Alvin Lee Message & Discussion Board
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Wow, that must have really been shocking after such a connection to Aurora and Denver. It's just so jolting when it happens so close. As I've gone to do grocery shopping, or have lunch in a restaurant the past few days, I feel like-- this is what they were feeling at the movie theater. Everything is just normal, day to day life, and then suddenly a nightmare. The people in Colorado are wonderful, peaceful and lovely. This is a great place where people love the sunshine, outdoors, health and fitness-- we are coming together, we're trying to process and begin the road to healing.
Eric, I agree about the bad influence on deranged and other individuals of violent, aggressive movies-- and the same goes for shoot-'em-up, blow-'em-all-to-kingdom-come video games. Yes, there's talk in Colorado about whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty in a trial, but that's only preliminary speculation. Holmes would get his chance in court to claim insanity and would undergo due process of law. He is surely already being evaluated to some extent by psychiatrists, and would continue to be so, much more extensively. He may already be medicated if he wasn't cooperating. He may well end up in a mental clinic, also, but it's not easy to be found criminally insane in this country. His apparently months-long premeditation will work against him in that regard. If a jury were to find that he knew the difference between right and wrong in committing the shootings, despite how disturbed he may otherwise have been, Holmes may very well end up sentenced to death.
I'm not sure but I believe those agressive movies like Batman and so many others give unbalanced peoples bad ideas...
Not a critisims but in Oslo they talk about putting the guy in a mental clinic.
In Colorado they talke about death penalty....
Very very sad and I feel so sorry for all family involved.
Eric, I am strongly against the death penalty for a range of reasons. It accomplishes nothing but revenge to put a person to death. The legal system should not have that kind of power over any citizenry. Further still, our legal system is not perfect and there are plenty of examples of innocent people being wrongly convicted. Even if we know for sure of one's guilt I do not believe in the death penalty. Putting someone to death is archaic. Not all people in America are for the death penalty, but sadly there are those that are.
Would a sane person commit this kind of act? This is why I think we do need to ask why and what happened. We need to try to understand the minds of criminals, psychotics and schizophrenics, not just call them evil, put them to death and stop trying to think about it. I feel it's partially through research and questionning that we may come to clearer understanding and potentially save lives in the future.
Eric, I totally agree with Lynn's post opposing the death penalty. She's already done a great job of making a case for that position, so I'll just add a few personal observations shortly in another post.
I'm also against the death penalty. It's archaic and cruel and our legal system is too imperfect - far too many innocent people have been wrongly convicted; in recent years, at least two have been put to death with questions of their guilt or innocence unresolved.
Mostly, though, it's a simple moral issue for me. I look at it this way - if I'm not willing to be the one to pull the lever or inject someone with that lethal dose of medications, then I have no right to ask the state to do it my name.
I completely agree, Toni. I could never kill someone in cold blood, or participate in their killing, unless it was the assassination of a mass-murdering tyrant like Hitler. Not that the desperation involved in such an act is really cold-blooded. It's absolutely defensive. But as part of one's job coldly to pull a lever, inject a needle, or fire a rifle, and suddenly end someone's life on a schedule, NO. The mere idea is horrific, barbaric, and I'll never understand how some people can do it. Stepping "off the cliff" into the Great Mystery Beyond before one's time is a fearsome, awesome thing. We should have a proper sense of the absolute enormity of it. I believe we should not dispatch someone to that fate without absolute necessity, which to me means genuine thou-or-I self-defense, defense or liberation of the innocent, as in a just war with those purposes, and tyrannicide. Execution of convicted criminals is nothing but revenge on people who are sometimes not actually guilty. I wouldn't want that on MY soul. Two wrongs don't make a right, and an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as the sayings go.
Mostly, though, it's a simple moral issue for me. I look at it this way - if I'm not willing to be the one to pull the lever or inject someone with that lethal dose of medications, then I have no right to ask the state to do it my name.