And there would be no question of our guilt.

This person deserves the ultimate sentence.

the USSC has ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for the legally retarded.

This isn't wanting "justice."

It's a call for revenge.

Lock the perp up in a teeny cell until he dies on his own.

He has been in solitary for 28 years since killing a prison guard (at least 2 prisoners as well). He is suing for cruel and unusual punishment.

He is also a pretty good artist but his materials were taken away when he went into SuperMAX. Wonder if someone like Norman Mailer will push to have him released like Jack Abbott.

Allowing them to donate their organs if they so chose.

There is also no recidivism.

why is a 76 year old working in a gas station?

Many more will in my generation, too.

Probably still working at 80 unless something changes. Even with a widow's pension, she'll only make like 1200 a month. People can't live on that shit. $500 for rent, $180 for car, then utilities and food, she's kinda screwed. Not that the woman can't twist a dollar until it screams, cause she knows how to be poor, but she's worked her ass off her whole life. She deserves to relax. But she'll get dementia as soon as she quits and is home alone with nothing to do. She's already showing some strange signs of something.

because she wanted to.

But I'm against the death penalty not because I have a soft spot for the criminals. I don't. I believe that a life in prison is no picnic and that they will be paying for their crime for the rest of their lives. Death is too good for them.

I'm also against the death penalty because it is just as wrong to kill the guilty as it was for them to kill innocent people. As a country we should strive to be civilized and state sanctioned death isn't civilized in my opinion. I also think everyone needs to make up their own mind about whether they're for it or against it.

My heart goes out to the family of that lovely lady. May she rest in peace and may her family be able to make it through this without harm to their souls.

Hopefully she will survive. As for the death penalty, no, but he should be locked up for life with no chance of parole.

Thank you for the link.

I am so sorry. A monstrous crime, her poor family

leaves me speechless...I want the images out of my head...I want to make the guy who did this suffer and beg for forgiveness...I wish I had never seen the story...I can't focus on it anymore...

that's not how punishment or justice works.

what you're suggesting is in a way, based on "an eye for an eye".

so you give the guy the death penalty for this one, then you find someone who killed multiple people in heinous ways --what do you do with them? the same? maybe you have to do stuff to them as they die, you know, torture them a bit, make it really gruesome.

why? because you've set justice at a limit that pleases you, and you want to get them back in a proportionate way, thinking you can equal out what they did.

but it's not your job to punish.

Doesn't something inside of you scream for vengeance?

Do you have no feelings at all?

Not better.

And it should for you as well.

You arent god.

- and neither are you

I'm not judging your position on the matter, merely expressing my own - disagree with me if you like while expressing your own view, but by going further and judging me, are you not being a bit hypocritical?

And saying i'd feel worse killing simebody for revenge is true for me and should be for you.

And if it's not for you, it should be.

After trial and verdict of course.

Seriously, this crime is so horrible because burning a human being to death is an atrocious and heinous act. When I read it I wondered how any human being could think of such a thing, nonetheless carrying it out. Yet after reading your post apparently he's not alone in his thought process.

Both of you make me question humanity.

Thank you for putting me in the same class as the perp. It helps my street cred.

sometimes hard to detect sarcasm.


And you're welcome about your street cred. It's the lest I could.

death, the ultimate penalty, is sufficient.

A murder such as this is one of them.

by without a death penalty.

Wonder WTH the motivation behind burning her to death was.

Many people here refuse to buy that, but it's true.

because I don't like my tax dollars being wasted on worthless murdering criminals. Why do they wait 20yrs to execute murders anyway?

Okay, welcome to DU. I oppose the death penalty, I am not in favor of becoming what we say we hate. Lock up him without a chance of parole, but to become what we claim to hate, or in your case, to dispose of him for monitory reasons, puts us in the same category as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, China and a few other dictatorships while making us the only civilized country in the world to still practice that medieval policy.

As someone once asked George Bush 'but if Jesus is your hero, how can you support the Death Penalty'? He was puzzled for a few seconds, but finally responded 'well, Bill, you have to kill them to stop the killing'. Great logic there George.

Did he say that before or after the frontal lobotomy?

Its not just about my tax dollars, its about every hard working American's tax dollars being wasted on waste of human space. You have to ask yourself, is it fair that our tax dollars pay for a murder's food, room & board, health care, and education. Some prisons have a gym and HBO, nicer than a majority of American homes. Many law abiding Americans don't have access to health care, but a murdering scumbag has access to decent health care. I'm sorry, but this doesn't sit well with me, which is why I support the DP.

And, because lots of innocent people are imprisoned, this is a terrific thing.

I am 100% anti DP. I hope this guy never gets out of prison.

is ever wrongly convicted.

