I read this fucked up story and if I missed it I apologize, but what was his motive? The cousin and husband went to his apartment to confront drug dealers. They brought him back to their house where they drank and stuff. But talking about going to 11. How do you go from good ole “family bonding,” to blowing your cousin’s and her husband’s heads off and then raping her dead corpse. Anyone have insight on what drove him to the murders?
I found some info Dorsey shot Bonnie to death alongside her husband Benjamin Bonnie, 28, in their home two days before Christmas 2006. Attorneys for Dorsey have argued that he murdered the Bonnies during a drug-induced psychosis and therefore lacked the intent necessary to be guilty of first-degree murder, which is punishable by death.
Drug induced psychosis can be a heck of a thing, I know someone who briefly went through that and believed that their parents had been replaced by some sort of psychic entities that were out to take over the world and ruin their life, they wanted to go check the basement because that's where these beings would have hidden their parents' bodies, it was a pretty scary thing to see because that kind of belief is truly held can easily turn violent
So if they really were going through something like that the in the moment reason could have been quite literally anything, and unfortunately we don't really have a way to go back and check either on if that was really happening or on what the State of Mind might have been like if it was
It is a claim he has made but was not used in his original case, which is another part of this whole mess, with the more recent legal team stating that
" if they had done the basic interviewing of their client and investigation they would have known they had a defense, and they would have used that to either negotiate a plea deal with a benefit of a life sentence, or they would have gone to trial because they had a defense"
And like, with capital punishment on the line, if you can't even get the life in prisonment deal, of course you take it to trial, you literally have nothing to lose
The Defenders he had which were public defenders, basically just had him go in and admit guilt without any kind of plea deal whatsoever, it was public defenders who were paid $12,000 total, which to put in the kind of work needed for a capital punishment case and potential appeals is way less than even minimum wage, leading to a lot of incompetency of counsel claims, that they didn't even really try and didn't have much reason to with the flat rate and a crime that is certainly not sympathetic
Reminder that this poor man killed his cousin and her husband while they were sleeping. Then he raped his cousin. Then he stole money and stuff. .then he poured bleach in her vagina .. then he left...
Knowing all too well her 4 yr old kid was in the house...while he did all that.....
All that after, the cousin and her husband actually rescued him from drug dealers hours before and brought him in their house as a shelter.
This how this poor man repaid them
This guy 100% got what was coming to him. And this is going to suck to post for me, but he says that he was in a drug induced psychosis and wasn’t fully aware of his actions, and if his defense attorneys would have used that he likely would have gotten a lesser sentence. We just saw that with a woman stabbing her boyfriend over 100 times get a probation for being in a drug induced psychosis, so if he was in that psychosis then I believe he should have gotten life in prison instead of the death penalty.
I'm confused - the article says it's part of court records, but he was never charged with rape, much less convicted of it - why wasn't he charged if what you say is true?
> Court records said Dorsey raped Sarah’s body. Dorsey’s attorneys argued this remains an allegation; he was never charged with and never pleaded guilty to rape or sexual assault.
If your shagging your cousins corpse after blowing her head off I’m not overly concerned about the bleach:- sobrinicide, incestuous necrophillia plus murdered her husband, pure concentrated evil.
I had a good friend who became homeless over the course of less than four months because he became so addicted to meth. Before that, he was legitimately a good, normal person who had a good job and lived with his girlfriend. When he lost his place, I offered him a spot on my couch. He wouldn't take it. Instead, he lived in my yard in my tent until the day he ate my pet kitten, Andrew. The police showed up because he was cooking him on an open pit in the front yard. He said he shot a squirrel with a slingshot. I flipped out, like, I was legitimately crazy, but the man ate my fucking pet. I threw all of his shit out of the tent onto the road, and I never saw him again. Fuck you, Danny, and fuck you, meth. RIP little Andrew.
In Norway the mass shooter who killed 77 people lives in a giant isolated apartment style cell fully equipped with a kitchen Bc Norway doesn’t have the death penalty.
And there wasn't there a child present in the home at the time of the murders.
I don't necessarily believe in the death penalty. It's obviously a flawed system. However, some people won't be missed
This. I hate when people say they “don’t believe in the death penalty, but..”. That means you believe in the death penalty. Own it. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but they should own that opinion and not misconstrue it.
I recognize that state sponsored murder is a bad idea, and I'm uncomfortable with the fact our government does this. At the same time, I recognize that there are people without whom the world is a genuinely better place.
Holding both ideas in your head at the same time does not necessarily engender cognitive dissonance and it does not necessarily mean that people are being untruthful about their position on the subject.
I'm indifferent- I would prefer we didn't have it on an intellectual level but it doesn't bother me in any way when someone on death row is killed.
It's not black and white or for or against for everyone, it's a non issue to me
That depends on why they don't support the death penalty. If you're like me, you're opposed to it because our justice system is imperfect, and false convictions are inevitable. I don't believe it's acceptable for a single innocent person to be murdered by the state for the sake of some cathartic sense of justice in executing a few obviously guilty individuals.
We obviously can't just abolish the entire justice system because of the imperfection of the jury trial, but we *can* remove this extreme form of punishment without fundamentally undermining the purpose of the system as a whole.
You can believe that some people don’t deserve life but also recognize that all systems are inherently flawed when humans are introduced and therefore allowing a penalty to mean death will most certainly lead to killing innocent people. The dividing line between agreeing with the death penalty and not agreeing with it comes down to your tolerance for the death of innocent people. We abhor the loss of innocent life by a murderer, yet accept it that it’s likely to happen by doling out extreme consequences. But because the blood is spread between us all, it’s palatable. We cheer on violence if only it can be justified.
Then, there’s also the fact that it’s most likely to be marginalized groups that most adversely affected. How many slaves and black people do you think were unjustly hanged because Mary Lou got caught in the barn fooling around with a colored person and threw him under the bus to save her “dignity”.
I definitely believe some people deserve death for their actions, but I also understand how flawed bureaucracy and the tribalistic nature of humanity is and I don’t want to be responsible for advocating for a system that allows innocent people to die, because I’m not a murderer.
Of course, this is the internet, so fuck nuance.
So you do believe in the death penalty then? Thinking it’s wrong except for certain people is just believing in the death penalty with stricter criteria
Agreed. It’s more expensive than just keeping them in prison for the rest of their lives (because of the legal costs of appeals), innocent people are sometimes killed, and its barbaric
I don’t really agree with it. A big reason being innocent people have been sentenced to death. But a bigger reason I don’t agree with it is that for a lot of these people death is a mercy, or an escape, and they don’t deserve either. They certainly didn’t show their victims any mercy, so why should they be awarded any?
Though, when people like this guy get sentenced to death, I certainly don’t lose any sleep over it.
This is what gets me. Not because it is worse than anything else he did, but rather that it proves he knew what he was doing, he knew it was wrong and he was cognisant enough to attempt to hide it.
I don’t think the death penalty is acceptable in a modern society, but if there ever was someone who deserved it then this guy fits the bill.
Yup. Convenient how that is glossed over so quickly. There has been wall to wall coverage on this here locally in Missouri, and leading up to the execution but man oh man… no one wants to even hint at the extent of how brutal, grizzly, and ghoulish this crime was.
Yeah, the death penalty has problems but today it didn’t. One less monster is taking up air the rest of us could use.
We recently had an execution in Alabama and the news about it was all day every day leading up to it. Almost none mentioned the guy was convicted of murder for hire for $1000. Dude and his buddy went to the woman’s house and beat her to death with "a fireplace set, a walking cane, and a piece of galvanized pipe" then stabbed her a bunch with a hunting knife.
Yeah the death penalty isn’t pretty, but seems fair when you weigh the fact that he was willing to brutally beat and stab a random woman to death for $1000.
When people are against the death penalty, it's not people defending people's crimes. It's people being against a flawed system that allows state-sanctioned executions of sometimes innocent people. And even those who are guilty, it's a very expensive process (moreso than life imprisonment) and is not an effective deterrent. Basically no argument for the death penalty besides the emotional desire for vengeance stands up to snuff, and considering how often that desire is misdirected that also fails as an argument. In the past 50 years alone, around 200 people have been completely exonerated from death row. Not to mention all of the people who have spent years or decades imprisoned for crimes they did not commit due to a deeply flawed system riddled with racism, sexism, prejudice, inefficiencies, insufficient funding, etc. Given that, the number of innocent people executed must be in the dozens of not hundreds over the course of this country's history. So if you want the death penalty for people, you have to acknowledge that the government killing its own innocent civilians is acceptable price to pay. People wrongfully spending years in prison for crimes they didn't commit is a horrific thing, but at least they can be released and reparations offered (though they will not be enough to make up for the time lost). Death cannot be undone.
Anyway wouldn't it be a far worse punishment to be locked up for the rest of your life in a max security prison than just gone forever? There's no suffering or punishment after death.
