http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090319/world/fritzl_trial
“I regret it with all my heart … I can’t make it right anymore,”
That is BS otherwise you do not “locking his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years, fathering her seven children and letting one die in captivity as a newborn.”
“Fritzl remained under a suicide watch”
Seriously, give the guy a gun loaded with one bullet and leave him for 5 mins. How much money this is going to cost to Austria to keep locked???
Thanks,
Fred.
Seriously, give the guy a gun loaded with one bullet and leave him for 5 mins.
Too kind. I’d give him a dull butter knife and leave him locked in the room until he was dead.
Of course, Austria is a progressive country that banned the death penalty many years ago. A real shame, but they get what they deserve with this one.
******Of course, Austria is a progressive country that banned the death penalty many years ago. A real shame, but they get what they deserve with this one.
Yeah, because countries that have the death penalty are so much safer. Pffft.
You don’t have to be a progressive country to ban capital punishment, just a civilised one.
Of course, Austria is a progressive country that banned the death penalty many years ago. A real shame, but they get what they deserve with this one.
No one deserves what happened there.
Yeah, because countries that have the death penalty are so much safer. Pffft.
You don’t have to be a progressive country to ban capital punishment, just a civilised one.
How nice for “civilized” Europe. Me, I’d have had that guy zapped down to a greasy smut by now. What, are you guys going to study him? Try to cure him so he can go back into society? Don’t you think he’s lost that chance, by now? How about we just erase him from the human roll call log? What’s so wrong with that? It’s what a truly EVIL man like him deserves, wouldn’t you say? Or does Europe, awash in the glory of deconstructivism, refuse to consider the possibility of good and evil anymore?
T.
**Or does Europe, awash in the glory of deconstructivism, refuse to consider the possibility of good and evil anymore? **
No, you have it all wrong. The nanny state has just moved up a notch. They are no longer recognizing breaches of the social contract. Any violation is obviously as a result of a failure of the state, so it will assume responsibility.
Heh. Now the cops over there say he may be connected to at least four murders. This guy is a walking, talking case study in how evil can walk amongst us without us even knowing.
T.
So here’s the thing that’s still kinda bugging me about this case. Now, I’m no legal expert - everything I know about criminal justice I learned from Law and Order, and I’m completely clueless about the Austrian legal system. My understanding about “insanity” in most of the states, however, is that it doesn’t have much to do with a clinical diagnosis. Rather, it’s a matter of being in a state of mind in which you don’t know that you are doing something wrong. Generally, it seems that an organized pattern of behavior, such as taking measures to hide your crime, will usually preclude an insanity plea, no matter how deranged the defendant is. He goes to prison rather than to a psychiatric facility (though I’m not entirely sure where a “psychiatric prison” falls in the grand scheme of things).
So Fritzl would not have passed this sort of a litmus test, I don’t think - hard to argue that you’ve spent over twenty years without ever, at any point of time, being able to distinguish right from wrong. So the decision to send him to a psychiatric facility rather than prison must have been made based upon some sort of clinical diagnosis, I suppose? Hard to tell from the news.
I just don’t want to think that this decision was made based upon an assumption that ONLY an insane person could behave in such a way. I think that it’s entirely possible that a person is entirely sane, but amoral, or outright evil (for lack of a better word).
Of course, Austria is a progressive country that banned the death penalty many years ago. A real shame, but they get what they deserve with this one.
No one deserves what happened there.
You missed my point. Austria deserves to be saddled with paying for this piece of shit for the rest of his life. Completely self-inflicted.
So I guess you feel it’s your just desserts to be paying for the guys on death row in Florida since you give them a trial?
Keeping a person in prison for life costs less than actually putting the person to death. The death penalty comes with automatic appeals, etc that end up costing more than the person living out his/her natural life in prison. This guy’s in his 70’s - life in a psych-ward will cost far less than executing him.
A 2003 legislative audit in Kansas found that the estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Death penalty case costs were counted through to execution (median cost $1.26 million). Non-death penalty case costs were counted through to the end of incarceration (median cost $740,000).
*(December 2003 Survey by the Kansas Legislative Post Audit)*In Tennessee, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment.
*(2004 Report from Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Office of Research)*In Maryland death penalty cases cost 3 times more than non-death penalty cases, or $3 million for a single case.
*(Urban Institute, The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland, March 2008)*In California the current sytem costs $137 million per year; it would cost $11.5 million for a system without the death penalty.
The reason the death penalty costs so much is because it’s worth it.
This case has been making me ill since it first came out. Did you know that the cellar where Elizabeth and the kids lived was rat infested? For the first few years that he held her captive and was raping her, he did not speak to her and did not look at her directly in the face. He liked to beat her too during all those years until he broke her. She delivered all the kids herself! Cutting the umbilical cord. And of course each time she delivered it was without any kind of anesthesia, with the guy probably holding her mouth so she would not scream. For punishment he would turn off the electricity and keep her in the dark with no heat. These are just a few minor points in the pure evil this man is.
Frankly, this case has been so shocking that it’s hard not to say the guy isn’t the devil himself.
The only reason I can think of keeping alive is to study him. He apperantly has been completely open and honest about what he did and why he did it. But really, what could he possibly tell us other than he was complete and totally insane and evil.
Frankly, the one point I will never be able to reconcile is how his wife did not know something wasn’t going on. How in the world could she not have suspected something. They claim that he was so controlling that she dare not think outside the box. We may never know, but I believe that the mother/wife knew what was going on.
Ya know…I’m beginning to like you more with each passing day. Keep up the good writing work.
T.
The reason the death penalty costs so much is because it’s worth it.
WTF? You think the reason it costs $3,000,000 to execute a criminal is because it is worth it?
The reason the death penalty costs so much is because it’s worth it.
Yes, it’s worth every penny. If you can think of some way to lower the cost, improve productivity, or speed up the process, then please let us know.
**How nice for “civilized” Europe. It actually is. IMO much better that the stone age school of thinking called “A life for a life”. Me, I’d have had that guy zapped down to a greasy smut by now. That’s you. I find capital punishment barbaric. What, are you guys going to study him? Try to cure him so he can go back into society? Don’t you think he’s lost that chance, by now? ** That’s a reason to keep him locked, not to kill him. How about we just erase him from the human roll call log? **No. **What’s so wrong with that? ** Everything. And if you can’t see that capital punishment doesn’t work and is morally wrong, there’s no point in trying to tell you so. **It’s what a truly EVIL man like him deserves, wouldn’t you say? **Never! **Or does Europe, awash in the glory of deconstructivism, refuse to consider the possibility of good and evil anymore? That’s BS and you know it. He was put away for the rest of his life. It’s not like they gave him a medal and set him free.
T.
Yeah, because countries that have the death penalty are so much safer. Pffft.
Actually … I am not necessarily supporting the death sentence … but in some safe countries … it has been a good deterent.
So I guess you feel it’s your just desserts to be paying for the guys on death row in Florida since you give them a trial?
We’ll only be paying for them until we can kill the miserable SOB’s. Much better than for the rest of their lives!
Now, if we could just speed the appeals process up a little, life would be really good! 
You’re right. What we need to do is fix the appeals process. There’s simply no reason for it to take as long as it does.
I don’t say this very often, but I agree with you 100% here. Well said.