In regards to the guy who took 25 minutes to die in agony

[unreadierLizard]

The man raped and murdered a pregnant woman - in effect, he took two lives.

I'm not a fan of capital punishment but if you expect me to feel sorry for a rapist and murderer I can't.

[1000words]

1. Feel better?

[unreadierLizard]

2. No.

I don't like it when anyone's life is taken.

But to be agape at the "horrible" crime of this guy's execution is to dishonour the victims - the woman and her unborn baby.

[pinboy3niner]

19. BS

You're condoning this travesty of justice. We should all be "agape" about this.

[sabrina 1]

26. How about this country? In places like Iraq under Hussein eg, people were executed and we were

appalled at what we, looking from our Democracy, viewed as barbaric. They would say that those who were executed had committed terrible crimes. We would not have listened because we are civilized.

Now we are no better are we? In fact we were no better then but we were hypocritical enough to ignore our own barbaric practices and point fingers elsewhere.

Just so long as we admit that we are of the same mindset as those we dare to criticize and rather than criticizing them from now on, express our understanding as to why they use these barbaric, medieval practices.

Because no one is going to be listening to us anyhow. We are in great company. Although none of that company is a developed, civilized nation. But that is our choice, just let's stop with the hypocrisy.

[mindwalker_i]

3. Yeah, what a slacker!

[JaneyVee]

4. Its not about feeling sorry, it violates the Constitution.

[AgingAmerican]

5. Your attitude is exactly we have a criminal justice system

Because REVENGE is not justice, and without a criminal justice system, we have a revenge system.

[sabrina 1]

27. Exactly, thank you! 'Revenge is not justice'.

But it feels sooo good and righteous!

[AgingAmerican]

28. .

[IDemo]

6. It's not a matter of feeling sorry for him

It's staying true to the Constitutional rejection of cruel and unusual punishment. And it's about not having the same disregard for human rights as the criminal did.

[JaneyVee]

8. Exactly. And the fact that the more $$$ you have = better representation.

[NuclearDem]

7. Please point out exactly who is telling you to have sympathy for the guy.

I'll be waiting.

[Chan790]

12. Well, I am.

We are not barbarians. Execution which is painful or torturous, especially when out of normative procedure (i.e. cruel and unusual punishment), is theoretically a violation of both Ohio law and the US Constitution so anybody not appalled by the violation of the human dignity and civil rights of the incarcerated by the state is pretty awful from my standpoint.

That's without touching on underlying opposition to capital punishment.

[FarPoint]

9. He is from the next county up from my house...about 20 miles away.

He had it sweet and easy....Lived years in prison with apparently family support....died without trauma as his victim had died.

[Chan790]

10. Yawn.

I'm increasingly finding state punitive-revenge supporters tedious; the more they take glee in the torture of the condemned, the more I feel compelled to work for a national moratorium on execution to spite them.

[bobduca]

18. torture culture

Internet Tough Guys approve of a painful death penalty!

[Red Mountain]

11. I wouldn't like to see an animal die like that

no matter what it did.

The execution method chosen by the state is pseudo-scientific 'humane' bullshit.

If the people of the state want to torture people to death they should be honest about it.

Perhaps they could volunteer to design ever more excruciating ways to kill people. It's about punishing the wicked, right?

I hate the death penalty.......if only because it reduces us to having conversations like this.

[Cleita]

14. Not only that his family had to witness that. Should the

families of criminals, their children also have to be punished for what their father did?

[Sheldon Cooper]

13. Well then, I think we should time their deaths to be just one second longer than that of

their victims. That way, we win!

[Th1onein]

15. And YOU support torture. What does that make YOU?

And what does it make anyone else who thinks this is A-ok? It's done in OUR name, after all.

[Bradical79]

16. I don't feel sorry for him

but how much sympathy I personally show is irrelevant. I might not feel any sympathy if someone who raped and murdered someone were put through a meat grinder feet first, eaten by dogs, or subjected to any number of horrors. It wouldn't make any of those actions ethical or less barbaric. The criminal justice system shouldn't exist to satisfy whatever angry emotion I may be feeling towards a criminal, especially considering how many flaws there are in the system that leads to someone being given the death penalty.

[avebury]

17. It is not about sympathy.

Constitutional rights apply to everyone, not just those deemed worthy. If you cannot protect the rights of the worse amongst us how do you expect your rights to be guaranteed. You do not pick and chose who gets to have civil and constitutional rights. If you did, the 1%ers might chose to keep those rights to themselves while denying them to everyone else.

