Rusty Shackleford
Banned
No one is advocating reciprocation in kind. We are talking about capital punishment, not months of slow torture the likes of which this poor child had to endure. The two are totally different.
I remember being converted to the anti-death penalty lobby by the superb '14 Days in May' documentary in the late 80s, which showed Edward Earl Johnson's last two weeks on death row in Mississippi, culminating in his execution. It was not so much the later revelations that Johnson may well have been innocent that moved me, it was the fact that he came across as a normal, decent human being, from a normal, decent family. The viewers of the documentary got to see that it's not always cold, cruel psychopathic monsters who find themselves as 'dead men walking'.
Twenty years on, I know that my reaction to the documentary was driven by emotion and not reason. However, my reaction to this case and its bestial barbarism is also an emotional response. I am enraged at this animal's brutality towards an innocent defenceless child, and I want to see him dead.
Whatever our conclusion, it must be driven by reason. What is fair? What will make us safer? What will act as a better deterrent? Whether you think of them as psychotic or just plain evil, the truly monstrous amongst us will perform their dreadful deeds regardless of the punishment, so I don't think the death penalty would prevent cases such as this. However, I do believe it is fair for someone who has committed such an awful crime to face the ultimate punishment.