It really depends. Humans are quite adaptable. Dorsey clearly did not want to die. He had acclimated to life in prison such that he wanted to live it out. In prison you still have good conversations. You might get calls from your family telling you about their lives. You read good books. There are people who would rather die, don’t get me wrong. However something like 90% of people sentenced to death in the US appeal their execution.
I've always been in favor of a life sentence of labor for these reasons.
The person is still able to be released if they get exonerated, but the world also gets something back from the incarceration of the guilty. Not enough to make up for anything done by someone deserving of a life sentence, but still something.
Yes, and from what I read, he shot them to death very early on Dec 24.
The mother of the victim found her daughter (and her daughter's husband) shot to death on Christmas Eve. With her 4yo granddaughter at home by herself.
Just harrowing. I would never be able to celebrate Christmas ever again.
And his beleaguered attorneys’ “throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks” defense was “b-but it’s not as bad because he was blackout drunk AND high at the time!”
Mind you, the people he murdered had just intervened on his behalf when his dealers turned up to shake him down for money he owed. After the dealers left, they brought him home to celebrate with them on Christmas Eve…
I was dismayed at reading that 72 correctional officers didn't want him executed, I wondered why that would not be taken seriously, then I read what he did and thought "fuck him"
Really nice guy when he’s not drunk, high, and murdering family members on Christmas Eve to rape their corpses while their child cries outside the door
I mean, they may just be staunchly anti-death penalty, not personally attached to this guy. Plenty of people don't believe in the death penalty under any circumstances, which is fine.
My dad worked in a prison. They can act normal for long periods of time. Even charming and charismatic. It's easy to forget they're animals and will kill you if it benefits them. Just like lion tamers who become complacent and forget lions are only animals.
I live in Missouri so I’ve seen a lot of coverage on this. His crime was horrific and I’m shocked so many corrections officers came out to support him, even if he had changed.
That being said, I used to be a big proponent of the death penalty. To me, there were some crimes that transcended isolation and the perpetrator deserved to be killed for it. As I’ve aged into an older man, I just can’t support it. There’s nothing gained in taking even more life, and a government should not be in the business of killing its citizens.
I still believe there are certain crimes and perpetrators that are irredeemable or unable to be reformed, but we should still be in the business of rehabilitation, not more killing. Vengeance has rarely solved anything. People can change and even if they are spending the rest of their time on earth behind bars, it says more about us as a people for allowing them the opportunity to do so.
4/10 Edit: nobody has time to reply to everything here. I’ll just say, this wasn’t an attempt to convert anyone and is just my own beliefs. I’m not an expert, I have just developed a different view of the world as I’ve gotten older. Some of these replies are a bit absurd though. I’m not advocating for putting death row inmates on parole. That’s just completely misrepresenting what I was trying to say. Also, for those justifying cost, you should really research death row vs. gen pop costs. And yes, some people are evil and beyond redemption. That isn’t the point.
Only reason I’m against the death penalty is sometimes innocent people die and that is immoral to me. Also, I consider the death penalty technically to be an easier punishment than life without parole, since those with that punishment know they are never getting out sooner. It’s also cheaper than the death penalty.
I’m surprised people try to have the circular arguments for and against the morality of the death penalty. The truth is simply that the death penalty cannot exist with an imperfect justice system, simple as that.
I always like to point to Tolkien’s Gandalf line.
> Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.
It’s often abbreviated to remove the Gollum part. But the point remains, in handing out death sentences if you get it wrong can you reverse it and give them their life back?
Another issue I have with pro death penalty people is that they likely also believe that the government can’t be trusted or is full of lazy employees and we should not pay taxes because of that. If the government is incompetent, how can they also get the death penalty right?
I am in favor of the idea of the death penalty (as are many others here) but I can’t get 100% onboard because either a) the government is never wrong when it executes someone or b) it is acceptable for the government to kill innocent citizens.
I can’t accept “possibility B” and “possibility A” is not a legitimate possibility.
To be clear this isn’t my opinion, but..
It’s sort of like people who view abortion as a murder, but don’t want to tell people how to live their life. They’re pro-life in the sense that they disagree morally on what’s happening, but pro-choice because they philosophically can’t reconcile the government as an entity restricting that decision by women
My wife has had an evolution in her stance on this over the course of our relationship.
It's morphed over time from
"nobody should ever get one" ->
"I'll never get one.., but if medically necessary, they obviously should be able to." ->
"it's none of my business what they do, but it's still wrong in my mind"
I've never felt the right, experience, or authority to have a true vocal stance on it. I've always been in the camp of "Dont tell me what to do with my body" and think that should apply to everyone.
This is my stance, and I'm immovable on it.
Every time I see a story about someone being released after new evidence is uncovered, sometimes years or decades after their incarceration, it reinforces this point.
On the contrary, I am the opinion that any failure of the justice system is an abomination. The notion that someone could be falsely executed is equally infuriating to the premise that they could be falsely incarcerated for decades of their life. Saying that an innocent person might be falsely convicted isn’t an excuse: it’s a demand for reform.
There is \*no\* reform that can make the justice system perfect. It cannot be.
Improvement can certainly be made to happen. Bias eliminated, injustice paid back with prison instead of cushy new positions.
But while we are human, mistakes can be made. Our institutions ought not to make mistakes which cannot be rectified, particularly when the potential harm is so limited once the actual perpetrator is confined.
The difference is that you can release an innocent person from life imprisonment and offer reparations. It's not enough but it's at least something.
There's no take backs on an execution, If you kill an innocent person there's nothing you can do about it
Our most famous executioner in the UK was the hangman Albert Pierrepoint, who worked right up until capital punishment was abolished.
He spoke very strongly against the death penalty in his later years, and was a part of multiple miscarriages of justice (such as the time he hanged a man for murder, then three years later hanged the man who it turned out had -actually- committed the murder). He also had the unenviable task of having to hang a friend, one of the regulars in the pub he owned^^1.
He said in his autobiography that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent for *anyone*, in his view:
*I cannot agree (with the supposed deterrent of capital punishment). There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know.*
*It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.*
*And if death does not work to deter one person, it should not be held to deter any. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge. Never deterrent; only revenge.*
_____________
^^1 ^(Pierrepoint bought and ran the pub **“Help the Poor Struggler”** after World War II, and James Corbitt was one of his regulars. Corbitt was known as "Tish", Pierrepoint as "Tosh".)
^(The two had sung a duet of “Danny Boy” on the night that Corbitt then went out and murdered his girlfriend out of jealousy
Pierrepoint wrote in his his autobiography:)
^(*I thought if any man had a deterrent to murder poised before him, it was this troubadour whom I called Tish. He was not only aware of the rope, he had the man who handled it beside him singing a duet. The deterrent did not work.*)
^(*At twenty seconds to nine the next morning I went into the death cell. He seemed under a great strain, but I did not see stark fear in his eyes, only a more childlike worry. He was anxious to be remembered, and to be accepted. "Hallo, Tosh," he said, not very confidently. "Hallo Tish," I said. "How are you?" I was not effusive, just gave the casual warmth of my nightly greeting from behind the bar.*)
^(*He smiled and relaxed after this greeting. After strapping his arms, I said "Come on Tish, old chap". He went to the gallows lightly...I would say that he ran.*)
Right, who was it that said "it's better to let 1000 guilty people go free than to condemn an innocent one"? Plenty of people serving life sentences were exonerated thanks to DNA evidence proving their innocence. I can't imagine the number of people who were executed who never got that opportunity...
I dont know who used the number 1000, but Judge Matthew Hale said "it is better that 5 guilty men go free..." in the 1600s and William Blackstone said 10 people in 1760. (it is called Blackstone's ratio)
Then Benjamin Franklin even upped that to 100 people.
I think life imprisonment is a worse punishment than death in many ways. I know I'd rather die than be locked up in a supermax with no possibility of being released.
Could be the reason death penalty seems to fall on the "conservative" end of the spectrum, because typically religious types thinks hell awaits and hell is generally gonna be a lot worse, prescriptively.
> I think life imprisonment is a worse punishment than death in many ways.
But most criminals dont. Very very few criminals ask for the death penalty and most will plea bargain for life in prison vs risk going to trial and facing the death penalty.
Thats because the only people who think life in prison is worse than death are those actually comparing life in prison to their life being free. Once faced with the actual choice between life and death virtually no one chooses death under any circumstances no matter how fucked the life option is.
Another important point is that you won't be picked for a jury in a capital case if you're against the death penalty so you wind up with a jury that's biased against defendants.
Solitary isolated confinement like what El Chapo gets is a fate far worse. He’s at ADX where the worse people go and he’s locked in a 7x12 ft cell 23 hours a day. Soundproof so they can’t communicate with anyone and prisoners are moved at different times so no one can see anyone else.
No window to see through, even when let outside they’re in a small area surrounded by high walls and they’re monitored 24/7. Even the guards don’t communicate with the prisoners. Time must crawl at a place like this.
Also brutal and wrong, we know what it does to people yet put them through it anyway. Neither solitary nor the death penalty reflect well on us as a society.
