I am against the death penalty: but I found I wanted her dead

Article by Marc Aupiais

It made national headlines, just because of the gruesome vivisection that the woman had committed on her victim. Her lover had helped. They had lured him in, by promising a date with her. They were to meet at a graveyard. He had had no hope of escape. Fortunately, he informed his employer, who told the police who arrested her.

She had written poetry about it, fantasized for years. The sort of poetry to disturb a school psychologist but meant!

I watched Bear Grylls and also River Monsters: hoping that the nausea would end. It is now only I know what bothered me most.

Having read she was going to jail for life, parole considered at 20 years: I wanted her dead. I wanted to inject her myself, or be on the firing squad. Like Hercules, I wanted to cut off her head and parade it to the villagers! To say the monster was dead.

I oppose the death penalty. Even in her case. Even in such a case as even Stephen King could not hope to write. A case unprecedented in history.

The reason we want monsters killed is that we feel the world is dirtied by them.

The reason I don't believe in the death penalty: isn't the monster: safely behind bars. It is because when you kill any person you remember them. You are tainted by them. They haunt you. Person and society lose their entire humanity.

Serial killers scare us because they treat people like animals. They treat us as nothing special.

But if we treated them as animals: we'd be worse than them. We'd have no soul!