Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: FlamingCobra on December 31, 2013, 06:25:42 pm
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http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-12-30/news/sns-rt-us-usa-crime-ohio-20131230_1_elias-acevedo-pamela-pemberton-ariel-castro
tl;dr, a murderer, kidnapper, and rapist plead guilty to all 297 charges against him and was sentenced to 445 years in prison without any chance of parole. He'll probably kill himself just like his neighbor Ariel Castro.
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seriously, I get the point that the guy is a serious piece of work who should never see the light of day again, but 445 year???? I think we have crossed the line, gone through comedy and into the realms of the academic, I mean that is in the region of 6-7 times the average human lifespan.
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Do you think Prosecutors care? Hell no, just another notch on the belt. They make a point of maximizing charges for plea deals. I would normally expect ridiculous charges against War Criminals.
However, provided the guy isn't killed by the inmates, he's boned already.
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I think it's better than what some are getting here in Australia, where the sentences (depending on the crime(s) & charges) and range from a few months to about 20 years with parole after 4. Severely under for quite a number of crimes.
But if you wanted him away for good, it's certainly been done.
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The Anglophone countries unfortunately have a "knee jerk" law system that rewards overcharging and spurious use of Prosecutorial powers for political gain and profit, hell just read some of Radley Balko's stuff about the Rise of the Warrior Cop for depressing news.
I've the opinion that public prosecutors should be all required to work as pro-bono defense lawyers for four years before being allowed to work the bench, or any legal functions.
But back to this case, even the Death Penalty seems more like mercy than these charges, and I'm against the death penalty~
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20 years in an american prison is probibly worse than the death penalty. nobody wants to go to jail in america.
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I fail to see a problem. They wanted to make sure he'd never be released, they made sure of it. Even if he gets time off for good behaviour he's still going to be in there for 100 years+
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its just summation really. every charge comes with a penalty and those penalty accumulate. i think of it as a score for how bad you can be. higher numbers win (a long life of prison rape, gang beatings, and neglect).
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Yes, I like these. It means every victim gets their piece of the pie. Every crime is acknowledged and the sentence handed down for each one.
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things get worse too. i fell sorry for anyone who winds up in this asshole's jail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio
muricans know how to imprison people, we are the best in the world in this regard.
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The Anglophone countries unfortunately have a "knee jerk" law system that rewards overcharging and spurious use of Prosecutorial powers for political gain and profit, hell just read some of Radley Balko's stuff about the Rise of the Warrior Cop for depressing news.
Only in countries where prosecutors are elected or serve at the pleasure of elected officials.
So... the United States.
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Well, I'd say good riddance. He should be forbidden to die before his sentence expires. :) Every single one of his crimes would, IMO, warrant an execution, so it's good they found something worse. 445 years ensures that he won't ever have a perspective of release, which is what they were going for, I suppose. Scum like that needs to be either kept locked down or shot.
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As much as I recognize where it comes from and why, and as much as I agree that some distasteful things have to be done in order to keep society orderly, I always feel disturbed as Hell when people are cheering for torture as a form of justice or are just tickled pink at the prospect of another human being dead.
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I like this system a lot. Imagine if a cure for aging is discovered tomorrow. Suddenly all those life in prison sentences would be a lot more harsh than originaly meant to. Sentences should be spelt out in numbers every time, even if it means hundreds of years. Its more logical and fair that way.
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its a good assholeometer.
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As much as I recognize where it comes from and why, and as much as I agree that some distasteful things have to be done in order to keep society orderly, I always feel disturbed as Hell when people are cheering for torture as a form of justice or are just tickled pink at the prospect of another human being dead.
Well, I don't see a problem here. We're talking a monster, not a human. It might look like one, but things often look like something they're not.
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Dehumanizing people who have no power is not a good thing to do.
Yes, criminals, even those guilty of the most heinous and vile crimes, are still human. Marking them as being not human is not a step a civilized society should make.
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Indeed. I have no problem with him staying in jail for a very, very long time but that is precisely because he is human. If he were a monster we'd kill him and mount his corpse in a museum. Or stick him in a zoo to be looked at by tourists.
Even if you won't do it for the reasons The E obliquely mentions, you shouldn't dehumanise people who do monsterous acts because most "civilised" people are capable of doing them themselves. It just takes the right circumstances. Our main protection against doing stuff like that, is should the circumstances ever arise, to choose not to. The second you start saying that people who do that aren't human, you remove your most powerful defence against becoming like them yourself.
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If I think he is no longer human, I'd toss him into a tank full of sharks or a cage of tigers.
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Actually, most people are simply incapable of consciously killing another human, regardless of circumstances. In most cases, it takes about six months of brutal conditioning to change that in a military boot camp. And even then, half of it is convincing a recruit that the enemy isn't human. To be able to kill and rape "just like that", one must be dehumanized, as those things go against everything the civilized society conditions us not to do. It's impossible to operate in a human society while completely rejecting this conditioning.
