No, I don't think I'd particularly want the job unless I had a personal interest in it. If the wages were right I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a problem filling it though.
It's time to bring the death penalty back!
- Thread starter Simpleton
- Start date
No, I don't think I'd particularly want the job unless I had a personal interest in it. If the wages were right I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a problem filling it though.
Actually, I promote the idea of bringing back the stocks and pillories, Spade. A modern up-dated version maybe but basically the same idea.
I think public humiliation is way too under-rated. :lol:
On the other side of the coin there is poor David Milgaard, which is also just as disgusting as the Homolka case. How many people got him convicted solely for the purpose of furthering their own careers, including the judge who disallowed the one reliable witness for the defense? How many of those people ever got brought to justice?
The trial may not have been corrupt per se, but the system was certainly lacking in its ability to deliver any sense of justice in holmolka's case.
How is it that this woman with barely a high school education was able to completely bamfoozle everyone into believing her right up until it was too late, and she had the deal in her evil paws? It simply defies belief.
Wouldn't any upstanding decent justice system want to take hard long look at any defendent willing to "sell" information to convict her own husband?
Perhaps the stocks may deter petty crimes such as speeding, travelling in a bus lane, or being a freelancing capitalist. However crimes of passion or those committed by the mentally ill would not be.
Your pointing out that Canada's wrongly convicting the innocent is a compelling reason to abolish capital punishment; and I agree. However, equally compelling arguments against capital punishment can be made on philosophical, ethical, and humanitarian grounds.
This boy is about as liberal as Stevie. Besides, they have been doing medical experiments on prisoners for decades.I do so love it when a Liberal slips and shows their true colours....
Well, I've never believed that education has much to do with "personal smarts." In some cases, it seems to be quite the opposite. Of course, that would all depend on one's definition of "smart."
David Kelly post mortem to be kept secret for 70 years as doctors accuse Lord Hutton of concealing vital information
By Miles Goslett
Last updated at 11:28 PM on 23rd January 2010
Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years.
In a draconian – and highly unusual – order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the information.html#ixzz0dYRfD5lo
By Miles Goslett
Last updated at 11:28 PM on 23rd January 2010
Vital evidence which could solve the mystery of the death of Government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly will be kept under wraps for up to 70 years.
In a draconian – and highly unusual – order, Lord Hutton, the peer who chaired the information.html#ixzz0dYRfD5lo
Dear Cousin darkbeaver,
Are you claiming the state (Britain in this instance) is an amoral institution willing to pursue its interests at any cost? Think this should be a different thread? Although, it is obliquely related.
Spade
Are you claiming the state (Britain in this instance) is an amoral institution willing to pursue its interests at any cost? Think this should be a different thread? Although, it is obliquely related.
Spade
Capital punishment is always an interesting debate. Personally, my own position on it seems to vary, depending on the case(s).
Of course, executing an innocent person is as bad as anything gets, but in my own mind I can't seem to come up with a reasonable, workable, acceptable alternative to address those cases where someone is actually guilty of murder, "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
Anybody have an opinion on how "justice could be served" without the death penalty, in those "guilty" cases?
Of course, executing an innocent person is as bad as anything gets, but in my own mind I can't seem to come up with a reasonable, workable, acceptable alternative to address those cases where someone is actually guilty of murder, "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
Anybody have an opinion on how "justice could be served" without the death penalty, in those "guilty" cases?
Brother Countryboy,
What is "justice"? To me, justice is not retribution. It is "protecting the population/state." For that, imprisonment (perhaps indefinite in some instances) is all that is necessary.
Cousin Spade, Yeah, the question "what is justice?" keeps crossing my mind. "Revenge" comes to mind in some cases. But of course, that's kind of a nasty one by today's standards.
Sure, imprisonment is the way we've chosen to go. There are problems with that though, in that things sometimes get all tangled up in parole boards and other decision processes that have perhaps allowed repeat offenders to slip through the system and get back into society. I don't have facts and figures on that - just a loose opinion.
I'm "swimming in thought" on this one at the moment. Some days, I'm convinced that the death penalty is OK, and other days I'm not so sure. Am I having a "crisis of conscience?" Probably.
