they were going to be gone. You don't want people thinking that. But they were planning on suicide, so many people who think like that deprive us of the opportunity to impose the death penalty.
Here's a footnote I wrote a while back (referring to Gary Gilmore's declining to appeal the death penalty and preferring to die):
This preference for death over prison is scarcely bizarre. Gilmore's decision, as reported in The Executioner's Song, seemed
entirely sane and rational, given his long experience of the reality of prison life. Popular songs have long portrayed a life sentence as worse than execution. See G. Brooks, "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair" (Mills Music, Inc. 1927) ("Now I don't want to bondsman here agoin'on my bail,/And I don't wanna spend them nine and ninety years in jail;/So judge, judge, good kind judge,/Send me to the 'lectric chair."); M. Haggard & J. Sanders, "Life in Prison" ("I begged they'd sentence me to die/But they wanted me to live and I know why – My life will be a burden every day/If I could die, my pain might go away."). And Patrick Henry said, "give me liberty or give me death!" to the 2d Revolutionary Convention in Virginia, March 23, 1775 (cited in 14 ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA 108 (1986)), a sentiment the state of New Hampshire compels its drivers to bear on their license plates. See Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977) (Court straining the doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), to bar prosecution of the nonconformist couple who took offense at the slogan "Live Free or Die" and covered it up with tape); see also Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dep't of Health, 110 S.Ct. 2841, 2885 (1990) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (citing Patrick Henry's quote in recognizing a "right to die"). For further discussion of the Cruzan case, see infra note 57.
The most widely venerated refusal to fight the death penalty was that of Jesus: "Pilate questioned him again: 'Have you nothing to say in your defense? You see how many charges they are bringing against you.'But, to Pilate's astonishment, Jesus made no further reply." Mark 15:4-5. Like Gilmore, Jesus withdrew from the process the law afforded him and accepted execution. Why has Jesus' choice inspired reverence and Gilmore's scorn? Gilmore turned his back on a legal system we still support and view as a source of justice; Jesus turned his back on a legal process we consider corrupt and evil. Perhaps it is not that we despise the acceptance of death, but that we judge an expression of contempt of the legal system in accordance with our opinion of that system. Socrates is also famous for accepting the death penalty. See Plato, Crito, reprinted in Plato, THE LAST DAYS OF SOCRATES 53-70 (H. Tredennick trans. 1954). Unlike Gilmore and Jesus, however, Socrates did not refuse any available step in the legal process. He refused the extralegal step of escape and argued against violating the law in a legal system that had wronged him. Thus, he expressed the very antithesis of contempt for the legal system.
The most obvious explanation for the scorn directed at Gilmore is simply that in judging him, we cannot separate his preference for death from the fact that he was a murderer, just as we cannot separate our judgment of Jesus and Socrates from our knowledge that they committed no offense we can remotely understand as punishable by death. Whereas Jesus and Socrates were great men we would never have condemned, Gilmore was a social excrescence whose demise relieves us (judgment takes place in context, not in the abstract). Or perhaps, at least for those who support the death penalty, scorn for Gilmore's choice expresses frustration that he somehow destroyed the state's power to punish. Someone who prefers death will only be killed by execution – not punished. Gilmore is incomparable with Jesus and Socrates for any number of reasons, but among those reasons is that only Gilmore deprived us of whatever satisfaction attaches to social vengeance.
From "Standing, in Fluffy Slippers."
William @ 9:26: Did you forget the "/s" tag there?
Prof. A: "....Gilmore is incomparable with Jesus and Socrates for any number of reasons, but among those reasons is that only Gilmore deprived us of whatever satisfaction attaches to social vengeance." Yes. The theatrical aspects of criminal justice are designed to reassure and warn the audience that the miscreant not only "deserves" the penalty, but acknowledges this and feels the full weight of the suffering that the system has allocated for that wrong. Gilmore refused to play his part. He stood center stage under the hot spotlight; and just flipped the world a bird. Frustrating!
Professor Althouse, I don't care about punishment. I want to save the $1 million wasted on incarceration.
They said they wanted to die, give them their wish. By their cold blooded, premeditated murder, they have demanded their own deaths. The fact that they might be more miserable if we spend $1 million to keep them alive is of no consequence at all.
We don't need a jobs program for prison guards to watch over these dirtbags being fed at taxpayer expense.
