John Allan Muhammad, best known for killing 10 people in the 2002 DC-area sniper shootings, will be executed at 9PM today in Virginia.
DC sniper to die today
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DC sniper to die today
John Allan Muhammad, best known for killing 10 people in the 2002 DC-area sniper shootings, will be executed at 9PM today in Virginia. ... More.
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This is such a wonderful thing, let the debating begin!
Killing is NOT a wonderful thing. Execution is NOT a wonderful thing. Ever.
My opposition to the death penalty begins and ends with the bias and incompetence of the state / system which enforces it. While I still do not support the death penalty, I have a very hard time working up much ire about this specific case of its use.
LOL, "best known"? Did he have a career of minor celebrity in a field other than killing people?
His recent pleas for clemency are in such ironic bad taste as to be almost laughable, if it weren't all so tragic.
Damn, MooseDesign beat me to it! That's just what I was going to say. I'm pretty confident he's ONLY KNOWN for killing 10 people.
Interesting ... he was supposed to be executed on Oct. 14, 2004, on the second anniversary of the murder of one of his victims, but the appeals process has delayed it more than 5 years.
As a resident of the area in which his killing spree took place, all I have to say on the matter is:
"Feed his remains through a woodchipper into the ocean 12 miles out from the Chesapeake Bay."
There was a time in 2002 that I would have gladly sold all my possessions for a chance to be the one to kill this scum.
I'm a PC, and that Windows one is just pathetic.
Yeah, I'm against the death penalty on general principle, but I'm not going to be lighting any candles over this.
What Church said.
The death penalty is often applied unfairly and unjustly. I despise the "needs killing" attitude of some parts of this country.
But this guy is evil, and compounded his evil by corrupting a vulnerable young man.
Most people who get the death penalty don't deserve to live. But then again, most of the people who get talk radio shows don't deserve free speech.
I oppose the death penalty for ideological reasons that generally have little to do with sympathy for the executed.
Brainspore: Well said.
"Brainspore: Well said."
Okay, but 'Spore didn't actually SAY anything...
I'm against the use of the death penalty as a deterrent, simply because it doesn't work. I'm also against scalping...
But if anyone has kick-ass seats for this event, let me know.
Scalping/Feather or Scalping/Ticketmaster...?
i find it interesting that so many of you are "usually" against the death penalty...yet are seemingly in favor of it in "this particular instance". what makes this situation so different than any other death penalty case where you would "normally" be opposed? the number of people who died at his hands? the relatively high level of fear/terror he gave people during the attacks?
(i am a death penalty supporter)
I am against the death penalty even in this case simply because I think that death is too good for these people.
I believe locking someone in a single person cell and limiting human contact for the rest of their life is a far worse sentence than being put to sleep... especially if you believe there are a bunch of virgins waiting to sex you up when you die.
I believe the salient fact is that in this case there is little question of bias or mistake in his receiving the death penalty. As I and others have already expressed, a good number of people who object to the death penalty do so because supporting it essentially means supporting the execution of innocents and/or people who do not receive fair trials. The system regularly and predictably fucks up but the odds of that being the case with this guy are insanely minimal.
If certainty were possible there are plenty of things I would support the death penalty for but it isn't and I won't accept an oops on who gets executed.
I glad to see so many in agreement, so far, on this issue. I'm old enough to have gone from the death penalty being discontinued to being brought back and I can attest to having mixed feelings about it. After the death penalty was outlawed more viscous crimes were perpetrated because of no fear of having to face the death penalty. This eventually let to any outcry to bring the death penalty back. Problems with this began to crop up over time beginning with criminals feeling that once they crossed the lined they had nothing left to lose. The odd thing was, the more hideous the crime the less lightly they were to face the death penalty. Then there is the risk of innocent people being put to death. Our legal system puts way too much validity in eyewitness testimony and snitches. One famous case, that of Leo Frank, illustrates that risk. Though technically Frank's death sentence was carried out by a lynch mob, he had been sentenced to death by a court of law and was lynched after new evidence emerged that cast doubt on his guilt and the efforts began to overturn his conviction. Among the lynch mob the group is reported to have included the son of a senator, a former governor, lawyers, and a prosecutor.
