You're on the jury in the Parkland Shooting trial. What would you sentence him to?
I'm absolutely pro death-penalty, for liars, cheaters, and generally unscrupulous people who try to further themselves by taking advantage of others. In fact, I'm not hugely opposed to some of the corporal punishment going on today in Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. It keeps society in check. You'd never have thousands of idiots rioting after the Super Bowl in Philly if such draconian measures were in place.
That being said, based on what's been released about this shooter's life, I'd give him 15-20 years in prison. Without the possibilty of early release.
Imagine:
Both your biological parents die.
Your adoptive father dies of a heart attack.
Your adoptive mother dies of the flu. (seriously?)
Your brother alienates you.
You're working at the local dollar store, making $6/hr.
You have nowhere to live.
Talk about unfortunate.
In no way am I defending him. However, I think any rational human should take the shooter's circumstances into consideration.
Yes, many people have it "much worse" than him and don't go on murderous rampages - I understand. But no one can say with absolute certainty how we would act if put in certain situations (to assume otherwise is quite naive, since we will never really know ourselves, our actions, and reactions).
“He’s a broken human being,” she said. “He’s a broken child.” ~ his defense lawyer, today in sentencing.
additional thoughts
Let's not forget, that Anders Behring Breivik only received 21 years in a Norwegian prison for killing 80 children. He mowed them down with a machine gun. And that guy was wealthy and had no personal struggles that we know of. He just killed for fun. These people should get the death penalty, without question.
don't you have like 7 threads about how to be a scheister?
perhaps. but you're making the assumption that I'd never execute myself.
how painfully edgy, mi amigo
Do us a favor and test that theory.
We need to bring back public executions.
I am against the death penalty in every instance. A life is precious and, as a society, we don't replicate the actions of some of the most depraved members of our society by replicating their murder with murder. Justice is about both punishment and rehabilition, the death penalty makes the second component impossible. Additionally, we continue to sentence innocent people to death, which in itself should be enough to abolish the practice. I think that it's shameful that we as a society continue to prescribe to the death penalty.
Then don't kill them, build a huge fenced in area in the mountains of Alaska and drop them in there with nothing but a knife and a hatchet and if they survive 20 years they can rejoin society.
I never understood the "life is precious" sentiment. There are more people than the planet can sustainably carry under our current systems. Making a human is cheap and easy. Why is life precious?
Every life is precious because each individual that lives only has one life to live (as far as we know for sure). Cutting it short out of some misguided need for societal revenge is outrageous in my opinion. Btw I disagree with your statement that "there are more people than the planet can sustainably carry under our current systems".
"We continue to sentence innocent people to death.."???
Hahahahah what an idiot he thinks movies are real..helloOOoO Ruben " the hurricane "carter was a movie character not a real person you dufus
Conservatives are so piously "Pro-Life" except when it comes to the death penalty (or war or immigration...)
so you assign equal value to an innocent fetus as you do to a convicted mass murdere?
talk about lack of values.
Really? As has been stated, a baby /= mass murderer. What kind of sociopath puts children in the same category as killers?
I think the US criminal justice system oftentimes ignores the circumstances of the less fortunate. That said, the number of mass shootings in the US in pretty unparalleled. As shown by CNN, the US makes up 31% of the total mass shootings, which is appalling. I hardly think the length of his sentencing will set a precedent moving forward, which can be validated by the punishment of other extremists (e.g. terrorists). That said, there needs to be some feeling of justice and restitution for the parents and loved ones who lost their children. I think most of us can agree that if anyone were to kill our child or sibling, we would not stop until we saw that individual killed or ensured he was suffering for the remainder of his existence. If I were on the jury, I would empathize with these parents and siblings, and see that this man receive the death penalty. There is no fairness in the criminal justice system, as is abundantly evident when looking at African American sentencing for gang related activity, drug offenses, or even the ownership of illegal weapons. The fact that quality lawyers come at a steep price is only a fraction of the issue.
With all of that said, there are certain crimes so heinous that they warrant extreme punishment, regardless of the extenuating circumstances. I feel for this man, and I am sure that he has never/hardly ever experienced joy or happiness. But the underlying issue is that his response to the world's lack of compassion and extreme feelings of bitterness is that he did the unthinkable; he ended the lives of 17 innocent children. Imagine that you were the parent of an only child, and your child was brutally murdered by an AR-15. So much of the joy in your life should have been derived from the relationship with that child, and yet it never will be. Think about the hundreds of thousands of experiences that those children will never get to have.