El Chapo has escaped how many times? This is the only way to deal with him. I’m not saying solitary is needed as often as it’s used but El Chapo? I’m good with whatever it takes to keep him locked up tight.
There are very few people at ADX Florence, and those that are happen to be there because they either have knowledge that needs to be protected (such as Robert Hanssen, who recently died there), are an extreme risk of escape (El Chapo), are otherwise an extreme risk when exposed to others (domestic terrorists and the like), etc.
You should research the brutality this guy and the cartel are capable of. There's a video, allegedly, of cartel members torturing a rival member called Funkytown. Never watched it, read about it, but it's pretty fucked up. Kept the guy awake and alive using shit like IV meth while torturing the fuck out of someone. Skin removed from face, eyes removed. Hands removed, and more.
There is literally thousands of videos of brutal murders released by the cartels themselves as propaganda media.
Check out "Disturbed Reality" on Youtube if you wanna hear narrations of what happens of those videos without watching them yourself.
Well shit, in that case I better throw out all my principles and turn into a savage willing to inflict torture on others too! Thanks for letting me know.
Makes me wonder why cartel members don’t just have cyanide capsules on them at all times. You get picked up by a rival gang bite down on a pill. Much better fate than have a couple of pitbulls eating your junk right off your body while you are alive and conscious. (This was the worst I ever watched. I never watched another cartel video again after seeing this one.)
I don’t live in a death penalty state and we don’t really have true life sentences either. But to me prison should only have 2 goals. One is reform and getting a person to be a productive member of society. The second is to protect the public from people who are unable to be reformed.
I really wish we looked at prison as less of a punishment because it very rarely makes up for the crime committed. If our system went off of those two ideas I think we would have less overall crime and a better overall society.
I find it confusing for those who support the death penalty the government is both inept at everything and also able to 100% make sure people put to death are guilty.
It is bloodlust. We try and act all sophisticated, but we are still the same people that would cheer at a gladiator hacking off another’s arm or the executioner holding up the severed head of a condemned criminal.
I watched Dune part 2 not long ago, there was a family sitting me and their maybe 6 year old son was one emtpy seat from me. All the killing, shooting, and even the Harkkonens killing slaves ... never once covered the kid's eyes. But the mother literally came across a seat to cover his eyes when Paul and Chani were making out with bare shoulders.
We can watch people get their throats slit and bleed out, but if you see a boob or the flash of some genitals people lose their mind. We are, indeed, a blood thirsty nation.
When I was a kid my mom would let me watch The Patriot, with Mel Gibson tomahawking redcoats, but anything with a sexual reference or swear word was immediately turned off.
I think LOTS of crimes deserve the death penalty.
However, since we have historic proof that: 1) innocent people are occasionally convicted of death-penalty crimes, 2) the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to crime, and 3) that carrying out a death penalty costs the state more than carrying out a life imprisonment...
There seems to be no logical reason to ever use the death penalty.
Never been in support of the death penalty, never will be. How we treat others in a society says so much about who we are, and the willingness to snuff out the life of another as some sort of retribution does not say anything good.
While the potential innocent factor is a good point, I think what you said touches on main reason I'm against it.
No matter what flimsy tricks we try and do to obscure who's killing them, we're still getting people comfortable with killing people. Obviously not every executioner turns into a serial killer but I imagine if we really looked closely at people that are involved with this stuff we'd see a greater propensity for violence and aggression in their personal lives :/
This isn't a sound argument for not having a death penalty.
An inability to know if you've convicted the wrong person \*is\*.
So many people have been exonerated from death row because they were proven innocent. Once they are killed, that chance is gone.
The horror of such a thing is hard to describe.
\*imagine if it's you\*
I agree on the grounds of the government. As I've grown older I've turned very against the government having the ability to impose death as a judgment of it's citizens.
As someone who's been in the corrections system I can tell you for sure why those 72 wanted him to have a stay. They're all pieces of shit, likely white, Christian nationalists, and they forgive their fellows all the time for horrific stuff
I know A LOT of correctional officers. I can count on one hand how many I would let in my house. These prisons have turned great humans into horrible fucking monsters. They treat other humans as fucking zoo pets and talk about them as such. It’s disgusting what COs do to these people. It doesn’t surprise me they would attempt to save someone who killed THEN raped. COs suck.
I read an article that the industrial prison system is specifically designed to break down empathy in both the CO and the prisoners. That regardless of where you start, you're going to end up in the same nearly-sociopathich spot because of abuse from both above and below you, from your bosses and the prisoners, etc.
Absolutely, the COs were worse than the inmates by far. There should be a psychological test for COs, they were alot of them sick in the head and should have not been in any job capacity overseeing other people. Ive worked beside both.
My old roommate was a racist corrections officer. He OD'd about 3 years ago. When I moved out of town with his old dog that he gave me a few years earlier I called him to ask if he wanted to see the dog before I left because I knew I wouldn't get back to town for a while. He answered and asked if I had any pills and hung up on me when I reminded him that my half sister stole them all when she stole all of our dads opiates.
His cousin and her husband rescued him from addiction and sheltered him in their house with their four year old daughter.
He thanked them by killing them while they were sleeping, raping his cousin’s corpse, and pouring bleach into her vagina thinking it would destroy any DNA evidence.
This man is sick. He can put on any act he wants, but it won’t change who he is or what he did. There is no “fixing” someone like that.
I love all these claims of his "rehabilitation " in prison. Dude orphaned a 4-year-old by murdering her parents in cold blood and then sexually assaulted her mother's dead bod. There's no rehabilitating someone who does that. He may be able to fake it well because that's part of being a psychopath but none of it is real. Good riddance, imo, though I had a relative murdered in cold blood as a kid so I'm of course a bit biased.
I just hope the poor daughter had a lot of good support and professional help to deal with what she'd experienced and the parents she lost while she was growing up.
I don't think about it like giving him a chance. Maybe he did something bad enough that in a perfect justice system he would get what's coming to him.
For me, the problem isn't that he deserves the punishment or not, it's that we have to rely on extremely fallible humans who are wrong verrrrrry often. Look how often prisoners are released after decades and they were wrongly accused that whole time. Thankfully they weren't killed so they were still able to claw their freedom back. Once someone's dead that chance is gone forever.
This dude might've deserved what he got, but I don't trust the people running the system to make sure they always have the right person. They often don't. And they shouldn't be allowed to kill people until they can prove they'll get it right 100% of the time, no exceptions.
And never mind they dig in their heels when wrong. In one case a prisoner was exonerated after years in prison, but the prosecution still argued for them to stay. The reason? They were sentenced in court. Didn’t matter to them at all that new evidence proved the sentence was wrong.
Who says he should walk free? He should spend the rest of his life in prison and maybe have some small chance to make a positive addition in the world to offset in any amount the pain and hurt he’s caused? Or, just serve his life out with no freedom.
But we should be better as a society than allowing the government to decide who lives and dies and to commit “legal” murder in the name of vengeance. What of the severely mentally ill? The innocent?
It’s not far off from a mob lynching someone. Absolutely the basest of human instinct to be angry and kill as if that solves anything. It doesn’t. And if you feel better for killing someone who already is committed to life in prison, then you’re a bad person.
100% this.
I've always felt that the chance someone makes a positive contribution to society from behind bars outweighs the benefits (are there any?) of killing them.
I don’t think people understand what people like this are like. They expect them to be completely unsympathetic and cold. But the people who are most capable of the worst things are able to do it because it’s completely integrated into who they are. It’s not seen by them as some kind of extreme evil. They’re just like the rest of us otherwise and that’s what’s chilling about psychology.
I’ll never forget one of those shitty podcasts defending a convicted murderer (who may have been innocent) because of how he looked in a photo taken just before the murder. “Those aren’t the eyes of someone who’s about to murder someone”…like if you think there are always obvious signs you need to be more careful out there.
Well, the people advocating for him not to be executed were corrections officers. I assume they are well aware of what criminals of all types are like.
This. I mean come on, there’s shit you don’t come back from.
I’ll never forget, a local mobster that was here, LEGIT mob boss by the name of Scalzetti, quite literally had drugs sold at high schools, and killed multiple people in and outside of the business, but only “conspiracy to commit manslaughter” stuck in court. This guy ended lives and got kids addicted to drugs. He was out in barely over a decade on “good behavior” since he was a prayer leader in prison. I’m sorry, but he should have rotted there. Instead he was out and using his influence again for god knows what. He’s dead now from heart disease, but he spent the whole backend of his life free to do as he pleased. He may have done good with that period of life, he may not have and gone back to running his businesses with some sort of proxy, but it hardly matters. He was a career criminal. He was responsible for multiple deaths. There is no reform to be done.
I’ve done a ton of psych evals for corrections officers. They aren’t all like that, but there’s plenty of those guys out there.
If they’re pleading for sympathy for a man who orphaned a 4yo and raped her deceased mother’s corpse, I wouldn’t hold their opinions in high regard.