I thinks it our stories. I believe we are mostly formed morally by the stories we are exposed to, especially when young. I know that's where my morality comes from. My parents and school had little influence in my ideas of right and wrong. I just didn't really identify with their lesson which were rare at best. I remember what I fell in love with back then. It was TV shows, and movies, and a few books. I remember the characters I identified with and wanted to be. They were heroes. Mostly it was the stoic character that was fighting for the underdog, protecting the weak, struggling to mind his own business, but usually forced into fighting for some innocent who happened to cross his path. Not always a thoroughly good man, but rising to the occasion with bravery, strength, and skill when nobody else would. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, David Carradine in Kung Foo, some of the heroes of cops shows, etc. Wanting to be that kind of man, made it impossible for me indulge in many of the evil temptations of life, and I think that singular idea in my psyche is responsible for most of the good things I have managed. This stuff rules my decisions to this day.
Modern kids are exposed to entirely different archetypes as heroes. Many of them are truly nasty, often the exact characters that were the nemeses of my archetypes.
I bet these two kids are Democrats...leftist Democrats!
I second the notion that popular culture has a not-insignificant role in all this.
There has been a lot of creative energy going into glorifying the romantic anti-hero, the powerful, beautiful ubermensch villan. That has to reflect in our shared values.
"Professor Althouse, I don't care about punishment. I want to save the $1 million wasted on incarceration."
They say the death penalty is at least as expensive, because of all the litigation, so what you care about isn't saving the money, but on seeing the money spent on what you want to buy.
I'm suggesting that you should want to buy life in prison, because it keeps the person from looking like the victim of the state, deprives him of that spotlight, and just makes him invisible and incapacitated. There's no violence and drama. Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person.
My support for the death penalty comes not just from a need for justice, but that refusing to use it devalues innocent life. When our penalty for brutal wanton murder that often includes hideous details for the victim and their family is no different than a career criminal's time in prison, it turns innocent life into a piece of property that is merely stolen, as if the victim can get it back or replace it.
My brother was murdered in cold blood by a convict out on parole with a gun. My mother never got over it, until the day the murderer died in prison 30 years later. That day, she finally found peace with it, but so much suffering was inflicted all those years reading about him going up for parole and even getting out once for two weeks before he assaulted a woman and went back.
The equivalent as a property crime would be if you got your car stolen and the guy is allowed to keep it and drive past your house everyday with a wave.
They say the death penalty is at least as expensive, because of all the litigation,
They say that but it's poor financial analysis. The litigation is not a differential cost, it's going to happen whether the sentence is death or LWOP or life.
You are wrong, Althouse. For the victims especially, but for all of us, they only go away when they are dead. Think of all the coverage of Charles Manson all those years crossing our screens and newspapers. Now imagine if the victims were family members, and you had to see that year after year, reliving the horror of your loved one every time.
There's a guy on death row here in Nevada who demands to be executed, but the courts are all tied up about how inhumane the lethal injection drugs are.
When we punish criminals based on the optics in the culture, we forget everything that really matters, but even considering those optics, it's very bad to leave murderers living, taunting, and rubbing it in in front of us all.
bagoh20, very well put.
I have long felt that death penalty jurisprudence has become the least important area of law in America, yet it dominates Supreme Court coverage and confirmation hearings. The mighty power of the law takes decades to execute a relative handful of people, but not a question can be spared for a judge's views on intellectual property, where billions are at stake. The court is working its way to the conclusion that only a foolproof process can be constitutional, that any process that is not exceedingly slow is not foolproof, and that any exceptionally slow process is unconstitutional and too expensive. We are asked to stand back and watch the journey towards this conclusion, which will, of course, be set back decades if the wrong Justice dies, but which shows itself tantalizingly in Breyer's dissents.
Far more consequential is the spread of the nihilistic fascination (TM) with causing the death of others as part of a suicide scheme. Death is trivialized in our culture. The idea of an afterlife has disappeared from the imagination of these young killers. What is left seems to be some sort of desire to be remembered, even if it is only for their horrible crimes. In this case, the killers didn't even bother with the suicide part of the scheme.
"the courts are all tied up about how inhumane the lethal injection drugs are."
I agree that lethal injection is not very humane because so many of these murderers are drug addicts with no peripheral veins.
The most humane was the gas chamber and California invented an argument as part of the Rose Bird resistance to the death penalty for any crime.
In early times, the death penalty was much more common for lesser crimes because there was no secure way to insure long prison sentences.
Now, the best argument for it is with murder, especially of police officers and prison guards. The only cells with privacy in California prisons are the death row cells. It's the best room in the house.
At least we can all agree these guys should be able to vote, even if found to be felons and/or under the age of 18*.
Right?
* Assumed, DNR the article.
