Let me start out by saying, whether you agree with it or not, that this man is so much worse than a murderer. Think what you wish, but that's my opinion. We could sit around for hours adjusting our petticoats and sipping our tea, thinking of who to blame for this incident and whose fault it is. But, I refuse to. This sick fuck, has only himself to blame. I shall show him absolutely no mercy, if what he has been accused of is true. Which, it mostly likely is.

Pro-life? Pro-choice? Neither of them are relevant in my opinion. You see, that argument had to do with women's rights. This, here is a discussion of punishment.

Shall we kill him, we might ask? No, no. That's not up to us. Shall we make him pay? You bet your ass we will. Sometimes when society is presented with these problems we often cry "Off with his head!" because it's the simple thing to do. Plus, it's catchy. But, this is not a simple case. Like I said earlier, murder would have made these women suffer a whole hell less. Ariel Castro knew that. He also knows that nothing we could ever do to him legally, would make up for what he's done. We know that and he does to. Again, sick fuck. In a sense, he must feel like he's won. Words don't describe how evil, disgusting, and honestly, satanic, that is.

What do I cry? "Let him rot! In solitary. In the dark, and pay every single second of his sentence"

And I'm fine with people talking about what bad person he is. He is absolutely a terrible person.

The trick with terrible people is not becoming terrible yourself when you're dealing with them. That's as individuals, but especially as a society. One person screwing off and messing up...well, that's what we've got prisons for - the bad people and the good people who do bad things too. But you start screwing up society? I think that starts getting into a lot of complicated shit like social mores, why Americans want guns more than anyone outside of Central Africa and places currently at war, why we're fat, why we do everything... Playing around with discarding the rule of law as a society is critical. It's not a "game over" thing, but I think it's one of the symptoms of a failed state, of a dangerously broken society. That probably sounds needlessly legalistic, and I'm not sure it isn't, but I think you can do an awful lot of terrible things in a legal way and not put your whole way of life on the line as a group of people. But you start doing terrible things just because you can and you want to, without going through the bureaucratic hassle of... justifying, rationalizing... whatever you want to call it? That's scary stuff. It's the difference between an autocrat and a dictator, for one.

Murder
Severe Child Abuse
Child Molestation
People who commit crimes like Ariel Castro's and Phillip Garrido's

There's another thread about the punishment fitting the crime that says more about what I think about the sentences criminals should receive. So I won't go into detail about it here.




I have to say that I feel like people are saying, "It's the law, so you can't/shouldn't have an opinion on this." This may not be what anyone means, just the vibe I'm getting.

You're "allowed" to have an opinion, but in the Debate Room you're really supposed to present some support for your opinion. Otherwise it's just a bunch of people showing each other their assholes. For a debate to be meaningful you have to present your opinion, make a case supporting it, and then be able to defend it and not get upset people are telling you you're wrong when they disagree. That's because unlike your favorite food or pop song, a debate is about "winning" or presenting an opinion successfully. Sometimes you get to an impasse where you find the hinge of disagreement too, and that's fine because that also makes debates informative. But just having an opinion? That's not constructive in the context of a debate.

So when you say, implicitly, "I think we should discard two hundred years of law to enact as horrible a vengeance upon this guy, who is probably guilty but has not yet been convicted of anything..." I think there's a collective, "Okay, why is that supposed to be better than what we've got now? How does that make you any better than any other person who's pissed off at someone and murders them?" There's a legitimate, understandable distaste for that sort of thing, because most people I think recognize that for the bloodlust that it is. But maybe bloodlust is a good thing, maybe it's something that makes sense, but if it is and no one else is making the argument then for most of us we'd expect each other to explain why it's supposed to make sense. Even certain banned members with issues of homophobia and bigotry at least made an effort to take the step to try to explain why they thought those were valid opinions, that's not going to save you (as that person found out) from being disagreed with and being mocked, but it's at least good debate form. And just like the law, there's a "good debate form" for a good reason. It's easier to have the sort of constructive conversation that we're presumably supposed to be having here, as opposed to "why is everyone picking on me, and you're mean Mistermook! And my opinion that the sky is green is as valid as anyone and everyone's and no one can tell me different!!!"

You like lasagna? You're absolutely right. No one can tell you anything about your personal opinion. But when you're weighing in to the a debate, you're implicitly trying to have an opinion of argument and consensus. Your personal opinion doesn't mean squat in that context, unless you can back it up.

