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Death Penalty


Oik

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The supreme court handed dwon a ruling showing that it is unconstitutional to proscribe the death penalty to a crime if they were under 18 when they commited the crime.

Thank God!

Here's the link.
[url="http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=US&cat=Death_Penalty"]Supreme Court Ruling[/url]

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thessalonian

[quote name='Luthien' date='Mar 1 2005, 11:07 AM'] Age doesnt change severity of crimes. A 12 year old is capable of killing a whole their whole family.. [/quote]
Age does change the culpability. A 12 year old simply cannot know the gravity of such a crime. God holds each accountable according to the level of their understanding (the light they have been given) and so should we.

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toledo_jesus

Why do we have a juvenile justice system if we are just going to execute them anyway?
Thank God that somebody showed some mercy for these youths. While they are by no means to be released back into society, by virtue of their youth they should be treated and rehabilitated if possible. If not possible, keep them in prison and let their naturally self-destructive behavior be contained.

I'm kind of appalled that anybody would think about executing a person who committed a crime as a 12 year old. What about that 6 year old who shot a classmate? What do we do with him? :angry:

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In Indiana, the cutoff is 10 years old for a juvenile accused of murder to be possibly waived up to adult court. I covered a case a few years ago in which a 10-year-old shot and killed his father, on purpose, but he wasn't waived up to adult court. He's now in a rehabilitative corrections facility in PA.

Personally, I think the DP should be much more sparingly administered than it is ... and maybe should be abolished all together. There are LOTS of problems with the judicial system that aren't all that obvious from the outside. When you get into it, though, you start to wonder whether it's possible to justly administer the death penalty.

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cmotherofpirl

[quote name='Oik' date='Mar 1 2005, 01:03 PM'] The supreme court handed dwon a ruling showing that it is unconstitutional to proscribe the death penalty to a crime if they were under 18 when they commited the crime.

Thank God!

Here's the link.
[url="http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=US&cat=Death_Penalty"]Supreme Court Ruling[/url] [/quote]
The case involved a 17 year old who hogtied his neighbor and thru her off a bridge.
PLEASE do not try to tell me he didn't know what he was doing.

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toledo_jesus

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Mar 1 2005, 01:31 PM'] The case involved a 17 year old who hogtied his neighbor and thru her off a bridge.
PLEASE do not try to tell me he didn't know what he was doing. [/quote]
Again, we have a juvenile justice system for a reason, and if we suspend it in special cases we should just stop pretending to care.
He may have known what he was doing. He may also have been sick in the head and impressionable. He probably didn't fully understand just what he was doing. Young people make bad choices that can put them in bad states of mind that can lead them to do bad things.

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cmotherofpirl

If you read on, he also bragged he was under 18 so they couldn't fry him.



"Young people make bad choices that can put them in bad states of mind that can lead them to do bad things. "

So? Bad choices lead to bad consequences.
If you deliberately take a life you forfeit your own.

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toledo_jesus

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Mar 1 2005, 01:48 PM'] If you read on, he also bragged he was under 18 so they couldn't fry him.



So? Bad choices lead to bad consequences.
If you deliberately take a life you forfeit your own. [/quote]
his braggadocio is another indication that he had not thought about this with an adult mind, nor was he dealing with the consequences as an adult.

If you take a life you deserve punishment. That's true. But adolescents and younger do NOT have the full capacity of an adult. My position is that we have a juvenile justice system. We should stick to it or drop it altogether. They have drawn a line at 18, and i think that's fair. Now, as far as what to do with these kids, I don't know.

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I'm so glad that they made this decision, now we are one step closer to getting rid of the death penalty all together, which is what needs to happen.

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toledo_jesus

[quote name='zwergel88' date='Mar 1 2005, 07:19 PM'] I'm so glad that they made this decision, now we are one step closer to getting rid of the death penalty all together, which is what needs to happen. [/quote]
I wouldn't go that far...It should still be a right of governments to put to death those who threaten the safety of its citizens. today the death penalty should be rare because we can contain most criminals, but still available for those times when a criminal is so dangerous that imprisonment would not be sufficient, ie he starts killing other prisoners.

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as PSPX once pointed out to me, criminals could be contained 1000 years ago as well. it's not like prisons had high escape rates, and island prisons were all the rage. send them to siberia or Australia and be rid of them.

so I no longer buy the argument to use it less frequently because NOW we can contain criminals. Everyone takes that and assumes that we now can contain them but when the death penalty was ok we couldn't. actually, we could... so yeah I don't get it..

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MilesChristi

[quote]The supreme court handed dwon a ruling showing that it is unconstitutional to proscribe the death penalty to a crime if they were under 18 when they commited the crime.[/quote]

I wonder when they'll decide that it's unconstitutional to prescribe the death penalty to unborn babies, who have committed no crimes. :rolleyes:

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MichaelFilo

Don't question the law, you'll fail at making any sense of it.


Children are impresionable, it's true. To kill one for something they did is greviously wrong. Whats funny is when you think you can cure someone without attending to their spiritaul needs. IF you won't give them that treatment, then giving them the DP is full acceptable, because a full cure cannot happen any other way, and they remain a menace to society. That is why I appreciate Bush (the senator, not the president) and his faith-based prisions here in Florida, they are the right step to curing the ills of those who are ill in mind. If you won't gratn them that, then better to kill them before they take more lives and put their souls in more uncertanty.

God bless,
Mikey

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