Just a thought . . .
Upon hearing that the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles cannot not be subject to the death penalty for any crimes they may have committed or will commit (no matter how heinous) because it apparently violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, I could not help but wonder: why do criminals seem to have more rights than victims? I'm not talking about people who have been convicted with little or no evidence. I mean people who have admitted to what they have done, people who have been proven by DNA evidence to have done something, people who have been caught in the act -- situations like that.
Not believing in the death penalty at all is one thing; believing that executing a 16 or 17 year old kid (those 15 and under were already exempt) who breaks into someone's house, pulls her out of bed and beats the shit out of her, ties and tapes her up, throws her into her own van and drives her to another county, hog ties her after she starts to break free from her original restraints, wraps a towel around her head and covers it with duct tape, then throws her off a train trestle into a river to drown is not, IMHO, worthy of a reprieve. Why are the people who do the most cruel, unusual and inhumane things (obviously not just teenagers) exempt from punishments that would be most fitting? I read all about the kid's hard life. Cry me a river -- and show me someone that hasn't suffered some kind of abuse at the hands of another. Kill your abuser then, dumbass! At least then people might be able to wrap their minds around the concept of how someone could do such a thing. His life was not in imminent danger. There was no justification for this killing. It was absolutely premeditated and the woman who died wasn't even his first choice of victim; she simply had made the mistake of leaving a window in her home open.
I don't accept that a 16 or 17 year old kid doesn't have the capacity to understand that what they are doing is wrong. A 5-year old kid knows that. No, instead let's keep them in prison for 25 to life and wait for some dumb crack whore to strike up a relationship from the outside and help the murderers reproduce. Fuck! This is one area of the law where I definitely believe things should be handled case-by-case rather than covered by a blanket ruling. I just imagine that poor woman's husband, who for 12 years has been living with the knowledge of his wife's final moments, and now knowing that his wife's killer will never receive the punishment that was handed down because it has now been ruled cruel and unusual. I'm no expert on the Constitution, but somehow I doubt that was the intention of that amendment. My cursory reading of it seems to indicate the intent to prevent "arbitrary and disproportionate punishments" and essentially prohibiting criminals from being tortured (examples given are beheading, drawing & quartering, and other nasty ways to die). So if you put someone on a gurney and dope him up and then give him a lethal dose of something, well, that's hardly cruel and unusual -- even given the interpretation of meeting "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." What a joke. Cruel and unusual my ass. Most people probably don't even know what that really means in this context!
I feel sick even writing about this . . . but I've already read the whole story and it's stuck in my head. I wish it wasn't. And I certainly hope I never find myself facing down a 17-year old "child" who has killed someone I love knowing they will never suffer the way their victim did.
Not believing in the death penalty at all is one thing; believing that executing a 16 or 17 year old kid (those 15 and under were already exempt) who breaks into someone's house, pulls her out of bed and beats the shit out of her, ties and tapes her up, throws her into her own van and drives her to another county, hog ties her after she starts to break free from her original restraints, wraps a towel around her head and covers it with duct tape, then throws her off a train trestle into a river to drown is not, IMHO, worthy of a reprieve. Why are the people who do the most cruel, unusual and inhumane things (obviously not just teenagers) exempt from punishments that would be most fitting? I read all about the kid's hard life. Cry me a river -- and show me someone that hasn't suffered some kind of abuse at the hands of another. Kill your abuser then, dumbass! At least then people might be able to wrap their minds around the concept of how someone could do such a thing. His life was not in imminent danger. There was no justification for this killing. It was absolutely premeditated and the woman who died wasn't even his first choice of victim; she simply had made the mistake of leaving a window in her home open.
I don't accept that a 16 or 17 year old kid doesn't have the capacity to understand that what they are doing is wrong. A 5-year old kid knows that. No, instead let's keep them in prison for 25 to life and wait for some dumb crack whore to strike up a relationship from the outside and help the murderers reproduce. Fuck! This is one area of the law where I definitely believe things should be handled case-by-case rather than covered by a blanket ruling. I just imagine that poor woman's husband, who for 12 years has been living with the knowledge of his wife's final moments, and now knowing that his wife's killer will never receive the punishment that was handed down because it has now been ruled cruel and unusual. I'm no expert on the Constitution, but somehow I doubt that was the intention of that amendment. My cursory reading of it seems to indicate the intent to prevent "arbitrary and disproportionate punishments" and essentially prohibiting criminals from being tortured (examples given are beheading, drawing & quartering, and other nasty ways to die). So if you put someone on a gurney and dope him up and then give him a lethal dose of something, well, that's hardly cruel and unusual -- even given the interpretation of meeting "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." What a joke. Cruel and unusual my ass. Most people probably don't even know what that really means in this context!
I feel sick even writing about this . . . but I've already read the whole story and it's stuck in my head. I wish it wasn't. And I certainly hope I never find myself facing down a 17-year old "child" who has killed someone I love knowing they will never suffer the way their victim did.
posted by PlatinumGirl at 6:12 PM
1 Comments:
I completely agree with you on this issue. I read the same story and the whole thing sickens me. I think this one should definitely be determined on a case by case basis and left for the states to decide.
Post a Comment
<< Home