Your views on the death penalty/insanity plea

K

KokosMomMom

New Member
In light of the weekends events I have reviewed my opinion of the death penalty and the usage of the insanity plea. First I will discuss the insanity plea, how can someone who used such deliberation and months of planning plead that he is too insane to stand trial? I can see if he hadn't spent months accumulating the guns, ammunition and explosives, but it was a cold deliberate act by a mad man not a crazy man.

The death penalty is normally not an avenue I would advocate but do you think in mass killings it is appropriate?
 

I think the insanity plea is just an easy way out for these people. They don't have to worry about the usual prison behavior that they may experience in jail, and they are given meds everyday too, so they can stay in 'la la land', where everything is peachy. :rolleyes:

I'm for the death penalty, and I'd like to take it a step further, and kill those creeps exactly the way they killed their victims. In the case of child abuse and murder, these violators should endure ALL of the unspeakable torture that they put those babies or young children through. :mad:
 
I'm all for the death penalty. Sure, it doesn't bring back loved ones. However, it puts the murderer one step closer to hell!
 

SeaBreeze said:
I think the insanity plea is just an easy way out for these people. They don't have to worry about the usual prison behavior that they may experience in jail, and they are given meds everyday too, so they can stay in 'la la land', where everything is peachy. :rolleyes:

I'm for the death penalty, and I'd like to take it a step further, and kill those creeps exactly the way they killed their victims. In the case of child abuse and murder, these violators should endure ALL of the unspeakable torture that they put those babies or young children through. :mad:
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Now see, I knew I liked you for a reason!! I believe that all criminals should be treated as they treated their victims. I especially think anyone who mistreats children should suffer and not live in "splendor" for years. By that I mean they have three meals a day, a roof over their head, and clothes to wear...more than some out here have...that is living in splendor when you deserve to be rotting away somewhere! Ok, I need to step off the soap box because I can keep going and going!:D
 
We up here in Canada have abolished the death penalty.. I have NO explanation why they did it, but never the less they did..
Sometimes I wonder if a criminal who should be executed is put in prison for life isn't suffering more rather than die a martyr.. Perhaps they should put all those criminals in a special prison where the basics of life are a luxury rather than a regular prison where they have almost everything given to them.. That way suffering like they did to their victims will be for the rest of their life..................

Suffer rather than die.......

This is just my opinion but I can imagine many not agreeing with me............
 
Steve, but once they die they will suffer more pain than they could ever endure on Earth. Keeping them alive also costs us thousands in taxes each year. Where I live, it costs up to 50,000 USD per year to house a murdered. What a waste of money!
 
It is expensive to keep someone in jail, even if it's just '3 hots and a cot'. It may not seem a very forgiving thing to do, but I imagine that those people who have had loved ones killed senselessly by these murderers, would like to see them lose their own lives as punishment. I think killing crime would go down if the murderers knew they would get a death sentence. I just think lying there and getting a needle in their arm to softly go to sleep is too kind for some of these monsters.
 
There is also the spectre of miscarriages of justice. Back in the 70s we here in England had a couple of cases were men were convicted of bombing pubs (part of the IRA's terror campaign on mainland Britain) It later transpired that the police had got the wrong men.
There was an almighty clamour at the time for them to be hanged....Just as well the UK had abolished the death penalty some years before.
 
SeaBreeze said:
I'm for the death penalty, and I'd like to take it a step further, and kill those creeps exactly the way they killed their victims. In the case of child abuse and murder, these violators should endure ALL of the unspeakable torture that they put those babies or young children through. :mad:
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Spiritual law! Suffering can only be requited by suffering. Nobody 'gets away with it'.
 
SeaBreeze said:
I think the insanity plea is just an easy way out for these people. They don't have to worry about the usual prison behavior that they may experience in jail, and they are given meds everyday too, so they can stay in 'la la land', where everything is peachy. :rolleyes:

I'm for the death penalty, and I'd like to take it a step further, and kill those creeps exactly the way they killed their victims. In the case of child abuse and murder, these violators should endure ALL of the unspeakable torture that they put those babies or young children through. :mad:
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Where's the "like" button. So I hit the "reply with quote" instead. Ditto all of that.

These people may be insane but they're not "sing-song" insane, if that makes any sense. What many of them are, is so intelligent they view themselves as above everybody. When they become upset by even the smallest of things, they allow their minds to visit the darkest of places and pretty soon those thoughts elevate to payback plans that ultimately become reality.