I don't think he's worse than a murderer. I think of it from the victims' perspectives - first of all, they're still alive to have a perspective. Probably the possibility that they would someday be free is what sustained them over the many years. Whereas a murderer takes away your life completely and forever. I hate when my daughter's watching one of those murder shows on A&E or ID - tragic stories , 2 girls walking to the beach and the serial killers in the van pull up and offer them a ride and I wish I had a time machine and could go back and stop it from happening.

Edit: changed the word 'personhood' to 'life' - that word has issues and there was no need to use it.

I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't saying that. You're perfectly entitled to have any opinion you want to have about anything. It's just that, as I said, the law isn't dictated by your (or anyone else's) opinion. And in this particular case that we're discussing, the law doesn't necessarily support the outcome that you'd like to see. That's all. And it certainly doesn't support the additions that you (and a few others who've weighed in) would like to make to current capital punishment laws.

Now, if you think the law needs to be changed, then by all means, go into law as a career, study and learn it inside out, and then get yourself elected into a position that has the authority to make/amend the law. For that, you'll optimally want to be involved in state government, which is where all the real power is. THEN your opinion might have more bearing on what becomes law.

That said, do you want to know what my personal opinion is about the case and whether or not capital punishment should apply? Well, whether you want it or not, here it is: My opinion is no. It's not because I don't think it was a horrible crime; it's because I think capital punishment should only be reserved for sociopathic murderers who've shown a talent for escaping from the authorities. People like Ted Bundy. OF COURSE I feel badly for the women in this case and I know they will have a hard row to hoe, etc...but they are alive to hoe it and, so far, Castro does not seem to be showing a talent for slipping away from his keepers. So I'm OK with the idea of locking him up as opposed to having him sit on Death Row for the next 30 years and filing endless appeals, etc. And I say that as a person who DOES support a judiciously-utilized death penalty while recognizing that the current system is not always judiciously-utilized.

Of course I wanted your personal opinion, that's why I started this thread.

Just to point out something. Say Castro gets the death penalty. He would immediatley have the conviction appealed and most likely get it. So, I assume there's either another trial or countless hearings in order for the death penalty to stick. Now those hearings take time to get in the first place. Then if he is put on death row, we're talking of years of appeals before he would even be put to death. Castro is in his mid fifties, I believe. He will more than likely die on death row from age related issues, then actually being executed. Also, for those appeals, those women, would have to go through their ordeal again.

Think about the women, not Castro. He doesn't care. Those women do care and are forever effected by the horrors inflicted on them. They deserve to get their lives back and not have to continue to tell their stories over and over again.

I understand the emotional aspect of the death penalty for many crimes that don't end with murder, or even if they do. Treating anyone as a sexual toy, torturing, and then throwing them away like their garbage is beyond dispicable. But, I don't really know if victims families find the peace they're looking for with the death penalty? Sure, they know that the person will never hurt another person again, but does it make the pain of losing their loved ones go away? Probably not. The ones that will be satisfied if Castro or anyone else that gets the death penalty, probably do not even know the victim. They just know about the immediate crimes. But, will go on in their daily lives for however long it takes to put someone to death. And then when that time comes, might say, oh, I remember that crime..good he/she deserved it.

As for the death penalty fitting the crime. I find that the US at least try to execute as humanly as possible, lethal injection. I think Florida still has the chair and some places have hanging and the gas chamber. Ironically, I don't believe there's death by firing squad anymore? So, even a government sanctuated execution, still doesn't fit the crime. I could go into other topics. But, I'll stop here.

This is the part that needs discussing, because as I pointed out a few earlier in this thread, they are charging him with murder of the fetuses based on the state's law (post #21). It was a law I was unaware of until this thread.

So the question might not be should Ariel be put to death for his crimes against the women he kidnapped, but should capital punishment be considered for crimes resulting in the death of an unborn child and should unborn children have the status of "personhood". It is the sticky wicket that Sim Whisperer said it was in the beginning (post #3).

My opinion is that the pregnancies and the miscarriages both resulted from the crimes against the women and are secondary to the primary crimes against the women. I do not favor "personhood" of fetuses. This doesn't mean I'm not upset about what happened. I am. The whole thing is disturbing on so many levels. But, the same legal thinking that would put Ariel to death for causing the miscarriage would also seek to prevent any of the rape victims from having abortions and that, to my mind, would also be a crime.

