Not Good Company 2015-05-14

[jwhouk]

In Suzi's case, it's been posited (whistles innocently) that she caught the guy who was raping Monica in flagrante delicto. In that case, she was likely more than justified in playing judge, jury, and executioner.

It's possible this near-corpse made the exact same mistake - getting caught by a vamp in media res.

I don't think I'd blame her for either one.

Gore is not my cup of tea - and I have seen some stuff over my years in Corrections - but occasionally Paul does have to remind us that this isn't a neat-and-pretty universe that M and company live in.

[Dave]

Murders, rapists and child molesters are simply like mad dogs in my view that should be put down swiftly and permanently. If anyone can show me a single case where using this penalty did not result in that person never again doing such things then i wont support it anymore. Until them i will continue to view it as a good idea.

As to "right" and "wrong" - the only reason that i oppose capital punishment is that it's very difficult to unkill someone a few years alter, when someone else confesses or we find out the cops lied or that the prosecutor withheld evidence or the lab messed up the DNA tests...

And therein is a big and very valid objection.

The Innocence Project now lists over 300 cases of "post-conviction exoneration" via improved DNA testing - and in almost half of these cases, the real perpetrator has been identified by those tests. A lot of these cases involved murder and/or sexual assault. If I recall correctly, there are several known cases where this sort of authoritative exoneration has occurred after the convicted individual was executed.

I suppose these executions had the effect oldmanmickey is talking about of ensuring "that person never again doing such things", but the subsequent investigations made it clear that the person in question never did that thing in the first place. In other words, the person who was executed was legally guilty, legally executed, but factually innocent. The causes are as AFF has suggested: incorrect-but-convincing eyewitness testimony, jailhouse "confessions" reported by informants who were lying to gain advantage, invalid forensic evidence or testimony, prosecutorial misconduct of any of several sorts, incompetent defense lawyers... you name it.

Some will argue (have argued) that this is an acceptable price for a society to pay... that it's OK to throw a few babies out with the bath-water, if that's what it takes to ensure that those who are truly guilty of horrible crimes are executed.

I do ask, though - how would you feel, if the person who was lawfully convicted and (in truth) wrongly executed, was someone you knew? Someone you love?

At least, with a sentence of "life without possibility of parole", there's a chance to undo at least some of the wrong done by a wrongful conviction.

[Gyrrakavian]

I feel sorry for the paramedics. What did they do to deserve having to walk in on that?

This is really the most objectionable part of the whole strip for me. She's going to give a whole team of paramedics a lifetime of nightmares and mental trauma, all so this waste of flesh gets an extra half-hour of suffering.

If the extra half-hour of suffering is really so important, there are ways to do it without involving other people. She became a vampire because nobody cared about her, right? She's being guilty of doing the same thing by not caring about the paramedics and all the paramedics' loved ones who will feel the backlash of the "justice" she is perpetuating tonight.

It's selfish self indulgence without forethought to the additional consequences.

Like when someone who'se suicidal jumps in front of a train or semi-truck. The conductor and engineer/trucker have to deal withbthat forthe rest of their lives. Een though their rational brain knows there's no way that they could have stopped in time.

Especially the train. The area of contact between each wheel and the rail is the size of a dime!!! It takes a mile and a half for a train going 55 mph to stop. Which is why it's so damn important to NEVER go around the crossing gates. Even if there's a train stopped off to one side. Tracks usually come in pairs, so there could very well be another train coming.

Sorry this comment turned into a train safety PSA, but some little sports car got crumpled earlier today and I got to hear the whole emergency call over the radio while waiting for my crew.

[jwhouk]

I kinda don't think that's the only incident involving a train that's been in the news lately...

[scantrontb]

With all the gore splattered everywhere how in the world did she manage to keep her glasses clean?

Rain X... and I'll bet that you thought it was only good for the WEATHER!?

[AnotherFairportfan]

Murders, rapists and child molesters are simply like mad dogs in my view that should be put down swiftly and permanently. If anyone can show me a single case where using this penalty did not result in that person never again doing such things then i wont support it anymore. Until them i will continue to view it as a good idea.

As to "right" and "wrong" - the only reason that i oppose capital punishment is that it's very difficult to unkill someone a few years alter, when someone else confesses or we find out the cops lied or that the prosecutor withheld evidence or the lab messed up the DNA tests...

