[TattoodGirl]

[quote:o6mufnxe]Asfor a well trained gun owner? Why is it that very pro-gun argumAnt seems to suggest that the average joe citizen who happens to witness a brutal event is a cooH methodical marksman of the jason bourne variety?[/quote:o6mufnxe]

I dont know who Jason Bourne is

I am not saying hand ouP guns to the average joe citizen...I am talking capable. There Ms training and there are folks that have a level of coolness in the event of a crisis.

As I have said...a fatal neck wound iseasier to take then a decapitatMon. But that is IMO...

[romanP]

[quKte="beefcake":7d40vq0d][quote="romanP":7d40vq0d][quote="beefcake"7d40vq0d]wow!this is why canada needs to bring back the noose![quote:7d40vq0d]

How would that have prevented this?[/quote:7d4vq0d]
Well the guy wouldent have a second chance to do it again![/quote:7d40vq0d]

That doesn't answer the question.

[DerbyX]

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

there is postmortem tox screens that can be done. If someone lawyers up, they will have to get a warrant to do a tox screen. By that time if there was drugs in the system, they will be gone. With psych meds there is a trail of want someone is being prescribed and if there has been any adverse effects in the past.

Yes, it could be done in that case but what of other reasons. reasons that only interviewing the killer can elicit.

What about allowing the family to confront the killer? Sometimes being able to face them and get closure that way is very important.

What about the families that want the killer to rot in jail?

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

Clifford Robert Olsons family recieved 10,000 a body...sickening in my eyes. He has gone on to torment the families over the years all the while sitting in PC. They live in constant pain and he is thriving off their pain...that is unfair. Unfortunately, the families have to do victim impact statements everytime this monster comes up for the 'faint hope' hearing...unfair.

For every case like that there are at least an equal number of cases where the families got closure from a living killer in one way or another.

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

Closure is very important, but it is rarely ever felt. The system in Canada does not support the victims or the families. If this guy is found incompetent to stand trial..how long will he spend in Forensics and how long until he is out on the street. I would rather see him dead.
there is postmortem tox screens that can be done. If someone lawyers up, they will have to get a warrant to do a tox screen. By that time if there was drugs in the system, they will be gone. With psych meds there is a trail of want someone is being prescribed and if there has been any adverse effects in the past.

Clifford Robert Olsons family recieved 10,000 a body...sickening in my eyes. He has gone on to torment the families over the years all the while sitting in PC. They live in constant pain and he is thriving off their pain...that is unfair. Unfortunately, the families have to do victim impact statements everytime this monster comes up for the 'faint hope' hearing...unfair.

Closure is very important, but it is rarely ever felt. The system in Canada does not support the victims or the families. If this guy is found incompetent to stand trial..how long will he spend in Forensics and how long until he is out on the street. I would rather see him dead.

I disagree. Closure is often a key issue with cases like this and the justice system does indeed take it into consideration. Many people do indeed find a measure of closure and please remember that closure doesn't equate with erasure of pain.

Are you aware of how many unsolved crimes are solved by subsequent investigations involving killers that might otherwise be dead? The families involved in those cases have found closure because they have finally got the answers.

I'm not against the death penalty philosophically but I am against knee-jerk street justice especially when far reaching considerations are factored in.

[TattoodGirl]

$1:

I'm not against the death penalty philosophically but I am against knee-jerk street justice especially when far reaching considerations are factored in.

If this psycho had stopped at just stabbing in the neck I would agree, but when someone starts sawing through an 18 year olds head and carrying to the front of the bus...I would like to see a lessening of impact on all the witnesses, which are victims in this as well.

Thats cool we can agree to disagree...I have to run to work now.

[hwacker]

So in other words, let this POS live and let him tell us and the poor boy's mother why he did this. Yes i'm sure that will help everybody deal with this the next time it happens.


W0W

[DerbyX]

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

$1:

As for a well trained gun owner? Why is it that very pro-gun argument seems to suggest that the average joe citizen who happens to witness a brutal event is a cool methodical marksman of the jason bourne variety?

I dont know who Jason Bourne is

I am not saying hand out guns to the average joe citizen...I am talking capable. There is training and there are folks that have a level of coolness in the event of a crisis.

