Yes, the banning of the juvenile death penalty was...
 

...a simply BRILLIANT move! :rar:

First, there's the kid who raped and beat a woman and then tied her up and threw her off a bridge....told his friend that he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone, and that he knew he'd get away with it because he was a juvenile, then this....teenagers are more violent, more homicidal, these days...how many other teenagers are going to do things like this because they know they'll only be sentenced to juvenile life, then have their records wiped? It's bad enough that we let adults get away with it, but now we're giving them an even earlier head start to perfect their asocial behavior...No one is EVER responsible for their actions anymore... if they can't blame it on the parents, they blame it on the maturity of the brain. If they can't blame it on the brain, they blame it on peer pressure. And on, and on, and on.


And it's not like he might be innocent...he ADMITTED it.

:rar: :mad2: :mad:


Sidhe




'Miracle' rescue of girl, 8, from landfill
Teenager is charged with attempted murder, sexual batteryThe Associated Press
Updated: 2:11 p.m. ET May 23, 2005LAKE WORTH, Fla. - An 8-year-old girl who was raped and buried alive told a friend she remembered her attacker towering over her before she passed out, then awoke seven hours later beneath a pile of rocks and concrete blocks when she heard the voices of rescuers.

The girl, who had been staying overnight at her godmother’s house, was reported missing early Sunday. She was hospitalized in good condition Monday and a teenage boy who also had been staying at the home was arrested. Authorities said he confessed.

“She said the last thing she remembers is that he looked over her with these big eyes and then she said she went to sleep. She said she was waiting for us to find her,” said 18-year-old Danielle Holloman, a family friend who calls the girl her sister.

“She said she knew we would come get her. That’s why as soon as the police came, she wiggled her fingers,” Holloman said Monday.

The girl was found Sunday morning when police Sgt. Mike Hall climbed into a 25-foot long trash bin, opened the lid to a 30-gallon recycling container and saw part of the girl’s hand and foot peeking out from under heavy concrete slabs, said police Sgt. Dan Boland.

Hall told ABC’s “Good Morning America” he summoned a fellow officer “and he shouted out, you know, ‘her finger is moving!’ And at that point, the expression on everybody’s face just changed. I mean, it went from a hopeless scene to there’s hope there now.”

Boland said there was no doubt that the girl would have been dead if Hall hadn’t found her.

“She was dehydrated and in rough shape with pieces of cement blocks on top of her and she was face down,” Boland said. “There was no way for her to get out on her own.”

'No way for her to get out'
He said rescuers feared the worst, but their mood turned jubilant when they realized she was alive.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this child would have been dead if he didn’t find her. She was dehydrated and in rough shape with pieces of cement blocks on top of her and she was face down,” Boland said. “There was no way for her to get out on her own.”

She had been sexually assaulted, authorities said.

Her disappearance rattled a state that had been outraged over the arrests of sex offenders in the separate killings earlier this year of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford and 13-year-old Sarah Lunde.

“When a child is abducted and abandoned like this, the critical thing is time,” Police Chief William Smith said. “That we found this child alive is a miracle.”

The 8-year-old had been staying overnight at her godmother’s house. After police found her, the girl named her attacker and described him. The teenage boy she named, a friend who was staying in the home, was arrested.

Boy, 17, charged
Authorities said Milagro Cunningham, 17, confessed and was charged with attempted murder, sexual battery on a child under 12, and false imprisonment of a victim under age 13, police said. A court appearance was scheduled Monday.

The teen initially told investigators that the girl may have been abducted by five men in a station wagon, and that he tried to follow them. He changed his story during questioning, Boland said.

“He was a good person. He would clean and do chores, laugh and play jokes and stuff. We never thought he would do something like that,” Holloman said. “The only reason I can think he went crazy like this is his father died and his mother didn’t want him. Nobody wanted him.”

Holloman said the teen stayed with an aunt until she kicked him out about four months ago. He then went to live at the home of Lisa Taylor, Holloman’s mother, where the victim occasionally spent weekends while her mother worked.

Cunningham’s aunt had accused him of stealing and the teen has a relatively minor criminal record, authorities said. He was on probation for throwing a rock through a car window.

Taylor was asleep when the girl vanished from the bedroom she was sharing with Holloman’s 1-year-old son. Holloman and her sister discovered the girl was missing when they came home after a night of roller-skating, authorities said.

A half hour later, Cunningham knocked on the door and the sisters found him with his shirt torn and his clothes covered with dirt. Investigators said that’s when he started telling his story about the men in the station wagon.

Authorities said the girl was found far enough from any homes that no one would likely have heard if she had cried out. The trash bin was in a fenced-off former landfill behind a park where she often played with Holloman, Holloman’s son and other friends.

erm....has it occured to you that a: cases like this aren't exactly common. b: maybe, just maybe, it'd be more constructive to work on why kids end up like this than threatening them with death? If they're at a point where they don't care about getting juvenile life then maybe possibly that's the real problem?

Long ago, Sidhe saturated herself with all the worst elements of society, channeling them through the media.

I bet you 95% of her posts contain some horrifying excerpt from a news article about a five year old cannibalizing his grandmother or something.

