7 year old girl murdered in Houston (1 Viewer)

[guidomerkinsrules]

Like I’ve said, we fetishize punishment

 

[JimEverett]

What are these racial overtones. I've read the report and the only mention of race is in the description of victim and suspect. This might be racially motivated but nothing I've seen so for indicates that. I hope this dirtbag gets everything he deserves for killing this child.

I thought of race fairly soon after hearing this. It just seems so random - and nothing I have read indicates that the victim's family isn't anything but an average, law-abiding family. So why would some dude just open fire on them? One thing that makes it make sense is that it is racially motivated.
Doesn't mean it is, of course - but I don;t think its a great leap to think it is.

 

[Surviving Saint]

Would it be racially motivated if it was a black man that shot 2 white people ?

 

[Surviving Saint]

Like I’ve said, we fetishize punishment

How? Lethal injection is not punishment. Someone going to sleep forever after raping and then burning someone alive should be put to death slowly and painfully. Child molesters like priests and Sanduskys should be castrated right after trial. Nothing fetish about it. You want to do forked up sheet, pay the price.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

How? Lethal injection is not punishment. Someone going to sleep forever after raping and then burning someone alive should be put to death slowly and painfully. Child molesters like priests and Sanduskys should be castrated right after trial. Nothing fetish about it. You want to do forked up shirt, pay the price.

I stand corrected, dreaming of castrating people is not fetishized punishment at all,
Thank you for unironically showing me the error of my way

 

[DadsDream]

Every night, WWL kicks off the news with multiple stories of all kinds of shootings on New Orleans, live right in my livingroom.

This one is in Houston.


Just sayin'.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

Every night, WWL kicks off the news with multiple stories of all kinds of shootings on New Orleans, live right in my livingroom.

This one is in Houston.


Just sayin'.

i disagree

 

[DadsDream]

i disagree

Exactly.

 

[Joe OKC]

Just sayin'.

Right...

You want to do forked up shirt, pay the price.

Right again... Do stupid sheet, Win stupid prizes.

I thought of race fairly soon after hearing this. It just seems so random - and nothing I have read indicates that the victim's family isn't anything but an average, law-abiding family. So why would some dude just open fire on them? One thing that makes it make sense is that it is racially motivated.

I disagree... I think that it was pure random... I have the strangest feeling that this guy had a few beers and he was P'Oed off at someone else and just wanted to show this car how though he was... He was only meaning to shoot their car and teach them a lesson... Thinking no one would ever find out who he was... Thinking he was some bad though dude... Gonna shoot out some glass and put a few holes in some fenders. Cause he's a bad dude.

He sobered up the next day and found out that he murdered an innocent young girl and will be facing the rest of his life in prison and he's a scared mofo right about now laying low, and he ain't so bad after all...

He'll be found...

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

*insert mental gymnastics meme*

 

[Icon]

I'm not anti-death penalty, but......

In addition to thinking of the trauma that a victim's family is going through...........in recent years I also find myself thinking of some criminals' families. Oh, I'm sure in many cases, it's a situation where the acorn didn't fall far from the tree. But I'm sure in plenty of other cases, it was a case of the old Merle Haggard song "Mama Tried". Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, cousins.......people who genuinely cared for this person who.....for whatever reason.....turned out to be an awful human being. Imagine being one of those parents who got the call........."there's been a school shooting.........your son was the triggerman". Or to keep things gender-neutral for example purposes: grandparents who get the news that their grandchild has been murdered, and the child's mother..aka their daughter....is the prime suspect.

The family of a victim is viewed by society as just that........the family of a victim, rightfully deserving of sympathy, well-wishes, and whatever help others can provide. The family of the criminals get to forever be linked to a person who is regarded by society as a piece of ****.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

a few things...

first, if people want the death penalty as a means of retributive justice, that's one thing - I disagree with it, for personal/spiritual reasons - that I can reasonably understand

secondly, if people want it because it's going to be a deterrent, I don't believe it's a justifiable reason. It's pretty well established that the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent and were capital punishment removed, it would have no discernible impact on crime

thirdly, the notion of public executions as a death penalty isn't new - and it used to be really, really effective. You have to go back several hundred years. And a bit of reading and learning, and you'll see that there are pretty clear reasons why it stopped being effective. And nothing has changed socioculturally in us that would make it effective again.

fourth, there are places on this earth where public executions are still practiced - and yet, crimes that result in public execution sentences still happen - when we are talking about compulsions or beliefs in an individual, especially someone as disturbed as the assailant in the OP must be, the mental processes aren't likely going to be something that will no longer happen, which brings me to my final point.

