A power it shouldn't exercise, or exercise rarely, because it's so prone to error. That I agree with. And because of the safeguards we require, it's not economical to kill him either. So put him in and throw away the key for the benefit of a legal system we're otherwise quite proud of. But in a vacuum, I don't think he deserves any privileges that we wouldn't give to any other animal. It's not the bear's fault when it attacks a campsite, but we kill it regardless. The shooter has demonstrated that he can't live peacefully in society, and that justifies his life as forfeit.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Oct 13 2022 08:36pm

His mistake was that he used a bbgun.

Should have been a 12 gauge.

Roasting in a brass bull is worse than a lifetime prison sentence, and way cheaper too.

If you think that killing people who mow down kids in a school won't make things better, then I dont know what to tell you.

If the punishment for school shooting was death by brass bull, youd likely have a lot fewer school shooters. Should be the same for pedophiles.

People can't mentally picture what 50 years in a cell is like, but they're all afraid of death. their choice means nothing.

Good riddance. Sadly with the way things are going if he survives till like 2040 some lenient “prison reform” bad actors will get him eligible for parole.

Or some new law allowing to lobotomize them to make them better workers

Do we suppose there's an epidemic of prisoners offing themselves ~10+ years in as they come to embrace death as the lesser punishment?

The vast majority of us are hard wired to prefer life. Fear of death is what makes it such an effective punishment.

suicide in prison is a thing, for sure, but there's a lot of mechanisms to prevent it. for instance jeffery epstein didnt kill himself.

but overall a biological imperative for life in my opinion doesnt negate the torture of an extended poor existence, it makes it worse. you can't kill yourself, you over time regret not taking the injection and going peacefully to sleep, etc. its a relationship between the conscious and subconscious motivations of a person. fear of death is a punishment, i'm not saying it's bliss, but they sit around for 5-10 years then when the time comes its a 1-3 day window of the order being signed and maybe 30 mins of real fear while you lay there waiting for the sleepy time shot.

i just think if someone asked me point blank:

"do you want to end your life after 5 or so years, or do you want to spend 60 years in prison in mostly solitary confinement with no one coming to visit you because you're a school shooter, and eventually die in a prison cell at the age of 80 or so having never made any friends because if we put you in any sort of population you're a risk of being killed, but hey you can read some books." i'd take the 5 year penance and the shot. i dont want to be a physically weak 80 year old man as much as anyone, but doing that in a solo cell after being their 60 years? fuck that.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Oct 14 2022 11:22am

You are assuming a degree of cold calculated rationality that humans just don't have

The death penalty is not an effective punishment. It does not deter basically any crimes. This has been studied and rehashed to death.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Oct 14 2022 11:28am

1 in 8 people sentenced to death were exonerated.

1 in 8

Some of those were exonerated after their execution.

The state fucks up WAAAAAAAY too often to be entrusted with this power.

https://eji.org/issues/death-penalty/