79 Replies to “Right To Die”

  2. With DNA evidence now available, plus video camera surveillance like the recent Gang member killing a girl here in Edmonton, for just asking for a smoke. With improved forensics its become hard for the murders to hide. I figure its time to bring the death penalty back for murders , Cop killers & such that can be proved completely to be guilty.
    They can start on Bernardo.

  4. I find it strange that a place where people opposed to state interference in our lives can be so enthusiastic about granting the state authority to literally take lives away as a punishment.
    Do we really need to go over the list of wrongful imprisonments? Justice is fallible… cops and crowns make mistakes, witnesses are corruptible.
    I think the energy being devoted to pushing capital punishment would be better directed at changing sentences for major crimes (e.g. murder means life, literally). Still a very serious punishment and no blood on anyone’s hands in case someone screws up along the way.

  5. Interested Observer: Life isn’t long enough for some crimes. If they live one year, that’s one year more than their victim/s were granted.
    And we’re not talking about just taking a life either. In the case of Bernardo and Williams it was torture: mental, emotional and physical. They ignored pleading, remember?
    Either a rope or cyanide is too easy. My advice: Hire the lady in Quebec who knows how to bake you alive with hot mud and a blanket.

  6. I volunteer to pull the lever or trigger or push the button…. and yes lets start with Bernardo and whats her name again?

  7. Observer, it’s a fact that about 75 people have been executed in Canada since Confederation for crimes they did not commit. I think the most recent was the Coffin case in Quebec.
    I also agree with you that life should mean life, not 25 years. I also agree with the three strikes you’re out rule, which we don’t have and should. I also agree that sentences should not be concurrent, particularly for crimes against person.
    Fact is, for those of us who want to limit government power and interference, allowing government the right to take life is too much. The justice system has proven too many times how it’s prone to large errors, i.e. the Susan Nelles case.
    It’s easy for Adler to talk about the obvious villains like Pickton, Olson, Bernardo, etc. But he doesn’t mention the more troubling cases of the innocent accused and convicted, like Nelles or Guy Paul Morin. Who would have been murdered by the state if the death penalty existed.
    Revnant, I agree with you that DNA evidence has reduced the possibility of error. But it has not eliminated it, as shown by the rash of convictions and dismissals of incompetent and inept provincial coroners over the past decade. Are you willing to tolerate a system in which there is still a possibility of the innocent being killed by the legal system?

  8. Interested Observer — that’s the great thing about Boisvenu’s comment: the state isn’t involved in it except to the degree of providing $2 worth of rope, which can be reused multiple times. It’s the prisoner who takes his/her own life.
    Cheap, safe, effective.

  9. Many people remain agnostic on the death penalty, seeing the arguments in favour (similar to those made for just wars) but reluctant, as cgh notes, to give the state — especially the state as we have come to know it — with such power. At the same time, Adler makes the interesting point that those who are strong supporters of assisted suicide are opposed, not just to giving the tools to prisoners, but to any relaxation of rules that go to bizarre lengths to prevent suicide within prisons.
    Perhaps the key is that advocates of assisted suicide are looking to create a public agency, stuffed with social workers, psychologists, cultural sensitivity experts, gender ombuds-thingies, and other unionized public employees to manage the process.

  10. “I figure its time to bring the death penalty back for murders , Cop killers & such that can be proved completely to be guilty. They can start on Bernardo.”
    Hear hear Revnant Dream. In those cases where there is no doubt as to guilt I say hang ’em on a meat hook. Starting with Bernardo would be excellent. The fact that my tax dollars have to go toward feeding and housing pure evil such as Bernardo is fundamentally wrong.

  12. I’m with Observer and cgh on this one: there are simply too many ways capital punishment can go horribly, horribly wrong, and in a country that’s seen so many recent examples of the legal and justice system utterly failing the common citizenry AND complete media malfeasance when it comes to reporting actual facts, I’m surprised by how often the right will bay for blood when this particular issues gets trotted out.
    The $2 worth of rope thing isn’t a serious suggestion; it’s not even worth discussing.

  13. I wouldn’t regret their choice, but why give these people the dignity of choosing when to end their life? I guess it saves money and gets rid of them, but it seems like mercy to me.

  14. Give them a 2 week training course run by natives on survival, then take them way up north, 1000 kms from any settlement , implant a GPS beacon under their skin, drop them off with minimal supplies and the knowledge that if they get within 100 kms of any settlement a bounty will be placed on the GPS beacon only, recovery worth $5K.
    Live out your natural life span, whatever that might be.

