woman kills daughter for having sex

OTM, in fact I think she'd be my one exception.
-- Hurting (Hurtingchie...), January 17th, 2005 11:52 AM.

Why is that? Why is this case more deserving than someone who beats someone to death over his wallet? Is it because it's a child or because it's in today's news?

The death penalty would continue to be used on
1) black men who kill cops (guaranteed)
2) Mass murds
3) People that are covered by the press as 'the face of satan' and so on.

probably because it is a child. i am against the death penalty but in cases like this i certainly wouldn't protest the execution. also for some reason when parents kill their children the reaction is more bloodthirsty and visceral than reasoned and logical. we all want to see them suffer for commiting crimes that seem to be a total affront to society. same would go for child molestation, etc.

WHICH IS IN NO WAY AT ALL TO JUSTIFY OR CONDONE OR SANCTION COPKILLING OKAY

The position of killing a cop is meant to be More reprehensable as the man is acting on our behalf to stop/prevent crime, and as a representative of the people should expect more protection.

I agree, except I don't think making the punishment for cop killing more severe gives them any more protection, and in any case is just wrong anyway.

An insanity plea is going to have a hard time getting around that part, I think.

all she did was imposed the death penalty on her daughter you know.

for the record, i would like to state that i am not in favor of the death penalty even in cases like this. but these are the ones that give me pause for thought, while others don't.

Every murderer that's convicted is done so "Beyond all reasonable doubt"...

xpost

No. And that is how I can be objective about this. Killing a child's parent is an affront to society too, no?

My first thought was how did I know this was going to be in Birmingham. My second thought was if these people were WHITE and BAPTIST this shit would probably never have leaked out (or if it had the spin would be vastly different.)

Um, yes I do. I think when you pass a certain level of proper behavior, the degree to which that behavior is offensive is no longer measurable.

Would you rather be raped or murdered? Have you stopped beating your wife yet? These questions are unanswerable.

pardon my possible ignorance but did you figure out the ethnicity and religion of those people from their name and where they're from? If not where was this reported?? I know nothing about Birmingham, Alabama..

i'm not positive about it, but i think the 'offensiveness' of the killing is the motivation for seeking the death penalty in many or most cases. if not that, then what? what other criteria would you have them base it on?

i totally assumed that they WERE WHITE and probably BAPTIST.

I can see how some murders/crimes may cause more of an emotional response in some people, but our legal system is (presuambly) not about emotional responses.

I was afraid this threat title was going to lead to an outline of our new federal abstinence-only sex education plan.

That killing someone would not be an insult to society.

Emily, I think Dave's arguing that murder in any form is kind of an anti-social act, even if it doesn't run against societal taboos quite as deep as child-murder or what have you. (There's a stronger societal taboo about incest than there is about murder, for example, but murder's surely worse!)

-- dave225 (right.knewi...), January 17th, 2005 1:01 PM. (Dave225)

killing jeffrey dahmer was not an insult to society.

Jeffrey Dahmer is another thing altogether, but some would consider vigilante justice to be an affront to law and order.

People who say that they're against the death penalty EXCEPT in cases of whatever aren't too much different from people who say that they're against abortion EXCEPT in cases of rape and incest, etc. It really seems like one should be either for or against it -- period. Not a lot of middle ground when it comes to death.

Come on, that's the kind of lazy thinking that Bush voters employ.

I think Dave screwed up that point about six posts up, possibly accidentally.

Em - law and order is the core of society, at least in the context we're talking about here. I think this argument has turned into a useless banter about semantics though.

I don't understand what's so lazy about that, Hurting. And most Bush voters are the ones who use the "rape and incest" exception.

It's a strange way of looking at it, but it makes perfect sense, particularly if you're the sort of non-scientific only-semi-religious person who can't really dredge up strong feelings on whether it's "wrong" -- morally speaking -- one way or the other. It becomes a kind of over-delicate kid-gloves response -- that people shouldn't have abortions, in general, because it's just unpleasant, but of course it's even more unpleasant for a woman to have to have her rapist's baby, so in that case ...

This is a horrible story.

Or as I called it, "wishy-washy".

I see what was probably meant by Hurting now. However, I still don't see more than two sides to the abortion or death penalty arguments.

It might make for a more interesting argument, but for most of the people involved, the moral issues are the most convincing of all. I mean (cheap shot alert) it might actually be more cost-efficient for Alabama to not guarantee high school education to its kids, but no-one cares about arguing the figures when they can pitch "we should have education" vs "we have the lowest tax in the country".

I have pretty firm and hopefully coherent positions on both ends, and I’m not really suggesting that people should abandon working out the moral side of things. Just saying I’m not adverse to hearing people frame issues in different ways, if only for novelty’s sake.

Okey dokey...
My feeling is that The State reserves the right to kill. Two obvious applications are 1) War and 2) the death penalty. Obviously, countries fuck up royally in their exercise of this bedrock right as a sovereign nation: the war in Iraq is a gross misapplication of the US right to wage war and kill people in the name of...whatever Bush is claiming as a rationale. With the death penalty, innocent people have been put to death, major miscarriage of justice, perversion of The State's right to punish its own. I don't disagree with the right of state and federal death penalties to exist, but without 100% assurance that the right person is being executed, it shouldn't be applied. (I think Barry Scheck is a hero.)

