4 Suspects Held in Fatal Carjacking at Mall

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
This in NJ; a thirty year old man shot in the head in front of his wife by four men who then stole the couple's SUV (a Range Rover) Story in the NYTimes.

Ok. I am no more bloodthirsty than the next fellow, but will someone please seriously explain to me why these people should not be executed?

New Jersey does not have the death penalty. I don't seriously think it's a deterrent, I just think it might be a useful way of minimizing the expense of disposing of these four miscreants, and ensuring they don't create any more havoc. One of the four had just been discharged from jail, evidently.

These are not good people, frankly. I think the only choice offered to them ought to be the option to die on the operating table after donating their organs. But perhaps I am being too practical here.
 
Execution is very hard for the libs to stomach. so lets be fair with these poor fellas....harvest their organs and then set them free..
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
Craig, I'm a liberal and I started this thread. Do you think I find execution hard to stomach?

Maybe you need to revise your definition of liberal. Do you think all of us are against the death penalty?

I attended med school with a man who turned out to be a serial murderer- of his patients, no less. Do you think I wouldn't turn his lights off myself if I got the opportunity?
 

Pete McCluskey.

Lifetime Supporter
Interesting, one of the things that I have noticed about American politics is how each side is quick to label anyone who may have an opposing view as either a liberal or a Republican. Also notice that all Liberals are wrong all the time, as are all Republicans wrong all the time. There appears to be no room for debate or any chance of middle ground. My clumsy way of saying American politics appear to be very polarised.
 

marc

Lifetime Supporter
At this moment it is as the divergence of rhetoric has brought us down to the level of 4th graders. In all fairness, Jim, you are quite right. I personally think that if we are up to having abortions, then we should have public hangings or at least notification of next of kin on all Media outlets. The real problem is that it takes 10s of years to get these death penalty deals done. And we are to worry if how they die is cruel and unusual punishment. Besides we are wasting volts now if ole "sparky" is brought out of retirement.
 
Craig, I'm a liberal and I started this thread. Do you think I find execution hard to stomach?

Maybe you need to revise your definition of liberal. Do you think all of us are against the death penalty?

I attended med school with a man who turned out to be a serial murderer- of his patients, no less. Do you think I wouldn't turn his lights off myself if I got the opportunity?
Well it looks like we're on the same page .
 
Ok. I am no more bloodthirsty than the next fellow, but will someone please seriously explain to me why these people should not be executed?


Jim,

To answer your question, as a Christian I guess my opinion would boil down to the fact that at some point we will have to stand before our maker to explain our actions, and will be judged accordingly. Not looking forward to that one myself.

I can understand why this would cause problems for non-believers (it’s hard enough for us Christians) as I assume they would argue there is no God, and the perpetrators would effectively “get away with it”.

So leaving religion out of it, I still have a problem with the death penalty. I have never really understood the argument that you have committed possibly the most heinous crime known to mankind, i.e. taken the life of someone. So in order to show you how appalling this act is we are going to take your life. Of course in many cases finding out later we got it wrong.

In fact it could be argued that us anti-death penalty blah blah blah Liberals are tougher on prisoners than those limp wristed “fry them all” humane softy conservatives ;) although they appear to have support from a surprising group of people

Hundreds of prisoners serving life sentences in Italy have called on President Giorgio Napolitano to bring back the death penalty.

The letter they sent to President Napolitano came from a convicted mobster, Carmelo Musumeci, a 52-year-old who has been in prison for 17 years.
It was co-signed by 310 of his fellow lifers.

Musumeci said he was tired of dying a little bit every day.
We want to die just once, he said, and "we are asking for our life sentence to be changed to a death sentence".
It was a candid letter written by a man who, from within his cell, has tried hard to change his life.
He has passed his high school exams and now has a degree in law. But his sentence, he says, has transformed the light into shadows.
He told the president his future was the same as his past, killing the present and removing every hope.
 
Nick ok lets say we take Christianity out of the equation completely and focus on the welfare of any given society.. I see no reason in trying to salvage a positively proven evil person....whats the point? If for example someone is caught on video camera butchering to death a 5 year old kid on a school yard playground is there really a need for this evil person to remain living? again whats the point?? What possible good can this person do to make up for his actions....answer nothing.
My stance has nothing to do with punishment or revenge it has everything to do with ridding humanity of its garbage....
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
Nick, I have to say that I don't see any point in looking for the better nature of someone who has conclusively proved they don't have a better nature. And there isn't anything gleeful or joyful in taking the life of another person, or in seeing some one pass away. My point was that the four people who killed the man in the carjacking could have just taken his car, not his life. There were four of them. And one of him.

