Posted on 12/23/2011 5:34:35 PM PST by naturalman1975
Donald Neilson has just died at the age of 75. He had been looked after by the State for the past 36 years, receiving three square meals a day which he didn’t pay for and he was provided with a warm and secure shelter.
Contrast Neilson’s life to that of Lesley Whittle. At the age of just 17, it was snuffed out. She died alone and naked, with her neck tethered by a wire noose, down a 60ft reservoir drainage shaft.
Such an ordeal would have been terrifying for anyone, let alone a teenage girl.
Neilson was better known as the Black Panther, a psychopath who was convicted of the murder of Lesley. He kidnapped her after reading that she had inherited £82,000 from her father. After breaking into her family home in Shropshire, he bound her with sticking plaster while her mother slept and took her to the drain shaft where he left her hanging while he made a ransom demand for £50,000.
Eventually, after 11 months at large, the former Army lance corporal was caught, prosecuted and given four life sentences.
The court heard that he had also shot dead three postmasters during a spree of 400 robberies and burglaries.
I heartily agree with Stuart Mackenzie, the police officer who finally disarmed Neilson and who received a bravery award for his actions.
He says: ‘I’m a great believer in an eye for an eye. Neilson never showed any remorse. He should have hanged.
‘When you look at the number of lives he took, why shouldn’t he have lost his own? Neilson enjoyed a life of luxury in jail while the families of his victims had to struggle on, working for a living.’
If there was ever a case for capital punishment, Neilson was it.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Oh, but the poor — who are disproportionately victimized by criminals in the first place — would comprise most of the executions. Why, it’s almost as if they commit most of the violent crimes. Thanks naturalman1975.
What would happen if slick willie had done it? Just a guess - his approval rating would have gone up, and the Senate would rule against impeachment.
I doubt anyone on FR is against hanging.
The victim’s families should not have to pay taxes to provide this zip wad three square meals per day decade after decade. He should have faced the pain of death before old age.
There are opponents of capital punishment here - I’ve seen them post and some of them have what I would say are perfectly reasonable objections, even if I disagree. But I thought the article was interesting as an argument for it, even for those who do already agree.
“There are opponents of capital punishment here -”
I suppose so, the official position of the RC church is against the death penalty, I think, and there are certainly Roman Catholic FReepers.
Still, any law and order post gets posted, and the comments all seem to be variations on “hang ‘em high!”
I am, on occasion. Too quick and painless.
Hang him high! Such as he should be gotten rid of—we have too many people—good people—starving and living in terrible conditions. Take his food and use it to feed starving children who are innocent—let him die of want. A better end than he deserves. Bring back the guillotine! The electric chair and the Firing squads. One thing we have too much of—bad people who have lost their right to be human.
Having a murderer die of old age isn’t justice in my book.
I believe he deserves the same fate as his victim.
Only then can one say justice was done.
The death penalty is about both restorative and retributive justice. A decent society seeks to uphold both ends and make sense of a cruel world.
By affirming the values by which it lives.
The poor deserve the comfort and humanity to which he wasn’t entitled.
Making someone evil appear as less than a monster makes a mockery out of our regard for human life.
Lesley Whittle had a soul. That counts for a lot more than the body of someone bereft of compassion for others.
Hanging is too good for some people.
As the saying goes: “The anticipation of death is worse than death itself” - should have been placed on death row. But then, England doesn’t do that anymore.
and in this country, it is high time we get the execution chambers running for those that have been on death row for more that 2 years.
Neutral on the death penalty. For the most part no. Most murders should not be death penalty cases. If they want to give the death penalty for the most heinous murders, then a jury must decide & I support long appeals for death row inmates incl. the right to commute death sentences @ the last minute to life w/o parole. Support mandatory sentences for murder whether it’s 1st, 2nd & Manslaughter with both 2nd Degree & Manslaughter carrying possibility of parole after a minimum sentence while with 1st Degree almost no chance of parole. Ordinary people can commit murder if given the circumstances so that’s why parole must be possible for 2nd Degree & Manslaughter.
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