Fifth and finally, when it comes to the state taking a life, I think it has to be something taken very seriously and without a shadow of a doubt - but the problem is that our judicial and legislative systems are not infallible.

Now, a common reply is - "but what about the cases that are disturbing and violent and proof is indisputable - what about then?" And my answer would be that what we decide to do - as a system of government and society - is reflective of us and our beliefs. I do not think that the US should be a country that hangs people from the Huey P Long Bridge - no matter how heinous that person's acts are. I think if we are going to have a death penalty, then a 'humane' death penalty is something more in line with what the US is about.

Obviously, if someone did something gruesome, a common reply is, "Well did you see what they did to this innocent child?" Yes. What they did was inhumane and grotesque. At that point, it becomes what we are about and not what the person did. But I can understand the desire to see something horrible done to someone who did something horrible - but that brings us back to the retribution point at the beginning.

To piggyback on this incredibly articulated argument, there is also the simple question of accuracy of the sentence.

Beyond a reasonable doubt is not ironclad, it is not 100%, it's simply a value judgement administered by a group of people suffering from the same fallibility of the human condition we all suffer from. Working within a fallible system. It's better than alternative forms of justice, the backbone of which helped build the bones of this country, but it's not without it's errors, even it's greatest proponents would fully admit as such. And squaring that with taking someone's life is something proponents of the death penalty I find have a hard time confronting. Heck, it was the thing I had a hard time confronting as someone that was raised in a culture and sect of the country deeply in favor of it. It tends to be something that just gets skipped over or ignored. Most arguments you hear make the argument of deterrence, but they also rely upon the assumption that the judgments passed that lead to the death penalty are correctly identifying the perpetrator in their verdict. Or they rest on anecdotes about the person being put to death being unquestionably guilty to a degree you often don't have. You see those assumptions being implied in almost all posts defending the death penalty in this thread.


And this leads to the key point and the hinge on which discussions about the death penalty MUST also confront:

In the last ~30 years, 125+ people have been released from death row that were either proven innocent or new evidence surfaced that called into doubt their conviction's accuracy. Over a dozen more death row prisoners in the last ~30 years are strongly suspected of their innocence despite conviction, again, due to new evidence surfacing, post trial confessions, or previously unrevealed issues in the prosecution. Except in these instances the revelations happened AFTER the person had already been executed...​

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You are putting people's one and only life in the hands of a system that has on multiple occasions killed, or came close to killing, innocent people. And for what benefits exactly? As you articulated, there doesn't really seem to be many, if any.

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So to me any defense of the death penalty that doesn't confront the very real problem of the death penalty being administered through a flawed process that has historically and continues to have the potential of putting innocent people to death is an argument skirting the largest moral question on the table. But one that also should not be separated from the efficacy argument you articulated about deterrence.

 

[WhoDatPhan78]

The death penalty isn’t tough. It’s the easy way out for society. It doesn’t deter crime. People committing crimes that carry the death penalty aren’t operating from a rational point of view.

Anyone who would want to watch a public execution probably isn’t much better than the person being executed.

 

[DadsDream]

The death penalty isn’t tough. It’s the easy way out for society. It doesn’t deter crime. People committing crimes that carry the death penalty aren’t operating from a rational point of view.

Anyone who would want to watch a public execution probably isn’t much better than the person being executed.

I disagree. A parent who has to physically identify the mutilated remains of their child should be allowed to view the public execution of the murderer. Popcorn with butter sauce optional.

Equating said parent to the murderer is inane.

 

[WhoDatPhan78]

I disagree. A parent who has to physically identify the mutilated remains of their child should be allowed to view the public execution of the murderer. Popcorn with butter sauce optional.

Equating said parent to the murderer is inane.

Our justice system shouldn’t be used to satisfy victims. That’s not justice.