One thing I know for sure - I'm not sure about this one! More thought required...:-|
I am. When you get to the end of Mr Kellys story it runs into Mr Blairs story and if their were a death penalty eventually we would get to high quality hemp rope and a scaffold made of very nice pine lumber and a box of same with gleaming brass fittings, if the inhabitants of that subjugated nation were feeling nice, for some strange reason. I support a limited reintroduction of the death penalty to clear up the expected backlog of white collar murderers. In these special case where psycopathy is indicated you can rest assured that a beast without conscience is being rewarded and that no possibility whatever of redemption of any kind is possible. Don't think revenge think maintenance. You can't let them go and you can never fix them is it necessary to torture them with life in prison and if so to what end?
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A little more information on Homolka
Karla Homolka, The Karly Kurls Of Love
I've always been fascinated by the case of Karla Homolka. Not so much her husband Paul Bernardo's role in their crimes because he is just a garden variety psychopath with a video camera and a little extra imagination.
Karla is the one who fascinates me.
How did I become so transfixed on this case? Well, at the time, I was married to a guy from outside Buffalo, New York. There was a publication ban in Canada regarding the case during the trial and we were stopped at the border and my newspaper from Buffalo was confiscated. We could have had automatic weapons and a pound of cocaine in the back of the SUV but they only wanted my paper.
(NOTE: I am a news junkie. If I am traveling anywhere, I love to read the local paper to find out what's going on. I may not know Gladys Finkelstein, who died at 84 after a long illness, but I will read her obituary and imagine her life. Local news is the most compelling and the best way to get a feel for a town.)
A bit of background history on the case.
Karla was raised in the blue-collar GM town of St. Catherine's in Ontario. She was a headstrong 17 year old, trying to figure out where she fit into the world. By a chance encounter, she meets Paul Bernardo, a native of Scarborough, a Toronto suburb. Paul is 23. It's instant bed at first sight.
They begin dating and Paul, well he likes his loving rough. Has a history of it as a matter of fact. He starts easy with Karla, just handcuffs her. They quickly progress to some serious kink. Right around this time, there is a serial rapist active in Scarborough who is getting progressively more violent.
A composite sketch is drawn of the rapist and it's a dead ringer for Paul. Several people who know him tip the police and he is called in to give forensic samples. He is freaked about this and talks to Karla about it. At one point, he asks her, "What if I was the Scarborough rapist?" Karla says, "Cool." This is the roadmap to any insight to their relationship. Take note.
To give you the Reader's Digest Condensed Version, Paul and Karla eventually kill three girls, including Karla's younger sister, Tammy. Tammy is the first and it's more of an accident than a premeditated murder. Paul is hot for Tammy, so Karla, being the battered girlfriend she is and fearful of losing her man, agrees to help. As you do. They spike Tammy's drinks and then use Halothane, an animal tranquilizer which Karla has stolen from the vetrinarian clinic she works at, to knock her out. Paul then rapes her both vaginally and anally while Karla videotapes. He then makes Karla perform oral sex on her menstruating sister. Tammy dies after choking on her own vomit. Although the police are suspicious, there are strange burn marks on Tammy's face, there is really nothing to go on. Accidental death.
Weeks or months go by. Paul and Karly Kurls talk about the sex slaves while Karla pretends she is Tammy while she is servicing Paul orally. As you do.
Paul then kidnaps Leslie Mahaffy and brings her home to use as a sex toy. After being subjected to unspeakable sexual torture and humiliation from both Karla and Paul, Leslie also dies. Of course, Karla, being the sympathetic girl she is, gives Leslie Bunky, a Gund Teddy Bear Paul gave Karla as a gift in their courtship, to hold. Like Bunky is going to be a salve on the horror they have visited upon Leslie.
Paul and Karla, in the meantime, get married in a lavish fairytale ceremony. While on their honeymoon in Hawaii, Leslie's body parts, encased in several different parts of concrete, wash up on the shore of a place Paul and Karly Kurls used to park and ****.
Their next victim is Kristin French, whom they kidnap out of a church parking lot while she is walking home from school. She too is subjected to terrible things and ends up dead.