It is indeed a sticky question, one that I'm not sure has an easy answer. Here's where I stand, personally: I DO believe that unborn humans are people, and I am "pro life" in that I believe that abortion is wrong and that I would never have one under any circumstances. (And before y'all cry, "You would if you were raped!" I'll say that I did not, thank you. My child conceived in rape when I was 17 is alive and well.) THAT said, I also do not believe that my personal views/ethics should necessarily be imposed as law because, for one thing, the issue of whether or not a human fetus is yet a "person" is, I will grant you, a fuzzy one, particularly depending on what stage of development has been reached. So, I believe the entire issue is more of a moral/ethical one than a legal one. Therefore, I believe that the gov't has no business dictating whether or not abortion should be legal, that it should be left up to the individual, and in that sense I am "pro choice." Not because I think abortion is OK but rather because I believe it's not OK for the government to decide everyone's morality for them except in cases where obvious provable harm to a post-natal human being is done. (i.e. murder, rape, assault, etc.)

All of THAT said, I am not especially worried about this law being used to outlaw/punish elective abortion that a woman chooses to have. Seems to me that it's being used more to be able to more severely punish people who commit a crime against a pregnant woman which results in the loss of her baby when she didn't want or choose to lose her baby. They're very different situations. Which isn't to say that the use of the law can't one day change so that it IS used against a woman who chooses abortion or against a doctor who performs one. I'm just saying that it doesn't appear to be used that way yet, and I will adopt a wait and see position before I get riled up.

In this particular case, the law could be used to put Castro to death. Some would applaud that and consider justice done for the women, even if technically it would be done in the name of the unborn child(ren?), not the women.

It seems like the focus of the charges, that which brings it to capital punishment, is the harm done to the unborn, not to the women. That a woman had her life threatened (beaten and starved) in an attempt to make her miscarry should be what is at stake here, in my opinion. Or perhaps it's because I don't understand enough about capital punishment. Attempt on someone's life does not warrant it?

I don't see using this law as a way to get justice for the women, but only for the unborn.

Attempted murder does not warrant the death penalty under any circumstances, no. It is a punishment reserved for first-degree murder which results in the death of the victim, not for ANY other reason, even cases of horrendous torture, etc., where the victim suffers unimaginably but ultimately survives. It may not seem fair, but...that's the law. To make the death penalty apply to that sort of situation, the laws would need to be changed, and I am, personally, uncomfortable with the idea of the death penalty being applicable in any way that's not cut-and-dried because the possibility of wrongful conviction increases that way. And even if the law would be changed today, I don't believe it would affect the Castro at all case because the case would be judged according to laws in place at the time of the crime or at the latest at the time of arrest.



I don't see it as justice for the women, either. I'm just saying that some people will choose to see it that way, if it should come to pass that he is sentenced to death. On the other hand, justice for the women WILL be served as the law is written. In the women's cases, no one died, so the death penalty, according to the law as it stands, is not applicable. In that sense, it doesn't matter what anyone's opinion is. The law is the law; it is not subject to public opinion, aside from electing representatives who might agree with how you want laws to be changed.

Um, the government kind of needs to say whether or not it's legal. If it dictates that abortion is illegal, it leaves no choice for the individual. If it dictates that it is legal, it leaves the choice open. Making it legal doesn't mean that everyone has to have one.

Moving on...

My own feelings on this are kind of mixed. You see, I support killing him, but I also support taking his genitals off with a cheese grater and leaving his bleeding groin to get infected as he curls up into fetal position and whimpers in pain. I suppose the only way to resolve this dilemma is to do both.

Anyway...

Prison inmates are supported by tax dollars. Money that could go towards education, healthcare, lowering taxes, etc. is instead being directed towards the living conditions of criminals. The worse your crime is, the longer the state supports you, the more tax money goes to your crime. It makes sense to just kill the murderers.

That being said, I don't necessarily think that rapists should get the death penalty. See, if someone commits a crime and thinks that they can get away with it by killing the witness - and they won't get a worse punishment for doing so - then they'll do so. Alternatively, it could lead to them forcing the victim not to talk, adding greater mental damage.
So I would support the death penalty for rapists if the means of death was inherently crueler for murderers or the combined crimes. For instance, rapists get the needle, murderers+rapists get burned alive.
I also support the cheese grater method of punishment.

And no, I'm not worried about convicting innocent people as rapists and then killing them. 2-4% of all reported cases are false, and it's hard enough to get a real rapist in jail because the legal system sucks. Though I do think we should reform our age of consent laws, first.

