Did Bundy deserve the death penalty?

Ted Bundy should have had his dick cut off and should have it shoved in his mouth, then slowly bleed to death from his crotch while choking his own foul taste.

Sorry. Usually not quite that crude, but this worthless worm deserved it. A 12-year-old, for Christ's sake. A little girl. He deserved much more than death. If there is anything beyond this life, I hope he suffers for all eternity.

I just didn't want to be a loser anymore. - Mitsuko Souma, Battle Royale

[deleted]

I am gonna go out there and say that I agree. Ted Bundy did NOT deserve the death penalty. I get angry just thinking about them killing him. It makes me very sad. And I am not the most likely person to think this, because I actually fit the characteristics of the kind of girl Ted Bundy would kill.

When the Green River Killer mystery was going on, Ted (while on Death Row) wrote to the police department there and told them that he could help them find the guy. He and the G.R. Killer thought alike, so Ted was all about helping them find this guy. And guess what? He did. He gave them characteristics that this guy would definitely have, and, of course, he was right.

So why did they kill him again??? He was dangerously smart, and I personally believe that they killed him out of fear. He was smarter than the system, and they were fully aware of this. And now a human life that could have been very beneficial to the world is taken away for no good reason.

My personal feeling on this is that hard cases make bad law. It seems pretty clear to me that by any objective criteria Bundy was insane, and therefore not capable of full criminal responsibility for his actions. This is no way detracts from their thoroughly appalling nature. (By the way, please don't remind me that in many ways psychopaths - criminal and otherwise - are capable of acting "rationally", i.e. prudentially in terms of their own sick projects. This in no way qualifies their moral insanity.)

People like Bundy are very, very easy to hate. Capital punishment, in my opinion, is a kind of primitive bloodletting ritual that allows otherwise ordinary people to indulge (albeit vicariously, via the agency of the criminal justice system) their sadistic impulses under cover of an ostensible moral justification. The more apparently hateful the condemned person the easier it is to overlook the sheer barbarity and moral ugliness of the execution process (and correspondingly to deny one's own sadistic feelings).

Bundy was a sick person who belonged in a secure mental hospital for the rest of his natural life. Instead, he was a sacrificial offering on the altar of the suppressed and denied cruelty that lurks in an awful lot of "normal" people. (And no, I am not one of those facile relativists who believe that there is no such thing as genuine normality. Indeed, this would undermine my very point.)

But in a more thoughtful response, I must admit, I don't quite support the death penalty. What one of the first-page posters said about innocent people on death row (and something about Canadians getting murdered, which I didn't quite get), I say is a terribly saddening statistic.

I say that unless there is the solidest of evidence that the person committed the crime, they should not be put to death. I have rather mixed feelings on this subject, though, and I really think that every case is circumstantial.

But I also think that the death penalty should be used more often on certain things besides murder. For instance, rape. Mainly in the case of young children. One of my friends was raped when she was 13 years old, and she ended up committing suicide because of the trauma she suffered afterwards. And it totally breaks my heart when I watch movies like "A Time To Kill."

But like I said, I think it's all completely circumstantial.

Ican'tcontrolmyselfbecauseIdon'tknowhow

Sick *beep*.