"As shown by CNN..."
Try a real source next time. They include gang violence where more than 2 people die as a "mass shooting." The rate of homicide by firearm in the US is less than 3 per 100,000. The rate of death by automobile accident is 11 per 100,000.
The death penalty feels selfish to me. I understand a case can be made for deterrence, but I do feel at the heart of that argument is just a thirst for revenge / a desire to see some suffering to make us feel better.
As a person who believes in expanding the death penalty, I don't see it as vengeance--I see it as justice. The penalty should fit the crime, which is exactly what our Founding Fathers believed when they were writing the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Why do you want to expand the death penalty? How do you want to do that? "The penalty should fit the crime" is very subjective and every single person on the planet believes it.
You can't claim that, in your subjective view, that expanding the death penalty is exactly what the Founding Fathers would want unless you can back that up with their writings and quotations.
15-20 years is outrageous. He just mowed down 20 innocent kids. Yeah he had a tough life, but are we really going to have a judge say that since he had it rough he can go get help for 15-20 years and then rejoin society, so now every kid with a terrible life situation can justify doing something similar. Maybe with much less significant crimes you take circumstance into account but I don’t see how circumstance can even be on the radar for something like this.
This, 1 year per murder is obviously a fucking joke, but so is MonacoMonkey. The shooter is like 20 years old currently, so Monkey thinks it's reasonable for him to get out when he's 35? Jesus, MonacoMonkey, you type so much but think so little. It is actually more reasonable to me that you're some radical leftist creative writing plant that is trying to get people on a finance forum to agree to your inanity, and that this will all end up on a Communist blog somewhere later on.
He should obviously get life. If he is truly insane then he should get life in a mental facility. If he is just hard up, I could find a few billion other people with worse life circumstances that didn't manage to want to murder their classmates indiscriminately.
it's funny because I'm fiercely conservative. oh well.
Solitary confinement for life.
Just shoot the kid agains the back of the courthouse. We have too many people that need help to fuck with this kid.
Trial by combat.
Bad shit people in his situation do is rob and steal, not amass enough firepower to take out 17 teens at the local school within a few minutes, just because he didn't have anything better to do that day.
Some lives are truly irredeemable; some acts are so heinous that no amount of introspection, rehabilitation, or remorse make a difference.
This creature has literally shattered a community and left an indelible, lifetime scar on the psyche of the survivors. Dozens of people affected by this will never recover, not to mention the victims. He prematurely extinguished 17 lives and left permanent scars on the victims' families.
In the constructs of our current society, there is no true and equitable retribution as a response to what he did. There is no way for this individual to feel the pain that others are feeling. Even if he one day experiences a sincere epiphany and is gripped by deepest remorse, that pain wouldn't be a fraction of what he has made others feel.
This individual must be put to death.
You think he cares?
I heard they're going to destroy the building within the high school campus where he committed the crime.
Why not kill two birds with one wrecking ball? He wanted to go back to school anyways. Now's his chance.
Life in prison without parole
The sheer brutality and number of people killed cannot be ignored. This was not a case of him robbing a convenience store and shooting one person when the robbery went awry. He methodically shot down as many students as possible, and did so without mercy or remorse.
The OP's argument is a dangerous one. Although a crappy background does affect how we turn out, using this to argue for a lighter sentence is setting a terrible precedent. Ultimately, we are responsible for our actions and should be judged as such.
but you're assigning your own (potential) actions onto a complete stranger. "this is how I would've / would not act If I was him, given such circumstances."
that's fine if it makes you feel better about yourself but at the end of the day, it's pure speculation without a basis. (you don't know yourself).
There are countless stories of people overcoming far worse childhoods who go on to do extraordinary things with their lives. This is no excuse for him no matter his challenges.
"He's a broke human being"? "He's a broken child"? SOP defense attorney language and I often wonder how those fuckers sleep at night.
