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Anyone who does something like this, is (fill in the blank with whatever term you want to use, I am not here to debate semantics, mentally ill, insane, crazy, etc.). It is not safe for the person to be among the rest of us. We do not kill, we do not torture. This person should be shunned from our society, but there is no good reason to abandon the very principles we use to hold him to task. It is our duty, as a society, to put this poor soul in some locked place with essentials. Life without parole.

-Chuck, Vegetarian fanboy



But that is just my point. Uh, the fill in any word you want to use part... I think the words everybody else wants to use are criminally responsible.

The fact of the matter is that he is most probably not legally insane, and there is not a mental illness that would excuse what he did. Neither of these are issues of semantics. Everybody is entitled to believe whatever they want about capital punishment, but to throw around words meant to justify your position (e.g. he's "insane" so shouldn't be killed, or he's "mentally ill" and so shouldn't be killed) that are factually incorrect don't help.

In other words, if your position is that we shouldn't kill him because he is either mentally ill or insane and then he is pronounced to be neither mentally ill nor insane, why shouldn't we kill him? I wasn't trying to be nit picky about how you used the words, this was the point I was trying to make.

I guess it's just my opinion that a person should have the courage of their convictions to say, "Sure the guy beat up a woman, kicked an infant across the room, kidnapped the infant and then beat it up some more and threw it out the car window on the highway to die by the side of the road and he isn't insane and he isn't mentally ill, but I don't believe in the death penalty so he should be taken care of and supported by society for the rest of his life."

Anyway, I wasn't trying to be nit picky about semantics (there are enough people around here who do that already), or attack your position, I was just curious about your thoughts against the death penalty without the crutch of mental illness or legal insanity to see if they still held up. I don't think you have to justify your position, I was just curious, that's all.
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--Some of us look for The Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.