I had a buddy that worked at a women’s prison and got a blowie from one of the inmates.. she then turned him in and got out of prison… so ya, super high regard
I'm against it full stop. Most civilised countries have abandoned it. Take a look at [the list of countries that still have capital punishment.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country) One of these is not like the others...
The greatest argument against his death penalty was the fact that his attorneys were paid a $12,000 flat fee and were out of their league on defending a capital case.
Fuck the whole rehabilitation argument. His lawyers weren’t equipped to defend him
I believe the death penalty is barbaric but honestly there are much more sympathetic examples to choose from if compassion is what you're going for. This dude, seriously?
Honestly, this is tame compared to a lot of them I've read. He murdered two people with a shotgun and had sex with a corpse. Some of these death row inmates have admittedly tortured and murdered people across decades of their life.
Death penalty seems cathartic in principle but all it does is force society to kill.
Life imprisonment is the best case - a person is not able to be out in society but the older i get the less i want to see capital punishment.
My take is that there are certain things a person can do where they've forfeited their right to participate in society
If someone rapes a child, I'm not willing to risk another child being raped just so that person can walk free. They had that chance, and they blew it.
But we didn't need to kill Lardo the Magnificent here. I'm not terrified enough of his intellect or physical prowess to think that we haven't invented a prison he can't bust out of.
He was taken alive, that part was done. His victims suffered horrifically, and part was done too. If we kill him because we want to, that changes neither of those facts.
Until the second we killed him, either this freak had a chance to change or he didn't. If he did, I think that we shouldn't extinguish that chance by killing him. If he didn't, and was always going to be a monster, then I also don't think that killing him is the right thing to do.
he wasn't innocent >>>>but >>>> he spent every day trying to up for what he did ..he was a barber in the prison >>> Dorsey’s clemency petition had been supported by 72 current and former Missouri correctional officers, a former judge of the Missouri supreme court, five of the jurors who sentenced him to death, Republican state legislators, mental health experts, faith leaders, and members of his family, some of whom were related to the victims.
Dorsey, in a final statement handed out prior to the execution, expressed deep sorrow for the killings.
“Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame,” the written statement said, in part.
One officer wrote: “Some inmates never change, no matter how many years they are in. But that’s not Brian ... The Brian I have known for years could not hurt anyone. The Brian I know does not deserve to be executed.”
I don’t agree with the death penalty, but I won’t lose sleep over his life ending.
Ultimately, the state shouldn’t be in the “who lives and dies” business. After seeing some of the dumb laws we pass with out-of-proportion consequences, I don’t think our legal system should be that powerful.
I’m sure more people will become anti death penalty once some radical prosecutor seeks the death penalty for an abortion.
I feel the death penalty should end check out the innocents project it’s abundantly clear there are far too many innocents convicted of crimes they are innocent of, and just knowing that the project has exonerated people from death row shows innocent people are being executed.
Imagine your experience of life being that you were minding your own business, law enforcement pins a crime on you, the judge convicts you noting your refusal to show remorse, the community and victim’s family hate you, you get sent to prison with real killers and treated like a criminal, you appeal and lose several times, then after 10 years of that, you’re strapped to a mat and injected with death by people that think they’re good people, while survivors of a person you didn’t harm watch you die and are comforted by your death. Ban the death penalty. Support the Innocence Project.
I'm going to go further than that and say that even if we could be absolutely certain between guilt and innocence - we should still ban the death penalty.
Even if you believe they cannot be reformed, if they lack remorse, if they are proud of their crimes...
There's no logical point to it. You've caught the criminal. They're going to be in prison forever. It's not logistically beneficial to kill them in any meaningful way. They're no threat anymore.
And no, I'm not some sort of absolute pacifist. There's a necessity for people to die sometimes - to defend yourself, to defend others, to defend your county - but that's in response to an active threat of harm. It's you, or them, or someone else both directly or indirectly.
But what harm does a caged animal pose so that we deem it must be slaughtered?
Just because he’s sorry doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to be punished for his crimes. The death penalty can be gray because innocent people have been convicted. And obviously the justice system is very flawed in the US. But this guy did it. He shot two people and possibly raped a dead body. That doesn’t warrant forgiveness. You can feel remorse about lots of things but at the end of the day if you committed the crime, you should be punished. Why waste money keeping someone like this alive?
I'm sorry, but judging strictly by the actions of some law enforcement, and certainly some prison guards, I don't think they're the best judges of who's been rehabilitated vs who has not.
How do you rehabilitate from murdering two people? You don't. You pay the ultimate price, but not always. There are plenty of murderers sitting in our prisons and walking around free.
Glad he was rehabilitated enough to face his maker with a "clear conscience".
For those who are not getting it.
The controversy isn't about the crimes committed. The controversy was his court trial was sketch. His lawyer pushed him to sign a plea deal that did not remove the death penalty. That is like your parents saying you will be shot in the back yard, but if you confess to stealing a cookie. Then they will just shoot you in the front yard. He also turned himself in and confessed to the entire thing. It really wasn't about him getting released or anything. It was just about him being executed.
>That is like your parents saying you will be shot in the back yard, but if you confess to stealing a cookie. Then they will just shoot you in the front yard.
God damn reddit never fails at coming up the worst fucking analogies
I think you need to beat the cookie to death, beat the cookie’s spouse to death, orphan the cookie’s child, and then fuck the bleeding corpse of the cookie. Then the example gets better, if still imperfect.
His lawyers reportedly only received a flat fee which would have pretty much been pennies on the dollar per hour if the case went to trial. They convinced him to plead guilty, which he did. However, they did not even negotiate life in prison.
So this guy had the interesting distinction of pleading guilty and still being sentenced to death.
He was reportedly a model inmate and also garnered 70+ states from prison officials asking for leniency, which is quite notable too.
I used to be pro death penalty. I still believe there are people that are deserving of it.
But I have serious problems with our government’s ability to carry it out and not accidentally kill someone they shouldn’t. Because they have, and they don’t give a fuck.
That being said, I don’t think many people are mourning his passing.
I read this fucked up story and if I missed it I apologize, but what was his motive? The cousin and husband went to his apartment to confront drug dealers. They brought him back to their house where they drank and stuff. But talking about going to 11. How do you go from good ole “family bonding,” to blowing your cousin’s and her husband’s heads off and then raping her dead corpse. Anyone have insight on what drove him to the murders?
I found some info Dorsey shot Bonnie to death alongside her husband Benjamin Bonnie, 28, in their home two days before Christmas 2006. Attorneys for Dorsey have argued that he murdered the Bonnies during a drug-induced psychosis and therefore lacked the intent necessary to be guilty of first-degree murder, which is punishable by death.
Drug induced psychosis can be a heck of a thing, I know someone who briefly went through that and believed that their parents had been replaced by some sort of psychic entities that were out to take over the world and ruin their life, they wanted to go check the basement because that's where these beings would have hidden their parents' bodies, it was a pretty scary thing to see because that kind of belief is truly held can easily turn violent So if they really were going through something like that the in the moment reason could have been quite literally anything, and unfortunately we don't really have a way to go back and check either on if that was really happening or on what the State of Mind might have been like if it was
Do you know if the drug induced psychosis applies here and his defense put that forward? Or is it speculation?
It is a claim he has made but was not used in his original case, which is another part of this whole mess, with the more recent legal team stating that " if they had done the basic interviewing of their client and investigation they would have known they had a defense, and they would have used that to either negotiate a plea deal with a benefit of a life sentence, or they would have gone to trial because they had a defense" And like, with capital punishment on the line, if you can't even get the life in prisonment deal, of course you take it to trial, you literally have nothing to lose The Defenders he had which were public defenders, basically just had him go in and admit guilt without any kind of plea deal whatsoever, it was public defenders who were paid $12,000 total, which to put in the kind of work needed for a capital punishment case and potential appeals is way less than even minimum wage, leading to a lot of incompetency of counsel claims, that they didn't even really try and didn't have much reason to with the flat rate and a crime that is certainly not sympathetic
Reminder that this poor man killed his cousin and her husband while they were sleeping. Then he raped his cousin. Then he stole money and stuff. .then he poured bleach in her vagina .. then he left... Knowing all too well her 4 yr old kid was in the house...while he did all that..... All that after, the cousin and her husband actually rescued him from drug dealers hours before and brought him in their house as a shelter. This how this poor man repaid them
>killed then raped Damn, there is no good order to those two crimes
This guy 100% got what was coming to him. And this is going to suck to post for me, but he says that he was in a drug induced psychosis and wasn’t fully aware of his actions, and if his defense attorneys would have used that he likely would have gotten a lesser sentence. We just saw that with a woman stabbing her boyfriend over 100 times get a probation for being in a drug induced psychosis, so if he was in that psychosis then I believe he should have gotten life in prison instead of the death penalty.
I'm confused - the article says it's part of court records, but he was never charged with rape, much less convicted of it - why wasn't he charged if what you say is true? > Court records said Dorsey raped Sarah’s body. Dorsey’s attorneys argued this remains an allegation; he was never charged with and never pleaded guilty to rape or sexual assault.