"I blame Dexter. And Feminism,"
These guys didn't watch Dexter:
"I opened her breast and with a knife cut through the fleshy parts of the body. I may say that while opening the body I was so greedy that I trembled, and could have cut out a piece and eaten it."
"When he had obtained the body, he cut it up with a sword or pocket-knife, tore out the entrails, and then masturbated. The sex of the bodies is said to have been a matter of indifference to him, though it was ascertained that this modern vampire had dug up more female than male corpses. During these acts he declares himself to have been in an indescribable state of sexual excitement."
"Gradually the thought came to him of how pleasurable it would be to stab a young and pretty girl in the region of the genitals, and take delight in the sight of the blood running from the knife."
I personally am against the death penalty, but I think all lifers should be given the option once a week of taking a suicide pill.
They could have applied to the Planned Parenthood corporation et al to satiate their elective abortion lust. Then toasted with a nice Chianti and fava beans, or self-abort after the bodies were cold if that was their Choice.
Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person.
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed...
That is to say that the Bible is an immoral book.
sounded more like something found in Podesta's emails
The cost of death-row appeals could be recouped with a GoFundMyExecution crowdsourcing. Or pay-per-view.
I'm suggesting that you should want to buy life in prison, because it keeps the person from looking like the victim of the state, deprives him of that spotlight, and just makes him invisible and incapacitated.
What incentive does someone in prison for life without parole, and with no prospect of the death penalty, have not to engage in all sorts of mayhem: violence in prison, escape attempts, etc.? What are they going to do, lock him up?
The solution to the problem of litigation costs is to change the rules that allow everyone on death row virtually a blank check for endless appeals.
To second James K, people in prison for life without parole can (and do) kill guards and each other; they can be (and are) sexual predators; they can (and do) escape or be released and prey on society again.
Why are those innocents, unlike the possible innocents among the convicted, not worthy of consideration in our moral calculus of whether and how to implement capital punishment?
The litigation costs cited by opponents of the death penalty are the costs that they themselves do their damnedest to maximize, and I consider that argument made in bad faith.
Why is assisted suicide so humane and peaceful and lethal injection so painful and grotesque?
Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person.
Unfortunately, they don't stay caught, do they?
In the post-war decade, many nations of Western Europe abolished the death penalty. Fine. Lock 'em up for life. But that's not how it has shaped up. It wasn't long before the same people who advocated again capital punishment began to agitate against life imprisonment. Today, those who commit murder in Europe and are brought to trial can look forward to 20-25 years in the slams, With good behavior and parole, they're out in 15. As it is you're more likely to serve a life sentence for egregious property crime than taking someone's irreplaceable life.
"I'm suggesting that you should want to buy life in prison, because it keeps the person from looking like the victim of the state, deprives him of that spotlight, and just makes him invisible and incapacitated. There's no violence and drama. Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person."
That's a cogent way of making your case against the death penalty. Not every decision should be boiled down to dollars and cents, anyway. I would extend your humanistic vision also to stop euthanizing perfectly healthy stray animals at a shelter due to overcrowding, or lack of funds.
Bagoh's post at 10:20 is worthy of consideration. The mourners of the victim should not be the sole source to determine punishment, but they deserve a voice.......It's grandiose to claim that no one deserves capital punishment. Milosovic was responsible for the deaths of over 17,000 people. While undergoing trial, he lived in a cell with a kitchenette, tv, and pleasant view. Probably better accommodations than the average studio apartment in NYC. He died of a heart attack during the trial, but if convicted, that was how he would have lived out his days. If i were a family member of one of the people Milosovic had killed, his life imprisonment in cushy quarters would have been a perpetual source of anger and frustration.
I can understand when one person is deranged enough to entertain thoughts like this. Well, not understand, but accept it. But what I cannot comprehend is how TWO people find each other, discuss something like this and neither says "Hey wait a minute." What are the odds?
Czolgosz shot President McKinley on 9-6-1901.
Czolgosz went to trial on 9-23-1901
Executed 10-29-1901
So there is that.
"They say the death penalty is at least as expensive, because of all the litigation, so what you care about isn't saving the money, but on seeing the money spent on what you want to buy."
You say that like it's a bad thing.
As others have noted, excessive litigation costs are a fixable problem. Leaving these dirtbags to live another 60 years while the promising and innocent life that they ruthlessly snuffed out is gone forever does not reflect well upon our society.
Seriously. Stop being so squeamish. They need to be made dead, the sooner the better. There is no doubt of their guilt, and no possibility of their reformation.
If it's immoral to kill a securely captured person, I suggest giving them a short head start.