In some ways, they are like sex offenders that start out exposing themselves. First in the front door of their home, then in their car, then in the public bathroom, then a few or several years down the road, they've got somebody in the trunk of their car in a body bag, on the way to some remote place for burial. They are sick but then again they're not too sick to plan all that out.

The only house visible to us when the trees are full of leaves, literally sits 10 feet from our fence. Naturally it's the only rental on this rural road. It turns out the last renter was already a three-time convicted sex offender and the third exposure offense was committed while he was in jail serving time for the second one. I'd say his bravery certainly was escalating.

It got to where I was carrying my pistol to the barn every day, so I called my other neighbor, who's a county deputy and reported the guy. That's when we found out he's a convicted sex offender. My county deputy neighbor was the one who actually saw him expose himself in his front yard and promptly arrested him.

Point-being the kid's behavior problems are going to escalate and he'll be a headliner on 48 Hours I.D. one of these days. He was married and they were both just as pleasant to talk to as they could be. Looked normal, never any indication there was something wrong, until the day I saw him standing buck-nekkid in his side door, watching me mow the barnyard.

Just like these mass killers who were "good kids" in school and their neighborhoods and always acted normal. You can't act normal if you're insane in that sense of the word we all immediately relate to; it shows in your thought process and your speech pattern.

I don't know what the trigger is to send these outwardly nice kids down such a dark path but they know full-well what they are doing and that insanity plea needs to be wrapped around every attorney's throat that tries to get away with it.
 
The death penalty, while may occasionally be found to execute the wrong person, is a much better alternative in qualifying cases to life imprisonment that costs the taxpayers an incredible amount of money each year. There should be a limit to the number of appeals as well. Rapidly sending the criminal through the system would save countless more money a year.
 
Insanity plea should only be allowed when a person can truly be deemed insane. Not just by slimy lawyers who want to win a case for their client. The problem is, you just can't tell these days. And so normal evil people, end up going to a nuthouse instead of the big house where they should go.
 
First, in general, I oppose the death penalty on principle... however, there are instances of crimes that are so horrific that I'd go along with it.

Second, though, I believe the 'defenses' should be based solely on the old M'Naghten Rule- a) did the person know what he was doing, and b) did he know that it was wrong. And I believe this 'test' for sanity/insanity should be the only one that applies in criminal cases.
People these days get away with too much, because there are too many readily-available excuses.
 
SeaBreeze said:
It is expensive to keep someone in jail, even if it's just '3 hots and a cot'. It may not seem a very forgiving thing to do, but I imagine that those people who have had loved ones killed senselessly by these murderers, would like to see them lose their own lives as punishment. I think killing crime would go down if the murderers knew they would get a death sentence. I just think lying there and getting a needle in their arm to softly go to sleep is too kind for some of these monsters.
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I agree completely SeaBreeze.
 
SeaBreeze said:
I think the insanity plea is just an easy way out for these people. They don't have to worry about the usual prison behavior that they may experience in jail, and they are given meds everyday too, so they can stay in 'la la land', where everything is peachy. :rolleyes:

I'm for the death penalty, and I'd like to take it a step further, and kill those creeps exactly the way they killed their victims. In the case of child abuse and murder, these violators should endure ALL of the unspeakable torture that they put those babies or young children through. :mad:
Click to expand...

I totally agree, Seabreeze, punish them as they punished their victims. We're much too gentle on these monsters, but only if we know without a doubt they did it. And those who torture & kill innocent children should have a very special sentence -- can't think of anything bad enough, but whatever it is I would support it.

It makes me sick to hear complaints as how the "way too humane injection" was torture for them, and how their client suffered. Don't want to hear it. So for those who may think I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I'm not!
 
I don't think the death penalty is sufficient punishment for many crimes and I oppose it. There is no pain or suffering when you end life. Life at HARD LABOR would be punishment and pay for the cost of incarceration.
 
I think capital punishment has no place in a civilised society. Besides being barbaric, sometimes the wrong person is executed. The capacity of some individuals to shrug that off horrifies me. No matter how many horrors I have seen or experienced, I refuse to become what I hate most, an advocate of murder. Slippery slope indeed, particularly when we

advocate subjecting criminals to the same treatment meted out to their victims. Who are the monsters then? I do not live in

an ivory tower, as long term members know, my story is gritty in the extreme. I have paid, and continue to pay a huge
price for my humanity, but I refuse to relinquish it under any circumstances. Want revenge? Dig two holes.
 