As I age along I have often had mixed emotions about the death penalty. Sure, it is revenge, but it also provides closure for those grieving the loss of a loved one. Do they deserve the freedom to live no matter how restricted life in prison is? Should they go to the hole and stay locked up in solitary 23 hours a day? Is it fair they get a painless death of getting a needle and drugs to shut them down? I would say yes for the many parents this week burying their children.
Then is it worth the cost of 3 meals a day and providing health care? It's easy to say F them and let them rot. When it comes down to what this kid did I am often ok with the mindset of letting him rot.
Death penalty or not the kid does not deserve to ever breathe the clean air of a free man. He has more than proven he is a danger to society and should remain in the cage until he leaves this earth.
"There are countless stories of people overcoming far worse childhoods who go on to do extraordinary things with their lives. This is no excuse for him no matter his challenges."
Ehhh, I find that hard to believe. I've read a lot on early childhood development, etc. The likelihood he was ever a productive member of society would be like 1 in a million. He was likely doomed by age 5.
It would be difficult for me to disagree with you more than I do. I will stand by my statement 100%.
Pretty much 90% of American immigrants the last 300 years...
Heard of the Mayflower?
Surely there are others with success stories with similar backgrounds, right? Sociopathic or not, I'm sure there's a bunch of examples in this country of individuals who can become somewhat integrated into society or even successful, or am I wrong?
Make him work for Tobin. That'd be worse than prison/death.
This is an easy one: I'd sentence him to death, and if there were any real justice he'd be drawn and quartered in the next 6 months. A lot of people grow up in shitty circumstances and don't end up murdering 17 innocent people. No extenuating circumstances for me.
Life in prison. Death penalty is the easy way out. I doubt his fellow prisoners would take kindly to him, and he's not big enough to defend himself very well. Much harsher than the death penalty.
You have to let him off and hold a trial for the gun itself.
It was clearly the gun that committed those murders.
Clever. A novel way of satirizing the act of killing with a killing machine. #MAGA
No, no, no, it was the NRA somehow. They are "child murderers."
The left is so dedicated to blame shifting that they have remarkably not focused blame--at all--on the actual guy who pulled the trigger; it's remarkable because in this instance the killer could be tied in a broad way to support for Trump (because of his alt-right statements and actual photograph with a Trump hat). As a leftist, you've got to be pretty dedicated to blame shifting to ignore the putative "Trump supporter" who pulled the trigger.
Thought the kid had an affection for isis? Saw some of his comments online around that.
Guantanamo Bay. Or Azkaban.
If it were me I'd make a coliseum where criminals like this all fight for entertainment; it would probably be somewhere in Texas. Then again maybe that's why I'm not a judge.
People like this maniac tend to have snowflake hurt feelings syndrome and turn against the world to get their revenge, thinking they are truly tough.
If we don't off this kid, I propose shipping him to Siberia to see what a tough existence actually looks like.
Western lifestyle and culture has sanitized life's true hardships to such a great extent, that the vast majority of teenagers and young adults in this country are in effect developmentally handicapped, with the mental fortitude of toddlers.
To note your mention of Anders Behring Breivik only receiving 21 years, a multitude of things are to be considered. For instance, to quote when you said he had no personal struggles, this dude's parents got divorced when he was one. He had an abusive mother who beat him, 2 reports were filed for removal of her custody due to how it jeopardized his mental health. His father cut all ties and communication with him after 16. He was later deemed criminally insane, literally deranged. So that part isn't exactly correct. However, perhaps the most important thing to note is that Norway no longer has the death penalty (it was banned in 1905/1979 depending on what you're on trial for) and Breivik received the lengthiest penalty possibly awarded. In fact, 21 years isn't technically correct as he was sentenced to "containment" which just means a minimum of ten years and can be indefinitely extended, meaning it could be equivalent to a life sentence. So context is important here.
I don't get how people don't understand this about Breivik. He's in for life. Do people really think Norweigian courts would let a mass murderer off after 20 years?
He's most certainly in for life. They couldn't actually hand him a life sentence however so they just gave them this, the equivalent of a life sentence (unless something serious arises).
I believe all homicides which are proven 100% (eyewitnesses, video, absolutely no doubt they did it) should get the death penalty. What is the point of allowing someone to live if we are going to lock them up in a cell for the rest of their lives? Is that really more humane than a painless lethal injection (not to mention the economic costs and the chance of them killing again...)
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