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When the death penalty is justified...

Catz Part Deux

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Home invasion victim's ordeal goes on - CNN.com

On July 23, 2007, at about 3 a.m., two men broke into the home where Dr. Petit, who was 50 at the time, lived with his wife, Jennifer-Hawke-Petit, 48, and their two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. Jennifer Hawke-Petit had multiple sclerosis.

The men -- identified by police and prosecutors as Steven Hayes, 47, and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 30 -- allegedly beat Dr. Petit with a baseball bat while he slept, bound his wrists and ankles, then took him to the basement of the family's home and tied him to a pole as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

They stand accused of sexually assaulting Jennifer Hawke-Petit and one of the girls, tying them up, setting the house on fire, and fleeing as it burned. They are accused of first forcing Jennifer Hawke-Petit to go to a bank and withdraw $15,000 for them, with the promise that if she did, she and her family would be permitted to live.

Instead, the men are accused of killing her and the two girls. Hayes and Komisarjevsky are each charged with multiple counts of murder, rape, kidnapping and arson.

Both men -- they were caught by police as they drove away from the burning house -- offered to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences instead of the death penalty. But prosecutors believed that the appropriate punishment for Hayes and Komisarjevsky was death. Dr. Petit -- who on that day in 2007 managed, while bleeding profusely from his wounds (he lost as much as seven pints of blood), to free himself from the basement where he was tied up and crawl to a neighbor's house to plead for help for his family -- agreed with the prosecutors.

Which brings us to these weeks in 2010, with Hayes on trial, and Dr. Petit in daily attendance at the proceedings.

Frankly, lethal injection is too civilized a response to this animals.
 
Yeah, that's about as clear a case for the death penalty as any I've seen. It's a shame the victims didn't have the opportunity to administer it themselves, on the spot.

Frankly, lethal injection is too civilized a response to this animals.

Yeah, but what are we going to do? Hurting them ain't going to undo the damage or even make us feel better about it. Better to rid ourselves of this human garbage as quickly as possible so that the rest of us can move on.
 
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Yeah, that's about as clear a case for the death penalty as any I've seen. It's a shame the victims didn't have the opportunity to administer it themselves, on the spot.



Yeah, but what are we going to do? Hurting them ain't going to undo the damage or even make us feel better about it. Better to rid ourselves of this human garbage as quickly as possible so that the rest of us can move on.

Very much agreed. They deserve to be put to death, but it should be done quickly and humanely.
 
I don't see the point in wasting taxpayer money on the penalty. Obviously, the are too dangerous to ever be allowed back into society, but there is no practical reason to kill them.
 
I don't see the point in wasting taxpayer money on the penalty. Obviously, the are too dangerous to ever be allowed back into society, but there is no practical reason to kill them.


Sure there is. Death is the more fitting punishment, and the only way to be sure they will never kill innocents again.
 
Home invasion victim's ordeal goes on - CNN.com



Frankly, lethal injection is too civilized a response to this animals.

That's exactly right. Too civilized. Let these two men die a natural death like the rest of us. Hell!!! I want to die by lethal injection when I'm ready. With any luck at all, they'll die alone and in pain after spending many years in the hell-hole that will be their prison. Maybe one of them's cute. Or both. One can only hope.
 
A lot of Internet Toughguy going on up in here. There's no reason to invent cruel and unusual punishments to satisfy some sort of inhumane quota. Just kill them humanely. It accomplishes nothing to draw it out and make it inhumaen on purpose other than show you're sadistic.
 
A lot of Internet Toughguy going on up in here.

It makes you wonder how many people could actually pull the trigger, doesn't it? I bet most people couldn't just sit down with these two, look them in the eye, and explain to them why it is necessary for them to die. If they actually tried to carry out these grotesque fantasies... well, it would come to a halt pretty quick once the screaming started.

I could put a bullet in a man's head, no problem. I'm pretty... callous, when it comes to these things. But I doubt even I could go through with half the things people wish would happen to criminals like these.
 
Cutting off their arms, legs and then setting them free with no state aid.
Yes, if I were king, I'd probably commission that as punishment.

With a sign around their necks listing their crimes.

It makes you wonder how many people could actually pull the trigger, doesn't it?

I certainly couldn't, but it's fun to speculate.
 
Could it be that the movie "Law-abiding citizen" was based on this case?
Sounds extremely similar to me - two men breaking into the house, beating the father with a baseball bat and tying him up, raping the daughter and wife and then killing both of them, and the father survives and tries to persecute the two murderers.
 
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The Nutmeg State has had exactly One Execution since the Death Penalty was restarted in 1977 and that guy just Gave up and let the system proceed.

These Two Scum if they are sentenced today will not possibly be executed before 2020 at the earliest. That's reality.
 