Death isn't punishment. Waking every day in prison, knowing that around any corner, or right behind you, or right in front of you is someone that misses their mother/grandmother...and he's bigger than you, and stronger than you...and he's got nothing to lose, and frankly, he's pissed off at your or life in general, and that is suffering. The death penalty is the end of suffering. Why someone who holds such contempt, anger, hatred, whatever for someone for what he/she/they have done, would embrace the death penalty is simply beyond me.

I'd rather get a DP than a life sentence, I couldn't stand being locked away for over 20-30 years. I probably couldn't stand 1 year.

Plus there are stories all the time of people discovering evidence that the person given death was actually innocent but too late to do shit about it.

"Snaggletooth killer" are just a few of the lucky ones.

Be honest with yourself.

Don't pretend to be something you're not. Or in this case, don't pretend that you hold a position that you never really held with regard to the death penalty.

If you're honest with yourself, you will feel a lot better.

Last edited Sun May 27, 2012, 11:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Because it sounds like you think if someone revisits their positions then they never sincerely held them. And that's so absurd I can't imagine you really thinking so.

in south Texas. Kingsville police arrested 22 year old male for the torture, robbery, and murder of an Army veteran of Afghanistan (and Iraq, IIRC). It's a case where I feel like, hell yes, the death penalty is warranted. Someone this bad isn't going to be fit for society, ever.

I guess that was the biggest reason Ben Franklin left for Phildelphia.
Aint RW religious nuts great?

Welsh Quakers came to the US after an English edict was issued to burn Welsh Quakers, but none were burned in the US.

Here's what I found on the net.
The Burning Times is a modern term for the historical time when thousands of witches were tortured and killed for suspected heresy. The Catholic Church wanted to purify the witch's soul and believed burning them alive would do the trick. Burning at the stake was just one of the methods to eradicate and save these witches. However, burning was not the only means for purification. In England & America, witches were hung and drowned. In France, Scotland & Germany, they were pressed to death or strangled.

Now I remember that if they floated they were witches so had to be killed (hung?) and if they sunk they were OK. but probably drowned.

Hell, it sums up are entire criminal justice system for the most part.

Matthew Johnson needs to be set on fire.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, if you aren't forgive my suspicion, please. Either way, many times I've read about animal abuse and thought, almost instinctively, that the perp should experience just what he put the animal though.

Reading this story, I had the same gut sense about the scum who did this. Part of me wants to make him suffer for his horrific actions. To feel what he caused another to feel. Used to be I'd quickly arrive at the conclusion that would be wrong. With this incident....?

brutally torturing anyone to death. How progressive.

Do you think rapist should be raped as well?

I've questioned that before. I feel they don't realize the consequences of their actions.

I pretty much oppose it, but not for the reasons that many do.

I have no problem with the death penalty in theory, and would still be amenable to it in certain cases (war crimes, treason, etc.). However, I think this country screws up criminal matters so badly that we cannot in good conscience execute someone. We know we have executed innocent people, and to me that's 100% not acceptable.

I always wonder what's wrong people like the man who brutally killed this women, but then when I see people in a supposedly progressive forum salivating at the mouth over the thought of setting anyone on fire and heinously and painfully burning them to death no matter what they did I realize that Matthew Johnson apparently has plenty of company in our society.

Torture is disgusting and so is murder. I actually think it's even more despicable when the state does it than when individuals do it.

who hear about something so heinous and DON'T feel, even for a moment, the desire for something violent to happen to the perpetrator. In fact I think such people are rarer than this thread full of saints would have us believe.

initial crime was so horrifying. Because burning someone to death is horrifying. Not because the wrong person was burned to death.


I also don't like people who exploit tragedies like this for propaganda for state sponsored murder and barbarism. If people were really concerned with human life they wouldn't feel the need to immediately turn the subject from the tragedy of the victim to joy of killing the alleged killer. In fact, many people are less interested in the suffering of the victim or even the crime itself as they are the possible suffering of the alleged killer. Which tells us all we need to know.

It's also really hard to divorce any advocacy for the death penalty from the fact that it is barbaric, cruel, and brutal (the things that people are allegedly outrage about on this thread), as well as it's really seedy history of being racist and classist in the United States. When people take tragedies like this and try to legitimate a failed brutal, racist policy I really am not impressed with they level of empathy or what not. Because let's face it, it's never just the Michael Johnson's who killed, but also the Troy Davis's and the George Junius Stinney's who die. Yet, it's the cases like this that proponents of state violence roll out to defend their actions and their polices.

Boy, you work really hard at equivocation.

Stop trying to pontificate about whether people "really care" about an innocent grandmother being set on fire. Sounds like you're the one judging.