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Louisiana man sentenced to 50 years in prison, physical castration for raping teen
(www.cbsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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You know, I always used to say they ought to do this. But now, presented with the reality of it, I don't like it at all.
Yeah I get wanting it, but I don’t want a government that can do it. I also don’t think a reasonable interpretation of the bill of rights allows it. How is removing body parts not cruel and unusual punishment?
Originalism is a cancer on the justice system.
I suspect your downvotes might be from folks misunderstanding originalism.
"a legal philosophy that the words in documents and especially the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted as they were understood at the time they were written"
It's like religion stating everything we ever needed to know was written thousands of years ago and we should just apply it like we were living in those times.
https://www.vox.com/21497317/originalism-amy-coney-barrett-constitution-supreme-court
Religion and guns. It’s impossible to have any reasonable discussion with someone who thinks laws written in musket times should be enshrined forever. Originalists conveniently forget that the amendment process exists for an reason and absolutely hold us back.
I'm just going to point this out - at the time the 2nd amendment was written revolvers existed, as were weapons that would be the earliest forms of what are now automatic weapons, there was even a relatively quiet rifle that could fire 22 shots per reload. Honestly, right around then was a time of massive innovation in the firearms space, with a lot of ideas and designs not getting much traction for various reasons.
These were "musket times" not because muskets were the best guns out there, but because muskets were cheap and easy to produce and literally any gunsmith worth the title could produce and repair them easily. Making them cheap to deploy for a military and also the most common gun for a citizen-soldier. Those other guns had limited manufacturing, required specialized knowledge to fix and maintain, or were expensive enough that they weren't common. That last one I mentioned (the Girardoni air rifle) was notable for being carried by the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803 (it didn't see a lot of military use because they were expensive and also required specialized parts and knowledge to maintain - ten men with muskets is a better use of military spending than one guy with a Girardoni).
Claiming that any firearm more sophisticated than a musket was so far beyond belief that the authors of the 2nd amendment couldn't possibly have imagined it and therefore they shouldn't be counted as "arms" is ridiculous. And also the argument you could use to claim the 1st amendment shouldn't apply to anything other than in person speech or print works, not film or TV or radio or the internet because those are light-years farther outside the realm of things the authors of the 1st Amendment could have imagined than a rifle that can hold and fire 30 rounds.
No one says laws should be enshrined forever, there's a process for changing or revoking them. For regular legislation, passing further legislation is all that's needed. For the constitution, there's an amendment process baked into it that has been used several times and even originalists accept that those amendments were valid, they just assume that the words used mean what they meant when the amendment was written, not what they might mean today if there's a difference.
The state having the power to do this is horrible. A victim doing this to their attacker with a butter knife on the other hand.
It's even worse
Only because the victim will be traumatized by what they did. Other than that, it's a legitimate self-defense.
I agree. I do not like the purge
This is because we can be of two minds about these things. You can have a personal response to heinous acts, but still think the government ought to be better.
If some guy murders the murderer of their kid, I can absolutely 100% understand why, and I could even admit that I might do the same in their position. But I still think that as a society we should not lower ourselves to this standard and I will always be against the death penalty (especially because the system will never be perfect and I will never think it's worth killing even one innocent person by accident).
It's why vigilante justice is so easily understood, but it's still something we, as a society, shouldn't accept.
Emotional reactions can cloud our minds to these things. But I absolutely agree with you. This is horrendous and barbarous. I can still somewhat understand the "he deserves it for what he did"-response, but I'm absolutely against this on a deeper level.
I don't think it's about having "Two minds" about it, for as you describe it doesn't seem to fit the op, as he admitted that he wanted the state to do it.
Imo, this is about abstraction vs reality. In theory something might sound good, but when you are actually faced with the reality of it, it's a huge turnoff.
I'm reminded of the reddit story where a guy got into scat porn. It became a fetish so he hired a prostitute to shit in his mouth. On the day of the deed, once the shit hit his mouth, as he described it, he was "just a guy on the floor with shit in his mouth."
The shit is just hitting the OPs mouth right now.
Exactly right! I think we're actually agreed on this.
I just meant that OP used to say they ought to do it, which was his 'emotional' response to it, which is easier when it's in abstract. But in reality he doesn't like it at all when his government actually does it.
I'd never heard about that reddit story, but I think it's very apt, lol.
It’s also why vigilante justice is far more sympathetic than government camps to torture prisoners.
I believe in bodily autonomy even for the worst people
Any punishment with no possibility of back pedaling should never be given. The chances of permanently harming a potentially innocent person are far too great.