Same thing with sexual slavery. If someone enslaves another - without consent, since I know about the secret lives of BDSM practitioners - for the purpose of raping them, then yes, definitely death penalty. And cheese grater.

This guy is guilty of a lot. The only thing that concerns me is that his victims will have to get dragged through the legal system in order to convict him. Our legal system is based on the premise that if two sides duke it out, the side of right will inevitably win, not unlike making two knights fight to determine if someone is guilty. And, of course, the actual victims get caught in the crossfire. It's especially bad for rape victims, because if they were anything but dowdy virgins wearing muumuus, they get slut-shamed and otherwise blamed for leading people on.
"Now, miss, is it true that every day you were being raped as a sex slave, you were wearing scanty clothing? Because that could indicate that the sex was consensual." -would not surprise me if this was actually used as a defense.
Who thought it was a good idea to have victims reliving their trauma in front of a jury and in the same room as their predator? That's like putting a bunch of shell-shocked veterans on stage to give a speech about the people they watched die on the field while everyone is mocking their performance and also while having firecrackers (which, by the way, sound just like bombs) go off right behind them! The legal system! Helping the healing process since NEVER. :cylon:

Not that I want to turn this into an abortion debate...but no it doesn't, at least no more than it needs to decide whether or not ANY medical procedure is "legal." The option exists. It's not going to go away, whether it's legal or not. Whether or not an individual chooses to use the option should be entirely up to the individual and their conscience and their own personal ethics. Just as with ANY medical procedure, really.

Legalizing abortion lowers the mother's risk of death during abortion by 90%. Making it illegal increases the rates of crime, poverty, and overall deaths.

If it is not legal, you don't get a choice. Well, you get the choice of having the baby or suffering painful death. But I guess having the choice is all that counts, right? Well, it would if you only care about looking like you support someone's choice and don't actually support choice.

ETA: You seem to be conflating legal abortion with 'people don't have the choice not to abort'. The point of legalizing it is to make it an option for people.

Yes, I agree. And?

Let me put it this way: To me, an abortion is a medical procedure that people can choose to have or not. Just as they can choose to have, say, chemo in an attempt to save themselves from cancer or they can choose to let nature take its course. The latter some people might say is choosing to kill themselves, which they might say is wrong, same as some, including me, would say that abortion is wrong. Still, I would not impinge on a person's right to have any medical procedure they wish to have or to refrain from ones they don't wish to have. In other words, I support ALL choices, without government intervention.



I support choice, as I said. What are you reading into what I said that makes this unclear? I'm just saying that I don't think the overall issue should be a question of legality but of personal ethics, which I don't think the government should be dictating. I think that everyone should be free to make whatever choice they want about abortion, according to their own personal ethics, without worrying about legality or illegality and without shoving one's own beliefs down other people's throats.

To me, although I personally feel that abortion does harm to a human being and is therefore wrong, I realize that not everyone feels that way. Therefore, I will and did choose not to have an abortion, myself, but my choice has no bearing on what I think someone else should choose. That's entirely up to their individual situation and their own conscience.



I'm not conflating anything, and, again, I'm not sure what I said that makes you think that. At the current time, abortion is legal in the US, and I'm fine with that. I'm politically Libertarian, believing in small government and personal freedom/responsibility. Basically, I don't think the gov't should be involved in people's ethical/personal decisions, so long as there is no harm being done to post-natal human beings. That's all I'm saying. Now can we get back to the actual topic?

Imma go ahead and drop a link right in here. All this "is it severe enough" talk just seems pointless to me, because I am never in favor of taking another human's life, regardless of what they've done.

Feel free to watch the whole thing, but if you're not into it, just go ahead and watch around 5:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wntitiiLotk


Yes, Penn and Teller are biased as fuck, they are very much against the death penalty, but everyone in this thread is biased in one way or another- they either want it or they don't.

Then there's always wrongful executions: people put to death when they were just thought to be guilty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution
You can always release an innocent man from jail, you can not give back a life that you've taken away.

And you don't care about the mortality rate of the women undergoing the procedure? So much for caring about human lives.

Legal abortion makes things safer for everyone. Which saves more lives, which you apparently care about. Not making it legal means that more lives are lost.



And yet not making abortion legal impinges on their right to have that medical procedure.



The fact that you're not saying abortion should be legal does not support choice.