As I have said...a fatal neck wound is easier to take then a decapitation. But that is IMO...

Don't get out to the movies much?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258463

Thats the problem with the theory about armed citizens stopping this. The vast majority of them are going to be insufficiently trained civilians. How many people on that bus had firearm training let alone training to deal with a knife-wielding maniac.

Suppose what happened was that the killer attacked the boy and a well meaning citizen pulled a gun and tried to intervene. Would that person have shot the killer without a second thought? Not a chance.

Now suppose that person froze and the attacker turned and attacked them possibly killing them in the process. Now the attacker has a gun.

That is as likely a scenario as any to happen wouldn't you think?

[DerbyX]

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

$1:

I'm not against the death penalty philosophically but I am against knee-jerk street justice especially when far reaching considerations are factored in.

If this psycho had stopped at just stabbing in the neck I would agree, but when someone starts sawing through an 18 year olds head and carrying to the front of the bus...I would like to see a lessening of impact on all the witnesses, which are victims in this as well.

Thats cool we can agree to disagree...I have to run to work now.

We are agreeing to a degree though. We both feel the killer deserves his just desserts but I also want to find out why.

Have fun at work.

[hwacker]

DerbyX stop posting about things you know nothing about. If you have a PAL, CFSC, CRFSC. Please post the number for us.

Until then stop posting made up stories. You don’t even own a firearm. How can you know what a person would do?

Stick to bugs in a petri dish.

[romanP]

TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:

$1:

As for a well trained gun owner? Why is it that very pro-gun argument seems to suggest that the average joe citizen who happens to witness a brutal event is a cool methodical marksman of the jason bourne variety?

I dont know who Jason Bourne is

He's a character in a bad Hollywood movie. Someone may correct me and say that he was a character in a book first, and they will be correct. But most people have probably seen the movie and not read the book.

$1:

As I have said...a fatal neck wound is easier to take then a decapitation. But that is IMO...

I don't think most people will try to rate one kind of brutality over another, once they've seen it happen in front of them. Bloody murder is traumatising, no matter which way you want to look at it.

[DerbyX]

Do these boys deserve death also?

$1:

SHENANDOAH, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- By the time help arrived, Luis Ramirez lay convulsing in the middle of the street, foam running from his mouth.


Crystal Dillman displays the religious medal worn by her fiance, Luis Ramirez, who died from a beating.

1 of 3 more photos » Blows had struck the 25-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant with such force that they left a clotted, bruised impression of Jesus Christ on the skin of his chest from the religious medal he wore.

His attackers were white teenagers, including star students and football players, witnesses told police.

After a night of drinking, the teens taunted the undocumented worker with racial epithets, pummeled him to the ground and then kicked him in the head, court documents charge. He died in a hospital two days later.

It took almost two weeks for arrests to be made. But on July 25, Colin J. Walsh, 17, and Brandon J. Piekarsky, 16, were charged as adults with homicide and ethnic intimidation.

Derrick M. Donchak, 18, was charged as an adult with aggravated assault and ethnic intimidation and an unnamed juvenile was also charged with assault. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that its civil rights division has opened a criminal investigation.

Defense attorneys for two of the teens say Ramirez responded to the name-calling with his own insults, which escalated the confrontation into to a fight that got out of hand.

The words allegedly hurled at Ramirez, and the perceived sentiments behind them, led prosecutors to label his death a hate crime.

Without the ethnic intimidation charges, many in Shenandoah believe the case would not be drawing attention to this depressed northeastern Pennsylvania coal town of 5,000. Residents question whether the attack was racially motivated or just an alcohol-fueled confrontation among kids. See a gallery of the key players »

Ramirez had spent July 12 with friends Arielle and Victor Garcia in their home. About 11 p.m. he asked them to drive him and a 15-year-old girl home, a probable cause affidavit says.

They got as far as a dusty park on Vine Street when Ramirez asked the couple to drop them off so they could walk. What happened next depends on the narrator, but everyone seems to agree that the first comments were directed toward the girl and Ramirez.

"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" the boys said, according to court documents. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here."

Racial slurs followed, and Ramirez responded. Punches were thrown, and Ramirez fell to the ground. Then Ramirez used his cell phone to call Arielle and Victor Garcia for help.

