Upper Left: Feel better now?

Friday, June 18, 2010

Death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner died in a barrage of bullets early Friday as Utah carried out its first firing squad execution in 14 years.

I forget, why do we kill people who kill people to prove that killing people is wrong?>

Pragmatic Rooster said...: Clearly because we are smart enough to invent God, we can invent reason where logic doesen't exist.; 12:34 PM
Terry Parkhurst said...: It's done to instill, within society, a sense that some crimes are so horrendous that forfeiting one's life is the only appropriate sentence. That's what the late Del Hitchner, a professor (I had) at the University of Washington for European political systems, asserted; and he was a kind and compassionate man, by most anyone's estimation.

Theoretically, it's also performed so that the killer, or killers, don't kill again. In that sense, there's no morality involved, only a brutal function, similar to putting down a rabid dog. Think here of the sociopath in California, who only recently was tried, yet again, for murders of women he did, back in the 1970s. His name escapes me, but it's the same guy who was also a contestant on the "Dating Game." Go figure that one.

Of course, it begs the question why any of the so-called Manson "family" involved in killing Sharon Tate and her friends weren't executed. I think that's what bothers everyone - proponents and opponents - about the death penalty: the arbitrary nature of how it is applied, when the legal system, with its byzantine collection of appeals, attorneys, judges and courts, kick in.; 12:38 AM