Much of the rapes and abuse of Leslie and Kristin are videotaped by Karla. Paul, being the classic serial killer he is, can't resist keeping these little mementos so he hides them in a lighting fixture. Although forensic teams pore over the house after his arrest, they don't find the tapes. Instead, Paul directs his defense attorney to their location. The defense attorney sits on them for a long time and this causes additional lawsuits that are too boring and full of legalese to go into. Suffice it to say, much of these horrifying crimes were videotaped although none of the actual deaths were.
Paul stepped up his physical abuse of Karla to the point that someone anonymously called her mother and tells her that her daughter is in grave danger. When Karla's mother shows up to Karla's workplace, she is dumbstruck. Paul had beaten Karla on the head with a Mag flashlight and stabbed her in the leg with a screwdriver, among other injuries. She's a mess and can barely walk.
Not to make light of the crimes or the victims whatsoever, but to keep this from reading like War & Peace and to get to the point, Karla gets Paul charged with spousal abuse and after much fumbling, the cops finally pin the Scarborough rapes on him and the murders of Kristen and Leslie.
Karla is sent to the Ha Ha Hotel where she is given prodigious amounts of drugs and questionable therapy. The battered wife syndrome defense is presented as an option for Karla's behavior.
She also finally confesses the role she played in Tammy's death in a letter to her parents. Although her original deal is for ten years with the expectancy that she will be paroled in 6, an additional 2 years are tacked onto her sentence for her participation in the death of Tammy.
Her trial is conducted with secrecy and the Canadian journalists covering it cannot publish anything at the time in fear of prejudicing Paul's trial. American journalists don't have this ban and therefore, Canadians are driving to border towns in the States to grab the papers. Hence, the confiscation of my paper.
Karla is not exactly the model prisoner. She has a lesbian affair with a convicted bank robber who comes from one of Canada's founding families. She has an affair with a fellow convicted murderer, male this time. She refuses to participate in any sort of therapy. Her parole is denied every time she applies since she is still deemed to be a danger to society.
Even though I think I've read just about everything published both in print and on the web about this case, I am not convinced Karla was a compliant victim. I think she enjoyed her power in these situations, since she had so little power with Paul. I think she relished the authority and the "chain of pain" she was able to pass on. Roy Hazlewood, the famed FBI profiler, would disagree with this, as outlined in his book, The Evil That Men Do. He interviewed her at length and portrays her as the compliant victim.
Upon my first reading about this case, I bought that story hook, line and sinker. Then, the more I read, the more I realized, Karla just didn't fit that type. She had a supportive family who were close by, she had more than one opportunity to go to police and although she always cited her fear of Paul revealing her role in Tammy's death and her fear he would kill her family, he never acted upon any of it at any time. He cultivated his relationship with her family. It was all talk on his part.
I think they both enjoyed the path of death and destruction they created. It was a joint effort.
Karla's twelve years are up this June. Since she will be released and not paroled, she is headed right back into mainstream society with no restrictions whatsoever. She has made noises about moving to the States. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you?
Some interesting reading on the case:
Deadly Innocence by Scott Burnside and Alan Cairns. Journalists for the Toronto Sun who followed the case from the beginning. This is the PG13 book on the case.
Lethal Marriage by Nick Pron. Also a reporter for the Toronto Star. This one is pretty graphic, the R rated version.
Invisible Darkness by Stephen Williams. By far the most grisly and graphic of the books. Not for the faint of heart. I'm rarely grossed out by anything and upon first reading this, I had to put it down several times and walk away. Stephen Williams also wrote Karla: A Pact With The Devil which covers some correspondence Mr. Williams has had with Karla during her incarceration and it bears reading just for the insight you glean from Karla's brainworks.
Edited to add: Here is an update on this case and the players.
April 15, 2005 in Latest Crime Opinions | Permalink
"I can see why someone might promote capital punishment for lawyers. :wink:"
Oh absolutely- BEFORE they get a chance to do anything........LOL
Oh absolutely- BEFORE they get a chance to do anything........LOL
"For that, imprisonment (perhaps indefinite in some instances) is all that is necessary."- THERE is too many instances of them getting out to reoffend. ONE thing I haven't heard of yet is any of the dead ones being resurrected. Why take chances?