And therein is a big and very valid objection.

The Innocence Project now lists over 300 cases of "post-conviction exoneration" via improved DNA testing - and in almost half of these cases, the real perpetrator has been identified by those tests. A lot of these cases involved murder and/or sexual assault. If I recall correctly, there are several known cases where this sort of authoritative exoneration has occurred after the convicted individual was executed.

I suppose these executions had the effect oldmanmickey is talking about of ensuring "that person never again doing such things", but the subsequent investigations made it clear that the person in question never did that thing in the first place. In other words, the person who was executed was legally guilty, legally executed, but factually innocent. The causes are as AFF has suggested: incorrect-but-convincing eyewitness testimony, jailhouse "confessions" reported by informants who were lying to gain advantage, invalid forensic evidence or testimony, prosecutorial misconduct of any of several sorts, incompetent defense lawyers... you name it.

Some will argue (have argued) that this is an acceptable price for a society to pay... that it's OK to throw a few babies out with the bath-water, if that's what it takes to ensure that those who are truly guilty of horrible crimes are executed.

I do ask, though - how would you feel, if the person who was lawfully convicted and (in truth) wrongly executed, was someone you knew? Someone you love?

At least, with a sentence of "life without possibility of parole", there's a chance to undo at least some of the wrong done by a wrongful conviction.

Note, please, that i set a standard of proof that is almost certainly not going to occur in what we laughingly call the "real world", before i'd be okay with the death penalty.

Of course, if i saw the crime committed with my own eyes, my own actions might not be precisely commensurate with the laws...

[Thor]

If you die alone and unloved you become a vampire.

It's alone and forgotten that makes the vampies in this universe.

SUZIE: Out of sight, out of mind. No one should be forgotten, or made to feel that they don't matter. That's how vampires are made!

There must be more to it than just this. If it were just this, then the Earth would be nearly overrun with vampires. I imagine fewer people are "forgotten" (whatever that exactly entails) in the modern age of record-keeping and redundant cloud storage, but before the last century, how many people would have been utterly alone and forgotten? Say one out of every 1000 people? Assuming that 3 billion people lived and died before the 1900s, the back of the envelope numbers give us about 3,000,000 vampires, or enough vampires to completely populate the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region . . . which wouldn't be too surprising considering that MSP seems to be the center of the supernatural universe for reasons that are still unexplained.

[Warrl]

I've always said that Timothy McVeigh - if there were no possible doubt that he committed the bombing - would benefit greatly from a gelignite suppository. Too bad we wouldn't be able to re-assemble him and do it 168 times, once a day for six months (plus two weeks, with Sundays off) - once for each death he caused.

Oddly, McVeigh was the case that turned me more-or-less against the death penalty. Not solidly against it, however; I think it should still be an option on the books.

My former opinion that it was too easily handed down (standard of proof needed to be higher) and then too hard to actually carry out (too many appeals, too much paperwork that had to be filled out absolutely perfectly...)

But that case so thoroughly stripped away all the usual lame arguments. The people I knew who were near-constantly campaigning against the death penalty, fell silent, not wanting to be seen (or to see themselves) as defending a man who had blown up a day-care full of little kids. Nobody seemed to have any doubt of his guilt either. Pretty clearly, execution was justified...

And I started wondering...

... is executing him NECESSARY?

And the answer was no.

... Do I want the government killing people in my name, when it isn't necessary?

Again, no.

Now if McVeigh, or anyone on death row, were to escape, or to commit a serious crime against a prison guard or another prison inmate, that would demonstrate that *in the particular case* the available alternatives to execution are insufficient, so execution is indeed necessary - and this is why I think the death penalty should be on the books.

And if we were a poor society, with significant numbers of people routinely in danger of starvation, I wouldn't waste food on keeping death-row inmates alive. Better to painlessly kill them and send the food they won't be eating to decent people. But we aren't such a society. Aside from a few jurisdictions that have seriously effed up on prison-guard labor contracts and pension promises, the cost of operating our prisons is not a huge burden in the United States.

Heck, I'll add that if a prisoner (not necessarily death row) who's certain (barring exoneration or pardon) to be in prison for the rest of his life desires to end that life somewhat ahead of schedule, then we should - with suitable safeguards against abuse - provide an option for that to happen with minimum mess and stress for the guards and other prisoners to deal with. Execute him in his own name, by his own will.

