talkpolitics | Shawna Forde gets death penalty

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/02/22/arizona.double.killing/?hpt=T2

I don't advocate the death penalty but I shed no tears for this woman. Here's the crux of the story: an anti-immigrant militant attacked a Latino family, killing the father and 9-year-old daughter (as she begged for her life), and shooting the mother who only survived because she pretended to die from the gunshot.

The murderers thought the father was a drug dealer and they wanted his money to finance their budding hate group. I guess that would have been a nifty recruiting tool for extremists, their willingness to kill Mexicans to get things done. Nevermind the fact that the victims were American-born citizens, such details are irrelevant when racial bigotry is concerned.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you fan the flames of hatred, dehumanization is the predecessor to atrocity. I'm surprised this didn't get more attention from the mainstream media, I guess they aren't as liberal as so many seem to think.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What you mean is, (at present) we don't know how to, or if we can rehabilitate them.

I'm sure I just said that.

You know, If you really just want to have an argument with me, that's cool, but you could at least pick a topic on which we actually disagree :)

The only possible way to rehabilitate someone like that would be to give them brain surgery. I am not comfortable ever considering that a solution.

only possible way

You don't actually know that.

Research into neuroplasticity tends to suggest that it is feasible that absent or lost functionality in the brain is possible to reproduce in other parts of the brains with the proper inducements. There are numerous cases where the part of the brain responsible for particular faculties are absent, individuals have acquired or regained the faculty either naturally or with specialised training.

The jury is still out on exactly how far this neuroplasticity goes, but that's exactly my point. We don't know enough about the brain to make a definitive statement either way at this point.

I'm not comfortable with ruling out any potential solution that could take people with profound mental disorders, who are a danger to themselves and others, out of prison, or off death row, and putting them back onto the street as a well adjusted contributing human being.

That reality is probably a very long way off, but treating it as an impossibility only postpones it further.

It's pointless to place so much on a hypothetical. If the time ever comes then maybe it can be fixed. But that hasn't happened yet.

Currently we can not fix them, and thus, they are a danger and should be treated as such.

No-one said otherwise.

Again, the only bone of contention here is what the words CANNOT and IMPOSSIBLE mean. I thought they were pretty well defined...like my moustachio, but then, while others might say, incorrectly, that it is not. Mazel Tov.

Shawna Forde gets death penalty

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