The fight seemed to be over by the time the Garcias responded. But in an instant, the taunts resumed.

It is unclear who threw the first insult. Ramirez was knocked to the ground again and kicked in the head. He went into convulsions, said Arielle Garcia, who witnessed the second part of the fight. Garcia, 17, told police she knew some of the assailants from school. Watch Arielle Garcia's eyewitness account »

By this time, Eileen Burke, a retired Philadelphia police officer, had stepped out of her home after hearing Arielle Garcia's pleas to stop the beating.

Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin next to him,' " she told CNN.

Piekarsky and Donchak are also accused of meeting the next day to plan how to cover up their involvement. Read the court affidavit (pdf)

Ramirez was taken off life support two days after the fight. His body was flown back to his mother in Guanajuato, Mexico, with donations from parishioners from Annunciation Church in Shenandoah.

"There's outrage among Anglos and Latinos over what happened, and I think that's representative of the attitude here," said the Rev. George Winne, who is in charge of Hispanic ministries at Annunciation.

Others in town pull over their cars at the sight of a stranger and recite a litany of attacks allegedly perpetrated by Latinos against Anglos. They refuse to give their names but acknowledge that Ramirez did not deserve to die. They say violence has been brewing between the races for some time.

Attorneys for two of the teens deny Ramirez was targeted because of his race.

"Let's call it what it was it was -- a street fight, a chance encounter with a tragic outcome," said Frederick Fanelli, who represents Piekarsky.

Fanelli told CNN he plans to investigate whether Ramirez has a criminal background. He also questions why the engaged father of three was walking on the street with the girl, and the nature of their relationship. Ramirez' fiancee says he was walking her younger sister home.

A lawyer for Walsh said he is equally skeptical about the ethnic intimidation charge. "They called each other names. The victim was calling them obscenities, vulgar names, and they said things back to him that would hurt him," Roger Laguna said. "It just means it was a foul-mouthed argument, not ethnic intimidation."

Ramirez died just as things were falling into place for him and Crystal Dillman, 24, the woman he planned to marry.

They met in Shenandoah in 2005 through the Garcias, had two children, Kiara and Eduardo, and Ramirez assumed the role of father to Dillman's daughter from a previous relationship, Angelina.

By May, Ramirez had settled permanently in Shenandoah, working two jobs after spending six months picking berries in Georgia.

"He worked hard so his kids would have more than he had growing up," Dillman said. "He talked a lot about how we take so much for granted here."

His diamond-encrusted religious medal, which cost him $300, now hangs over the fireplace in the three-story home on Main Street where Dillman and the children live.

"I just don't understand how you can beat someone so badly when you don't even know them," Dillman said. "People here are just ignorant. They think life begins and ends in Shenandoah." Watch Dillman talk about her fears for the future »

A court affidavit identifies Walsh and Piekarsky as the teens who delivered the fatal blows: Walsh punched Ramirez in the face and knocked him to the ground. Piekarsky then allegedly kicked Ramirez in the head.

Michael Walsh is struggling to comprehend how his boy -- a straight-A student who juggled track, football and school -- could stand accused of killing another person when he should be starting his senior year in high school.

"It's very stressing because you just don't expect it. If you had a child that's constantly in trouble, you'd say, hey, well, this is coming any day," he told CNN.

"Colin was a great kid and fell into a bad situation. He never really gave me any trouble," he added. "I feel sorry for the families and anyone who cares about Mr. Ramirez." Watch Walsh describe his family's 'nightmare' »

"You would be proud to have any of these kids in your classroom, and any of them as your children," said Fanelli, Piekarsky's lawyer. "To this point in their lives, they have done everything right."

Besides his academic achievement, Piekarsky worked part-time at Sears and made the varsity football team as a sophomore. He is a National Honors student.

His mother postponed her wedding to a Shenandoah police officer because of the incident.

Walsh and Piekarsky are being held in solitary confinement in an adult jail in nearby Pottsville. They are awaiting a preliminary hearing.

Donchak was the team's quarterback last year and graduated in May. He planned to attend Bloomsburg University in the fall. He is out on bail.

The racial spotlight falls on the region nearly a year after a federal court struck down proposed anti-immigration laws in nearby Hazleton. City officials had passed a law to fine landlords and employers who dealt with illegal immigrants. The city is appealing.

