Reply #104: I knew some Bloods and Crips, for a short while, long ago [View All]

They were all utter and complete scum. They did not deserve to live. No remorse for their acions, including future ones yet unplanned...scum who should have been put down for everyone's good.

And, yes, I realize that it's possible to rise above even the most heinous of tracks though life, and rally even when it seems you are doomed, but if any of those swine ever survived and did anything positive in the world it'd have been not only a minor miracle but a long, long road to even begin to atone for the sheer evil that they embodied and committed.

But I'm ambivalent about the death penalty. Not uncaring, either way, but torn, and perhaps more ready to see its merits on a case-by-case basis rather than along predetermined moral lines of black and white dichotomy. I'd probably be okay with this f***er getting jail time for the rest of his life. If he really does stay there, I mean. And, at that point, there's not a whole lot of difference between death and life...well, there may be, but that depends on the inmate themselves, to a large degree. Part of me would want to see him treated roughly for the duration of his incarceration, but the rest of me trusts that, at some point, his own past catches up to him in full and that he is tormented by the one who torments better than anyone else: himself.

I won't be upset, I think, if he's granted clemency. Yet I doubt I'd lose much sleep over his execution, either, if that's the way it comes down. Ideally, the state wouldn't be in the vengeance business...especially states that dish it out liberally (small 'L') and increase the odds of wrongful death. Of course, ideally people wouldn't be committing atrocities that earn the death penalty in the first place.

But if his actions had directly or nearly so affected someone close to me I would quite possibly want to dispatch him myself.