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Education If guilty- death penalty

Discussion in 'General' started by K404, 30 May 2012.

  1. Flibblebot

    Flibblebot Smile with me

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    There's a couple of reasons they may have done it: the father had been asking the council for a bigger house - perhaps the fire was a bungled attempt to force the issue, and it went horribly wrong.

    The other reason is that it's some form of Munchausen Syndrome - the father had been on TV several times, his infamy was waning, and this was a way of getting back on the TV - "Look at me, I have no home and the council won't give me a bigger one" - again, a scam that went horribly wrong.
     
  2. Guest-44432

    Guest-44432 Guest


    It depends on the crime, as to how remorseful I would feel on the person(s) and the death penalty.

    Ian Huntley for example;

    If it was my daughter(s) he did this too, then I would want the scumbag to be tortured for as long as possible, with near death experiences. Death too quickly, would be the easy way out.
    I would want him to feel the fear and every other emotion that the victim(s) felt.

    Why should he and his wife, be aloud to live?
    The victims didn't have a choice at what they experienced, so why should we be more laid back on the criminal?

    I say "Bring back stoning!"
     
  3. sp4nky

    sp4nky BF3: Aardfrith WoT: McGubbins

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    I'm just hypothesizing here but I have an idea how this might have happened. I think this could have been an attempt to get better accommodation for the family, which went tragically wrong.

    Suppose you've got a very big family and the council house you've got isn't big enough. How do you convince the council to move you? One very immediate way would be to make the current house unfit for anyone to live there, e.g. by setting fire to it.

    How would you go about setting fire to your house and get away with it? Simple - go outside, get some lighter fluid (or petrol) and squirt it through the letter box. Then drop a match inside and hey presto, instant fire. Time to call the fire brigade - good thing I brought my phone with me, eh?

    Oh wait, the family's still inside. Let's get them out. Dammit, I've only got 2 hands and 10 kids. Still, they'll never know it was me, right?

    EDIT: While I support the death penalty in some circumstances, this is not one.
     
  4. Porkins' Wingman

    Porkins' Wingman Can't touch this

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    This post is excellent, with just one minor flaw... Flibblebot said it all, using less words, an hour before you :D:read::D

    The hypotheses posted support the idea of manslaughter, no-one's come up with a reason for murder yet.
     
  5. 3lusive

    3lusive Minimodder

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    But setting fire to your house with kids inside is totally going for murder. No sane person who wanted a bigger council house would do such a thing unless they wanted to kill their kids too. But if they they have less kids there will be less chance the council will give them a bigger house!

    Sent from my HTC One S using Tapatalk 2
     
  6. Porkins' Wingman

    Porkins' Wingman Can't touch this

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    http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/homicide_murder_and_manslaughter/#murder
    Prosecution has to prove intent to kill or cause GBH.

    How many 'sane' people have set about killing 6 of their own kids?

    Not saying murder can't be proved, but manslaughter seems much more likely if the evidence that they started the fire is there (which presumably it is if they've been charged so quickly). CPS would need a confession or some strong evidence of a motive behind killing/GBHing the kids I'd have thought.
     
    Last edited: 31 May 2012
  7. 3lusive

    3lusive Minimodder

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    Are you trying to tell me that if I set my house on fire knowing my kids are inside I could claim manslaughter in a court of law? lol.

    Even if I didn't intend to kill them, because of the nature of fire you can't set your house on fire and then claim you weren't intending to kill them. You have to expect that they could very easily die from those actions, and so it's murder even if you didn't really want to kill them.

    I'm assuming that they knew they were inside of course.
     
  8. 3lusive

    3lusive Minimodder

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    I very much doubt that. If they have evidence he went and bought cans of petrol recently, and have evidence one of them started the fire, and knew they were home (which they had to seeing as they're the kids parents), that's murder any day of the week in a court of law.
     
  9. kingred

    kingred Surfacing sucks!

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    Dumb **** who can't keep his dick in his pants, sets fire to own house in order to get a bigger council one.

    Stupid mong should be imprisoned for his ineptness.
     
  10. sp4nky

    sp4nky BF3: Aardfrith WoT: McGubbins

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    It took me about that long to write it :p
     
  11. Porkins' Wingman

    Porkins' Wingman Can't touch this

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    Would you expect a murder conviction if instead of setting the house alight they were driving along the M1 at 110mph in a car with no MOT, faulty brakes and no seatbelts? It's not the same thing, but where do you draw a line? The line is drawn at the intent to kill/GBH or lack of.

    "Yes, Your Honour, I did set the house on fire wile my kids were inside it. It was my intention, during the early stages of the fire, to effect a rescue and ensure none of my kids were harmed - the reason being that I thought this would be the most convincing way of faking an accidental fire. Tragically the fire spread faster than I anticipated, so much so that I was unable to reach any of them". Prove otherwise. If you can't prove otherwise then surely you can't convict for murder. Starting a fire in a house is not the same as pulling the trigger of a loaded gun when the end of the barrel is against someone's head.