Now The State also grants its citizens the right to kill. One obvious example is killing in self-defense. If you come at with me with a knife in front of witnesses, miss with your first swing, and I send you down a flight of stairs and your neck snaps, I'm not going to jail. I also believe that abortion rights are an example of The State granting its citizenry the right to kill. I don't argue against the notion that abortion is taking a life; I just believe that up until a certain point of viability outside the womb, it's the mother's life to take, a right granted by The State. I think it's a more consistent approachthan being pro-execution and anti-abortion-rights, which makes as little sense as being pro-choice and anti-death-penalty. For me, logic and consistency are a lot more important than any moral claims one way or another.

(Also for the record you yourself are pro-choice and anti-death-penalty, insofar as asking for "100% assurance" of just application is for all reasonable purposes the same as opposing the penalty itself.)

That's me, by the way. One is taking a life and one isn't. Simple.

Women should be able to terminate a pregnancy any time they want to.

I'm okay with the death penalty but against the way it's applied in the U.S. Is that too hairsplitting? Maybe, I don't know.

George (Curious), I have no idea why these two issues - abortion and the death penalty - are being spoken of in the same breath. Maybe I should read the thread again.

George (Curious), I have no idea why these two issues - abortion and the death penalty - are being spoken of in the same breath. Maybe I should read the thread again.

It's about taking a life. I'm pro-choice: The mother's life is also at stake in my opinion.

It's a very small percentage of cases in which the mother's life is actually at stake. Sure, tons of pregnant women have their quality of life (and for that matter the quality of the potential kid's life) at stake, but I don't think it's a very good pro-choice argument that the mother's life is always at stake.

I'm pro-choice myself... I'm just saying I wouldn't use that argument.

Stevie, I agree, cost of killing vs. cost of incarceration for life is another reason not to apply the death penalty. There are a lot more reasons not to do it than there are to do it.

Incidentally I think all arguments about the death penalty wind up going backward, with some people saying "I support it here" and others venturing to point out why it's a bad idea. The argument should function the other way around, since it's the execution-advocates who are actually proposing something: why kill the convicted? Why put all that money and energy and time into killing someone? There's no demonstrable purpose to it apart from this often-quite-creepy balm that it puts on the national psyche.

See, this is why I can't totally abandon the death penalty.

was an expression of shock, and four hours later, I've calmed down a bit. But if some Alabama D.A. goes for the death penalty, AND determination of a defendant's competence stands up, AND a jury convicts, AND then that jury hands down a death sentence, AND then through the appeals process it's determined that the trial, verdict and sentence were fair, AND then somebody, most likely Ms. Archie, is executed, THEN I'm not going to say there was a miscarriage of justice. I might say there was a waste of taxpayer dollars, but I'm not going to argue against the State of Alabama's right to perform the execution.

* haha maybe this new thing about how much force you can use in self defence that is being decided might call this into question

That's not an argument, Dave (time and money)! As mentioned several times on this thread and routinely ignored in this discussion, it costs us way more to execute people than it does to just keep them in jail -- money spent on a whole series of judicial checks and safeguards that still don't guarantee anything even resembling accuracy. Time and energy-wise, the burden of proof is on those advocating execution; if we're worried about what's guaranteed to our citizens, we'd be much better off passing on death-penalty prosecutions and shunting all the money saved to something useful. And I'm uncomfortable with the idea that there's anything "a cut above" about being forcibly confined for life, as if cable television and guaranteed medical treatment -- nice as they may be -- at all make it worth being trapped for life in a crappy brutal institution where most of the universe could hardly work up a shrug over your getting beaten, raped, or just generally treated like shit; maybe for some super hooked-up organized crime or gang-brotherhood or white-power guys it's not so terrible, but those aren't the types that we're talking about anyway.

We should follow the Inuit tradition I just made up whereby we smack the offender with mackeral until they cry.

*made a mockery of many times, cf Hitler '39, Bush '03, etc.

but of course our society can afford to kill their own, it was an occasion to mention restorative justice that is also going on today.

"Restorative justice is a systematic response to wrongdoing that emphasizes healing the wounds of victims, offenders and communities caused or revealed by the criminal behaviour.

Practices and programs reflecting restorative purposes will respond to crime by:
1. identifying and taking steps to repair harm,
2. involving all stakeholders, and
3. transforming the traditional relationship between communities and their governments in responding to crime."

It's different than just keeping people in jail.

I'm beginning to think that all my responses boil down to exhausted disgust at what America has come to represent. "Sure, you have the right to kill that woman. You're an idiot for doing it, but whatever."

does anyone else have the same qualms about this idea of "right-to-kill" or am i just a pathetic streak of piss living in la-la land??

(KIDDING)

I mean: Ban abortion and you have more back-alley abortions. And more unwanted children. You could simply assert that these outcomes would be worse than the rather hypothetical and abstract harms done by keeping abortion legal?