In this particular case, the evidence is strong and I too have no problem putting this waste of life to death. In fact, where Santa's Knee said to "Feed his remains through a woodchipper into the ocean 12 miles out from the Chesapeake Bay." I say feed him into a wood chipper feet first, his crime was hideous enough to deserve that.
After the death penalty was outlawed more viscous crimes were perpetrated because of no fear of having to face the death penalty.
Source?
Scalping as in Ticketmaster.
There are many reasons to be against the death penalty, but some good ones are:
- it's much more expensive for the state to execute someone than it is to house/feed them for the rest of their natural life; mostly due to the costs of mandatory appeals and subsequent challenges
- its use as a deterrent presumes that potential offenders will accurately weigh the long-term consequences of a capital offense against the short-term benefits; cuz they totally do that all the time
etc. etc.
And I meant "scalping" as in TicketMaster.
"I believe locking someone in a single person cell and limiting human contact for the rest of their life is a far worse sentence than being put to sleep... especially if you believe there are a bunch of virgins waiting to sex you up when you die."
I'm sure there are many tortures that are worse than a quick (if you think a seven year process is quick) and painless (well, it *looks* painless because the victim is paralyzed, so we can't tell if the victim is awake to suffer the effects of the posasium chloride) execution, but I personally would feel better if the sociopaths who are prepared to carry out such tortures were locked safely away from the rest of us.
I don't think I have the moral authority to make pronouncements about who does and does not deserve to suffer and/or die, so I won't offer an opinion about what a man I know nothing about other than the fact that he once inflicted a great deal of fear and suffering on a lot of people, but I will suggest that those people who take it upon themselves to decide who ought to die and how horribly have more in common with the DC Sniper than they might care to think.
I lived through that period.
So did thousands of people who have done studies concluding that the death penalty hasn't been shown to reduce violent crime. Try again.
Again, I am my own source in this matter, if you prefer to rely on information that may be bias then that is your choice. But I'm not interested in getting to an argument because of your preference.
I was just trying to find out whether or not you based your opinions about state-sponsored killing on evidence. I believe I have my answer.
"a man I know nothing about other than the fact that he once inflicted a great deal of fear and suffering on a lot of people"
That has to be today's stupidest claptrap.
Go home and shave a whale, chief.
"I lived through that period."
Everyone that is still alive who was born since Sept. 2002 has...
I'm sure really sure of your question.
Try this again. I'm not really sure about you question.
" 'I lived through that period.'
Everyone that is still alive who was born since Sept. 2002 has..."
Wow, borked-up my mad math skills on that one:
Everyone that is still alive who was born before Oct. 2002 has..."
My question is: "Do you have any data to back up your claim that violent crime increased as a result of the death penalty being suspended in 1972, as you asserted in post #19?"
As I said, I lived through all of that. I saw, listen and read the news, I experienced it. You should try it sometime.
"Again, I am my own source in this matter, if you prefer to rely on information that may be bias then that is your choice."
Bias
Bias is a term used to describe a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result, when the tendency interferes with the ability to be impartial, unprejudiced, or objective.
Irony
Irony is a situation, literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity, discordance or unintended connection that goes beyond the most evident meaning.
Everyone who was born before Oct. 2002 probably didn't fear standing in a gas station, pumping gas, and thinking that any minute, a bullet could come screaming through the air and snuffing you out. Everyone who wasn't living in the DC area didn't have palpable thoughts that the walk from their car into the grocery store could be their last. While it's true that everyone could potentially be the victim of this sort of random crime, it's so very unlikely that none of us could get through the day if we thought about it happening. Back then, the whole greater DC area thought about it.