I'm usually on that side of the discussion, too, but this case doesn't leave much room for the guy to be innocent. Beyond the "pleading guilty" part, which is sometimes done strategically, he's the biological father of the kid a 14yo got. There is no shot at this being a mistake at this point.
I still agree though; if this should exist, it must require even stricter than the usual "beyond reasonable doubt" conditions or something.
He got her pregnant... His DNA. Not possible to be innocent. He plead guilty. He shouldn't hit a prison cell, he should go directly to the chair.
Most likely this particular guy will never live to see it done. So the particulars of this case are moot.
I changed my mind about execution some 25 years ago, and while there there have been many people executed since then that I won't defend or feel bad about dying, I still don't think it's right for the state to execute prisoners.
Same thing here. What this guy did was horrible. I wouldn't even disagree that he deserves castration. But I still feel it's not right to actually do it to anyone. It's a dichotomy I'm confronting right now. There is what the guy deserves and then there's a separate consideration of what justice I think is appropriate to mete out. And I thought those were one in the same, but it turns out they aren't.
Yeah he did, don't get me wrong this guy should go to jail. But imagine for a second he (or anyone else for that matter) was not actually guilty, and got convicted on a technicality or a judiciary error.
You would mutilate or kill someone and then absolve them of the crime if ever found out they were innocent, oh no you can't, because what happened is utterly irreversible. I mean, it's not like it ever happened before right?
Ok, but by that argument, jail is irreversible too. All the damage it does to work and social evironment.
You can get out of jail, you cannot grow your balls back or be not dead. Jail damages society because of the way it's implemented, that's a political choice, but that's another argument.
Yeah, I agree with that too. There's a reason they call it "con college". Nobody wants to hire an ex-con, so a lot of people commit further crimes. And when you are in jail or prison, it's pretty hard to take care of everyday stuff like your house, car, finances, etc., so who knows what state they'll be in, or even if they'll still be there.
There is no imagine "he" was innocent. There becomes a point where evidence is overwhelming and WITHOUT a doubt. I can tell you right now, IF this guy raped you/your wife/your child, you wouldn't feel sorry for him. Would you be ok with a PROVEN rapist living next door to you? If you rape someone, you know what you're doing is wrong, you did it anyways. This says "I can't control myself", that individual is not ever going to fit in to society. I can't fathom how anyone can say they can. It's not like you got mad and got into a fist fight with someone and accidentally killed someone. This dude was RAPING A 14 year old. She will suffer the rest of her life for this.
The castration part everyone is getting upset over isn't even real. He gets it a week before he's released.... At well over 100 years old. He's not going to care since he'll be dead and on the miraculous chance he's not, he won't know or care.
The exercise of law shouldn't involve emotion, there is a reason why mob justice shouldn't be a thing.
Of course I would be upset and want the guy dead, mutilated or whatever if it involved someone close to me.
But that's the thing, dude's a monster, he should go to jail, and get psychiatric help and be rehabilitated to the best of his capability. If he's never safe enough to be a free man ever again that's fine, but in no way he should be killed or mutilated by the state.
But the point isn't about him specifically, if he gets such a sentence, it sets a precedent that a sentence like this is acceptable for a given crime. And that's unacceptable on many levels, a state should never have the power to kill or mutilate a person, for any reason, ever.
But it is the state deciding to sentence someone to it. We’re mad at that. We’re angry they feel comfortable doing so
We aren't talking about him specifically. We are talking about every single person who is charged with this crime ever, at least one of which will be innocent.
This falls squarely under no cruel and unusual punishment for me. Heinous as the crime was this is just inhuman.
Well, in Louisiana, it might be the only way to get gender affirming care
/s
That’s the other thing Louisiana may use this to further their unjust associations between trans people and pedos
So, first you relativise what counts as cruel and unusual punishment, then you demonize the person. That is the road to atrocities. Why do you want to go there?
Me saying that rape is a heinous crime but saying its still inhuman to castrate a convicted rapist is demonizing them?
Sorry, I misread.
I mean, when the state of Louisiana agrees, it's only reasonable to wonder if you're being the baddy.
If I've learned anything after coming back to the south south (for some dumb reason) if you find yourself agreeing with the state you're definitely the baddy, with ☠️ and all.
They made my residential road a 25mph speed limit, and I'm really happy about it. I just learned that i'm a baddy. :(
Yeah I think we all agree you suck
Yeah, chemical castration seems a lot better than the bull band treatment