Discussion for article #222192
So all the “red meat” conservatives who use the death penalty as the channel for their bloodlust and vengeance should be delighted. Too bad we don’t set people on fire in botched executions any longer.
(“We tried to follow the 8th Amendment. Oops.”)
This is horrifying. Whatever these men did or were, we are theoretically bound both by the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and by our common humanity to treat them with at least a basic dignity; surely even those who believe in the death penalty cannot justify this kind of horror. I cannot imagine hating anyone enough to want to inflict this kind of pain, and I say that as someone who was a victim of a violent crime.
As ghastly as the death inflicted by the state is the salacious excitement of those who believe that this travesty has somehow served the cause of justice. If our willingness to tolerate and even embrace this kind of brutality is any measure of what kind of society we have become, then the tragedy is ours; we have become something less than fully human, which means that we have lost the right to judge men like these, no matter what they’ve done.
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Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve read about officials shutting the blinds after a botched execution by injection. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having witnesses in the first place?
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Not that it matters to you, but not all of us are motivated by fear.
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In addition to the murder charge, Lockett was found guilty of conspiracy, first-degree burglary, three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, three counts of forcible oral sodomy, four counts of first-degree rape, four counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery by force and fear. The charges were after former convictions of two or more felonies, according to the court clerk’s office.
So I’m not feelin his pain
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If he died it isn’t botched, just made more interesting
Second Amendment’s all the amendments we need if you ask me. Now pardon me while I put on my tricorn hat, grab my musket, and march around with all my Tea Party buddies to defend the Constitution from them whiny lib’ruls and their “cruel and unusual” bullshit.
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I mean this in all sincerity, but you are a far better person than I’ll ever be.
Raping and killing a baby and burying a woman alive? IMO, they should die slow. For me, there are some crimes that aren’t about justice, they’re about a need to eject that person from humanity. The killers bought what they paid for when they snuffed out innocent lives in the most brutal and heinous of fashions.
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So what have these two men done to you, personally, that gives you the right to demand that they suffer?
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I get it. He’s a bad guy, so he’s not entitled to anything.
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It’s not about what they did to me, they’ve done nothing to me personally. It’s what they did to their victims and their victims’ families. Raping an 11 month old baby…Burying a woman alive…I just can’t feel any compassion.
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It really need not have anything to do with compassion. We’re a society of laws. The Constitution is our highest law. The Constitution says, “nor [shall] cruel and unusual punishments [be] inflicted.” It doesn’t say, “except for people who are really really inhumane.”
Do we follow the Constitution just when we like what it says, or is it the law regardless?
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When you rip a baby girl in two with your penis, what’s cruel and unusual?
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Tried to come up with a thoughtful response to your dreck, then, looked at the year on your avi, and thought…why?
Must burn that you thought 2013 was the Nirvana that meant No Obama and then? Still here.
So, yeah, go for it: let’s just torture people to death! They deserve it!
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If the execution was botched, why ain’t this guy still alive?
For the record, I am against the death penalty. I also disagree with their “public” facet. Having said that, the execution method that is most botch proof and humane is the guillotine. I hope that officials in our execution states investigate using it instead.
“We are theoretically bound” ?
I’m opposed to the death penalty because it is imposed disproportionately on some individuals.
I have to be honest, though. If it were proportionately imposed? I don’t know that I would be opposed to it.
Raping an 11 month old?
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Guillotine would be so awfully…public. No one wants their beliefs thrust into their faces in an ugly way.
Utter barbarism. This need to kill haunts us all.
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