And every post, I can't help but wonder if Sidhe considers these things to be the norm, rather than the rarest of exceptions.

Do you really think this kid is going to get a slap on the wrist for this? I doubt it, juvenile or not. When I first heard this story I was just really happy that the girl SURVIVED--that's what interested me, not whether the punk that did it would get the death penalty.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s when corporal punishment was standard practise, both at home and at school. I still sometimes wish that I could get one or two of my old teachers in a back room somewhere and give them a taste of what they gave me, but I realise that this is ridiculous.

I think that the trouble is that the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. Now kids are given almost no discipline, and they can even "divorce" their parents (become emancipated - I think that's the term). Add to that the level of violence that kids see every day in TV shows (CSI, Law & Order etc), and what do you expect? They become insensitive to violence, they know their legal rights, and what they can expect from the court system (they see it every day on TV - it's like a manual for crime).

As Jag quite correctly points out, cases such as the one cited by Lady Sidhe are not common, but violent acts by teenagers are on the rise, nevertheless. I don't have any magic solution, but I think the answer starts at home. Even with all the "bad" kids you hear about, there still seems to be a majority out there who grow up to be at least reasonably responsible people. I don't know how you turn a bad parent into a good one.

I'm starting to sound like a Bush supporter. That's a worry. :worried:

Lady Sidhe, some facts for you:

• The proportion of violent crimes committed by juveniles that victims reported to law enforcement has changed little since 1980.

• The number of murder offenders in each age group between 14 and 17 increased substantially and proportionately from 1984 through 1993.

• All of the increase in homicides by juveniles between the mid 1980's and mid 1990s was firearm related.

• In 1997, juvenile offenders were known to be involved in about 1,400 murders in the US. From the peak year of 1994, the number of murders known to involve juvenile offenders dropped 39%.

• The rate at which juveniles comitted serious violent crimes changed little between 1973 and 1989, peaked in 1993, then declined to the lowest level since 1986.

I agree with you about responsibility. The examples you tend to quote are pretty vicious, and I wouldn't argue that IF TRUE they deserve severe punishment no matter how traumatic their childhood.

However when designing a 'one size fits all' legal system (as I have often comdemned) one cannot take into account every possible permutation of murder or crime in general. Does the boy you mention above deserve the same as the woman who kills her cheating husband?

It's an impossible question, and one you shouldn't be attempting to answer by purveying a 'death fits all' mentality to black, white AND grey crimes.

oh wow.. I'll get back to this tomorrow... I did some stupid things growing up, but nothing like that.. and there in lies the problem of justice... there's a part of me that says kill the fucker.. then another part that says whoa! he needs help.. *sigh* here is my most unpopular idea, if IF we are going to have capital punishment.. here's the thing.. fuck the little lab in jail.. out in the damn town square, a brutal hanging! be-heading! whatever (although I don't think torture ought to be allowed) I mean, if it's meant to deter people from doing things like that.. get EXTREME!! WOOO!!!! (sorry TV got me all caught up).

ps. I'm glad she's alive...

... and hanging isn't torture????

:worried:

not if done right.. it ought to be a fairly painless death.. like i said if done right

damn it I always hit enter before I ought to. no wonder the ladies love me :) I studied torture for a while working on a D&D campaign (yeah I am that kind of loser), but I wanted to understand more of what might be behind the mentality of doing something that horrible to someone.. and also to apease my vengeful side.. and my other sides to know that 'damn! I could never do THAT to someone.. all told, hanging isn't that bad.. filling a persons belly with dry rice is horrible.. the death of a 1000 cuts... horrible.. being burned alive at the stake... horrible.. I could go on if you like. but you don't disagree on the the public display of 'justice'? I mean it is a better 'deterrent' than otherwise.. although I would like some dignity when I die.. and a cheering mob might not be so good for that.

Number of things:

wrongly accused
feed and condone public appetite for violence
go back 200 years
didn't deter then, wouldn't deter now

Before determining whether blows of justice should be dealt in public, in private or by noose or nails, one needs to examine it's purpose. So little is understood about human nature, is it really right to make a decision without knowing all the facts?

If your key point is that 'well if they knew they were going to get hanged, they wouldn't do it', you should know that the death penalty has been proven (as much as you can trust any statistics) not to act as a deterrent.

If they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it! How do you stop them doing it?

Just ditto to catwoman in that neither corporal or capital punishment is a deterant, never was never will be. End of.

The case you site is extremely rare otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it, and there will be an understandable reason for it, and obviously understanding is not the same as justification. He didn't act the way he did out of boredom or wickedness and whipping him on a regular basis would not have stopped this from happening.

Cowhead, how does anyone know what kind of death is painless...? Who was it reported back?

What a relief the victim survived.

Just ditto to catwoman in that neither corporal or capital punishment is a deterant, never was never will be.

Agreed. The only thing the death penalty does is make the victims' families and the public feel as if justice has been served. It does absolutely nothing more.

What should we do about people that cannot be rehabilitated? How do we handle the cases like those, whether minors or adults? Prisons are overflowing, as everyone knows. Do we just keep building walls and bars to keep them in so the rest of "normal society" doesn't have to think about it?

Let out the weed smokers, and there will be plenty of room for murderers.