🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <greg.n.smith.192.00086354@daytonoh.ncr.com> greg.n.smith@daytonoh.ncr.com (Greg Smith) writes:
>>Is your property more valuable than someone else's life?  Is _this_ the
>>attitude our country was founded upon?  I think _NOT_.
>
>Back then they used to hang people in public for stealing horses (property). 

It was considered the same as murder to steal someone's horse 
because of the importance of the horse to man in those times.  A man
could literally die if his horse was stolen from him in certain
situations (Indians, deserts, etc.).

They also used to practice slavery, should we bring that back too?

>It IS an attitude our country was founded on.  Maybe if they brought back 
>hangings we'd have less crime, eh?

There has never been any statistical evidence correlating decreased crime
with increased executions.  NEVER.

While it is true that capital punishment was used for crimes in
addition to murder and treason (burglary, rape, and other felonies),
This was a carry over from Europian Laws.  I believe the founding
fathers of this country saw something better than that, when they
wrote the constition.

Grolier's Academic American Encyclopedia states:

"Reform of the death penalty began in Europe by the 1750s, and was
championed by such thinkers as the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria,
the French philosopher Voltaire, and the English law reformer Jeremy
Bentham.  They argued that the death penalty was needlessly cruel,
overrated as a deterrent, and occasionally imposed in fatal error.
Along with Quaker leaders and other social reformers, they defended
life imprisonment as a more rational alternative."


Gerry Cermak
student

"Law makers typically lag 20 years behind common-thought"  - unknown.