waiting....

I have resorted to tales of domestic chores to entertain people here. We need a new topic.

Ok...so, anyone familiar with the Daryl Atkins case? Here's a little background if you're not: [link] Also, if you google his name, you'll come up with a bunch of stuff about the cases...including a link to a pro-death penalty website which counts down the dates to all the upcoming executions (ick!).

Here's an article that quotes my big!boss: [link]

Basically, here's the deal. Guy commits murder with another guy. Other guy makes a deal and turns guy 1 (Atkins) in. Atkins gets convicted and sentenced to death. Atkins goes to Supreme Court saying that it's cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who's Mentally Retarded (MR). Supreme Court agrees, but since Atkins has never been diagnosed as MR, the Supreme Court sends him back to his state to prove to a jury that he's MR. He loses. He's set to die on December 2nd.

So, there are two parts of this. Do you agree with the Supreme Court? Should it be cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who is MR? And, do you think Atkins is MR and should not be or should be executed for his crimes?

edit: I can spell! Really!

I'm afraid my answer won't help much. I don't think anyone clincically low intelligence or not should be executed. Not even mass murders like ....

Well one politics discussion at a time.

Secondly to change your question to a more general one: should people with clinically low intelligence people be held less responsible for crimes than those of normal intelligence? And I'm afraid that the answer is again not helpful: depends on the particular circumstances - whether the retardation actually contributed to making the person less responsible. Degree of mental disability, whether someone took advantage of the low intelligence to confuse them to the point where they were less able to distinguish between right and wrong, and so on.

Do I think Atkins was of clinically low intelligence? Yes.

I killed it! Come back! Come back! We can talk about fluffy bunnies!

I think it's cruel and unusual punishment to execute anyone. Since the mentally retarded are a subset of anyone, yep, it's cruel and unusual. I don't know if Atkins is mentally retarded, but he still shouldn't die.

I'm very, very uncomfortable with the idea of a government invested with the power to kill its own citizens legally.

Jen, I gotta say I agree with you on that one.

I had no idea before today, though, that this kind of ruling was this recent (2002).

I'm very, very uncomfortable with the idea of a government invested with the power to kill its own citizens legally.

I am assuming you're also against a government invested with the power to legally kill people not holding its citizenship, right?

Oh, absolutely. Sorry, I should have said 'residents'.

Or, you know, 'anyone.' Because I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a government that can kill anyone and call it legal.

The only times I am absolutely pro-death penalty, is in the case of anyone who does anything sexual with children. Molesting, rape, anything. You have any sort of sexual contact with a child (under the age of say 14), you get shot. Period.

you get shot

Not to side-track the discussion, but did you truly intend death by firing squad with that statement or would you be ok with lethal injection? I don't really have a point, I'm just curious if people make a distinction between methods of (quick) execution (i.e. up to but not including burning, draw-and-quartering, drowning, etc.).