While Schuylkill County is 96 percent white, Shenandoah has taken pride in its ethnic diversity. European immigrants came to work anthracite mines in the late 19th century. Pizza joints, German bakeries and Polish grocers on Main Street serve as reminders of that time.

The town hit hard times after World War II and saw its population tumble from 20,000 to about 5,000, leaving about one in three homes vacant.

Latinos began to arrive about 20 years ago, heading to the fields and distribution centers that have become the new economic base.

Jose Calderon, a Puerto Rican who has lived in Shenandoah for two years, says he's not fearful. "These are the problems of the youth," he said.

On Main Street, where people gather on benches in front of the remaining storefronts, some members of the Anglo community are also outraged.

"The young guys around here are racist because they think they're so much better than everyone else," said Jessica Lane, 18, as her 2-year-old son, Damien, squirmed in her lap.

Shenandoah officials now acknowledge a racial element of Ramirez's death, after initial denials.

Regardless of perception of tension, many Latinos and Anglos have formed interracial relationships, like those of Dillman and Ramirez, and their friends the Garcias, who have a son.

Mixed couples and their offspring sat among other Latino couples at Annunciation Church's Sunday Spanish-language mass. As the service began, a white woman approached Dillman and hugged her

[DerbyX]

While I don't agree with everything in this piece about closure and the death penalty it strikes to the heart of the matter.

http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/resour ... der/27.php

$1:

Grief, Closure, and Forgiveness

Jeanne Bishop

My sister Nancy Bishop Langert was murdered when she was 25 years old. She and her husband Richard were returning home from a restaurant the night before Palm Sunday, 1990. The killer, a local teenager with a criminal history, was waiting for them, gun pointed. He handcuffed Richard. Nancy, who was three months pregnant with what would have been her first child, begged for the life of her baby.

The killer forced Nancy and Richard into the basement. He shot Richard once through the back of the head, execution style. He turned the gun on Nancy. She protectively folded her arms across her pregnant belly, but he fired there anyway, twice. Then he left her to bleed to death. Blood and marks on her body revealed what Nancy did in her last moments: she tried unsuccessfully to crawl upstairs to the telephone. She banged on a metal shelf in a futile attempt to summon help. Finally, when she must have known she was dying, she dragged herself over to her husband’s body and wrote in her own blood a heart symbol and the letter “u.” Love you.

The killer was arrested six months later. Police found in his room the gun (which ballistics tests showed was the murder weapon), the burglary tools he used to break in, handcuffs, a trophy book of press clippings about the murders, his own poems about killing. Police learned he had even gone to Nancy and Richard’s funeral.

A jury convicted him of the first degree murders of Nancy and Richard and of the intentional homicide of an unborn child. The court sentenced him to life without parole on all three charges. Because he was 16 at the time of the murders, he was ineligible for the death penalty in Illinois. After the judge sentenced him and the sheriffs took him away, my mother turned to me and said, “We’ll never see him again.” When we left the courtroom that day, a reporter asked us if we were disappointed that the killer didn’t get the death penalty. That was the first time I had an opportunity to say what I’ve been saying ever since: No.

I thought a lot about this answer when I watched interviews with family members of the Oklahoma City victims after Timothy McVeigh was executed. Family members said they were dissatisfied. McVeigh hadn’t suffered enough. He hadn’t said he was sorry. And they hadn’t gotten what they were promised by federal officials who had sought and carried out the execution: closure. Those family members were looking in the wrong place. First, there’s no such thing as closure. Second, the death penalty is the most anti-victim response to murder imaginable.

“Closure”, a neatly wrapped-up end to the horror and grief of murder, simply doesn’t exist—nor perhaps should it. The most blatant perpetrators of this lie are death penalty proponents who promise executions that bring psychological resolution, even peace, to family members on a specific date. It doesn’t happen this way. Grief, the culmination of sweet memories and the bitter loss of possibilities, lives on—and it should. The grief I felt after my sister’s murder is not closed. It lives in me today, but differently. At first it was a grief that numbed, that paralyzed. Now it is a grief that energizes me to love more passionately, to share more generously, to live more fearlessly, to work to prevent the violence which could inflict on another family the suffering mine has endured.