285exp: "...short head start."
Threadwinner.
"Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person."
We could shoot on sight, but shouldn't there be a trial first? I guess we could try them all in absentia, then send out hunters to shoot them down.
A person living on death row lives better, with more amenities and less stress and challenges than does a free innocent person at an advanced age, or many handicapped people, and probably many who have done nothing more than found themselves poor. Life in prison is for many a better life than they would have had if they never committed a crime. It's certainly less work.
I find it immoral to capture a murderer and then feed and house them for life right in the face of their victims forever as those victims toil to survive and move past the horror they never asked for, and never deserved.
Nothing helps evil in it's work as much as "good people" doing nothing, accept maybe when they also stop actual good people from doing what is right.
"
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
I'm suggesting that you should want to buy life in prison, because it keeps the person from looking like the victim of the state, deprives him of that spotlight,..."
I'll be kind and assume you never gave it much thought before writing that.
Nobody, except rabid libertarians care about a murderer being a victim of the state, and I doubt that really concerns you much either. As for the spotlight, you can't be serious. Spotlights soon go out with nobody to shine them on, and a spotlight on severe justice for murderers is more of a lighthouse.
These two were raving wolves. They got together and their viciousness came out.
They didn't want to die. See they did all they could to cover it up!!! I don't care what they said, their deeds showed they didn't want to die.
Here in Texas we do give 'em the death penalty. Pronto!
So --- Who would be happy to have as their attorney someone with neon pink hair cut as a Mohawk????????????????
Althouse asserts: They say the death penalty is at least as expensive, because of all the litigation, so what you care about isn't saving the money, but on seeing the money spent on what you want to buy.
That's what 'they' keep telling us. Let's limit appeals to one. As far as cost to execute, why I know people who would do it for nothing. Why not a firing squad? I'm sick to death of all the hoopla surrounding lethal injection. Just shoot 'em or hang 'em high. If they get right with God they have nothing to fear.
Most liked comment on WAPO:
10 hours ago
Just think what would have happened if they got their hands on a couple AR-15s.
Second most liked comment on WAPO:
9 hours ago
I bet these two could sit in a Starbucks......all day.
U.S.A.
On this thread:
Robert Cook said...
I bet these two kids are Democrats...leftist Democrats!
The comments all speak for themselves.
Paul reports: Here in Texas we do give 'em the death penalty. Pronto!
Good for Texas. And Florida. They are about the only states that are doing their job.
I finally read the article. Genetics probably at work, at least on the one whose father is in prison for armed robbery
I've interviewed a few kids whose fathers are in prison or who even dies in prison. At least they are joining the military and might have a chance.
There's a guy on death row here in Nevada who demands to be executed, but the courts are all tied up about how inhumane the lethal injection drugs are.
Oy. Washington state even had more of a mess several years ago when hanging was the method. A vicious beast named Mitchell Rupe got too fat while in prison and it was determined he was too fat to hang ... lest his head become actually separated during the execution. I thought that was a feature, not a bug. But, alas.
The State changed the law to hanging OR lethal injection ... which created another 'problem' because an even more vicious beast named Charles Rodman Campbell claimed having to choose his method of execution was unconstitutional.
Mitchell eventually died on death row due to liver failure. Campbell got hung because the law reverted to hanging when said asshole refuses to make the choice himself.
Personally, I'd rather the state stay out of capital punishment/executions. Let the victims' families put one in the back of the head of the perp after conviction and one appeal.
Jim, I remember Campbell. If anyone deserved to die, it was he.
OTOH, Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, more than deserved to die but got life, instead, as a plea bargain. He killed more than 50 women, I believe. Makes me sick!
Althouse moans: Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person.
How about we let them escape and then shoot them in the back?
They allowed Ridgway to plea so they could close the book on all of the unsolved cases they had against him. He fessed up and the families got closure.
And then there was the case of Westley Allen Dodd. A relatively young man who kidnapped, raped and murdered two Vancouver brothers. Back in '89, or so.
As evil and vile as his crimes were, he knew he was a monster and demanded he be put to death (similar to the guy currently in Nevada). Of course the lawyers jammed it up for a bit, but eventually Dodd got what he felt he deserved.
I had a small amount of respect for Dodd despite his horrible crimes. He knew he was an animal and he wanted it to end. In that way, he was a better person than his lawyers.
I had a small amount of respect for Dodd despite his horrible crimes. He knew he was an animal and he wanted it to end. In that way, he was a better person than his lawyers.
Yes, and he became a Christian before he died and I've no doubt he is in heaven.
