<p>Oh, see, when it comes to people like this, or to the 2 guys who tortured and set fire to the house of that family in Connecticut, or other cases … I’m so totally for the death penalty, despite my usually-liberal leanings. And I don’t think I’d have too many qualms if I were the one being asked to pull the switch. What a horrible story. There ARE monsters, z-mom, you are right.</p>
<p>I never understood the death penalty. If you are a Christian and demand the death penalty for a monster, but the monster has a pastor proclaim he has been forgiven by God before he goes off to his death, does that not mean in fact that the man is going to live in eternal bliss? OP, I am not assuming you are Christian by the way. It was just a spontaneous thought that occurred from your last sentence.</p>
<p>I agree with NewHope33, whose name is quite ironic to his/her statement haha.</p>
<p>In my brand of Christianity, a pastor can’t proclaim anything for anyone else.
Also, being forgiven after confessing to God with deeply-held contrition, doesn’t wipe away knowledge of and remorse for the act.</p>
<p>Alright, well, this could be a very interesting discussion, but wouldn’t want to go off topic.</p>
<p>What pushed me over the edge was the fact that the father placed the head on the street so the mother could see it, according to the article.</p>
<p>There have been many cases of parents killing their disabled kids, not out of negative emotions, but because they actually cared for them in their minds. This was definitely not one of those cases.</p>
<p>We all have primitive feelings of revenge and anger, and we all want to make someone else suffer as much as they made their victim suffer.</p>
<p>But as human beings, I think we should rise above those feelings and punish in a different way.</p>
<p>If we kill a human being, we are murderers, in my opinion. There is way too much gray in the world for me to ever think someone absolutely positively deserves to be killed.</p>
<p>Who is to say they don’t deserve to inhabit this world? Our emotions? That is why I love this country. Our criminal system tries to be as objective as possible. I repeat, TRIES. It seems there is no doubt that he killed the child. I hope a lifetime in prison awaits him. Furthermore, I wouldn’t even twitch the tip of my finger if he got killed in prison. I find it a totally different matter when it is members of society demanding for someone’s head.</p>
<p>As a taxpayer, I do not want to provide free food and shelter to monsters for the rest of their lives (sending them to work in uranium mines would be too cruel, wouldn’t it?).</p>
<p>I think taking the life of a criminal as punishment for the taking of a life is hypocritical and wasteful if you’re not going to eat him afterward.</p>
<p>Now, seriously, it makes me ashamed to be a man when I see that this kind of disgusting act is usually committed by other men. Not that mothers don’t sometimes kill their children, but not in such a vulgar, vengeful way.</p>
<p>BunsenBurner, but you already do. Your tax dollars do a lot more evil deeds in this world than housing a murderer in a stone cold cell. You have got to accept the good and bad of being part of a society.</p>
<p>mantori.suzuki, nice trolling.</p>
<p>I don’t know, the death penalty is just a very interesting topic. I get a lot of emotional responses from those who are for it, and hardly ever any rational responses.</p>
<p>I am grudgingly against the death penalty, even though part of me yearns to support it. The Innocence Project convinced me that it’s a bad idea. So many people have been found, through science, to be innocent of crimes they were guilty of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. I just have to imagine myself sitting on Death Row for something I didn’t do, for long, long years, without my family and friends, the whole world convinced that I am worthless and more than willing to throw away the key and forget me. Some people have lost 30 years of their lives because they were “proven” guilty by tainted evidence, mistaken witnesses, coached witnesses, malicious prosecutors, incompetent defenders. It’s a horrific thought, like being buried alive.</p>
<p>I don’t believe in the death penalty. I do believe in placing people like this man in general population with the grown up abused children and in not punishing any prisoner who does what it is needed to those walking stacks of excrement. If anyone has seen the movie “Short Eyes,” you’ll know what I mean. </p>
<p>I shed no tears when Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance, was beaten to death by his peers in prison.</p>