Who would it be? You have a choice to give an offender from any case a lethal injection who would you choose?

G. Daniel Walker.

I forgot my choice. Jeffrey Macdonald for me

Interesting idea for a topic.

Question. Do we have to know the person’s actual identity? Or can it just be “the person that killed so and so” from an unsolved case even if we don’t know their name?

Interesting idea for a topic.

Question. Do we have to know the person’s actual identity? Or can it just be “the person that killed so and so” from an unsolved case even if we don’t know their name?

It can totally be "so and so" since most are going to be from an unsolved mystery. Thanks for the question, I should've been more specific

No comment.

It can totally be "so and so" since most are going to be from an unsolved mystery. Thanks for the question, I should've been more specific

Thanks for the clarification. Since it can be someone whom I don’t know the identity of, I’ll pick one of the losers that committed the Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre. I wish I could have both, but one of them would be better than none.

No comment.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Well played, sir!

I'd be going after people that have murdered or sexually assaulted children. However, since I am a real "bang for your buck" type of person, I would say EAR. With at least 50 rapes and 12 murders, he has destroyed the lives of so many people. My only stipulation would be that I was allowed to kill him 30 years ago (when I was a toddler LOL) instead of letting him live all those years free and uncaught.

Whoever set the dog kennels on fire or the ppl giving the sea lions treats with dynamite

So many from UM that might be good candidates to go ... how about Judy Groesinger?

Actually, the pet segments are the most sad for me. To me pets are almost likes babies, they have never hurt anyone in their lives and they are so innocent. People, well....most of us have been an arsehole at one time or another, and most of us have at least one person in the world that would like to see us dead LMAO

Frank Delano Floyd.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Well played, sir!
Thanks...! Subtlety was never one of my strong suits.

No comment.

This wins the Internet for today. Thank you all for playing.


Had to clean up some comments. Let’s keep it civil, please and thank you...

I don't get it is this an in-joke

Anyway probably Ida Pruitt

It has to be William Bradford Bishop, surely..

Luckily tony Alamo died already.

It has to be William Bradford Bishop, surely..
Hard to imagine a worst human. I’m not a supporter of the death penalty, but there are countless cases on UM that make me wonder how these people can live with themselves after what they have done to other people. George Washington Hicks is another one for me. How do you kill a young mother and her son.

Anyway probably Ida Pruitt

Too late, unfortunately.

While technically not an UM person, the sick individual who killed Nyleen Kay Marshall's mother :(

While technically not an UM person, the sick individual who killed Nyleen Kay Marshall's mother :(

The individual who (indirectly) killed Nancy could be an UM person. That's if the step-father theory were true, or it was the guy from Wisconsin.

If I ran Mexico, I'd have the people responsible for ruling her death a suicide get shot, and then have their bodies (or ashes) dumped into a sewer.

I don’t know how to respond to this thread without coming across as a pompous ass, so I will just say that in my view execution brings the state and everyone involved down to the level of the criminal, which is the opposite of what we should be trying to do.

I don’t know how to respond to this thread without coming across as a pompous ass, so I will just say that in my view execution brings the state and everyone involved down to the level of the criminal, which is the opposite of what we should be trying to do.

Would you still hold that view if a member of your family was taken out by one of these scumbags?

I don’t know how to respond to this thread without coming across as a pompous ass, so I will just say that in my view execution brings the state and everyone involved down to the level of the criminal, which is the opposite of what we should be trying to do.

So what should we be trying to do to someone who murders a bunch of young girls? I'm not arguing, I'm genuinely asking. I knew this thread would be decisive and everyone has their own feelings on capital punishment, but I'm not sure what we should be trying to do to a mass murderer.

Anyone who killed or molested a child. I'm not picky.

I don’t know how to respond to this thread without coming across as a pompous ass, so I will just say that in my view execution brings the state and everyone involved down to the level of the criminal, which is the opposite of what we should be trying to do.

Same.

Even if one discards the moral and ethical questions (which I personally think are the supreme ones), there's still a question of utilitarianism. One may best glean information about the people who commit various crimes while they are still alive. That information can then be used to aid law enforcement, medicine, and social professionals of so many disciplines to better address criminal activity, and ultimately make the wide community safer.

Donnie Hansen

Any animal killer/abuser.

Same.

Even if one discards the moral and ethical questions (which I personally think are the supreme ones), there's still a question of utilitarianism. One may best glean information about the people who commit various crimes while they are still alive. That information can then be used to aid law enforcement, medicine, and social professionals of so many disciplines to better address criminal activity, and ultimately make the wide community safer.
What do you do with these people though, incarcerated in their cages like battery hens as they while away their time accomplishing not very much? There's a real dilemma as to whether the humanitarian approach is to preserve life, or to put them out of their misery in one quick, final act.

