The death penalty to show killing is wrong?

If you've read or seen anything about this Jared Loughner in Arizona who shot and killed the 6 people and wounded Congresswoman Guiffords, you've learned he's not connected with reality.

Some examples of how out of touch Mr. Loughner is:

Lydian Ali, a classmate at Pima Community College, said, “He would laugh a lot at inappropriate times, and a lot of the comments he made had no relevance to the discussion topic.”

 Mr. Ali, 26, continued: “He presented a poem to the class that he’d written called ‘Meathead’ that was mostly just about him going to the gym to work out. But it included a line about touching himself in the shower while thinking about girls. He was very enthusiastic when he read the poem out loud.”



At the Y.M.C.A. where Mr. Loughner worked out, he would ask the staff strange questions, like how often they disinfected the bathroom doors. Once he asked an employee how he felt “about the government taking over.” Another time, he sat in the men’s room for 30 minutes, leaving front-desk staff members to wonder what he was doing. When he emerged, he asked what year it was.

David Brooks writes, in The New York Times, that it seems clear Mr. Loughner is schizophrenic: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/opinion/11brooks.html?src=me&ref=general.

Check out the 2nd link, below, for more on his state.

His videos on YouTube made no sense at all, just as his writings were completely, totally and utterly incoherent.

So a couple things come to mind.

First, there is no way possible he could remotely get a fair trial in Tuscon, at least, if not in all of Arizona.  No way.  The trial needs to be moved out-state, let's put that up right away.

Second, killing this guy--giving him the death penalty--would be just like his writing in that it would make no sense at all, either.

If the guy weren't patently crazy--and while it hasn't been proven in a court of law yet, I think that seems to be only a matter of time--I'd say sure, there may be a point to executing the guy.  Maybe. 


But he would have had to show he was more in touch with reality, to begin, and then they would have to show that it was part of some diabolical plan he had, for whatever reason.

Yes, the fact that they found that, at his home, he wrote he "planned ahead" goes against him but the fact is, the guy, it has been shown already and in at least a few ways, is just out of his head.  This would be like executing someone with an IQ of 25.

The only thing that can be claimed is that people don't want to pay for this guy to be in prison for the rest of his life.

Okay, no one can take that away from you but the fact is, the humane thing to do is to put this guy away with an unbreakable, unbeatable life sentence.

It's not like that will be pleasant for him.

Links:  http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/jared_lee_loughner/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10shooter.html?ref=jaredleeloughner