The Death Penalty for Sex Offenders

[stephen]

Originally posted by TonyM.
Could be. When NY legislated the death penalty for drug dealers the number of police officers killed in the line of duty went up substantially.

Exactly, this is the same effect.

Thanks for the assist.

Steve Kovalcik

 

[OULobo]

First I want to throw in a case that is happening here in Cleveland that illustrates one of the problems with the idea of sexually oriented crimes, in specific those associated with minors.

In Coventry Township, between Cleveland and Akron there was a cases where three girls accused a teacher of grabbing their butt and barging into their rooms during an overnight field trip. The case was brought to the prosecuter, the teacher was put on unpaid leave and very soon after, fired for immorality and regulation violations. When the case was brought up for indigctment(sp) by the prosecuter it was tossed because he found there was little or no baisis for the charges, partly because there was a website that the three girls maintained that was titled the "I Hate Mr. Dennis (the accused) Fan Club" and because the "barging in" was actually the teacher knocking to administer medications that were for one of the girls. Of the three accusing girls one refused to testify, one recanted her testimony saying she purposly lied and the third stuck to it. The teacher took the school to task to prove he did anything wrong. The referee found the teacher should be reinstated.

Now I bring this up to illustrate that the teacher was found guilty in the minds of the school board and consequently most of the parents without the facts being examined. This was because he was accused by minors. I personally don't classify any minor over 15 as a child, as many have learned to be vindictive and logical by this time and many know the, as mentioned, viceral reaction they can get for making false statments, all without serious consequence to themselves. If that teacher was found guilty he would've been a sexual offender.

I have an aquaintance that was arrested and convicted of gross sexual imposition and corruption of a minor, because he went to a bar and and picked up a patron there. The patron went home with him and they had consentual sex. She never argued this. She was however, 17 years old. This man is labled a sexual offender with all the registration hassles and he would be up for capital punishment if sex crimes against "children" were included.

My stance on the death penalty in general is that it should be all or nothing. Either don't have it at all or if you do then streamline the process so that it isn't more expensive to execute than to incarcerate for life. Now as to the original question of the thread, I think capital punishment for sex crime should only be used in the most extreme cases (children or not). The best example that comes to mind is the Witchita Horror without the murders. Even if, these men had left the group alive, they would still deserve the death penalty.

I do think that murder rates will increase when rapist realize that they already commited a capital crime and if they leave the victim alvie they leave a witness alive. They have nothing to loose by comitting murder at that point, but they gain a better chance at getting away.

On a side note I personally think that comparing prostitution to rape is ludicrous, I hate the idea of ostrasising criminals pst their sentance (I wouldn't mind if you exile them, but where can they go where someone isn't going to already be there and complaining the minute they walk in) and I ain't touchin' the genetic issue.

I think that covers all my opinions. Did I leave anything out?