Now we'll have to sit through a trial in which they explain how bad their lives were and how they never had a chance. And then after that, we'll have to support them for the balance of their natural lives, while people who never killed anyone but had the misfortune to make other mistakes, or have mental illness, are homeless and hungry out on the streets. Why?

I don't say any of this lightly. And, for the record, on a lot of topics I am pretty conservative. This is one of them. I AM a liberal on a lot of things. But I am not a chickenshit bleeding heart, and anyone who thinks all liberals think the same as each other is exactly as mistaken as those who think all conservatives think the same way as each other. I have politically conservative friends who are against the death penalty.

I don't agree with them. Maybe in the commonly held ideas about liberals, I ought to agree with them on that. But I don't. There are some crimes that DO merit the death penalty. These guys committed them, and so did my medical school classmate who killed his patients.
 
Jim:
I am about 20 miles from that mall and in fact grew up in that town.
That is an affluent area and a target for car theives....something like 415 vehicles already this year.
What is really bad is that there was an ongoing investigation by a lot of agencies and they knew these characters who were operating a export ring to South Africa..as usual someone had to die to bring it all to the surface.
I say public execution would be nice
Cheers
Phil
 

Terry Oxandale

Skinny Man
Personal thoughts on the death penalty (and I am considered by some on this forum to lean left) are to abandon it simply for the single reason that innocent folks get convicted of crimes they don't commit. Yeah, one could argue that they are guilty of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but until the conviction rate of innocent people becomes zero, why would any society take the chance of murdering its innocent people in those apparently rare situations? Once they are dead, finding out later they were innocent means nothing. More and more prosecutors in this country no longer look at obtaining justice, but instead are looking for convictions...big difference.
 

Keith

Moderator
One element of the ultimate deterrent might be 'immediacy' and 'method' of sentence. That is to say, if guilty of such a crime as described by the OP then death 'by the same means' within one week of the trial. That is to say, the guilty party is executed using the exact same method he/she visited on his/her victim(s) within one week - no appeals. Let's face it, any similar crime committed in front of witnesses, and/or captured on CCTV does not merit 10 years of haggling over technicalities.

Let Justice be swift and total.

I believe that this simple change may focus potential murderers' minds more than a little.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
Keith, I usually agree with you but not on this one. Mostly for the reasons of the previous poster. In this case, there are eyewitnesses who can ID the criminals who murdered the owner of the car. I don't think justice ought to be delayed, but I think due process ought to be given. But only that; no more. And THEN the death penalty for these guys.
 

Keith

Moderator
OK Jim, 2 weeks...

It's about time Society took the law into it's own hands.....

(Now THAT is irony)
 
Nick, I have to say that I don't see any point in looking for the better nature of someone who has conclusively proved they don't have a better nature. And there isn't anything gleeful or joyful in taking the life of another person, or in seeing some one pass away. My point was that the four people who killed the man in the carjacking could have just taken his car, not his life. There were four of them. And one of him.

Now we'll have to sit through a trial in which they explain how bad their lives were and how they never had a chance. And then after that, we'll have to support them for the balance of their natural lives, while people who never killed anyone but had the misfortune to make other mistakes, or have mental illness, are homeless and hungry out on the streets. Why?

I don't say any of this lightly. And, for the record, on a lot of topics I am pretty conservative. This is one of them. I AM a liberal on a lot of things. But I am not a chickenshit bleeding heart, and anyone who thinks all liberals think the same as each other is exactly as mistaken as those who think all conservatives think the same way as each other. I have politically conservative friends who are against the death penalty.

I don't agree with them. Maybe in the commonly held ideas about liberals, I ought to agree with them on that. But I don't. There are some crimes that DO merit the death penalty. These guys committed them, and so did my medical school classmate who killed his patients.

Jim,

I agree with a lot of what you say but remain against the death penalty. Two reasons have been highlighted here. One Terry's point that innocent people will slip through the net, and one by your last post, there are mentally ill people out on the streets and there are mentally ill people that murder.

I think if we start executing people for economic reasons, or for crimes committed whilst they are mentally ill, we are on a slippery slope.
 

Larry L.

Lifetime Supporter
...if guilty of such a crime as described by the OP then death 'by the same means' within one week of the trial. That is to say, the guilty party is executed using the exact same method he/she visited on his/her victim(s) within one week - no appeals....any similar crime committed in front of witnesses, and/or captured on CCTV does not merit 10 years of haggling over technicalities.


You have no idea how many years I've been saying exactly the same things.
 
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