[XemaSab]

20. I don't support the death penalty for several reasons

but if we're going to have it, why not make it painless and quick?

I can think of three really quick and really cheap ways to kill someone off the top of my head, so why not?

Carbon monoxide, any opiate really, anesthesia... there are probably half a dozen more.

And then there are the tried and true methods like firing squad.)

(I think the humane thing is to make suicide available to anyone with a life or death sentence, but that's just me.)

[CFLDem]

21. So I take it we're against gladiator fights?

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

22. Do you feel okay with torture?

In less time than it took this person to die, and I do not speak about his conviction, you could be burnt at the stake, beheaded, impaled, pressed to death, pushed to your death, poisoned strangled and on and on.

My point is not what the convict was convicted of and ultimately put to death over, but it is centered on what our society tolerates as a humane execution. Once we forget what that means then what next?

Bloodsport?

Running Man?

I do not feel sorry for the executed, barring a torturous death, inasmuch much as I feel remorse for the society once they tolerate the intolerable.

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. It's not about "feeling sorry" for anyone.

Condoning barbarism makes the society that does it collectively no better than murderers like this, though. And inflicting suffering isn't supposed to be the aim of capital punishment anyway; it's supposed to be about removing someone unfit to live in society from our midst (which is something that life imprisonment with no parole accomplishes just as effectively).

[rustydog]

24. This makes it difficult, doesn't it?

If we become as violent as those we have "Judged" and "sentenced"...How are we a civilized country?

I don't feel sorry for the murderer, but I feel sorry for the Country. We should be better than our country's making a comedic movie (Idiocracy) historically accurate.

[sabrina 1]

25. I don't feel sorry for rapists or murderers either. I feel sorry for this country's descent into

barbarism.

[KT2000]

29. capital punishment

is about us, not the criminal.
This was an act by the state (us) in response to this person's crime. The sentence was for the state to murder the criminal. The state committed torture - again - in carrying out the sentence.
What does the murder and the torture make us all.

[Demo_Chris]

30. I do not support capital punishment, but I don't care about how long this ghoul took to die...

I am opposed to capital punishment for many reasons -- most here probably share many of them -- but the suffering of monsters is not one of them.

[struggle4progress]

31. "Everything that degrades the conscience of the nation enhances the power of Napoleon"

is a great old proverb

If you want a country where people care about each other, you have to work for a country where people aren't contemptuous of other people's suffering -- because the contempt is contagious in curious and paradoxical ways: the folk most inclined to inflict suffering always believe everyone else also wants to inflict suffering, and the more inclined they themselves become to inflict suffering, and so the more other people actually do suffer, yet most of those who actually suffer as a result won't be those whom you might think deserve it

[Heidi]

32. No empathy whatsoever?

Fact is, most progressives can disapprove of the man's crimes while disapproving of the death penalty and/or the way it was carried out in this case. It's like walking and chewing gum at the same time. It can be done.

[tkmorris]

33. We should have tortured him slower

Maybe force him to swallow a starving rat that eats him from the inside out. Lower him an inch an hour into an acid bath. Maybe surgically remove his fingers, without anesthetic, one by one. Then his toes. Then his arms, but only a couple of inches at a time, and with a doctor attending to make sure the injuries aren't lethal. Then we can mash his testicles over and over with small hammers, until they turn into paste. Then we can go to work on his legs, slicing off small strips one by one which we then grill in front of him and feed to hungry dogs which we keep on chains which are JUST not quite long enough to reach him. Of course we will pull his fingernails out one by one with visegrips before we apply a very slow drill to his eyeballs. We'll remove his tongue, piece by bloody piece, and then cauterize the stump. Then, when left with nothing but a living torso, we can slice open his belly so his entrails cascade out. Of course he will try hard to keep them in but he will inevitably fail (no hands, HAHAHA!). This will allow our chained dogs to feed on his intestines, which will surely kill him, albeit slowly.

Justice is served!

OP: It isn't about who he is, or whether we sympathize with him. It's about who WE are. Who do you want to be?

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. Let's forget empathy or any soft hearted lib'rul thing

Cruel and unusual punishment, ring a bell? It's in the constitution, look it up.

[Arugula Latte]

35. Many, convicted "murderers" have been wrongly convicted -- and put to death.

They were innocent, but still killed by the state.

Is that okay with you?

[SheilaT]

36. One wonders how it is that

other first world countries manage without a death penalty.