While large-scale wars and prison camps can do this to anyone (indeed, the latter were often designed to do just that), some "people" are like that even without them. The difference is that while someone dehumanized by a war or a concentration camp can remember the life before it and, with some help, regain his humanity, I don't think there's any hope for those who are like that from the beginning.
And as I said before, as a monster, it should be locked down or shot. Exhibiting is another matter, and unnecessary in that case, is it really isn't much to look at.
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In many countries, it's now illegal to even sentence someone to life in prison without a possibility of parole or revision. And in most countries which have abolished death penalty, it's also illegal to literally leave people to die in a jail (that's why in most european countries time in prison is limited to 30 years and do no cumulate).
Not a bad thing for human rights, in my opinion, especially if we consider that prison is a way to ensure public safety and not some kind of "public vendetta" against what some people consider to be monsters. Destroying human beings should not be, under any circumstances, a goal for a liberal state, and leanings towards barbarity shall be crushed before it's too late.
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Actually, most people are simply incapable of consciously killing another human, regardless of circumstances.
/me tosses BS flag.
Show me the most mild-mannered woman in the world who can't even kill insects, and I promise that in less than 10 minutes she could demonstrate the capability to kill another human being with her bare hands, if necessary. Every human being is physically and psychologically capable of killing another, given the right (or rather, wrong) set of circumstances.
In many countries, it's now illegal to even sentence someone to life in prison without a possibility of parole or revision. And in most countries which have abolished death penalty, it's also illegal to literally leave people to die in a jail (that's why in most european countries time in prison is limited to 30 years and do no cumulate).
Not a bad thing for human rights, in my opinion, especially if we consider that prison is a way to ensure public safety and not some kind of "public vendetta" against what some people consider to be monsters. Destroying human beings should not be, under any circumstances, a goal for a liberal state, and leanings towards barbarity shall be crushed before it's too late.
There are a number of reasons I disagree with both those laws and your opinion of them. This is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Olson
There are certain individuals which, once removed from a society, should never be permitted to return to it. I don't necessarily favour the death penalty (certainly in practice it is much more cumbersome than life in prison), but life in prison remains an option in most countries and should continue to do so.
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There are certain individuals which, once removed from a society, should never be permitted to return to it. I don't necessarily favour the death penalty (certainly in practice it is much more cumbersome than life in prison), but life in prison remains an option in most countries and should continue to do so.
If your only goal is to keep society safe and not to punish them, then thats what high security psychiatric institutions are for, not prisons.
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Psychiatric institutions are for treatment. Prisons have multiple goals, in order: rehabilitation, deterrence and punishment, public safety.
At any rate, I think you missed my point precisely because I was saying that certain individuals should be placed in prisons for the remainder of their lives for the protection of society AND punishment, as in the example. Olsen was likely diagnosable with some mental disorders, but not of the correctable variety and certainly not of a type that would have rendered him not criminally responsible for his actions. He knew what he was doing. The appropriate response - which our system allows - is an indefinite prison sentence. The man was always going to die in jail from the moment of his sentence.
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As much as I recognize where it comes from and why, and as much as I agree that some distasteful things have to be done in order to keep society orderly, I always feel disturbed as Hell when people are cheering for torture as a form of justice or are just tickled pink at the prospect of another human being dead.
Well, I don't see a problem here. We're talking a monster, not a human. It might look like one, but things often look like something they're not.
Dehumanization arguments aside (because that's bull****), I would still feel disturbed with the same circumstances involving a deer or a pig. The reaction of glee over suffering and death is ****ing disturbing to me.
Actually, most people are simply incapable of consciously killing another human, regardless of circumstances. In most cases, it takes about six months of brutal conditioning to change that in a military boot camp. And even then, half of it is convincing a recruit that the enemy isn't human. To be able to kill and rape "just like that", one must be dehumanized, as those things go against everything the civilized society conditions us not to do. It's impossible to operate in a human society while completely rejecting this conditioning. [...]
If this were true, the world would be a very different place.
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If I think he is no longer human, I'd toss him into a tank full of sharks or a cage of tigers.
That's rather recursive.
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I'm with most of Dragon's sentence. I'd just change the 'regardless of circumstance' to 'except under specific circumstance'.
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muricans know how to imprison people, we are the best in the world in this regard.
Boy howdy... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc1gF-XicUM) (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-clint.gif)
(http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-smith.gif)
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Well, I don't see a problem here. We're talking a monster, not a human. It might look like one, but things often look like something they're not.
One of those most dangerous things you can do when looking at the perpetrator of some sort of heinous act is to convince yourself that they're not human. It's perfectly understandable why the brain does this, of course; if they're not human, you don't have to agonize over trying to empathize with them. You don't have to worry about whether or not you might be capable of doing something like that; after all, you're human, and they're not... right?
The truth is, you are capable of doing exactly the same things. You probably won't, but that's not the same thing as saying you are mentally incapable of performing them. Humans are all capable of doing horrible things. Convincing yourself you're not capable sounds like a good way to just stop paying attention to your own behavior... after all, you aren't capable of doing something like that, so why should you monitor yourself to make sure you don't?