He was found guilty on all charges last week and now the jury is listening to debates over whether the penalty should be life in prison or death. I am against the death penalty, since it is too easy to put on someone wrongly accused.
However. There is NO doubt whether or not Green did what he was accused of and found guilty of.
Premeditated raping, murdering, desecration by burning to cover up the evidence.
I am torn though. Death is retribution and so final. Life in prison is also retribution, but final is a long time away.
What say you, DUers?
This is an interesting blog post on it, coming up with a different conclusion, death.
http://blogs.chron.com/polimom/2009/05/the_penalty_for_mahmoudiya_sho.htmlThere were so many horrible stories out of Iraq -- savage, unspeakable atrocities that rolled across the national consciousness over the course of the war. Back here in the US, we read reports on our laptops or watched the news from the comfort of our living rooms, and passed judgment on events occurring in our names on the other side of the planet. Safely esconced in a technological vacuum, Americans argued and wrangled with the morality of violence and war.
I suspect everyone has a specific event from the Iraq war that stands out in their minds. For me, though, there was really only one that resisted every form of intellectual or empathetic gymnastics: Mahmoudiya.
Do you remember? That was where, in March 2006, an Iraqi family was murdered; where a 14-year-old girl was raped repeatedly, then shot, and her body set on fire. It was not a checkpoint shooting, or an interrogation, or a street confrontation. It was a premeditated violation of everything civilized. (clip)
Green was found guilty last week -- utterly unsurprising, since not even his defense attorneys are asserting he didn't do it -- and today, the sentencing phase starts. His lawyers will now try to mitigate his actions. They'll emphasize his 'personality disorder', and they'll try to present this atrocity within the context of war.
(more...)