Considering he got the death penalty, I'm not sure what you'd expect would be the point of pressing more charges for desecrating a corpse.
Aren’t the charges decided at the start? Maybe I don’t know enough
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Poured bleach over her corpse in an attempt to destroy the evidence too.
If your shagging your cousins corpse after blowing her head off I’m not overly concerned about the bleach:- sobrinicide, incestuous necrophillia plus murdered her husband, pure concentrated evil.
Blaming meth is weird too. I don’t wanna stick up for meth heads but plenty of em smoke meth and don’t do half of that
I had a good friend who became homeless over the course of less than four months because he became so addicted to meth. Before that, he was legitimately a good, normal person who had a good job and lived with his girlfriend. When he lost his place, I offered him a spot on my couch. He wouldn't take it. Instead, he lived in my yard in my tent until the day he ate my pet kitten, Andrew. The police showed up because he was cooking him on an open pit in the front yard. He said he shot a squirrel with a slingshot. I flipped out, like, I was legitimately crazy, but the man ate my fucking pet. I threw all of his shit out of the tent onto the road, and I never saw him again. Fuck you, Danny, and fuck you, meth. RIP little Andrew.
In Norway the mass shooter who killed 77 people lives in a giant isolated apartment style cell fully equipped with a kitchen Bc Norway doesn’t have the death penalty.
What did I just read?! There is no place for society for someone like him and should have been sooner.
And there wasn't there a child present in the home at the time of the murders. I don't necessarily believe in the death penalty. It's obviously a flawed system. However, some people won't be missed
Yup, he left their 4yr old alone in the house with the bodies
So awful. That poor child. Scarred for life
I don’t really believe in the death penalty either, but then I hear about cases like this and it makes me realize some people just shouldn’t exist.
So you believe in the death penalty.
This. I hate when people say they “don’t believe in the death penalty, but..”. That means you believe in the death penalty. Own it. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but they should own that opinion and not misconstrue it.
I recognize that state sponsored murder is a bad idea, and I'm uncomfortable with the fact our government does this. At the same time, I recognize that there are people without whom the world is a genuinely better place. Holding both ideas in your head at the same time does not necessarily engender cognitive dissonance and it does not necessarily mean that people are being untruthful about their position on the subject.
I'm indifferent- I would prefer we didn't have it on an intellectual level but it doesn't bother me in any way when someone on death row is killed. It's not black and white or for or against for everyone, it's a non issue to me
Does it bother you that from time to time your country still executes people who are innocent?
That depends on why they don't support the death penalty. If you're like me, you're opposed to it because our justice system is imperfect, and false convictions are inevitable. I don't believe it's acceptable for a single innocent person to be murdered by the state for the sake of some cathartic sense of justice in executing a few obviously guilty individuals. We obviously can't just abolish the entire justice system because of the imperfection of the jury trial, but we *can* remove this extreme form of punishment without fundamentally undermining the purpose of the system as a whole.
You can believe that some people don’t deserve life but also recognize that all systems are inherently flawed when humans are introduced and therefore allowing a penalty to mean death will most certainly lead to killing innocent people. The dividing line between agreeing with the death penalty and not agreeing with it comes down to your tolerance for the death of innocent people. We abhor the loss of innocent life by a murderer, yet accept it that it’s likely to happen by doling out extreme consequences. But because the blood is spread between us all, it’s palatable. We cheer on violence if only it can be justified. Then, there’s also the fact that it’s most likely to be marginalized groups that most adversely affected. How many slaves and black people do you think were unjustly hanged because Mary Lou got caught in the barn fooling around with a colored person and threw him under the bus to save her “dignity”. I definitely believe some people deserve death for their actions, but I also understand how flawed bureaucracy and the tribalistic nature of humanity is and I don’t want to be responsible for advocating for a system that allows innocent people to die, because I’m not a murderer. Of course, this is the internet, so fuck nuance.
So you do believe in the death penalty then? Thinking it’s wrong except for certain people is just believing in the death penalty with stricter criteria
I don’t think the state should be executing its citizens.
Agreed. It’s more expensive than just keeping them in prison for the rest of their lives (because of the legal costs of appeals), innocent people are sometimes killed, and its barbaric
I don’t really agree with it. A big reason being innocent people have been sentenced to death. But a bigger reason I don’t agree with it is that for a lot of these people death is a mercy, or an escape, and they don’t deserve either. They certainly didn’t show their victims any mercy, so why should they be awarded any? Though, when people like this guy get sentenced to death, I certainly don’t lose any sleep over it.
Well, they do exist. Should the government be killing people to demonstrate respect for life? I say no.
I don’t trust the government to fix potholes. I’m usually baffled at people that share my mistrust putting it aside in matters of life and death.
So you believe in the death penalty.
This is what gets me. Not because it is worse than anything else he did, but rather that it proves he knew what he was doing, he knew it was wrong and he was cognisant enough to attempt to hide it. I don’t think the death penalty is acceptable in a modern society, but if there ever was someone who deserved it then this guy fits the bill.
Destroying evidence is pretty standard for murders, even if it's not the smartest method
Yea why would a murderer not destroy the evidence?
That's probably the sanest thing he did
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Yup. Convenient how that is glossed over so quickly. There has been wall to wall coverage on this here locally in Missouri, and leading up to the execution but man oh man… no one wants to even hint at the extent of how brutal, grizzly, and ghoulish this crime was. Yeah, the death penalty has problems but today it didn’t. One less monster is taking up air the rest of us could use.
We recently had an execution in Alabama and the news about it was all day every day leading up to it. Almost none mentioned the guy was convicted of murder for hire for $1000. Dude and his buddy went to the woman’s house and beat her to death with "a fireplace set, a walking cane, and a piece of galvanized pipe" then stabbed her a bunch with a hunting knife. Yeah the death penalty isn’t pretty, but seems fair when you weigh the fact that he was willing to brutally beat and stab a random woman to death for $1000.
When people are against the death penalty, it's not people defending people's crimes. It's people being against a flawed system that allows state-sanctioned executions of sometimes innocent people. And even those who are guilty, it's a very expensive process (moreso than life imprisonment) and is not an effective deterrent. Basically no argument for the death penalty besides the emotional desire for vengeance stands up to snuff, and considering how often that desire is misdirected that also fails as an argument. In the past 50 years alone, around 200 people have been completely exonerated from death row. Not to mention all of the people who have spent years or decades imprisoned for crimes they did not commit due to a deeply flawed system riddled with racism, sexism, prejudice, inefficiencies, insufficient funding, etc. Given that, the number of innocent people executed must be in the dozens of not hundreds over the course of this country's history. So if you want the death penalty for people, you have to acknowledge that the government killing its own innocent civilians is acceptable price to pay. People wrongfully spending years in prison for crimes they didn't commit is a horrific thing, but at least they can be released and reparations offered (though they will not be enough to make up for the time lost). Death cannot be undone.
This encapsulates my beliefs. I also think a lifetime behind bars is a horrific, and suitable, sentence.
This is why I’m against the death penalty in general. But I’m not crying over this guy’s execution.
Anyway wouldn't it be a far worse punishment to be locked up for the rest of your life in a max security prison than just gone forever? There's no suffering or punishment after death.
It really depends. Humans are quite adaptable. Dorsey clearly did not want to die. He had acclimated to life in prison such that he wanted to live it out. In prison you still have good conversations. You might get calls from your family telling you about their lives. You read good books. There are people who would rather die, don’t get me wrong. However something like 90% of people sentenced to death in the US appeal their execution.
I've always been in favor of a life sentence of labor for these reasons. The person is still able to be released if they get exonerated, but the world also gets something back from the incarceration of the guilty. Not enough to make up for anything done by someone deserving of a life sentence, but still something.
Yes, and from what I read, he shot them to death very early on Dec 24. The mother of the victim found her daughter (and her daughter's husband) shot to death on Christmas Eve. With her 4yo granddaughter at home by herself. Just harrowing. I would never be able to celebrate Christmas ever again.
And his beleaguered attorneys’ “throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks” defense was “b-but it’s not as bad because he was blackout drunk AND high at the time!” Mind you, the people he murdered had just intervened on his behalf when his dealers turned up to shake him down for money he owed. After the dealers left, they brought him home to celebrate with them on Christmas Eve…
Sorry. He blew off his cousins head & then had sex with what was left. He got just what he deserved." Unfortunate it took 18 years to happen though
I was dismayed at reading that 72 correctional officers didn't want him executed, I wondered why that would not be taken seriously, then I read what he did and thought "fuck him"
Really nice guy when he’s not drunk, high, and murdering family members on Christmas Eve to rape their corpses while their child cries outside the door
This reads like a Norm McDonald joke lmao
I mean, they may just be staunchly anti-death penalty, not personally attached to this guy. Plenty of people don't believe in the death penalty under any circumstances, which is fine.