There is no moral or ethical problem if you keep prison conditions humane, and maybe think more in terms of rehabilitation than in terms of punishment. I am a realist and understand that some types of criminals are not capable of being rehabilitated and will never be fit to re-enter society, but UM, because of what it is, skews the sense of how large a percentage of the prison population that is.

To freakbook's question, of course, if someone in my immediate family were murdered, I would want revenge. I would want to kill the person who harmed my mother, my wife, or my child. Slowly. To be perfectly honest I am thinking I would want much, much more than that. If someone steals my car I'd probably want to break their arms or smash their thumbs with a hammer. Etc.

This is precisely WHY we have the criminal justice system in the first place - to divorce the raw and understandable emotional response of the directly affected for revenge from the societal problem of what to do about offenders.

About a year ago, a high school classmate of mine was murdered, under some of the most horrific circumstances imaginable. Two kids wanted his car, stuck a gun in his face, demanded he hand over his wallet and the keys as he was getting out. He instantly complied with the wallet - but had his two year old daughter in the car. He remained calm, explained he would give the car up without a fight, just please let him have his daughter. They said no, and when he tried to explain again, they shot him in the face.

I cannot honestly say I was friends with my classmate. We were in AP English class together, so I knew him a little, but we traveled in different circles, and truth be told we had not seen each other since the day we graduated, at least not so far as I recall. However, he was the kind of guy that was nice then, and was obviously going to turn into a nice guy now. And so he did. He was a leader in his community and well-known as a great guy.

Even though we were not close, I certainly identified with him. We were classmates, the same age. I have a wife and child and a dog, like he did. He had a newborn to boot. I had lived in the city, like he did. We had friends in common. I know people who were close to his parents.

Understandably, I ran the gamut of emotions about this. And the initial one was raw, deep anger. I had lots of thoughts, lots of ugly thoughts I'd rather not get into here. But if I could feel this way about someone who was more theory than practice to me at this point in my life, how much more rage would I feel had it been my wife or my mother or god forbid my son?

As the initial shock wore off, I kept asking myself, why, why, why on Earth this kid - the shooter was 17 years old - would shoot my classmate, when my classmate reacted so calmly, when he promised to give them what they wanted, when the only resistance he offered was, "Let me get my daughter out of the car," when - if they had stopped to think about it for even three seconds - they wouldn't really have wanted to drive the car off with a two year old inside it anyway. They were out to steal a car, not kidnap a child.

A lot of answers to this question occurred to me, but by far the most important one was this.

This whole incident was all the proof one needed to understand that the reason that 17 year could pull the trigger, then run off with his friend laughing (yes, they laughed as they ran), was because these two boys did not value their own lives at all. Nothing in their backgrounds permitted them to see any value in their own lives. Therefore, they had no framework for understanding that other people might value their own lives, or that my classmate's death could affect the lives of others who saw value in him. Everything about where these boys grew up taught them: you have no value. Is it any wonder they treated another person as valueless? How could they think anything else?

What they did was unspeakable, and they must be punished. But executing my classmate's killer, or even imprisoning him forever in a prison meant only to punish, will accomplish nothing except to confirm for this young man, and many others like him, what they already think - that their lives are worth nothing, that no one cares, that throwing them away for a failed shot at grabbing a car off the street is something to be laughed about, because none of it matters, and it never mattered in the first place. It will teach the next generation of kids from circumstances similar to theirs that these two were right, that their lives have no value.

If that happens, then my classmate's life will not only be tragically cut short, but wasted too. I think that the truth is: the instant that kid pulled the trigger, he wasted three lives, not one. What I want is for these boys to realize this too, and that is a big part of why what they did was so wrong. For that to happen, they must first realize that their initial premise is wrong: their lives do have value, and in turn what they do with their lives matters - that they should not be thrown away for nothing. But to teach them that, we as a society need to be credible. We can't just tell people their lives have value and expect them to believe it, no matter how we behave towards people from poverty. We must not elect politicians who demonize the poor and underprivileged, who characterize people living in poverty as leeches on society, living on the taxpayer's dole. We must not look the other way when poor people's children are expected to attend substandard schools with substandard facilities and substandard access to proper food, medicine, and supplies. When we do these things we can't credibly say to people from those circumstances, "you have value."

These are a lot of problems to solve, but we can start by providing consistent access to proper mental health care. It may be too late to get it to these boys before they do something heinous, but that's no reason not to understand that they behaved as they did because of how little they believed in themselves, and that this lack of belief was reinforced by the societal messages around them everywhere, and that, paradoxically, prison can be a place to start to change that.