You don’t hold back love when you understand that people can be snatched from you at any moment. You don’t waste time being afraid when you realize how short life is. Every day I’ve lived since Nancy’s murder is one day she never got to have; now I try to live in a way that honors her and the God who gave the gift of life in the first place. Grief taught me this.

In the play “Shadowlands,” C. S. Lewis, whose wife, Joy Gresham, is dying of terminal cancer, exclaims that the prospect of life without her is too painful to discuss. She answers, “The pain then is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal.” So it is with Nancy and me. The pain now is part of the happiness then, when she lived. The memories of Nancy’s life and death, painful as they are, also bring tremendous joy. Why would I “close” that, even if I could? The notion that killing another human being, no matter how despicable his act, could somehow honor this grief, even heal it, is a lie.

It’s a lie because the death penalty is, frankly, anti-victim. First, death inadequately punishes the killer. The most common proposition—a life for a life—is obscene. If all my sister’s killer could give me in return for my loved ones was his own life, I would wholly reject it. His life is not enough for theirs; his death could not begin to pay for theirs. To suggest that the killer’s death is equivalent to those of the victims insults their memory.

The death penalty is also anti-victim because it squanders the money and attention that should go to victims and wastes those resources on the killer. Millions upon millions of dollars were spent to execute Timothy McVeigh; countless more millions were spent publicizing the execution—and McVeigh. We are no safer now that he is dead rather than incarcerated for the rest of his life. But we are poorer. Money which could have paid for police officers, crime prevention, hospitals, damage restitution, counseling for victims and their families, and scholarships for victims’ dependents went instead to death row personnel and security, lethal injection drugs and apparatus, court costs, media platforms, cameras, reporters, news trucks, ad nauseum.

The death penalty is anti-victim because it promises what it cannot deliver. It does not deter crime; it does not make us safer; it does not even punish (how does one punish a person who no longer exists?). Finally, the death penalty is anti-victim because it perpetuates the evil idea behind my sister’s death: that one human being has the right to snuff out the life of another. Executing Nancy’s killer would erase him from the earth. But the reality is that the death penalty does not limit blood shed but always fosters even more killing.

That grief can somehow be good and that killing to even the score is wrong are radical notions, particularly in light of September 11 and its aftermath. But Hannah Arendt , writing after the Holocaust , pointed out that forgiveness—not forgetting but refusing to be diminished to the level of murder-- is one of two human capacities which make it possible to alter the political future. The poet W. H. Auden wrote in the wake of the blitzkrieg of Poland that “We must love one another or die.”

Forgiveness, love: these abilities are not fuzzy-headed idealism; they are pragmatic practices of extraordinary courage. Vengeance didn’t work in South Africa or Northern Ireland. Forgiveness has. Vengeance has not worked in our criminal justice system. Beside the bloodshed of execution and leniency for murderers, there is a third way: punishment without violence. Life without the possibility of parole.

“We’ll never see him again,” my mother said that day. And it’s proven to be true. We’ve been allowed to process our grief, day by day, year by year. We’ve been blessed to do this without another death on our hearts. My sister’s killer will spend the rest of his life in prison. His life will be his punishment. And because he lives I can work to extend to him the forgiveness he has neither asked for nor deserves. Not for him, but for God, for Nancy and for myself.

[hwacker]

DerbyX DerbyX:

$1:

Pennsylvania

Who Cares, they can own hand guns.

[romanP]

Would a hand gun have stopped the killer after he stabbed the guy the fourth time or the tenth time? Or only after he cut off the head?

[hwacker]

romanP romanP:

Would a hand gun have stopped the killer after he stabbed the guy the fourth time or the tenth time? Or only after he cut off the head?

Who says he would have gotten the chance to do anything ?

At least the kid might have had the chance to eat dinner with his parents tonight. Now they eat alone.

[ziggy]

hwacker hwacker:

romanP romanP:

Would a hand gun have stopped the killer after he stabbed the guy the fourth time or the tenth time? Or only after he cut off the head?

Who says he would have gotten the chance to do anything ?

At least the kid might have had the chance to eat dinner with his parents tonight. Now they eat alone.

A witness said he probably stabbed him 50 or 60 times before decapitating him.