Like many here,I am anti-death penalty because of the flaws in our judicial system, but there has been at least one study that links executions to reduced incidence of murder:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=295576
That said, anecdotal evidence is pretty much the same as no evidence at all.
maybe people who are pro-death penalty should have to be the ones who flip the switch, yank the lever, or pull the trigger...it could be a random civic-service, like jury duty
Often one's perception of what is going on around them does not jibe with reality, especially when they are asked to look back at events more than three decades prior. If I'd asked a McCarthyite why they supported the policies they did they probably would have said "because of all the communists infiltrating the state department!"
That's why it's helpful to have some more objective data on hand when crafting policy. Maybe some crime statistics before and after capital punishment was suspended? A comparison of crime rates between states that have it versus ones that don't? That kind of thing.
Mst f ths cmmntng r gnst th dth pnlty. Hwvr, spclt tht mny r pr chc. Wht’s th dffrnc? xct prsn ftr thy cmmt hns crm r xct n nbrn bby?
Onecos,
Check out the Moderation Policy.
Just the way you worded the question shows your skewed view and thus there is no point in bothering to answer you.
Wait a minute! A moment ago I could read that! Now its gibberish! What happen!
IMHO - I think nobody, including the state, has the right to murder in cold blood. Why i think this, I can't really say. I.e. I don't have a great legal argument for it. It's just how I feel.
I guess I think the state has a right to protect itself from criminals by locking them up. I.e. the state's right to protect itself trumps the criminals right to liberty because locking the person up is the only way the state can protect itself.
However, the state never needs to kill the criminal to protect itself so I don't see any ethical way to argue that the state killing someone in cold blood is OK.
The deterrent argument seems tenuous because it seems hard to argue that the deterrent effect of capital punishment is so much higher than imprisonment that it warrants depriving a person of their life - especially with the very real risk of false conviction.
I think that the guiding principal for me is that the state has an obligation to protect itself in a way that impinges least on a citizen's rights -- even a criminal citizen who I would easily call in casual conversation "the scum of the earth".
As someone who also lived through this I do not believe that he should be put to death. The death penalty is state sanctioned murder. Fullstop. This is not a question of the sanctity of life or any other. For the countless number of truly 'evi' people the risk of a type I error is just too large.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
Looking for sources I came across this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_nation.
Looking at that list there are only a few countries that have killed in 2009: Sudan, Bangladesh, China, Iran, Japan and the US (I did skip a few). Most of them do not have the same moral standards as the US.
Looking at the discussion here I see a lot of arguments against death penalty and for some reason I fail to see any supporting arguments. Except, maybe, revenge (illustrated by a wood chopper(sic). How medieval can you get?) and a personal experience that crime rates have dropped. If the latter is true why don't other countries have a higher crime rate (please check the list)?
I think that the missing arguments illustrate one point: there is never a good reason for killing a human.
Am I going to miss the killer? No, I'm not. However I do feel ashamed that with all our civilization we haven't come up with a better way to handle these situations.
That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. It makes it a societal responsibility. Every citizen will have to live with the responsibility that they might have to kill someone in the name of justice. It's not fair for someone to advocate for a death penalty and then say that someone else should do the killing.
I'm pro death penalty, but I'm also pro criminal justice reform.
Errr ... read the first few, stopped. In my view, you're either against the death penalty or not. Doesn't matter who's being done in, or what they did - but if it does to you, you're suffering from a shallow and simplistic thought process around what the death penalty is and what it means.
I couldn't give a toss about this fellow, but I stand against his execution because I know it won't have any effect other than broadcasting to the population that the state condones killing. By the time someone is willing to start thinking about killing, they're on a slippery slope.
This fella has dozens of people "worse" than him on death row. Paedophiles, slicers and dicers, etc.
The only hard part for me is the cost of maintaining the lives of these people. Now that's hard to bear, but is the cost of my principles.