  16. Never was one of those “eye for an eye” people…too many half-blind people left around after that one!
    On the other hand, with the millions of unoccupied (pun intended) hectares in our True North, the penal colony system makes great sense to me. Australia didn’t turn out so bad with that idea!

  17. Back in the day, I had the sad duty of commanding firing squads…..I am positive that the subjects deserved it…..but….
    Che Guevara, whose face fashionably graces the clothing of the OWS, specialty was executions….even obviously pregnant women.
    More recently, I was one of a number of victims of a home invasion/robbery(big loss of face, there) the Judge handed down life for each…translation 4.5 years a pop…..served consecutively as each was a separate event…gross result…22 years…net…including 3 years for a phamacy robery and a year for trashing a court house.
    Result…eligable for parole in 12.5 years……4 life sentences +served consecutively…12.5 years.
    Even Olsen gets a parole hearing every so often….the “faint hope clause”, intended to avoid these desperate souls from harming the penal staff….good luck….a buddy, who works as a jail guard….told me of a workmate fatally stabbed by an inmate….who was scheduled for unsupervised release within 2 weeks….womens prison….

  18. sasquatch. that animal Olsen shuffled off this planet. one hopes that there is no parole hearing where he went.

  20. I would have paid good money to be part of a Citizen’s Firing Squad to assist in dispatching Clifford Olsen to his just rewards in Hell.

  21. I think Senator Boisvenu was right. Let the criminals die if they want to. Saves a lot of money.

  22. Thank God they’re finally talking about Capital Punishment again!
    Quick we need to line up the NDP and Liberal left for treason before this gets away on us again.

  23. There’s a simple answer to those who are concerned about giving “the State” the power of life and death over criminals. (aside: funny, ain’t it, how so many opposed to capital punishment see nothing wrong in “the State” condemning some folks to a painful death by rationing medical care, nor see anything wrong with executing fetuses for the crime of being conceived in the wrong womb at the wrong time, aaah, but I digress)
    Anyway: simply make capital punishment the default punishment for first-degree murder, and require that Crown prosecutors pursue a first-degree murder charge if the facts of the case support it. So, a conviction on first-degree murder results in an automatic death sentence. Here’s the twist: no death sentence may be carried out until that sentence has been validated by a vote at large amongst the population of the district(s) in which the crimes took place. I would use Provincial electoral districts. Clifford Olson’s crimes might cover 3 or more electoral districts; the Shafia gang, one, I expect.
    Write the enabling legislation such that every death sentence would be “pending” until endorsed or commuted (to life in prison, no parole ever) by the public at large in a ballot question taken at the first Provincial election following the date of the final level of court appeal plus one year.
    So a suspect gets to through the full round of court trials on matters of law; at least one calendar year elapses, and then his/her final fate is decided by the good people of the community wronged by the crime.
    Those people who oppose capital punishment on general principles can vote to commute, likewise those who harbour doubts, reasonable or otherwise, about the criminal’s guilt. And those who feel otherwise can vote to have the sentence carried out.

  24. “and in a country that’s seen so many recent examples of the legal and justice system utterly failing”
    And “so many” means what–three or 4 out of how many hundreds,even thousands.
    But don’t forget the argument-“even if we save one life”.
    If its beyond a “reasonable doubt I say “hang em high”. I saw the hanging of Hussein on video. It was a bit “chilling” but compared to what he did it was a walk in the part.
    I’m waiting for the NDP to tell the good senator that his daughter being killed was”No big deal”. Its the NDP way.

  30. @Rick: “Judges are only human.”
    Yes indeed. Even worse, witnesses can be incredibly contradictory or imprecise or coached. And they lie. All the time, like so many carpets. So much for “the facts of the case” that Gord so casually tosses off.
    @Daniel Ream, as a general principle, I’m opposed to granting the state any new power of any kind. Giving it the power of life and death is beyond the pale. And the media malfeasance to which you refer is just one of a host of reasons why Gord’s stupid suggestion of commnunity voting won’t work.
    @Gord, the net effect of your suggestion will be virtually no charges laid for 1st degree murder, because 1. juries will refuse to convict unless the evidence is far higher standard than it is now, and 2. the appeals process will be so drawn out as to make the process unworkable.

  31. For those who are opposed to the death penalty in all instances: are you saying that if it had been one of your daughters who was tortured and killed by Bernardo that you wouldn’t want him dead?
    Remember he was absolutely 100% guilty, no question at all about it.
    What if you personally witness a thug kill your own child, are you saying no to the death penalty in that case?