"Personally, I think it's immoral to deliberately kill a securely captured person."
No problem Ann. One can always drop them in the middle of Death Valley or outside of Nome Alaska in December.
Execution used to be a part of the public pageant, when it was removed behind the prison walls, it lost its power. Early Anglo-American juries (on both sides of the Atlantic) were keenly aware of the possibilities of their sentences. These jury trials were held in open session, most of the community knew all involved. Which is why you see many juries returning either not guilty or guilty of reduced charges to keep the convicted from being 'turned off'. Indeed, the first efforts of a justice of the peace was to attempt to resolve the matter before it came to a court case, to literally 'keep the peace' between citizens. As noted above, carrying out the sentence would be quick, and again, public. The condemned also knew they were part of the pageant, and would often have speeches, hymns, and psalms ready for their final moments. All of that is lost today.
Good point, Todd. There is some somber dignity in a public execution. It is also a chance for the condemned to repent before God and his/her fellow citizens. Kings and queens have suffered the same fate and most did so gracefully.
Every legal doctrine beyond "an eye for an eye" is flawed, imho. These two should be partially strangled then fatally stabbed, and their bodies dumped in the woods.
"Every legal doctrine beyond "an eye for an eye" is flawed, imho"
I just don't see how, if you believe in God, you want to cut it that close. You should opt for the higher morality. That's how I read Jesus. I don't see how you can risk saying the Old Testament said it was the rule. Jesus said the rules in the Old Testament were a lower standard and you are called to a higher standard. And whether you believe in God or Jesus or not, the idea of choosing the higher standard is a good one.
Whatever.
Being forgiven by God doesn't mean forgiven by the state. What you reap, you sow.
I call bullshit on the notion that killers like Gilmore REALLY want to be put to death - by the state or otherwise. Every intake of breath, every morsel of food or drop of liquid he ingests, every instinctual defensive reaction he makes is his soul and being begging, striving, demanding to stay alive. Whether a killer acknowledges it or not, he does not want the essence of his being to be taken from him (or her).
Therefore, society should make it a point whenever possible to repay the crime of first degree murder with a death sentence for the guilty. Gilmore and others may say they want to die, but by God they will cry out to stay the executioner's hand as their time draws nigh. Their beings, their cells, their atoms will grasp at the last shreds of this life on earth - just as their victims' beings, cells and atoms did.
Deterrence, and a message from society to those who would toy with the idea of killing a human being. And if some stupid bastard REALLY DOES want the state to put him to death for his crime ... then, doublegood.
Did I get blocked because I used the word "bullshit"?
@Doug
Not sure what comment you're talking about but the answer to that question would always be no.
Comments on post old than 1 day have to go through moderation, but I approve everything that's not spam or a couple people I always delete. Very occasionally I reject or delete a comment because of the substance of that one thing, but it wouldn't be just for language. It would be something like an attack on a specific person or pedophilia.
I call bullshit on the notion that killers like Gilmore REALLY want to be put to death - by the state or otherwise. Every intake of breath, every morsel of food or drop of liquid he ingests, every instinctual defensive reaction he makes is his soul and being begging, striving, demanding to stay alive. Whether a killer acknowledges it or not, he does not want the essence of his being to be taken from him (or her).
Therefore, society should make it a point whenever possible to repay the crime of first degree murder with a death sentence for the guilty. Gilmore and others may say they want to die, but by God they will cry out to stay the executioner's hand as their time draws nigh. Their beings, their cells, their atoms will grasp at the last shreds of this life on earth - just as their victims' beings, cells and atoms did.
Deterrence, and a message from society to those who would toy with the idea of killing a human being. And if some stupid bastard REALLY DOES want the state to put him to death for his crime ... then, doublegood.
I call bullshit on the notion that killers like Gilmore REALLY want to be put to death - by the state or otherwise. Every intake of breath, every morsel of food or drop of liquid he ingests, every instinctual defensive reaction he makes is his soul and being begging, striving, demanding to stay alive. Whether a killer acknowledges it or not, he does not want the essence of his being to be taken from him (or her).
Therefore, society should make it a point whenever possible to repay the crime of first degree murder with a death sentence for the guilty. Gilmore and others may say they want to die, but by God they will cry out to stay the executioner's hand as their time draws nigh. Their beings, their cells, their atoms will grasp at the last shreds of this life on earth - just as their victims' beings, cells and atoms did.
Deterrence, and a message from society to those who would toy with the idea of killing a human being. And if some stupid bastard REALLY DOES want the state to put him to death for his crime ... then, doublegood.
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