I'm very, very glad that here in the UK we no longer have this barbaric, savage and counter-productive outcome to convictions.
Godless America.
Ultimately John Muhammad not only managed the deaths of 10 people, he put John Lee Malvo into the care of the state for the rest of his life. I cannot work up any sympathy for him.
If certainty were possible there are plenty of things I would support the death penalty for but it isn't and I won't accept an oops on who gets executed.
I second that #18 - well said. I also agree that in this case the evidence is overwhelmingly convincing. Same with Saddam - it was hard to muster up any compassion.
I'm sorry hisdevineshadow, personal experience is perhaps the *worst* information on which to make choices which have wide-ranging consequences. It is the easiest way to stray from objectivity. Your opinion also goes against the conclusions of most research on the subject. Please explain why countries with the death penalty often have high murder rates? Dasbub #21 said it perfectly when he said:
[the death penalty's] use as a deterrent presumes that potential offenders will accurately weigh the long-term consequences of a capital offense against the short-term benefits; cuz they totally do that all the time
Funny that the topic of gun control is suspiciously absent from this debate. Perhaps if there was not such easy access to high-powered long distance rifles and scopes then there would not be 11 people dead from this tragedy. Also seems pertinent that this guy's execution falls in the same week as the alleged actions of Major Hasan. Both men had been scarred by war (Hasan was scarred remotely, by hearing all the horror stories), and both men decided that packing heat and taking the lives of others was the best course of action.
As mentioned, I find it hard to muster any compassion in this case, but I just hope that all possible lessons from this event have been learned before Muhammad is put to death and we lose our chance to learn what we can in order to prevent people going off the rails like this in the future.
My GOD, you're a pompous ass.
My GOD, you're a pompous ass.
I am against the death penalty on principle. Not because I have warm, fuzzy feelings for murderers. I think some people do deserve death. But that's an instinct for revenge. And revenge is not a good basis for a justice system.
This quote gets overused, but it's still the best encapsulation: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
it was worth saying twice.
I'm not sure how anyone can feel comfortable with their position on the death penalty. I see a bunch of emotional and/or party-brainwashed opinions above.
> As someone who also lived through this I do not believe
> that he should be put to death. The death penalty is
> state sanctioned murder
The death penalty is indeed state sanctioned murder. But the way you put it--saying it's "state sanctioned"--is a nice euphemism. A better way to put it: it's sanctioned by the system of democracy (aka "mob rule"). So as long as you vote, as long as you accept and participate in the evil of democracy, you are complicit in that state murder.
There is no consistent basis for application of the death penalty. It's interesting some of you consider Muhammad's crime worse, say, than Hasan's slaughter, but that's entirely a judgment call. The guys Hasan killed saw it coming, so for them their last moments must have been far more terrifying than the people who didn't know what was coming (and most of whom were killed instantly). Whatever--it is a meaningless distinction, and both should be receiving the same "penalty"--as should, say, OJ Simpson and that woman who drowned her children.
For those who don't believe in the death penalty: Is it really more cruel and unusual to execute someone than to keep him or her caged like an animal for the remainder of their life, subject to regular abuse, rape, and other violence? Our prison system is a far larger "immoral" embarrassment that few want to admit or discuss. I remember a bunch of people, mostly ideologues, shedding tears over embarrassing pictures of non-citizen prisoners; do they shed the same tears over our own citizen prisoners? (More often than not, no.)
Is it right to subject other humans in prisons to the likely violence of a hardcore murderer? How many prisoners and/or guards have been murdered by someone already imprisoned for life without parole? This, too, is blood on your hands.
We've evolved a system that arrogantly removes any real rights of the victim (or victim's family) to decide what's appropriate retribution, and enact it if they choose. This is designed to rebuke the notion of revenge, which is usually denigrated as savage and uncivilized, but it is simply an arbitrary moral decision enforced by a majority (mob).
