When they execute the Colorado theater shooter

[cthulu2016]

the executioner could dress up as Batman, thereby completing the bizarre loop of intricately planned violence.

If the state was on a psychiatrist's couch explaining how killing somebody, who poses no current danger, through an intricate and ritualized process would make the world a better place the psychiatrist would be required to turn in the state to the state.

I would not be broken-hearted if this fellow were executed. I wouldn't be lighting candles or anything.

I would, however, notice that the execution looked as much like something from a comic book as the crime did.

[Raine1967]

1. I'm not sure if I am interpreting what you are saying.

But I would like to say this:

This guy was a danger before the state got him the medical care he needed to understand the crime he committed while a danger.

That he not a current danger isn't really relevant to the crime he committed while he was a danger.

He committed an atrocity. Putting him to death doesn't seem right to me. Mocking his illness with a Batman costume seems very unseemly. It's almost cruel.

It would be nice if we made mental health care accessible to people like James Holmes BEFORE they commit crimes. It would be helpful if we as a nation, a society that should provide social safety nets not let people like him (and the person in Arizona) not fall thru the cracks.

I wrote about this sort of situation last year: http://www.fourfreedomsblog.com/Blog.php?Act=ViewBlogPost&BlogID=2212

One woman in Idaho was told that in order for her son, who needs assistance -- to get the help she needed he would have to get him into the prison system. The sad irony here is that Idaho has no insanity defense for people who commit crimes under a fog of mental illness.

It's a catch 22, and a bad situation all around.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. I hope they don't

I do not forgive. I do not forget.

But he's sick.

Ted Bundy - seriously? Who cried over him? He didn't view his victims as human beings. They were simply prey. Gacy. Shawcross. Pick your serial killer du jour.


But this young man? So mentallly disturbed he probably doesn't have the capacity to discern between human being and prey.

[Morning Dew]

3. Interesting take on the DP.

The Death Penalty makes no sense in a civilized society.

[rrneck]

4. Killing people is wrong. Every time. I don't care why. nt

[librechik]

5. don't worry, it will be a good long time befoore they give him the needle.

Just because they won't let him cop out of the ultimate penalty doesn't mean they won't squeeze all the info out of him they can.

In fact, by refusing to grant him the guilty plea, this allows the prosecutors to open up the murderer's medical records to examination, where they would have been protected if the guilty plea were allowed.

And believe me, they will insist on removing any hint of Holme's homicidal fantasies from the execution. In fact, he will probably be pretty much sane by then, from combine drugs and therapy, so he can really understand the profundity of his insane acts.

Yes, it is bizarre that a death will be the result of all that death, and that civil institutions involve themselves with killing citizens, whatever the "reason."

But there it is.

[talkingmime]

6. Have you consider psychotherapy? That's a really sick view on things.

Then again, I just watched "The Dark Knight Rises" again yesterday, so that MIGHT have something to do with my current perspective. Besides, he'll be on death row for 20 years or more. The only reason they killed McVeigh was because they didn't want him around to reveal his high-level accomplices (ahem, The Bush clan, Cheney, PNAC cartel). Seriously. Nobody in the US has been executed that quickly in the last 50 years. Nobody. Six years. Just six. Think about it.

[cthulu2016]

8. Hmmm... death penalty opponents need psychotherapy. Thanks for the tip!

People are funny.

[talkingmime]

10. I am completely against the death penalty. We've murdered too many innocent people.

[MineralMan]

7. As I have since I became an adult, I categorically

oppose the death penalty in all cases. I became an adult in 1963, if 18 years of age is an adult.

[Logical]

9. +1000

[JI7]

11. give him life in prison, he is young, let him live the rest of his life confined

with no hopes of ever having a life outside of that and just thinking about why he is there.