What is your opinion?

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Originally posted here by RoadClosed
If he was found mentally Ill at time of conviction, whould he have NOT been given capitol punishment? I am looking at the original conviction and his sanity or lack of - at the time he was convicted of a capitol crime, by a Jury of citizens. I do see the cruelty of nursing someone back to health only to execute them. But what should we do, not treat them? And if we aren't willing to treat them why NOT just get it over with?

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You really think that killing someone who doesn't understand what they are doing at the time is the way a civilized country acts? How do 2 wrongs make a right? And perhaps a little reading into the particulars of what being schizophrenic really means would give you a little bit more idea what you're really suggesting. And no, no one should ever be forcibly required to receive any type of medical treatment, particularly treatment the government wouldn't willingly provide for them until they were convicted of a crime.

First off, I have an opinion, it is solely mine - I own it, and chances of me changing are very slim but there is a chance. This is it - I don't think removing someone who violently kills human beings is wrong. Regardless of the circumstance so the wrong + wrong = right equations does not fit me, to me it's a wrong negates a right or possibly wrong negated by right + right = right squared?

However; I am willing to accept what society has deemed as mental illness but in my mind the disease should be removed from the organism. Say I kill and bury 40 plus woman and take pleasure in it, seeing their faces each day as captured while I destroyed them. Why would someone feel grievance and pity at the fact that this killer of 40 women shows no remorse? That is a factor that can determine mental illness, the lack of remorse. So he is mentally ill, so what. Perhaps it is better to eliminate his illness through euthanasia? But I accept that fact that people like him have a group based in our reality that considers it humane to keep them alive and on drugs for the rest of their life and confine those to a hospital ward where they never see freedom again. Theirs is a world of chemical reality that cannot exist within our "real" society. They will never be re-introduced back into society so why string them along on something like life support? I often wonder if some of them, a few perhaps - may consider death a happy alternative. After all I bet there is a number who try suicide on occasion or try and get off drugs that reduce their will and distort control over them.

As for understanding that they didn't know they were harming someone else.... any attempt what so ever to cover the crime is justification to me that they knew something was not right as in correct. If one run's from the police, hides, lies, tries to hide a body, and tries to hide a weapon or anything that shows distaste for his action. The sanity plea doesn’t apply to me, of course I can do nothing about it but that is the way I feel. Come to think of it, I can't find any case in memory where one of those items wasn't a factor.

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Shouldn't a sentence that was given based on a mental illness be valid even if the person gets the help they need after conviction? And they're not even given a choice about it, it can be forcibly administered? It just seems very very wrong to me.

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debwalin...

I doubt if his victim/s were given any choices at all. Was the victim/s not administered medical procedure forcibly?

In a broader sense I think that by societal definition anyone who commits murder is at least temporarily insane. A sane, rational, logical person doesn't commit murder. IMO, even extensively premediated and planned murder has to have at least a moment or spark of insanity.

I definitely see the argument that to the victim it is irrelevant whether the criminal had cognitive awareness of the harm they were causing. I also see the irony in the government stating that to kill someone who is mentall unable to understand their crime is "cruel and unusual punishment" but somehow killing a criminal at all doesn't fit the definition of "cruel and unusual punishment". I don't understand how they draw the line and make a rational leap that one thing is cruel and unusual, but another isn't.

I agree whole heartedly with debwalin though that if the person is unable to get the treatment and medication necessary to keep him from committing the crime in the first place, it is a VERY cruel irony for the government to freely and forcibly administer the medication after the fact to make him sane enough for execution.

IMO the death penalty shouldn't be waived regardless of mental state. You had your chance, you didn't have any help, or didn't seek any? Too bad. If the severity of the crime was such that you are slated to die for it, it was bad.

Up here in Ontairo, we had this rapist/murderer named Paul Bernardo. His first victim was his girlfriend's neice I believe. He kept her drugged in his basement and hobbled her by slicing the tendons in her ankle. He had as much sex with her as he wanted, and his girlfriend (Carla Homolka) helped. At some point, he decided he had had enough of her, killed her, cut up her body into pieces, put them in garbage backs, and cemented the garbage bags in concrete. He disposed of the blocks, and they started anew with a fresh victim until the cops caught him. We don't have a death penalty up here, but if there was ever someone deserving it, it was him. Instead the solution is life imprisonment for him, and his girlfriend (for helping supply evidence) was let out very recently on parole. I think that the death penalty is needed for some of these sickos, because the crimes they've committed are vile and disgusting, and I honestly don't believe certain people deserve a second chance. If you blow it big enough the first time, why are you going to reform from that in any reasonable way?
So he has housing paid for in part by my taxes guaranteed for the rest of his life.

I believe it is incredibly naive to think that everyone can be reformed.

chsh - a long time since I agreed with what you say, but on this issue, since I did follow the bernardo story - you are correct.

Deb and others - it is a mistake to suggest that someone who commits a nefarious act is not responsible for it. Period. Regardless of circumstances. That logic would have freed many conductors of genocide such as those in wwII and bosnia. Medical conditions aside, the blame shifting of responsibility is as old as time. It remains incorrect.

Even if they are reformed and completely the hospital completely cured someone, that is a reward for slicing a woman's body parts and forcing her into brutal acts over weeks or months. Man, I can't even imagine the torture. But anyway, that is a reward, you kill - no problem we will nurse you back to health and cure you. Here's a chocalate bar and a coke, while your waiting. But even if they are cured, they will never be let out - most of those guys are given sentences with no possibility for parol. So that is what I meant earlier by saying "what is the point of rehabilitation?"

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Originally posted here by RoadClosed
But even if they are cured, they will never be let out - most of those guys are given sentences with no possibility for parol. So that is what I meant earlier by saying "what is the point of rehabilitation?"

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I think you and I almost agree here... just from different perspectives.