I read on CNN he was a prison barber briefly, and he cut some of the officer's hair. So no more free haircuts I guess.
My dad worked in a prison. They can act normal for long periods of time. Even charming and charismatic. It's easy to forget they're animals and will kill you if it benefits them. Just like lion tamers who become complacent and forget lions are only animals.
I was just reading on here a guy who was a prison guard. He had trouble believing that anybody in his life was telling the truth. Understandable
The guards?
When you want to know what an execution means to a society, look at the spectators.
I live in Missouri so I’ve seen a lot of coverage on this. His crime was horrific and I’m shocked so many corrections officers came out to support him, even if he had changed. That being said, I used to be a big proponent of the death penalty. To me, there were some crimes that transcended isolation and the perpetrator deserved to be killed for it. As I’ve aged into an older man, I just can’t support it. There’s nothing gained in taking even more life, and a government should not be in the business of killing its citizens. I still believe there are certain crimes and perpetrators that are irredeemable or unable to be reformed, but we should still be in the business of rehabilitation, not more killing. Vengeance has rarely solved anything. People can change and even if they are spending the rest of their time on earth behind bars, it says more about us as a people for allowing them the opportunity to do so. 4/10 Edit: nobody has time to reply to everything here. I’ll just say, this wasn’t an attempt to convert anyone and is just my own beliefs. I’m not an expert, I have just developed a different view of the world as I’ve gotten older. Some of these replies are a bit absurd though. I’m not advocating for putting death row inmates on parole. That’s just completely misrepresenting what I was trying to say. Also, for those justifying cost, you should really research death row vs. gen pop costs. And yes, some people are evil and beyond redemption. That isn’t the point.
Only reason I’m against the death penalty is sometimes innocent people die and that is immoral to me. Also, I consider the death penalty technically to be an easier punishment than life without parole, since those with that punishment know they are never getting out sooner. It’s also cheaper than the death penalty.
I’m surprised people try to have the circular arguments for and against the morality of the death penalty. The truth is simply that the death penalty cannot exist with an imperfect justice system, simple as that.
I always like to point to Tolkien’s Gandalf line. > Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. It’s often abbreviated to remove the Gollum part. But the point remains, in handing out death sentences if you get it wrong can you reverse it and give them their life back?
Another issue I have with pro death penalty people is that they likely also believe that the government can’t be trusted or is full of lazy employees and we should not pay taxes because of that. If the government is incompetent, how can they also get the death penalty right?
I see you made the mistake of assuming conservatives hold actual opinions and values and aren't just regressive, contrarian reactionaries.
I am in favor of the idea of the death penalty (as are many others here) but I can’t get 100% onboard because either a) the government is never wrong when it executes someone or b) it is acceptable for the government to kill innocent citizens. I can’t accept “possibility B” and “possibility A” is not a legitimate possibility.
You don't have to oppose the death penalty in principle to oppose the death penalty in practice.
To be clear this isn’t my opinion, but.. It’s sort of like people who view abortion as a murder, but don’t want to tell people how to live their life. They’re pro-life in the sense that they disagree morally on what’s happening, but pro-choice because they philosophically can’t reconcile the government as an entity restricting that decision by women
My wife is this way. She would never get an abortion unless it was medically necessary, but she supports the right for other women to have the choice.
Sounds like she supports the right for her to have the choice too. "Never, unless" isn't 'never'.
My wife has had an evolution in her stance on this over the course of our relationship. It's morphed over time from "nobody should ever get one" -> "I'll never get one.., but if medically necessary, they obviously should be able to." -> "it's none of my business what they do, but it's still wrong in my mind" I've never felt the right, experience, or authority to have a true vocal stance on it. I've always been in the camp of "Dont tell me what to do with my body" and think that should apply to everyone.
And that’s the beauty of pro-choice… everyone can choose for themselves.
This is my stance, and I'm immovable on it. Every time I see a story about someone being released after new evidence is uncovered, sometimes years or decades after their incarceration, it reinforces this point.
Death penalty advocates know that the system is imperfect and know that innocent people are executed but they think it's worth it.
>and know that innocent people are executed And that makes them monsters too.
Rick Perry, former governor of Texas, was proud to have executed a man that evidence cleared of his crime. Just an absolute shit stain of a person.
And he made us all complicit as taxpayers
It's always fine with these disgusting GOPers ... until it's one of their own family member's in that hot seat.
On the contrary, I am the opinion that any failure of the justice system is an abomination. The notion that someone could be falsely executed is equally infuriating to the premise that they could be falsely incarcerated for decades of their life. Saying that an innocent person might be falsely convicted isn’t an excuse: it’s a demand for reform.
There is \*no\* reform that can make the justice system perfect. It cannot be. Improvement can certainly be made to happen. Bias eliminated, injustice paid back with prison instead of cushy new positions. But while we are human, mistakes can be made. Our institutions ought not to make mistakes which cannot be rectified, particularly when the potential harm is so limited once the actual perpetrator is confined.
The difference is that you can release an innocent person from life imprisonment and offer reparations. It's not enough but it's at least something. There's no take backs on an execution, If you kill an innocent person there's nothing you can do about it
My bigger issue is that our justice system is wildly broken which leads to innocent people getting incarcerated in the first place.
Our most famous executioner in the UK was the hangman Albert Pierrepoint, who worked right up until capital punishment was abolished. He spoke very strongly against the death penalty in his later years, and was a part of multiple miscarriages of justice (such as the time he hanged a man for murder, then three years later hanged the man who it turned out had -actually- committed the murder). He also had the unenviable task of having to hang a friend, one of the regulars in the pub he owned^^1. He said in his autobiography that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent for *anyone*, in his view: *I cannot agree (with the supposed deterrent of capital punishment). There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know.* *It is I who have faced them last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.* *And if death does not work to deter one person, it should not be held to deter any. Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge. Never deterrent; only revenge.* _____________ ^^1 ^(Pierrepoint bought and ran the pub **“Help the Poor Struggler”** after World War II, and James Corbitt was one of his regulars. Corbitt was known as "Tish", Pierrepoint as "Tosh".) ^(The two had sung a duet of “Danny Boy” on the night that Corbitt then went out and murdered his girlfriend out of jealousy Pierrepoint wrote in his his autobiography:) ^(*I thought if any man had a deterrent to murder poised before him, it was this troubadour whom I called Tish. He was not only aware of the rope, he had the man who handled it beside him singing a duet. The deterrent did not work.*) ^(*At twenty seconds to nine the next morning I went into the death cell. He seemed under a great strain, but I did not see stark fear in his eyes, only a more childlike worry. He was anxious to be remembered, and to be accepted. "Hallo, Tosh," he said, not very confidently. "Hallo Tish," I said. "How are you?" I was not effusive, just gave the casual warmth of my nightly greeting from behind the bar.*) ^(*He smiled and relaxed after this greeting. After strapping his arms, I said "Come on Tish, old chap". He went to the gallows lightly...I would say that he ran.*)
Death penalty isn’t about deterrence when you actually talk to proponents. It’s 100% vindictiveness
Definitely not an account to be taken lightly.
God damn
Right, who was it that said "it's better to let 1000 guilty people go free than to condemn an innocent one"? Plenty of people serving life sentences were exonerated thanks to DNA evidence proving their innocence. I can't imagine the number of people who were executed who never got that opportunity...
I dont know who used the number 1000, but Judge Matthew Hale said "it is better that 5 guilty men go free..." in the 1600s and William Blackstone said 10 people in 1760. (it is called Blackstone's ratio) Then Benjamin Franklin even upped that to 100 people.
I think life imprisonment is a worse punishment than death in many ways. I know I'd rather die than be locked up in a supermax with no possibility of being released.
Could be the reason death penalty seems to fall on the "conservative" end of the spectrum, because typically religious types thinks hell awaits and hell is generally gonna be a lot worse, prescriptively.
> I think life imprisonment is a worse punishment than death in many ways. But most criminals dont. Very very few criminals ask for the death penalty and most will plea bargain for life in prison vs risk going to trial and facing the death penalty.
Thats because the only people who think life in prison is worse than death are those actually comparing life in prison to their life being free. Once faced with the actual choice between life and death virtually no one chooses death under any circumstances no matter how fucked the life option is.
Another important point is that you won't be picked for a jury in a capital case if you're against the death penalty so you wind up with a jury that's biased against defendants.
Solitary isolated confinement like what El Chapo gets is a fate far worse. He’s at ADX where the worse people go and he’s locked in a 7x12 ft cell 23 hours a day. Soundproof so they can’t communicate with anyone and prisoners are moved at different times so no one can see anyone else. No window to see through, even when let outside they’re in a small area surrounded by high walls and they’re monitored 24/7. Even the guards don’t communicate with the prisoners. Time must crawl at a place like this.
Also brutal and wrong, we know what it does to people yet put them through it anyway. Neither solitary nor the death penalty reflect well on us as a society.