    As I said before, find the motive and you've got yourself a murder case, but the commission of dangerous acts that result in death does not always equate to murder.

    In the unlikely event that anything written in the paper's is reliable it sounds like there was some significant domestic disharmony leading up to this event, which points more to one of the adults doing in an attack against the other/family, rather than some ploy by both of them to get a bigger house. If this is the case then murder is more likely but the fact that both adults have been charged obviously suggests something contrary to this happened. Perhaps it was some insane act of commitment between the two of them - the children were tearing the relationship apart so as an act of commitment they vowed to start over, just the two of them, but I can't see this being the case.

    While there might be exceptions, it would be quite unlikely for this case to get heard on a Sunday, so shove that down your lolbox and smoke it :p
     
  12. specofdust

    specofdust Banned

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    That's an argument against how the united states carries out the death penalty, not against the death penalty.

    All government's have the ability to end life though, that's where they derive their power from. The very foundation of the state is that it is the sole body with the ultimate legitimate recourse to violence within a set territory. As for it being inhumane, I don't see what is necessarily more inhumane about it than indefinite detention.

    It's not necessarily just vengeance, it can act as a good deterrent in the right situation. Not all theories of punishment are based on deterrence, some are based on having the best outcome for society, or upon parity of outcomes for the victim and criminal (you would probably view that as retribution, although the two are slightly different).

    It can't be, the legal definition of murder requires intent to kill. Anything else is manslaughter.
     
  13. 3lusive

    3lusive Minimodder

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    No, that would probably be gross negligence manslaughter.

    And the jury would laugh that excuse out in court. That's not a credible defence for setting fire, with petrol, to your own house with kids upstairs.

    If it's true they caused the fire, they unlawfully took the lives of 6 of their own children, by committing an act that would in all probability cause their death. You can't claim to do such a thing without the intention of killing them, because fire quickly spreads and any serious person understands this and understands that you could kill someone by doing so.

    They would never use that as a defence. They're either going to deny that they caused the fire, or conjure up something else.
     
  14. Porkins' Wingman

    Porkins' Wingman Can't touch this

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    Mind if I just leave this on the table?

    Read the facts and considerations regarding a manslaughter conviction on the first three pages and you'll see an obvious similarity with the theory being bandied about here and you'll also see that the main deliberation was not over intent to kill but whether setting fire to a house with people inside was even dangerous. Murder, evidently, was not even on the cards for the jury. Note how Goodfellow seems to have been appealing the manslaughter conviction even.

    Here's the first page if you don't trust the link:

    [​IMG]

    In fact, here's the rest of the document, just in case you don't trust the link - I'd hate for anyone to miss out :naughty:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: 31 May 2012
  15. Showerhead

    Showerhead What's a Dremel?

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    If it is such a good deterrent how come states which still practice the death penalty in general have far higher crime rates than those that don't. I very much doubt the thought of punishment goes through someones mind if they are premeditating murder.
     
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  16. specofdust

    specofdust Banned

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    I said in the right circumstances it could be a good deterrent, not that it will be in all circumstances.

    Punishment only tends to work as a deterrent when people consider that there's a reasonable chance of getting caught, but they don't care because they weigh up the consequences of being caught as relatively benign in the possible event that they do. No-one murders thinking they'll get caught, so punishment as deterrence is pointless.

    Littering, on the other hand, or speeding? The streets would become very clean and very safe fairly sharpish if the penalty for dropping an empty packet of crisps was death.
     
  17. ripmax

    ripmax Minimodder

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    The death penalty never works as a deterrent. Most murders are "spur of the moment" usually in extreme anger/jealousy/fear etc or psychopaths who feel no empathy or think of the consequences.

    The death penalty is a pointless, expensive and barbaric way to "punish" criminals, especially if an innocent person is executed they can no longer prove their innocence. It has happened in the past and it will happen in the future.
     
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  18. Elton

    Elton Officially a Whisky Nerd

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    In some cases as you've mentioned yes. However I have to raise the question of how effective the death penalty is when it comes to cases of reasonable doubt. That's my gripe, you can't undo the death penalty. True imprisonment does technically wreck one's life, but how can you undo the death penalty? We can't necessarily revive those convicted can we?

    Remember, there is always more evidence. If not for that, I wouldn't be against the death penalty, but that reasonable doubt and the chance that they might be innocent in of itself makes me against the death penalty. It'd reflect pretty poor on a society to kill someone as punishment especially if they were innocent.
     
  19. specofdust

    specofdust Banned

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    You can't undo any punishment. You can't give someone back 20 years of their life. The death penalty isn't qualitatively different than any prison sentence when wrong (or right), just quantitatively.
     
  20. Elton

    Elton Officially a Whisky Nerd

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    This is true. I can't say you can repay someone with time spent in prison. But at the very least you didn't prematurely end their life. It really comes down to how much one values life. That is not to say that it's better one way or another, but I would find it much easier to repay someone for wrongful imprisonment versus wrongful execution.

    Mind you it still isn't a great thing to do, wrongful imprisonment. But the death penalty is admittedly a bit harder to reverse.
     

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