(And I'm not sure there's a requirement for consistency with how you think about the death penalty, which I'm knee-jerkily against, BTW. Where is it written that you can't argue one issue from a consequentialist standpoint and another from a deontological standpoint?)

But you wouldn't buy that assertion if you believed abortion was MURDER and GOD forbade it. Once someone makes comes to a moral conclusion informed by their religion, it's virtually impossible to argue with them.

"Only seeing two sides" means putting the moral issue at the center of things -- either it's wrong or not, and no other considerations enter. I'm actually always interested to see the rare people enter these debates whose view of the issue doesn't place that consideration at the center; I'm even happier to see someone do this and actually put something else convincing at the crux of it.
Okey dokey...
My feeling is that The State reserves the right to kill. Two obvious applications are 1) War and 2) the death penalty. Obviously, countries fuck up royally in their exercise of this bedrock right as a sovereign nation: the war in Iraq is a gross misapplication of the US right to wage war and kill people in the name of...whatever Bush is claiming as a rationale. With the death penalty, innocent people have been put to death, major miscarriage of justice, perversion of The State's right to punish its own. I don't disagree with the right of state and federal death penalties to exist, but without 100% assurance that the right person is being executed, it shouldn't be applied. (I think Barry Scheck is a hero.)

Now The State also grants its citizens the right to kill. One obvious example is killing in self-defense. If you come at with me with a knife in front of witnesses, miss with your first swing, and I send you down a flight of stairs and your neck snaps, I'm not going to jail. I also believe that abortion rights are an example of The State granting its citizenry the right to kill. I don't argue against the notion that abortion is taking a life; I just believe that up until a certain point of viability outside the womb, it's the mother's life to take, a right granted by The State. I think it's a more consistent approachthan being pro-execution and anti-abortion-rights, which makes as little sense as being pro-choice and anti-death-penalty. For me, logic and consistency are a lot more important than any moral claims one way or another.

-- I Am Curious (George) ([email protected]), January 17th, 2005 7:50 PM.

to me, none of this washes because neither states nor individuals have the right to kill. so a death penalty to me is not a exemplar of the state exercising this right-to-kill, its the state deciding that someone should be killed to a) remove this person from society and b) achieve some sort of vague balance in the actions that the person took, and the justice they recieved, both of which premises i feel are flawed and morally unjustifiable, which is why i dont support the death penalty.

But I don’t know why I even bother to trace out that line of thinking, because you’re right, obviously: apart from religion and metaphysics there’s no abstract right-to-kill that the state reserves—it can kill just because it has the force to do so and people don’t always mind so much. Ideally our particular nation will one day conclude—as my last state-of-residence recently did—that the whole thing is kinda wrongish and totally not worth it, and we should probably just quit.

In a roundabout, down-the-rabbit-hole-and-back, incoherent-because-I've-never-studied-rhetoric kind of way, that's what my half-day of posts boil down to as well. (Really!)

*in fact there is pressure, maybe not "force" from other nations, of a diplomatic nature rather than militaristic, for countries like the US to abolish the death penalty. The very reason Russia abolished it in er...1996, was because having the death penalty tested its credentials as any kind of a European country, despite many of its citizens being pretty pro-capital punishment (yeah yeah, thats they sense i picked up, not necessarily true)

as i said before, i dont think war is morally justified (not even by international rules of war, which dont legitimise war, but try and reduce and control the inhumanity of killing), so neither one nor the other can be justified by any State. I can see that if you accept one, then you can "grayly" accept the other, but...i dont know what i am surprised by. maybe the acceptance of either of those concepts.

She's obviously insane. What good is killing her going to do?

xxpost

Really, it's best to just nod and smile at us, then back away slowly while making placating hand gestures until you're out of the room.

FCUS doesn't really have the same ring to it

She's obviously insane. What good is killing her going to do?

00ps wrote:

What if it made the girl's father and his family feel like justice was served?

How are we to distinguish justice from revenge? Because they look awfully similar sometimes.

It wouldn't deter similar things (as the kind of person who would do such a thing is generally acknowledged to not be deterrable). It certainly wouldn't bring back the daughter. It would just serve to gratify our strong cultural sense that retribution feels good.

Put a little more charitably, what killing her would accomplish is that it would express our cultural revulsion for what she did. You could say we want to cement the society together by voicing our disapproval in the strongest possible terms.

But I don't like the notion that the state should be made to serve the emotional needs of the survivors. We don't live in a victimocracy, where the degree to which you were hurt by something defines how much the state works on your behalf. The state should keep its action confined to what's best for ALL of us, not the lust for retribution of a few people. That's a road we wouldn't want to go down: what's to stop people from claiming victimization left and right for increasingly silly reasons, and demanding that the state make them whole?

i kinda liked that idea. i don't know if they do it anymore. now they're civilised.

but this woman doesn't deserve the time spent discussing the case, put her down, and mve on.

while scrubbing your floor. better for acceptance maybe? i can see the hollywood script now....hugh grant is the foppish accidental-murderer who has killed sandra bullocks husband and now must wash her dishes........with cedric the entertainer as stalin the dog....