With proper mental health care in prison, we can perhaps get people like these boys to move towards a day where they take that critical first step of seeing themselves as valuable. That accomplished, they can begin to understand why what they did was wrong, because they will have a frame of reference and be able to relate to my classmate and his family, and understand what he/they lost. I want these boys to be taught to see the value in their lives, and hope that maybe someday they can actually be spokespersons to other boys like them, careening down similar paths, to tell them: you know what? I did what you did, and it was wrong, because I was wrong, I do have value, and you have value too.

I hope by developing a process where these boys learn to value themselves, others, who haven't yet thrown their lives away but who share the nihilistic worldview these boys had, will learn they, too, have value.

I think getting this process under way would be the best way to honor the memory of my classmate, and ensure a better result next time by hopefully making sure there is no next time.

If we can do this, his life will still have been much, much too short. But neither his death, nor his killers' lives, will have been a waste.

There are many issues involved there. Firstly do we still have confidence in the criminal justice system, to which you seem satisfied in delegating these decisions? Do we as taxpayers not expect by the age of 17 that these juveniles have learned the difference between right and wrong? If they haven't should we as a society have removed these boys from their homes or at least attempted to educate the parents?

Are these boys capable of rehabilitation or are they the hard core offenders who do exist? Would it have made any difference to your judgement had they shot the 2-year-old? Is your position a moral absolute or would you not have killed Adolf Hitler or other war criminals either? Is there a line to be drawn somewhere..

Would I kill Adolf Hitler if I encountered him at a point when he had not been neutralized? As in, I am a soldier and storm into his bunker and there he is alive and well with presumably guards about, kind of like what happened to Osama bin Laden? Yes.

But once in custody, the cold process of killing a human being in a planned and public exercise does more harm to those doing it than good for society IMHO. I don't think Iraq, for example, gained much of anything by executing Sadaam Hussein.

Would I kill Adolf Hitler if I encountered him at a point when he had not been neutralized? As in, I am a soldier and storm into his bunker and there he is alive and well with presumably guards about, kind of like what happened to Osama bin Laden? Yes.

But once in custody, the cold process of killing a human being in a planned and public exercise does more harm to those doing it than good for society IMHO. I don't think Iraq, for example, gained much of anything by executing Sadaam Hussein.
..and many argue that Osama Bin Laden should have been taken alive and put on trial in New York. But to take the case of Darlie Routier for example, it seems that the powers that be are selective in the individuals to whom they do apply the death penalty.

..and many argue that Osama Bin Laden should have been taken alive and put on trial in New York. But to take the case of Darlie Routier for example, it seems that the powers that be are selective in the individuals to whom they do apply the death penalty.

I agree, and that's another reason not to do it at all. No selection bias if there is no selection to begin with.

There is zero chance I could limit it to "just one." There are so many heartless scumbags that have killed or abused children, or other people, on UM. I couldn't pick just one.

There is zero chance I could limit it to "just one." There are so many heartless scumbags that have killed or abused children, or other people, on UM. I couldn't pick just one.
Do you think the State should have recourse to the death penalty?

Do you think the State should have recourse to the death penalty?

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: Yeah...definitely not getting into a discourse on the death penalty.

I will say this much: In a perfect world (a perfect world being one where the evidence is always exact, reliable, and completely irrefutable), I'd be 100% for the death penalty in certain types of case. That being said, with the obvious issues in the justice system (from law enforcement "helping" to convict someone they think is guilty, to the obvious issues with jury trials, and everything in between), it's hard to be 100% for it. I very much take it on a case by case basis, as for my belief in it.

Art Silva and Edward bell sorry excuse of people

Steven Geri, was that his name? What an ass. Or Todd Nichols.

Would love to beat up a few people

The first to mind is Derrick Todd Lee. I think he passed away from health reasons while in prison. He was the one in Louisiana that raped and killed quite a few women. I met one of them a few years before that happened, Carrie Yoder. She was nice, just a sweet and innocent person that didn't deserve to be raped beaten and murdered. None of them deserved it but it hits home when you spent time with one of them

The one that really gets me isn't an unsolved mysteries case but figured I'll mention it anyways. Nicole vanderheyden was killed by a guy named George Burch not too long ago (I believe it was Wisconsin). He actually shot and killed a friend of mine in the 90s. If the courts had put him away back then Nicole would still be alive. I didn't know Nicole but it's still sad since I know how evil that guy is

Also, Ryan Hoyt for killing an innocent Nick Markowitz. That was sad

That fat ****er hitchhiker who killed Phillip Fraser. Betty Day would be up there too.

The speedboat driver striking Stephanie Booker and her friends.