The pain is not in the people who the cowardly Muhammad killed; sadly they will never have had the chance to have a say in the matter. It is in the lives of the families he destroyed. Perhaps victims' families, those with enough courage or audacity, should have been allowed to exact from Muhammad a suitable piece of revenge. Why are you, the mob, so arrogant as to insist on a punishment when they cannot?
Revenge is an ugly solution, but at least it could bring some satisfaction to those who sorely deserve something. (And the best revenge isn't revenge at all, but instead the ability to proactively arm and defend yourself from attack, a fundamental human right. Not that it would have likely made a difference here.)
The only reasonable solution that remains is a return to the notion of permanent exile: Remove those from society who cannot respect the most fundamental of human rights. That too raises some interesting questions--where do they go, what about the wrongfully convicted, how do we keep them out--but at least it eliminates the irreversibility of execution and the corruption inherent with imprisonment.
For those able to think beyond your party or religious beliefs, there is no obvious solution that will appease everyone, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't look in the meantime to address the very major current problems (arbitrary application of the death penalty, the horror of prisons, the continued danger that imprisoned murderers present).
@ Anonymous #55
"it's sanctioned by the system of democracy (aka "mob rule"). So as long as you vote, as long as you accept and participate in the evil of democracy, you are complicit in that state murder."
I dispute that. Mob rule does not follow any codified law. American Democracy for all its flaws is a system in which the "mob" as you put them have the right to vote. The officials which they elect then go on to pass laws. These laws are interpreted by the judiciary.
Indeed As Aristotle wrote “Lawgivers make the citizens good by inculcating good habits in them, and this is the aim of every lawgiver; if he does not succeed in doing that, his legislation is a failure. It is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one."
Surely one of the 'good' habits which should be inculcated into the people is that murder is not alright? Even if it is to avenge another murder (even if done through state sanctioned organisms)
Consider this: A government and the judiciary are in collusion. There are what they regard as dissidents. What is a good way to silence them permanently? Well trump up some charges and find them guilty of murder. Then execute them.
We have not 'evolved' a cowardly system of disenfranchising the victim of a crime. We should however limit what the acceptable threshold of what punishment should be. Furthermore the purpose of punishment is deterrent, does the death penalty deter individuals from committing heinous acts? I doubt it. Otherwise we would expect to see huge crime rates in countries which do not have capital punishment. Yet we do not.
I find that we agree however there is no solution to appease everyone. That is democracy, it lives and dies by the middle voter theorem.
"I know it won't have any effect other than broadcasting to the population that the state condones killing. By the time someone is willing to start thinking about killing, they're on a slippery slope."
err...last I checked the UK still has an army/navy/air force which sports weaponry with greater than Nerf lethality. Do they serve any other purpose besides informing the population about governmental bloodlust? There is a difference between murder and homocide carried out within a system of justice.
I believe that a person's actions can justify the forfeiture of their right to exist. Like many have mentioned above, that decision needs to be made with the utmost care, deliberation, and surety. That isn't always the case in our country unfortunately, but in cases like Muhammed's or McVeigh's, certainly the death penalty is warranted.
I also think Malvo and Nichols should be strapped to a table and given a lethal dose of KCl, but that is another can of worms...
Your GOD knows you're a repetitive heathen
What about the many, many cases where the case has been proved wrong, and 'beyond reasonable doubt' morphs post-mortem to hmmm ... now THAT's a surprise!
Another British film on this - 40's or 50's - "Let Him Have It" - recounts the hanging of an individual less capable than others of defending himself, and rotates around an ambiguity of expression.
"The Red Pullover" (le pullover rouge) has an excellent fiction critique of the death penalty and what it means to a society to implement it. And it's a well-known fact that the US does not have a lower rate of major crime than other western nations - the death penalty has no real useful effect.
Plus recently haven't a lot of US states been commuting death sentences on the basis of non-affordability in the current economic climate? That demonstrates a clear tossing of principles in the face of other pressures. Er ... one for the good guys? Not really.
