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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   3590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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If Dylann Roof claims that he achieved sexual gratification while shooting could Biden commute his sentence too?

Btw - do you think that some of those would be rejected? Life without parole is crueler and harsher sentence than death in some conditions.

On the latter point, very few people in the position to get death penalties seem willing to accept them rather than appealing endlessly. I don't know what the actual numbers are on that front, but the desire to simply stay alive seems very strong.

For what it's worth on my end, I am personally opposed to deliberately creating conditions that are crueler and harsher than the death penalty. As I have probably mentioned in one of these threads where I hold forth on the death penalty, I don't view the death penalty as a way of maximizing harshness, but as a cap on the allowable suffering and extent of retributive justice meted out. Many people instinctually feel that a clean death is too good for some killers, and I understand that sentiment, but one of the reasons I so strongly support it is precisely to subvert the temptation to descend into inflicting excessive cruelty on the condemned.

On the latter point, very few people in the position to get death penalties seem willing to accept them rather than appealing endlessly. I don't know what the actual numbers are on that front, but the desire to simply stay alive seems very strong.

It does occasionally happen, most notably with Gary Gilmore, that a condemned prisoner asks to be executed and still needs to go through large portions of the appeals process for baffling reasons.

Edit- wrote down the wrong Gary.

Gary Gilmore too. Subject of the (long-winded and overcooked) book The Executioner's Song.

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