Public Hanging in Iran of serial child-killer.

[cole grey]

You confuse me, I am not a person who is dead-set (pun intended) against all capital punishment, or any of that.
I am not saying that the guy doesn't deserve everything he got and worse. I am merely saying that there is no effective form of vengeance available for the parents. Let's not pretend that taking this person's life makes up for the damage he did. He can never feel the same shock and pain a child victim of his would have.

I didn't raise a double standard either, I said I would probably participate if justice weren't being done, but I would probably wonder later whether we lynched the right person.

And we don't have victims of crime on juries, so your description of our barbaric participation in the justice system is not entirely apt.

 

[Avatar]

Public Hanging in Iran of serial child-killer.

They should to that more often in other countries too. Would chill off other wanabee serial killers.

 

[Arditezza]

I don't think it would. Serial killers don't kill because of anything else other than lust and thrill. They usually kill to feed their own ego and to become famous or well known in a certain way. They crave attention to the n'th degree. Gacy, Dahmer, Bundy, Ridgeway, and so many others were just losers who needed a little more attention they anyone ever gave them. Going out with a bang would put them in the history books and keep people talking about them posthumously.

I don't think that the death penalty is a deterrent at all.

It brings closure to the family of the victims, and it keeps the monsters from ever returning to the streets in any way. Or harming anyone else in prison, guards or other inmates. The death penalty is simply the best way to protect the public from sociopaths with no conscious.

 

[Avatar]

In one other forum there was a discussion at lenght of the death penalty issue and it was concluded that it really is more humane than life inprisonment.
That's an alternative view to think about.

 

[Silas]

Interesting, so for you it's ok to kill him for his crimes but just don't let the public see it? Kind of hypocritical don't you think?

Erm, no? The only hypocritical thing was for me to pretend that I agreed with his vicious punishment, which I didn't. But that wasn't the point I was trying to make.

Let me ask you something, if your child was one of this prick's victims, you wouldn't be part of that lynch mob? Or would you be standing there chanting that he should not be hung or only hung in private to preserve his dignity? Give me a break!

Well, no, of course I'd be leading the gang. That's why I'm glad I live in a country where the victims don't get to make that decision and reveal in themselves their basest instincts.

The bastard forfeited his dignity when he took away the dignity and lives of those children. If it was one of my kids that this bastard had brutalised, I'd have been standing there with a knife waiting to castrate him as he was flogged.

Bells, if you were a friend of mine that I saw on a regular basis, drank with, invited round for dinner, etc, I would be horrendously shocked by reading that about your capacity for violence. I'd rather not know about it. Civilisation may be only a facade, but I think that facade is important to maintain for all our sakes, rather than seeing our friends and neighbours literally baying for blood - most of which would have been created by "crowd hysteria" anyway - a form of temporary insanity.

This wasn't just a public lynching Silas, this allowed the family watch as the individual, who ruined their lives and did things that one cannot even stand to think about to someone they adored, be put down. One cannot even begin to imagine the pain he and his accomplice inflicted on those children. As they say, what goes around comes around. And in this particular case, it kind of has some poetic justice to it.

No, it wasn't just a public lynching. But then I wasn't necessarily complaining about the right of the family to watch their children's killer being executed. On the other hand, it seems that at least one family involved stated that they would rather have invoked the "blood money" punishment, not merely as recompense, but also because they apparently had lost a great deal in the hunt for him (not sure quite why that is, but still).