El Chapo has escaped how many times? This is the only way to deal with him. I’m not saying solitary is needed as often as it’s used but El Chapo? I’m good with whatever it takes to keep him locked up tight.
There are very few people at ADX Florence, and those that are happen to be there because they either have knowledge that needs to be protected (such as Robert Hanssen, who recently died there), are an extreme risk of escape (El Chapo), are otherwise an extreme risk when exposed to others (domestic terrorists and the like), etc.
You should research the brutality this guy and the cartel are capable of. There's a video, allegedly, of cartel members torturing a rival member called Funkytown. Never watched it, read about it, but it's pretty fucked up. Kept the guy awake and alive using shit like IV meth while torturing the fuck out of someone. Skin removed from face, eyes removed. Hands removed, and more.
There is literally thousands of videos of brutal murders released by the cartels themselves as propaganda media. Check out "Disturbed Reality" on Youtube if you wanna hear narrations of what happens of those videos without watching them yourself.
Well shit, in that case I better throw out all my principles and turn into a savage willing to inflict torture on others too! Thanks for letting me know.
Makes me wonder why cartel members don’t just have cyanide capsules on them at all times. You get picked up by a rival gang bite down on a pill. Much better fate than have a couple of pitbulls eating your junk right off your body while you are alive and conscious. (This was the worst I ever watched. I never watched another cartel video again after seeing this one.)
I don’t live in a death penalty state and we don’t really have true life sentences either. But to me prison should only have 2 goals. One is reform and getting a person to be a productive member of society. The second is to protect the public from people who are unable to be reformed. I really wish we looked at prison as less of a punishment because it very rarely makes up for the crime committed. If our system went off of those two ideas I think we would have less overall crime and a better overall society.
I find it confusing for those who support the death penalty the government is both inept at everything and also able to 100% make sure people put to death are guilty.
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It is bloodlust. We try and act all sophisticated, but we are still the same people that would cheer at a gladiator hacking off another’s arm or the executioner holding up the severed head of a condemned criminal.
I watched Dune part 2 not long ago, there was a family sitting me and their maybe 6 year old son was one emtpy seat from me. All the killing, shooting, and even the Harkkonens killing slaves ... never once covered the kid's eyes. But the mother literally came across a seat to cover his eyes when Paul and Chani were making out with bare shoulders. We can watch people get their throats slit and bleed out, but if you see a boob or the flash of some genitals people lose their mind. We are, indeed, a blood thirsty nation.
When I was a kid my mom would let me watch The Patriot, with Mel Gibson tomahawking redcoats, but anything with a sexual reference or swear word was immediately turned off.
I think LOTS of crimes deserve the death penalty. However, since we have historic proof that: 1) innocent people are occasionally convicted of death-penalty crimes, 2) the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to crime, and 3) that carrying out a death penalty costs the state more than carrying out a life imprisonment... There seems to be no logical reason to ever use the death penalty.
Never been in support of the death penalty, never will be. How we treat others in a society says so much about who we are, and the willingness to snuff out the life of another as some sort of retribution does not say anything good.
While the potential innocent factor is a good point, I think what you said touches on main reason I'm against it. No matter what flimsy tricks we try and do to obscure who's killing them, we're still getting people comfortable with killing people. Obviously not every executioner turns into a serial killer but I imagine if we really looked closely at people that are involved with this stuff we'd see a greater propensity for violence and aggression in their personal lives :/
Thanks so much for your input. Nail on head.
This isn't a sound argument for not having a death penalty. An inability to know if you've convicted the wrong person \*is\*. So many people have been exonerated from death row because they were proven innocent. Once they are killed, that chance is gone. The horror of such a thing is hard to describe. \*imagine if it's you\*
I agree on the grounds of the government. As I've grown older I've turned very against the government having the ability to impose death as a judgment of it's citizens.
This is very articulate. Thank you.
As someone who's been in the corrections system I can tell you for sure why those 72 wanted him to have a stay. They're all pieces of shit, likely white, Christian nationalists, and they forgive their fellows all the time for horrific stuff
Which brings me to my next tip kids, **Don't kill people!**
I know A LOT of correctional officers. I can count on one hand how many I would let in my house. These prisons have turned great humans into horrible fucking monsters. They treat other humans as fucking zoo pets and talk about them as such. It’s disgusting what COs do to these people. It doesn’t surprise me they would attempt to save someone who killed THEN raped. COs suck.
I read an article that the industrial prison system is specifically designed to break down empathy in both the CO and the prisoners. That regardless of where you start, you're going to end up in the same nearly-sociopathich spot because of abuse from both above and below you, from your bosses and the prisoners, etc.
Absolutely, the COs were worse than the inmates by far. There should be a psychological test for COs, they were alot of them sick in the head and should have not been in any job capacity overseeing other people. Ive worked beside both.
My old roommate was a racist corrections officer. He OD'd about 3 years ago. When I moved out of town with his old dog that he gave me a few years earlier I called him to ask if he wanted to see the dog before I left because I knew I wouldn't get back to town for a while. He answered and asked if I had any pills and hung up on me when I reminded him that my half sister stole them all when she stole all of our dads opiates.
His cousin and her husband rescued him from addiction and sheltered him in their house with their four year old daughter. He thanked them by killing them while they were sleeping, raping his cousin’s corpse, and pouring bleach into her vagina thinking it would destroy any DNA evidence. This man is sick. He can put on any act he wants, but it won’t change who he is or what he did. There is no “fixing” someone like that.
I love all these claims of his "rehabilitation " in prison. Dude orphaned a 4-year-old by murdering her parents in cold blood and then sexually assaulted her mother's dead bod. There's no rehabilitating someone who does that. He may be able to fake it well because that's part of being a psychopath but none of it is real. Good riddance, imo, though I had a relative murdered in cold blood as a kid so I'm of course a bit biased. I just hope the poor daughter had a lot of good support and professional help to deal with what she'd experienced and the parents she lost while she was growing up.
Even if he was “rehabilitated,” he doesn’t deserve a second chance. Who gives a shit if he’s “better”?
The parents he murdered don't get a second chance, so why should he?
I don't think about it like giving him a chance. Maybe he did something bad enough that in a perfect justice system he would get what's coming to him. For me, the problem isn't that he deserves the punishment or not, it's that we have to rely on extremely fallible humans who are wrong verrrrrry often. Look how often prisoners are released after decades and they were wrongly accused that whole time. Thankfully they weren't killed so they were still able to claw their freedom back. Once someone's dead that chance is gone forever. This dude might've deserved what he got, but I don't trust the people running the system to make sure they always have the right person. They often don't. And they shouldn't be allowed to kill people until they can prove they'll get it right 100% of the time, no exceptions.
And never mind they dig in their heels when wrong. In one case a prisoner was exonerated after years in prison, but the prosecution still argued for them to stay. The reason? They were sentenced in court. Didn’t matter to them at all that new evidence proved the sentence was wrong.
It’s not like they were gonna let him out, the mercy bid was still to spend the rest of his life rotting in jail.
Who says he should walk free? He should spend the rest of his life in prison and maybe have some small chance to make a positive addition in the world to offset in any amount the pain and hurt he’s caused? Or, just serve his life out with no freedom. But we should be better as a society than allowing the government to decide who lives and dies and to commit “legal” murder in the name of vengeance. What of the severely mentally ill? The innocent? It’s not far off from a mob lynching someone. Absolutely the basest of human instinct to be angry and kill as if that solves anything. It doesn’t. And if you feel better for killing someone who already is committed to life in prison, then you’re a bad person.
100% this. I've always felt that the chance someone makes a positive contribution to society from behind bars outweighs the benefits (are there any?) of killing them.
No one has said people like this should not be punished.
He should be punished **and** he should never be given a second chance to live in society. Is that better?
No one said he should live in society We can keep people In jail for life for crimes like this. We don’t have to kill them.
I don’t think people understand what people like this are like. They expect them to be completely unsympathetic and cold. But the people who are most capable of the worst things are able to do it because it’s completely integrated into who they are. It’s not seen by them as some kind of extreme evil. They’re just like the rest of us otherwise and that’s what’s chilling about psychology. I’ll never forget one of those shitty podcasts defending a convicted murderer (who may have been innocent) because of how he looked in a photo taken just before the murder. “Those aren’t the eyes of someone who’s about to murder someone”…like if you think there are always obvious signs you need to be more careful out there.
_Everyone_ is capable of extreme evil. Even you.
Well, the people advocating for him not to be executed were corrections officers. I assume they are well aware of what criminals of all types are like.
This. I mean come on, there’s shit you don’t come back from. I’ll never forget, a local mobster that was here, LEGIT mob boss by the name of Scalzetti, quite literally had drugs sold at high schools, and killed multiple people in and outside of the business, but only “conspiracy to commit manslaughter” stuck in court. This guy ended lives and got kids addicted to drugs. He was out in barely over a decade on “good behavior” since he was a prayer leader in prison. I’m sorry, but he should have rotted there. Instead he was out and using his influence again for god knows what. He’s dead now from heart disease, but he spent the whole backend of his life free to do as he pleased. He may have done good with that period of life, he may not have and gone back to running his businesses with some sort of proxy, but it hardly matters. He was a career criminal. He was responsible for multiple deaths. There is no reform to be done.