The insanity defense is seldom accepted by juries. But, let's talk about insanity for just a second.

When people do horrendous acts, the public thinks that's crazy. Sure isn't "normal" to hack people to death. Or, is it?

Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who murdered then ate his victims. Is that normal? Isn't that a little crazy?

I personally wanted to see John Hinckley be put away in prison for life, for shooting Ronald Reagan. That didn't happen, Hinckley was released from

institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016, and lives full-time at his mother's home. But, wasn't that all crazy, shooting Reagan over

Hinckley's obsession with Jodie Foster? Crazy, for sure, but not sufficient to excuse him from criminal prosecution, IMO.


Regarding the Death Penalty- on the surface, it doesn't serve any purpose. Revenge? O.K., but revenge does not heal the

wounds of the victim's family.

Revenge is only therapeutic for those with evil hearts.

A deterrent? Nope. Nobody that commits / is going to commit a death penalty punishable offense ever thinks about it. Never ever.

Sitting on death row for decades is a lot like serving a "life without parole" sentence, only a lot more expensive.

The Innocence Project has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing. For that reason, I feel

that "life without" is a better sentence penalty than the death penalty.
 
Insanity plea to avoid being put to death where the death penalty is used IMO would have to be evaluated case by case. Toss in beyond reasonable doubt where it is absolutely proven that the person did commit the crime, it comes down to what does society owe to that individual. What is just?


I see no reason to prolong the life of a person that had no regard for the life of another. For those with religious objections didn't your God wipe out the lives of everyone but Noah & his family because people were not living the expected way? What is so different from society taking the life of someone that definitely isn't living to the expected standards of civil society?
 
tnthomas said:
The insanity defense is seldom accepted by juries. But, let's talk about insanity for just a second.

When people do horrendous acts, the public thinks that's crazy. Sure isn't "normal" to hack people to death. Or, is it?

Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer who murdered then ate his victims. Is that normal? Isn't that a little crazy?

I personally wanted to see John Hinckley be put away in prison for life, for shooting Ronald Reagan. That didn't happen, Hinckley was released from

institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016, and lives full-time at his mother's home. But, wasn't that all crazy, shooting Reagan over

Hinckley's obsession with Jodie Foster? Crazy, for sure, but not sufficient to excuse him from criminal prosecution, IMO.


Regarding the Death Penalty- on the surface, it doesn't serve any purpose. Revenge? O.K., but revenge does not heal the

wounds of the victim's family.

Revenge is only therapeutic for those with evil hearts.

A deterrent? Nope. Nobody that commits / is going to commit a death penalty punishable offense ever thinks about it. Never ever.

Sitting on death row for decades is a lot like serving a "life without parole" sentence, only a lot more expensive.

The Innocence Project has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing. For that reason, I feel

that "life without" is a better sentence penalty than the death penalty.
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Well put.
 
Knight said:
Insanity plea to avoid being put to death where the death penalty is used IMO would have to be evaluated case by case. Toss in beyond reasonable doubt where it is absolutely proven that the person did commit the crime, it comes down to what does society owe to that individual. What is just?


I see no reason to prolong the life of a person that had no regard for the life of another. For those with religious objections didn't your God wipe out the lives of everyone but Noah & his family because people were not living the expected way? What is so different from society taking the life of someone that definitely isn't living to the expected standards of civil society?
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My objections are not religous, but ethical.
 
Shalimar, I completely agree with you. Given the number of people falsely convicted, it is horrendous that in this day and age we are still practicing this barbarism. Why not life without parole? Just throw away the key.

As far as the "insanity" defense, this doesn't make too much sense in the modern world. I think it's based on a very archaic definition of insanity, not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It's certainly a lot more
complicated than that.
 
As far as the death penalty, there are some, whose actions are so inhumane that they've given up the right to live with us. It's not just for killing a police man, kid, etc. It is a special death penalty trial. And no "human" evidence can be used in the trial. No one can say, "I saw him", "He's the one", etc. It all has to be forensic evidence, DNA, or tape.
The 'insane" defense is tough. Is this guy running around killing people, because he doesn't have the right molecules in the right place, or is he a SOB? I worked in psych. I've seen how meds change people. I've seen violent, biting, punching, screaming, totally out of control people, get on the right meds and go home to care for their invalid mothers. They are the same person. Right now, we don't understand enough to know what "crazy" is? Is your non-functioning computer "guilty" of not working? I would change it to "GUILTY- BUT INSANE". The person would remain in a psychiatric facility for life.
 

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