As for pomposity - did I step on a little lair of illiterates? Confusing pompous prose and precision of expression is the realm of the sub-educated and moronic. Long may ye dwell there, your ignorance blissfully resting your empty head on the pillow of uselessness.
The right to live is so fundamental, such an important bedrock, that if you begin to chip at it, you impact on every other societal right, and damage every individual's chances of a happy and free future. Rwanda, Somalia, former Yugoslavia, Cambodian, East Timor, all provide beautifully illustrative examples of precisely how quickly humanity tumbles to barbarism and bloodshed. Isn't the quote - we're always 4 days from anarchy? 4 days without the grocery trucks and we're there. I'd rather an anarchy where people maintain the right to life as the most sacrosanct principle, rather than ditching it at their looting convenience.
While I'm at it ... gun rampage after rampage in the US. Columbine. Indeed, the DC sniper.
It's actually surprisingly attractive, the idea that you can make a problem go away by ceasing the problem-maker's life. That then seeds the idea that you can silence children by striking them, that you can gain obedience by withholding rewards, and so on. It all seems so easy!
Then of course we could bring guns, idiot religions, bigotry into the discussion. That would be so delightfully volatile!
It's a slippery slope, people.
What, tell me, does anyone actually GAIN by executing people? And please, for the grace of our Lord, don't reply "justice" unless you're prepared to accurately define it. Revenge might be appropriate, but "justice" just isn't.
Talking of religion - one of the victim's relatives said:
"Meyers said he had forgiven Muhammad for two reasons: "One is that God calls for me to do that in the Bible and the second thing is related to that. If I don't, it rots me from the inside out. It doesn't really hurt John Muhammad or anybody that I have bitterness against."
But he didn't quite forgive him enough to stand against his killing.
Ah, the hypocrisy of the religious.
Please check at the very easiest:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/11/virginia.sniper.execution/index.html
And someone, please explain, how does Malvo's youth exclude him from consideration for the death penalty? When I was 9, I understood perfectly well that killing creatures was a final and atrocious act.
For all those who are "aye" on the general death penalty vote, please disclose your association with religion and arms. At the very least, confess to ownership.
We as a society accept that killing in general is a bad thing, a wrong except in the case of a circumstantial imperative (to preserve one's life or the life of another in imminent danger). We as a society also accept that we all die. What we cannot agree on is what the experience of death will be like, since those who have "experienced" it are not able to describe it to us- the living. So I put the question to all of you- how is death a "penalty"?
And someone, please explain, how does Malvo's youth exclude him from consideration for the death penalty? When I was 9, I understood perfectly well that killing creatures was a final and atrocious act.
Do you really need someone to explain this to you?
You do understand that for good, sound, biological reasons we do not treat minors as adults generally, and those who wrote Virginia's death penalty statutes were simply recognizing this widely agreed upon distinction. Bravo to you for being so advanced for your age, but until you can justify treating all children as adults, spare me your condescension.
I wouldn't condescend to respond to your piffling nonsense, but I am a-mused, and laugh at you derisively. What you've done is bypass the main point of my commentary, and attempted to find a soft underbelly to thrust the wilting point of your intellectually undemanding rapier.
So you are spared my condescension, and gain my enthusiastic derision. "ha ha".
And by the way - you are also wrong. It is the psychological factors that drive the legal distinction, hence the line of immaturity is fungible: witness the recent burning of Brewer by his companions, and the attempts by the prosecutors to bring minors under adult charges.
I also liked your inclusion of the term "generally" - is that your boilerplate rolling-off-the-end-of-sentences caveat to any of your carefully considered opinions?
But pray, don't let me mock you. Why don't you try to respond to the central thrust of my argument, rather than feinting blows that we all know lack intelligence and weight?
Now now children, lets all get along.
I wouldn't condescend to respond to your piffling nonsense, but I am a-mused, and laugh at you derisively.
oh, the huge manatee.