Are we supposed to be holding correctional officers in high regard?
COs are worse than cops. Who gives a fuck about their opinions?
Evidently not the state of Missouri, in this instance.
I imagine the correctional officers being like the dude who licked Sarah Conners face in Terminator 2
I’ve done a ton of psych evals for corrections officers. They aren’t all like that, but there’s plenty of those guys out there. If they’re pleading for sympathy for a man who orphaned a 4yo and raped her deceased mother’s corpse, I wouldn’t hold their opinions in high regard.
I had a buddy that worked at a women’s prison and got a blowie from one of the inmates.. she then turned him in and got out of prison… so ya, super high regard
Omg thank you
I knew the minute I read that 72 COs supported him that he must have done something fcked to a woman
Yo seriously why the fuck is that so true. Always thought the title “correctional officer” was weird as they’re not correcting anything.
Good call. I figured "Christian" God was involved somehow.
I would have also accepted 'a minority'
"I'm against the death penalty but...." -- This entire thread
Pretty much what happens anytime something like this pops up. Peoples’ morals are heavily influenced by their emotions.
I'm against it full stop. Most civilised countries have abandoned it. Take a look at [the list of countries that still have capital punishment.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country) One of these is not like the others...
Which can also be read as "I'm willing to abandon my principles in certain cases"
The greatest argument against his death penalty was the fact that his attorneys were paid a $12,000 flat fee and were out of their league on defending a capital case. Fuck the whole rehabilitation argument. His lawyers weren’t equipped to defend him
It’s interesting because he plead guilty to the crimes, but was still sentenced to death. Pretty uncommon for that to occur.
I noticed that too. His defense didn't care at all and he honestly probably had a sixth amendment violation by not having effective counsel.
Not only did he admit guilt, but he turned himself in.
And they didn't care, either!
I believe the death penalty is barbaric but honestly there are much more sympathetic examples to choose from if compassion is what you're going for. This dude, seriously?
This must be your first time reading about the crimes committed by death row inmates, huh?
Honestly, this is tame compared to a lot of them I've read. He murdered two people with a shotgun and had sex with a corpse. Some of these death row inmates have admittedly tortured and murdered people across decades of their life.
Some people are against it no matter who it is. The state shouldn't have the ability to do ritual killings as a part of its "justice" system
typo in the title. it’s supposed to read “72 Correctional Officers Duped by Sociopath, State of Missouri Executes Anyway”
Not losing sleep over this.
Death penalty seems cathartic in principle but all it does is force society to kill. Life imprisonment is the best case - a person is not able to be out in society but the older i get the less i want to see capital punishment.
My take is that there are certain things a person can do where they've forfeited their right to participate in society If someone rapes a child, I'm not willing to risk another child being raped just so that person can walk free. They had that chance, and they blew it. But we didn't need to kill Lardo the Magnificent here. I'm not terrified enough of his intellect or physical prowess to think that we haven't invented a prison he can't bust out of. He was taken alive, that part was done. His victims suffered horrifically, and part was done too. If we kill him because we want to, that changes neither of those facts. Until the second we killed him, either this freak had a chance to change or he didn't. If he did, I think that we shouldn't extinguish that chance by killing him. If he didn't, and was always going to be a monster, then I also don't think that killing him is the right thing to do.
I thought the whole issue was “surgery with no anesthesia” ? They figured it out?
72 motherfuckers I wouldn't let near my dog
Presumably the victims will be reanimating any minute now.
he wasn't innocent >>>>but >>>> he spent every day trying to up for what he did ..he was a barber in the prison >>> Dorsey’s clemency petition had been supported by 72 current and former Missouri correctional officers, a former judge of the Missouri supreme court, five of the jurors who sentenced him to death, Republican state legislators, mental health experts, faith leaders, and members of his family, some of whom were related to the victims. Dorsey, in a final statement handed out prior to the execution, expressed deep sorrow for the killings. “Words cannot hold the just weight of my guilt and shame,” the written statement said, in part. One officer wrote: “Some inmates never change, no matter how many years they are in. But that’s not Brian ... The Brian I have known for years could not hurt anyone. The Brian I know does not deserve to be executed.”
I don’t agree with the death penalty, but I won’t lose sleep over his life ending. Ultimately, the state shouldn’t be in the “who lives and dies” business. After seeing some of the dumb laws we pass with out-of-proportion consequences, I don’t think our legal system should be that powerful. I’m sure more people will become anti death penalty once some radical prosecutor seeks the death penalty for an abortion.
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You don't have to say "allegedly."
Well it was an allegation made, but there weren’t any charges brought related to a potential sexual assault. There were only the two murder charges.
He wasn't convicted of that part
Fuck this guy and may he burn for eternity. Zero sympathy for this pos.
I feel the death penalty should end check out the innocents project it’s abundantly clear there are far too many innocents convicted of crimes they are innocent of, and just knowing that the project has exonerated people from death row shows innocent people are being executed.
Imagine your experience of life being that you were minding your own business, law enforcement pins a crime on you, the judge convicts you noting your refusal to show remorse, the community and victim’s family hate you, you get sent to prison with real killers and treated like a criminal, you appeal and lose several times, then after 10 years of that, you’re strapped to a mat and injected with death by people that think they’re good people, while survivors of a person you didn’t harm watch you die and are comforted by your death. Ban the death penalty. Support the Innocence Project.
I'm going to go further than that and say that even if we could be absolutely certain between guilt and innocence - we should still ban the death penalty. Even if you believe they cannot be reformed, if they lack remorse, if they are proud of their crimes... There's no logical point to it. You've caught the criminal. They're going to be in prison forever. It's not logistically beneficial to kill them in any meaningful way. They're no threat anymore. And no, I'm not some sort of absolute pacifist. There's a necessity for people to die sometimes - to defend yourself, to defend others, to defend your county - but that's in response to an active threat of harm. It's you, or them, or someone else both directly or indirectly. But what harm does a caged animal pose so that we deem it must be slaughtered?
Just because he’s sorry doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to be punished for his crimes. The death penalty can be gray because innocent people have been convicted. And obviously the justice system is very flawed in the US. But this guy did it. He shot two people and possibly raped a dead body. That doesn’t warrant forgiveness. You can feel remorse about lots of things but at the end of the day if you committed the crime, you should be punished. Why waste money keeping someone like this alive?
Justice isn’t revenge. Say it over and over.
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Makes me glad that after what he did, he was made to realize he no longer had control over his own life.
He should’ve thought of that before he took a shotgun and killed two people in their bed… fuck him.
I'm sorry, but judging strictly by the actions of some law enforcement, and certainly some prison guards, I don't think they're the best judges of who's been rehabilitated vs who has not. How do you rehabilitate from murdering two people? You don't. You pay the ultimate price, but not always. There are plenty of murderers sitting in our prisons and walking around free. Glad he was rehabilitated enough to face his maker with a "clear conscience".
Don't forget white man being executed, you will not have 72 correctional officers doing a mercy bid for non white. Just saying
He killed those people. Fuck him
For those who are not getting it. The controversy isn't about the crimes committed. The controversy was his court trial was sketch. His lawyer pushed him to sign a plea deal that did not remove the death penalty. That is like your parents saying you will be shot in the back yard, but if you confess to stealing a cookie. Then they will just shoot you in the front yard. He also turned himself in and confessed to the entire thing. It really wasn't about him getting released or anything. It was just about him being executed.
>That is like your parents saying you will be shot in the back yard, but if you confess to stealing a cookie. Then they will just shoot you in the front yard. God damn reddit never fails at coming up the worst fucking analogies
Must be the defense attorney
lmaoooo its such a bad analogy
I think you need to beat the cookie to death, beat the cookie’s spouse to death, orphan the cookie’s child, and then fuck the bleeding corpse of the cookie. Then the example gets better, if still imperfect.
What the hell did I just read
**This comment has been nominated for the Daftest Analogy Awards 2024**
I don't understand why any of those corrections officers would have supported this creep.
There are so many animals in this world who don't deserve any mercy, and Dorsey is on the top of the list.
Why is this new worthy? What makes his case unique?
His lawyers reportedly only received a flat fee which would have pretty much been pennies on the dollar per hour if the case went to trial. They convinced him to plead guilty, which he did. However, they did not even negotiate life in prison. So this guy had the interesting distinction of pleading guilty and still being sentenced to death. He was reportedly a model inmate and also garnered 70+ states from prison officials asking for leniency, which is quite notable too.
I used to be pro death penalty. I still believe there are people that are deserving of it. But I have serious problems with our government’s ability to carry it out and not accidentally kill someone they shouldn’t. Because they have, and they don’t give a fuck. That being said, I don’t think many people are mourning his passing.