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Post by k5 on Mar 5, 2009 12:26:16 GMT -5
as can be seen in a thread currently in the lounge, there is much discussion on the recent beheading which occured in manitoba and on the death penalty. many of our fellow posters who are american think this man, mental illness or not, deserves certain death. i have been avidly disputing this, claiming that there are higher grounds than putting one to death and that canada chooses to recognize those grounds. as i quoted in the thread from Albert Camus: - www.iep.utm.edu/c/camus.htm SOO my question is how do all you fellow canadians feel about this? how do you feel this situation should be dealt with? do you think his possible mental illness should be a factor in how he is dealt with? and finally, how do you feel about canada not having the death penalty - are you proud of this, or do you feel we should take some advice from our friends over the border? said thread can be viewed here: wfigs.proboards48.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=121456
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Post by Graze on Mar 5, 2009 13:22:38 GMT -5
Having the death penalty doesn't solve anything. People will still murder with or without a death penatly. Thats why we have lifetime jail sentences. Totally agree with the quote listed above.
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Post by HandsomeHollywood on Mar 5, 2009 16:10:11 GMT -5
i don't like it too much. i used to understand it but i don't anymore. it's too much. it's not equal and it's not justice.
two wrongs don't make a right, etc, etc. it seems insanely barbaric to me to kill someone, so it naturally would worry me when the government is giving the big ol' O.K.
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Post by jyrm on Mar 6, 2009 0:20:25 GMT -5
The reason that I've always been for the death penalty is one simply borne of money.
Why should we have to foot the bill for a murderer to rot in prison for his entire life when we can eliminate the tax burden after just a few short months?
I realize this isn't the popular opinion here in Canada, but it is an opinion that I've held for as long as I can remember and nothing has swayed me in this belief.
In the case of Vince Li - mental illness or not - the man stabbed and beheaded an innocent man on a bus!!! He doesn't deserve to live - let alone the possibility (however remote) that he will one day again be allowed to ride a bus freely...
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Post by k5 on Mar 6, 2009 10:50:43 GMT -5
life > money
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Treball
Mid-Carder
Joined on: Jun 10, 2004 21:35:22 GMT -5
Posts: 339
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Post by Treball on Mar 6, 2009 12:14:08 GMT -5
Such a tricky subject.
For some cases I would suspect that there would be that tiny bit of unknown, that maybe they did or maybe they didn't. However, there really is no question in this particular circumstance. He totally did it. The one thing that cheeses me off though is the non admission of guilt. I think if he was REALLY wanting help, he would have got it before doing what he had done. I might have a little bit of sympathy for him being crazy if he had said "Yeah, so I'm sorry, I was crazy, I'm guilty." But nope. No remorse what so ever. What to do with him now though? Hard to say. Sure he's said, through the lawyer of course, that he's looking forward to treatment and wishes to make amends...but really, if he were truly looking for help, shouldn't he have looked for it before boarding a bus with a knife?
On one hand the thinking that in some way, through taxes and everything, the family of the victim is paying for Li's "rehabilitation". Sure money doesn't mean everything, but that doesn't seem a-ok. I've done some digging up and apparently (information came from the internet so...) it costs somewhere from $74,000 to $110,000 a year for incarcerating one male inmate. Just one. Now, say Vince Li was sentenced to prison for life. Li's 40 now, so...say he lives another 40 years. $4,400,000 to keep in in prison. (Once again, internet information. It's about as trustworthy as...well, any other bits of information I guess) Would that money be better spent somewhere else? Say, research and development into, say, schizophrenia maybe? Or perhaps developing better security at the Greyhound bus terminals perhaps? And now that he's not going to regular prison, it's going to cost even more. What I've found in internet searching is that it costs approximately $150,000 US to incarcerate the mentally ill. Which converted is like 18 billion dollars Canadian. Once again, this is all being covered by the Canadian Government. I don't want to sound insensitive or anything, but I'd prefer that the money that gets removed off my cheque every couple weeks go towards road paving, elementary school programs and art scholarships.
Does he deserve to be "put down"? Dunno. Doing more looking up (I should get a job that doesn't have the internet.) I've found some fun facts. He moved to Canada 4 years ago. Do you think he would still be around in China if this happened there?
"They say Li was clearly battling mental illness, but refused repeated offers to see a doctor and get help."
He refused to get help, so...that should kinda say something shouldn't it?
Bah. I don't know. If we were still apes running in the jungle, there wouldn't be this type of problem. The community would just banish him for being a weirdo right from the get go and that would have been that. Maybe we need to have Australia back to it's prison-ish type being. Send every baddie there and let them sort themselves out.
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