Here's a couple for you:

[esskreemr]

Coral Eugene Watts admitted to brutally killing over 13 women, police suspect the number may be in the hundreds:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in649363.shtml

Weldon Angelos convicted of carrying a gun (didn't shoot anyone, or at least wasn't caught shooting anyone) and dealing marijuana:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/11/17/fe....ap/index.html



Guess which one will be serving 55 years and 1 day and which one will is scheduled to be released after 24 years...

[Zilverzmurfen]

I suppose this is what could happen when you don't have a national (as in each state seem to have their own) legislation system.

Nevertheless, frightening!

[pixie]

That is just plain scary!

[Inquartata]

Justice is blind...and occasionally stupid as well.

[Unmarked]

Obviously this guy is nuts.Why did'nt they just shoot him??

[MikeHarm]

There is no death sentence for murder in Michigan, which is why they didn't kill him. Even if they had sentenced him to life, the number of years you can serve in the state for a life sentence is capped at 30, so you actually can serve more time if they sentence you to a straight number of consecutive years than getting a life sentence over here.

The other side of it though is if they go with a straight number of years when we have prison overcrowding they reduce everyones sentence by a percentage in the places that are crowded. Being one of the states with the highest prison population over a long time that can eat away at the number of years sentenced and give an earlier release than the life sentence in some cases.

I agree, its a pretty stupid system.

[Maeve_Mari]

Obviously this guy is nuts.Why did'nt they just shoot him??

One of the problems I have with the death penalty is that I believe the system needs to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they got the right man, and also that the crime was heinous enough to warrant death over rehabilitation.

What's interesting is that they really only have him on the one murder. If it wasn't for his own confession, no one was going to get this guy!

It's scary to think that he has killed nearly a hundred women in completely random acts. If they couldn't get him for the first hundred, how many more are going to die during this upcoming release before they get another charge on him?

[scrapinpeg]

One of the problems I have with the death penalty is that I believe the system needs to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they got the right man, and also that the crime was heinous enough to warrant death over rehabilitation.

But that's what the system already does. It is the task of the trial jury to determine whether the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt whether the accused committed the crime. Certain crimes, by their nature, are defined as eligible for the death penalty (varying from state to state), and in each case where such a crime has been committed and the government pursues capiral punishment, the judge or jury must determine whether this particular crime warrants it.

With respect to your emphasis on rehabilitation -- that is probably not what you should focus on. Criminal law is distinguished from civil law by the fact that punishment is its purpose (rather than compensation or otherwise fixing the problem). To protect society, the criminal is punished.

Purposes of punishment include basic retaliation/retribution (you did bad, so bad's gonna be done to you), removal (we don't want you to be able to harm society again, so we're jailing/banishing/killing you), deterrence (we want to give people a self-interested reason not to commit crimes), and rehabilitation (we want to change you so you don't do this again).

Most people who commit crimes and go through the system in the US are scared, embarrassed or otherwise convinced never to get in trouble again. The figure is somewhere around 83%. Some of these people acted in unique circumstances and would have been unlikely to do it again even if they hadn't been caught, others are just scared straight.

However, about 17% are recidivists -- they keep coming back. And of those who keep coming back, almost none of them rehabilitate. Be they serial killers, sexual predators, rapists, muggers, or drug dealers they keep committing the same crimes whenever they're released. For these people, removal is in the interest of society.

Retaliation is a very crude purpose of punishment, and although it does underly much of civilized penal law, it is never the primary reason for punishment in civilized societies.

Deterrence is impossible to quantify, as it refers to people deciding not to do things because they might get in trouble. Almost everyone makes such decisions at one time or another, and some people even do a kind of crude cost-benefit analysis (there is a 10% chance I'll get caught, and if I do I might get 10 years, so is it worth .10*10=1 year of my life to do this). But many crimes are spur-of-the-moment events and thus not subject to deterrence in the first place. So although it is certainly a useful end, deterrence cannot be the primary purpose of punishment.

Given all that, I would suggest that in a death-penalty case, your concern should not be on death vs. rehabilitation, but on death vs. some other form of removal from society.

Problems I have with the death penalty are that it has no deterrent effect, because it is not uniformly or consistently applied in similar cases, and because the appellate process is so interminable prior to execution that in most cases it is just a more expensive kind of long jail sentence. I would have no problem with the death penalty if it actually worked consistently. But given that it does not, its only purpose is removal, a purpose achieved much less expensively in the long run by lifetime incarceration without parole.

[MikeHarm]

It does have a deterrent effect. 100% of those prisoners executed weren't repeat offenders after their execution.

[Epee_Pox]

I think that's called "removal," not "deterrence."

I think the concept of deterrence involves some kind of living thinking person making a decision.

[D+F+P=Hadouken!]

I think that's called "removal," not "deterrence."

I think the concept of deterrence involves some kind of living thinking person making a decision.

who cares. Prove him guilty, and feed him to a dragon.

[mrbiggs]

I think that's called "removal," not "deterrence."

I think the concept of deterrence involves some kind of living thinking person making a decision.

I think that there's no deterrence when you kill 13 people. Sorry. But when that happens, obviously you're beyond what the law can do.

Shoot him.

[Rogue]

I think that's called "removal," not "deterrence."

I think the concept of deterrence involves some kind of living thinking person making a decision.

I don't believe the death penalty is a deterrence to murder, proper punishment yes, but not a deterrent.
BTW, we are to kind to the murderers with electrocution or lethal injection.

[Westley]

I'd rather get zapped with the song "Crazy Train" playing in my ears than spend the rest of my life getting nailed in the *** by some big black guy named Bubba.

[epeefencer74]

I don't believe the death penalty is a deterrence to murder, proper punishment yes, but not a deterrent.
BTW, we are to kind to the murderers with electrocution or lethal injection.

Yeah, you guys should just hang'em like we do here. It's cheaper.

[Unmarked]

Yeah, you guys should just hang'em like we do here. It's cheaper.

Fully agree with that.You save on food and lots of other stuff.

[Soldier]

who cares. Prove him guilty, and feed him to a dragon.

Now if only we could find some decent friggin' dragons... We really need to put up a "do not feed the dragons" sign. What with all the virgins people keep tossing them, no wonder they turn their noses up at run-of-the-mill murderer...

[Soldier]

Fully agree with that.You save on food and lots of other stuff.

Sure, there's that immediate benefit, but how much do you lose with that waste of a perfectly good labor force?

[jeff]

What with all the virgins people keep tossing them, no wonder they turn their noses up at run-of-the-mill murderer...

Now, Soldier, I don't think that's the reason there are so few virgins around....

[xcr]

I find it worthy of note that the Canadian murder rate droped sharply since the abolition of the death penalty (1976, save for military law) and further since the last exucution (1963 +-a year). One more thing, a person sentenced to death in the late 50's here, who had his sentence reduced to 10 years (he was only 14 at the time, the youngest person ever sentenced to death in Canada), has recently been granted a new trial. He lived all that time without criminal charges.