You're saying that abortion does not need to be legal because everyone should have a choice in the matter. If abortion is not legal, there is provable detriment to the people involved and society as a whole. And yet you keep arguing the matter of choice as a rebuttal, not any reason why it not being legal is okay. Well, other than "women still have the choice to kill themselves trying to get an abortion!" and "I smoke pot even if it's not legal, so people can have abortions even if it's not legal!"

Making abortion legal IS the government keeping their noses out of peoples' business. Not forcing people not to abort. Not creating laws to force people to abort under certain circumstances, like they did back before Hitler made eugenics uncool. Legality means that they're staying out of the matter. And even that isn't working, because some people just want to tell women to stay out of the bedroom because female sexuality is scary.

Back the hell up, dude, she's saying abortion should remain legal. She's saying that the government has no right to make it illegal, that would be intruding in other people's lives If it is legal, people can choose whether or not to have the procedure done on their own without the government telling them no.

The way I look at it, is that we have to look at the intention, and not always necessarily the act itself. This is why being convicted of "Attempted Murder" gets you so much time behind bars.

Then why is she disagreeing with me?!

She's not. She'd never have an abortion, but supports the right for others to do so.

I agree, as I said. I guess I'm just not making things clear. Abortion is legal. Has been for a long time now. I don't foresee that changing, and I believe it should remain legal even though I personally believe it's ethically wrong. I think all medical procedures -- including abortion and elective euthanasia and elective sterilization and other things that various people will disagree with on various moral/ethical grounds -- should be legal without the government having to give it an official yay or a nay, so long as such things aren't abused in such a way that impinges upon personal rights. In other words, that's my ideal -- a small government that lets people make their own choice about things. But I realize that the world is not ideal, and in abortion's case the government had to step into the fray. And they did. And I'm good with that. I just wish that it hadn't had to come to that and, in the case of the "abortion debate" in which some people who believe that abortion is wrong are trying to enforce that believe on everyone...Well, I believe they're wrong to do that.



No, I'm saying that it should not be within the government's general purview to dictate individual people's ethics, be it about abortion or euthanasia or gay marriage or wherever "morality" butts up against law, except in cases where harm is done. I believe that, as I said, all choices should be legal by default in the sense that all options should be available and that it's then up to individuals to decide what they will and will not do.

In other words...I think we're arguing for the same thing but approaching it from different angles. For some reason, though, you seem to think I'm not agreeing with you. I must not be clear or maybe I'm just using terms that are triggering something in you.

ETA:

This, exactly. Thank you.

I really appreciate your attitude, iCad. I wish the country could come together on this point and agree to disagree. I can understand the feelings of those who are pro-life and those who are pro-choice. It seems like an impossible bridge to gap, yet somehow you've managed to do that. I wish the rest of those who are prolife could do that, too.

This. I think if you ask any of Castro's victims if they'd rather be dead today, I doubt a single one would say "yes". They are all still young with the rest of their lives ahead of them. The punishment doesn't fit the crime when considering what he did to the women.

Although I'm not against the death penalty, I am against using "fetal personhood" as grounds for the death penalty in this case. I read an article recently about a Chinese woman who was pregnant during a suicide attempt. They managed to save her, but not the fetus. She was charged with murder under one of Indiana's "fetal personhood" laws.
I think "fetal personhood" is a dangerous step towards illegalizing abortions and worst case scenario, charge a woman with murder for having an abortion.

As far as Ariel Castro's life, I wouldn't shed a tear if he died. I don't think the death penalty is appropriate in this case, but that's not to say I don't think a world without Ariel Castro in it would be a better place. I believe we don't need people like him, and a world without him in it would indeed be a better place. I would not be the least bit sorry to see him go.

I don't really have any problem at all with the killing of cold-blooded killers. Their lives don't mean squat to me. However, I have mixed feelings on the death penalty in general because people ARE often wrongly convicted. I hear all the time about how some piece of evidence comes to light which exonerates someone who was incarcerated. I watch a lot of "news magazine" shows and there's been multiple times where the prosecution was on the way to charging a suspect with first-degree murder WITH death on the table, but then some easily-overlooked piece of critical evidence comes to light exonerating the suspect. I would rather stay the execution of 1000 murderers than wrongly execute one innocent person. Another argument against the death penalty is cost...



I believe reality is actually the opposite of what you've said. I have read many articles over the years about how it's soooo much cheaper to incarcerate for life vs executing someone. Just found this in a quick Google Search:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyph...-death-penalty/
I don't think it's just one flawed article either, as the majority of articles about cost seem to agree that life in prison is cheaper than the death penalty.