  32. Whats all the fuss about. I thought the left (and as such the their media enablers) supported assisted suicide? The NDP and Libs should be applauding such a progressive notion as the good Senator has put forth.
    Maybe one of the intrepid journalists in the PPG could get a clarification from the Opposition parties on their position on Assisted Suicide.

  33. Why the argument about innocent people getting the death penalty?
    Isn’t this about proven cases only?

  34. If you are against capital punishment or allowing prisoners to kill themselves, but are for abortion and assisted suicide, you might be a Leftie.

  35. a@c
    “sasquatch: Where the hell is your gun now?”
    Properly secure.
    There is no pleasure to be had in the taking of a man’s life…..unless you are a psychopath….tread lightly….
    The biggest rush I have had in a long time, was after realizing the other on-lookers lacked the grit to check a demolished car….after them confidently pronouncing “he’s dead,” was to walk over, check and discover….”we got a live one!”
    That’s the way I roll…..

  37. gordinkneehill,
    Sincerely hope your comment was facetious.
    Humans are far from perfect, more often than not confusing correlation with causation. And to complicate things justice is run by humans motivated more by emotion than cold hard fact.
    That said, what we do with the monsters convicted via incontrovertible evidence remains a conundrum
    But what you are apparently advocating is mob rule – in other words-Dare I say it – a lynch mob.

  38. Nah, the state’s to incompetent to trust, I don’t care how good the technology gets. Also, imagine a (shudder) NDP majority with the death penalty in place and them getting busy implementing “crimes against the planet” legislation…

  39. Derek >
    “Public hangings should make a come back.”
    Nah the NAACP wouldn’t go for it.
    It’s 2012 we can be more inventive than that. Why not some sort of live Death Race, or Cage Fight or drop them on an island and see how long they survive a Last Man Standing challenge? Winner could get life or something else like the choice of living in a gay brothel while being deaf, dumb, blind and castrated.
    Just say’n, hanging is so 1920’s Democrat ol South for me.

  40. One cannot be sanguine about the death penalty. Yes, we are going to take a human life and we better make damn sure we are not killing an innocent one. That is the extent of my pity. For cases like Bernardo or Olson, they deserve their punishment.

  41. Fact most prison suicides are hangings. They have a tendency to use the bed linens.
    They happen somewhere in the world almost everyday, nobody cares enough to put it in the news.

  42. What grok said.
    I believe that was the point of Kate’s post and that was exactly my thought when the faux outrage hit the air.
    This isn’t about capital punishment.

  43. How in the hell can you be 100% sure? Who is to say?
    Judges are arseholes.
    I’m ALL for hanging the bastards that earn it. But the legal system accepts thin evidence/feelings and excludes facts that are “tainted”.
    Socalled authorities ARE human and can get on the wrong track. Plenty of examples of wrongly convicted.
    As for Bernardos lawyer, that phuck should have been in jail:obstruction of justice.If it had been my daughter, lawyerboy would be dead; take one for the team”.
    The sane ones feel a well armed home owner rarely kills the “wrong” intruder.Oops, forgot this is Canada.

  44. Then what grok and bluetech said.
    I think it goes without saying that leftists have no problem with abortion or euthanasia but would fight tooth and nail to stop capital punishment. Whether out of idiocy or malice, I’ll let someone else nut that out.

  46. assitted suicide…people have the rite to make their own choice, even if it is wrong in the eyesof others
    death penalty should be reinstated, it makes an excellent bargining tool, and should be applied causiouly, because, as others have pointed out, there is incompetance, error, stupidity, bias and just plain bad luck to consider
    and cops ain’t hired for their hi IQ

  47. Osumashi Kinyobe >
    “….but would fight tooth and nail to stop capital punishment”
    It’s not allot different than the Liberal left wanting ever more welfare thus creating violent ghetto drug cultures, then lighter sentences for violent criminals and pedophiles, then wanting the general public uninformed about released felons into their communities or having the rights to protect themselves from the monsters that they created and unleashed in the first place.
    It’s the Liberal left that are the true villains and assassins of our freedoms, culture and safety.

  48. Keep in mind that when political upheaval occurs, these people are all out in the street taking revenge on all and sundry. This happens often.
    some of that occurred in our family history…not pretty.
    That being said, it is not good when innocent people are executed or aborted.

  49. “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
    Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
    Is Kate riffing the Marxists?
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  50. I might be for it , except I was once wrongly found guilty of something i didn’t do .Nowhere near as serious as murder , but it happens .

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