[scantrontb]

Assuming that 3 billion people lived and died before the 1900s, the back of the envelope numbers give us about 3,000,000 vampires, or enough vampires to completely populate the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region . . . which wouldn't be too surprising considering that MSP seems to be the center of the supernatural universe for reasons that are still unexplained.

that would account for the newly "born" vampires for sure, but don't forget about the "shitty mosquitoes" aspect of their existence... that'll cut down on their numbers quite drastically once you figure out how many other paranormal (PN) individuals/groups were/are involved in the process of "culling" the vampire population. currently, to my knowledge, we only "KNOW" specifically of ONE individual (Phix) as a vampire slaying personage. it is heavily implied via Lilly that they are the bottom rung of PN society and can EXPECT to be killed at any moment by practically ANY OTHER PN... but we don't have hard facts, nor numbers... so... one out of a thousand seems kinda high to me, i'd say one in 100000 or even 500000 might work better for the number of vamps that have found some way of surviving long enough, like our current population of 2 vampires has shown...

[shadowinthelight]

And Suzie does know. If he weren't guilty. she' be screaming on the floor, with blood running out of her eyes.

That's exactly the point I was going to bring up that some seem to be forgetting. Vampires in the Wapsiverse appear to have a built in paranormal guilt-o-meter. Suzie is not standing on a slippery slope, there is a big damn wall to keep her in check. If vampires were able to kill whoever they wanted they probably wouldn't be viewed as so weak by other paranormals.

[DNTMEE]

And Suzie does know. If he weren't guilty. she' be screaming on the floor, with blood running out of her eyes.

That's exactly the point I was going to bring up that some seem to be forgetting. Vampires in the Wapsiverse appear to have a built in paranormal guilt-o-meter. Suzie is not standing on a slippery slope, there is a big damn wall to keep her in check. If vampires were able to kill whoever they wanted they probably wouldn't be viewed as so weak by other paranormals.

So all those vampires out there can only kill and eat, and/or skin alive guilty people? I don't recall that. But, if so, guilty of what? How "guilty" do they have to be to be eaten and tortured by a vampire? A thief? A cheat? Where is the line drawn? Doesn't make much sense to me. I also fall on the side that what Susi did was very, very wrong. Even if she is a paranormal and no longer human. Her victim was. Eye for an eye (and them some) may be the rule in the paranormal world, but that world is not supposed to extend into the human world. Doing so puts a lot of innocent paranormals at risk, according to Phix. There are going to be a lot of questions on this one. This time they can't blame it on the work of some animal either. I guess MIB will cover it up somehow, but still, I don't see how this sort of transgression could be tolerated, no matter the greater good for the human world. Human affairs are for humans to deal with, and paranormals by other paranormals. That's the agreement. That's what keeps things at peace. When a paranormal steps across the boundry, it's supposed to be time to call in the parapolice to put a stop to it pronto. And in the paranormal world, there does not seem to be a prison system, nor a need for one. Unless you count Tartarus. Most times it seems the death penalty is employed and that is that. As a bonus the winner is free to eat the loser. Or, in the case of demons and sphinxes, they get to eat demons without a contest first. In any event, I think Susi may be running out of "get out of trouble" passes and may have to face paranormal justice at some point.

[jwhouk]

Paranormal justice, however, is the death penalty. She's already dead.

[KnightDelight]

Paranormal justice, however, is the death penalty. She's already dead.

While this is true, in the para-normal wapsiverse, death is a mere technicality. A matter of semantics really. For them death is ceasing to exist. While Suzi is technically "dead" she is still functioning and animate with her faculties intact. In any practical sense she is very much alive. She can still be "swatted" and removed from the world, paranormal or otherwise, for good. No doubt there is a way for even a human to do it. Obviously sunlight doesn't do it. Wooden stake? Maybe Wood chipper. Who knows. Decapitation would probably be effective. Even if the head needed to be run through that selfsame wood chipper afterwords to be final. I think one of the ways in the movies is to bury the head apart from the body. Not sure about the devouring part though. Even Phix's tastes may not run towards Vampire Tartar. Some predators don't like long dead meat and Phix does not strike me as the scavenger type.

