> but he's only done is 8 times...

I didn't read the page (I see enough stupidity on a daily basis, so I'll take your word on this one), but to some degree I can understand the need for concrete numbers in sentencing.

Murder, sexual assault, etc. cases are so emotionally charged that it's not inconceivable that someone could receive a punishment that exceeds the crime simply because he/she happened to get a certain mix of people on the jury. By setting some sort of hard limits (based on number of victims, nature of crime, etc) you take the "fuzziness" out of the equation and ensure that there's a bit of consistency to the sentencing phase of the process.

This needn't apply just to capital cases, either: Punishment for theft involving $25.00 in stolen merchandise should be sentenced differently than theft involving $100,000 stolen from a person's saving's account. What if the 1st thief by chance gets a jury of "zero tolerance" types and the latter gets a jury full of softies? There need to be hard-and-fast, legally mandated rules on this sort of thing.

(...though 12 murders seems like an odd choice - even a single murder of a helpless child seems worth at least life in prison, in my opinion. I'm actually undecided on the death penalty for various reasons, but if we have it I wouldn't be nearly so simplistic as to use an arbitrary number alone for a sentencing guideline.)

As an aside, considering the topic for this thread and because of your suggestion from an entry or two back, I thought you might get a kick out of this...

http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/4520-6033_16-4206213.html

Ha ha! That was beautiful! I got a kick out of it! Honestly, I was wondering why there doesn't seem to be a big "push" to punish these people. I mean, Sassler caused all kinds of havoc (I wasn't infected with this one)...you would think something of that proportion would merit a man hunt or something, right? It's irritating and it utterly baffles me why someone would do something like create computer viruses to infect millions of people they don't even know...but then again, I guess I'm giving humans too much credit...

As for my view of the death penalty, yeah, I'm for it in certain cases. I don't think it should be widley used...but in the case of people like Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, Gacey, that teenager who killed that seven year old boy just so he could see if he could do it, my own personal example, etc I say let'em fry...I totally agree with the fuzziness aspect though. If there were more "set" rules, I think we'd see more "vaild" convictions. Punishment to fit the crime...that's a nifty idea...Nothing ticks me off more when I pick up the paper and see some child molester getting 6 months for his second offense and right below it is some idiot who shoplifted some pez from K-mart getting 25 years (Okay, I'm exaggerating here but you get the point...)*laughs*

I was just dumbfounded at the comparison between endangered species and human life...*laughs* Immediate death for killing one member of an endangered species, while a murderer can kill 12 people and then he gets the chair...I don't see the logic...probably because there isn't any...LOL

Hey, I was going to ask you, and I'm not sure if it's just me and my computer, but I was going to make a comment on your blog (about your lemon theif *ha ha*), but the calendar is right over the top of it. I tried switching screen sizes, but it didn't work...More than likely it's my incompetence, but I thought I'd ask...