You were in direct violation of what you yourself have said. Either you claim that people are born such-and-such and thus are innocent or that they make their own choices and are therefore responsible. You can't be responsible for being born (someone), FFS.

If he was born that way, how is it his fault?

I can't think of any characteristics someone is carrying from birth, that I would then say that person is responsible for possessing.

You're incurable...
Just because such people are born the way they are doesn't make them less deserving of proper justice. There's no contradiction in what I said, if you'll look a little carefully.
You are what you are, and you must reap the rewards, or pay the consequences accordingly. I still don't see what's so hard to understand.

Quite on the contrary: we are who we are not ;P.
I will, however, leave you to your essentialism for now, I have games to play tonight...

....

There are savages everywhere. Look up information on the old Boy's home on Bastøy in the first half of the 20th century. It may be the site of a model prison now, but back then it was where troubled boys were sent to be physically and sexually abused by the men who were supposed to be rehabilitating them. No group is free of terrible acts because they all are made up of humans.

I wrote off the rest of your comments as sheer arrogance, but to this one I'm just going to say this - fuck you, just fuck you.
This. It's all well and good preaching on how about rehabilitation, but in practice this never works. You cannot make them a valuable member of society, in most cases you cannot even make them work from within prison as they refuse to.

Many (legitimate) death row inmates are defiant to the last (I don't mean poliical prisoners by the way). They are fundamentally dangerous human beings, and all you can do is either cage them up for the rest of their lives or end their lives humanely.

I'm of two minds on this, because lately I've been going through a transitional phase in my spiritual development.

The old me would say "Right on! They should have killed him a long time ago because of what he did!"

The transitional me says "What he did was unfortunate, but to gloat and express joy over his death degrades us all."

What about human fetuses then? Is abortion ok or is it killing another human being?

I can't accept this attitude - human fetus = not human being so it can be aborted, hardened criminal = human being so he can't be "aborted".

I believe you start being a part of human "group" when you are born and you are a part of it when you die or when you do something so horrible, you no longer deserve "the privilege". I'm not saying this "definition" is universal or anything, it's my point of view.

Okay I give, all the shitty things I posted and this one gets low rated? Holy shit, I'm being downrepped but the kids from the slow class. XD

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/finally_a_happy_death_notice_d/post92

I blame video games!

Fuck punishment. Justice has to be about use and cost to society; preventing future crime.

The worst you can do to a person is to kill them. A person who has racked up enough criminal actions for a death sentence has no incentive to ever collaborate with the state, and vice versa: criminals who know they won't be killed by the state are more difficult to persuade/manipulate into more crime by threatening them with death. Abolition of the death penalty reduces crime.

Now there's another factor; that of Moral Outrage. As in, the stone-age-mentality savages who want blood to flow, because VENGEANCE. And there's a tradeoff between incentivizing criminals to surrender and disincentivizing savages to lynch random suspects. That's a PR matter, and we can provide different arguments for different people (the well-documented inherent racism of the death penalty, false convictions, "we should be better than that", religion, gandalf, whatever). But, fluffles aside, the solid reasoning behind the abolition of death penalty is that abolition reduces crime.

or Michael Jackson.

Jesus Christ what a pile of shit. I can't believe Licurg brought Vlad Tepes in this, so typical for Romanians. We were taught in school this weird idea that he was a hero and I distinctly remember my teacher telling young kids that it's a shame people like him aren't around anymore because then we wouldn't have so many criminals. There are these legends that this guy was some sort of medieval batman defending wronged and keeping the land crime free when he was actually just a guy who enjoyed shoving stakes up Turk asses.
This comes from some fucked up nationalistic idea that used to flood our literature and history manuals. I haven't heard this kind of crazy talk in a long time, I thought we were passed that point.
Vlad Tepes was a sick fuck, certainly sicker than this Ramirez muchacho and the only thing to his credit is that he kicked some major turk ass with impressive medieval commando fighting.
Also how screwed up in the head do you have to be to talk this eye for an eye shit. I admit feeling a sort of relief while reading about some asshole getting killed but seriously this is 2013, keep that shit in the old testament.