[illiad]

If you die alone and unloved you become a vampire.

It's alone and forgotten that makes the vampies in this universe.

SUZIE: Out of sight, out of mind. No one should be forgotten, or made to feel that they don't matter. That's how vampires are made!

There must be more to it than just this. If it were just this, then the Earth would be nearly overrun with vampires. I imagine fewer people are "forgotten" (whatever that exactly entails) in the modern age of record-keeping and redundant cloud storage, but before the last century, how many people would have been utterly alone and forgotten? Say one out of every 1000 people? Assuming that 3 billion people lived and died before the 1900s, the back of the envelope numbers give us about 3,000,000 vampires, or enough vampires to completely populate the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region . . . which wouldn't be too surprising considering that MSP seems to be the center of the supernatural universe for reasons that are still unexplained.

The awful truth is, RL is NOT that 'interesting'... It is grindingly boring and lonely... especially for those old people who have lived through the last war, and feel for all the poor people 'that are *total fiction* dreamed up by evil people wanting their money!! I say this on the news of a lady who was a lifelong poppy maker and charity giver, who took her life due to mindless robots demanding money...

[jwhouk]

I've always posited that there's something about the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi that draws paranormals. Maybe there's one of those gaps in the world grid or something.

[Skywatcher68]

umm folks, could i point out one thing please. The paramedics are necessary. If you die alone and unloved you become a vampire. She does not want that sick piece of trash to come back even more powerful. As for the debate on how to treat criminals a lot of what are called criminals are capable of being reformed and should be. Murders, rapists and child molesters are simply like mad dogs in my view that should be put down swiftly and permanently. If anyone can show me a single case where using this penalty did not result in that person never again doing such things then i wont support it anymore. Until them i will continue to view it as a good idea.

The paramedics might have a contract with MIB, in which case they'd be familiar with this sort of thing.

[AnotherFairportfan]

umm folks, could i point out one thing please. The paramedics are necessary. If you die alone and unloved you become a vampire. She does not want that sick piece of trash to come back even more powerful. As for the debate on how to treat criminals a lot of what are called criminals are capable of being reformed and should be. Murders, rapists and child molesters are simply like mad dogs in my view that should be put down swiftly and permanently. If anyone can show me a single case where using this penalty did not result in that person never again doing such things then i wont support it anymore. Until them i will continue to view it as a good idea.

The paramedics might have a contract with MIB, in which case they'd be familiar with this sort of thing.

The ones who were cleaning up after Suzie when Lily met Senior Director Oudoya, perhaps.

[Gyrrakavian]

As to "right" and "wrong" - the only reason that i oppose capital punishment is that it's very difficult to unkill someone a few years alter, when someone else confesses or we find out the cops lied or that the prosecutor withheld evidence or the lab messed up the DNA tests...

If i knew with absolute, undoubted, 100% indisputable evidence that someone was guilty of crimes like that - i'd be there helping Suzie (albeit with occasional pauses to throw up - at least the first time).

And Suzie does know. If he weren't guilty. she' be screaming on the floor, with blood running out of her eyes.

I've always said that Timothy McVeigh - if there were no possible doubt that he committed the bombing - would benefit greatly from a gelignite suppository. Too bad we wouldn't be able to re-assemble him and do it 168 times, once a day for six months (plus two weeks, with Sundays off) - once for each death he caused.

The Question is less "Did he do it?" and more "Did he do it alone?" and "Why did he do it?"

Apparently, McVeigh and Lee Harvey Oswald have something in common aside from being white males with some military service under their belts.

[TazManiac]

Based on Suzi saying the cops were called due to screaming and found the kid in the oven, we can be relatively sure, In This Case, that Suzi has 'the right man'...

Nonetheless, it occurred to me that she might be bullsh*tting the dude as he expires, just to twist the knife, so to speak.

[Grantwhy]

Based on Suzi saying the cops were called due to screaming and found the kid in the oven, we can be relatively sure, In This Case, that Suzi has 'the right man'...

Nonetheless, it occurred to me that she might be bullsh*tting the dude as he expires, just to twist the knife, so to speak.

I thought about that, and I really, *REALLY* hope not

SUZIE: Out of sight, out of mind. No one should be forgotten, or made to feel that they don't matter. That's how vampires are made!