A Nigerian sharia court lifted the stoning sentence on a young woman convicted of adultery. That was the good news. Stoning is a particularly gruesome, lingering, and bloody form of execution, and the case had generated a large international outcry.
Unfortunately, the same court then turned around and sentenced a man to death by stoning for sodomy.
No word yet on the international outcry thang.
Granted, the guy in question is no saint. He was convicted of having paid three minors (ages not provided) to engage in anal sex with him.
But being stoned to death?
The three boys, by the by, were also convicted of having accept the payments, and sentenced to a fifty lashes.
UPDATE: Okay, fifty lashes? This deserves fifty lashes. Hell, you might even get me to reconsider about the stoning thing.
San Diego has a local case that is interesting.
Defendant in an awful crime (kidnapped, sexually assaulted, tortured and killed to boys, 9 & 11) whose lawyers admit his guilt (which is supported by DNA evidence. The defendants lawyers asked no questions of the prosecutions witnesses and offered no defense. In fact, they admit his guilt to the jury. (He is already serving a 75 year sentance for a rape).
Before the trial, the defendant’s lawyers tried to deal life without parole with no appeals, and signing away his right to be pardoned, but prosecutors felt that death is the ONLY punishment for this crime.
My personal opinion is that if our society is going to have the death penalty (and I’m not sure that we should), this is one of the few crimes were it is appropriate. There are those, however, who wonder if giving this defendant time in the public eye is actually a detriment, even if we get to kill him after.
So the argument is that if the DA had just accepted the deal, it would have been better for society because we wouldn’t have had to hear about the horrific crimes the guy committed?
I’d rather society heard. It’s not a matter for whether the guy gets “fame” or not. But if conveniently dealing with the truth by hiding it doesn’t seem to society’s benefit, either.
As to the death penalty — it sure sounds like he’s one of the candidates where it’s clearly warrented, in my opinion. It’s the less obvious (or more malfeasibly prosecuted) cases that have changed my mind about its use (not its morality).
But, then, I think there’s also a significant difference between a lethal injection and stoning.