Home invasion victim's ordeal goes on - CNN.com



Frankly, lethal injection is too civilized a response to this animals.

I don't get the focus of Greene (the author of the article). - is he trying to get us to believe that it was a bad thing that the photographic evidence was shown?
Because that's not a *bad* thing - that'll nail the case down. What were they suppose to do? NOT allow it to be shown in court?

I feel horrible for Mr Petit - but if you WANT to convict someone and seat them in their spot in hell you HAVE to delve into those distasteful things.

Trust me - All of those jurors felt AWEFUL just for having to look - but it would really nail the case down and give no one a reason to vote 'innocent' or question the validity or measure of the sentence.
 
A lot of Internet Toughguy going on up in here. There's no reason to invent cruel and unusual punishments to satisfy some sort of inhumane quota. Just kill them humanely. It accomplishes nothing to draw it out and make it inhumaen on purpose other than show you're sadistic.

You sound like the Internet Tough Guy that you're talking about. How would you react if this happened to your family?
 
Yah we can kill them, torture them, give them the exact amount of pain they gave that family but in the end what would it accomplish? Nothing, We would just be the killers just like them. Nothing will change unless we can fix the underlying societal problems which cause this madness. Nothing will change unless the proper rehabilitation be given to all criminals no matter what their crimes are.
 
Truly a horrible crime. What I hate about these types of threads, however, is the selective nature of them. Here's a case where it seems they have a lot of evidence against the defendants and the crime was particularly gruesome. We all feel some emotional twinge. "Hell yeah, these guys should die....they're animals". This and that. Perhaps true. However, in general the use of the death penalty in society is very expensive and often can catch innocent people up in it; even with DNA evidence. The fail conditions of the death penalty are that innocent people die, and no matter what with the implementation of the death penalty, less under extreme scrutiny and restriction, will end up catching innocent life in the process. Thus I do think it a bit disingenuous to present a case such as this and say "here's why we need the death penalty" because it ignores the aggregated effects of actually implementing such a penalty into the system.

Yes, the crime was horrible. Yes, if they are guilty they deserve to die. However, we should not authorize the government to do so because of the ramifications of having a death penalty.
 
Yah we can kill them, torture them, give them the exact amount of pain they gave that family but in the end what would it accomplish? Nothing, We would just be the killers just like them. Nothing will change unless we can fix the underlying societal problems which cause this madness. Nothing will change unless the proper rehabilitation be given to all criminals no matter what their crimes are.



Sociopaths cannot be rehabilitated. Why should the rest of us live in fear of criminals like these two getting out to murder again?





 
Maybe they can or maybe they cannot. It should be based on each particular case. A sociopath is a person with serious psychological and mental illness. All illness can and should be healed. A person with HIV or AIDS has a serious illness but does that mean we lock them away and quarentine them so we do not have to live in fear. No we do not. How about if they got another person infected and killed them, Would they have committed a crime? Not in our society because they have no control over it. Just like if a sociopath killed someone beacause they themselves had no control over it. But yet we judge the two cases very differently.
 
Maybe they can or maybe they cannot. It should be based on each particular case. A sociopath is a person with serious psychological and mental illness. All illness can and should be healed. A person with HIV or AIDS has a serious illness but does that mean we lock them away and quarentine them so we do not have to live in fear. No we do not. How about if they got another person infected and killed them, Would they have committed a crime? Not in our society because they have no control over it. Just like if a sociopath killed someone beacause they themselves had no control over it. But yet we judge the two cases very differently.

Not all illness can be cured (as of today and maybe not in the future).
Even the mentally ill make decisions to do what they do. the difference is for some their decisions are not within social norms.

For those that clearly deserve the death penality
Life in prison -- 50-60K/year
9mm cartridge -- 50c
shot to the head -- priceless and final.
 
Maybe they can or maybe they cannot. It should be based on each particular case. A sociopath is a person with serious psychological and mental illness. All illness can and should be healed. A person with HIV or AIDS has a serious illness but does that mean we lock them away and quarentine them so we do not have to live in fear. No we do not. How about if they got another person infected and killed them, Would they have committed a crime? Not in our society because they have no control over it. Just like if a sociopath killed someone beacause they themselves had no control over it. But yet we judge the two cases very differently.


A sociopath lacks empathy for other living creatures. A true sociopath cannot be cured, at least not yet, but even they understand that certain actions are against the law, even if they don't have empathy for their fellow man. They must still make the choice to murder or not murder, knowing that they may well lose their own life if they choose to end another's. We do not give them a free pass for having a mental illness, nor should we. Society must be protected from dangerous individuals. And yes, there have been cases where HIV positive people have been prosecuted for purposely infecting others with callous disregard for their welfare.

 
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