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So was he let off easy, since there would be no punishment too cruel and/or unusual in this case? Can we not just cut his dick off and leave it on the road after driving a rusty metal object into him? Well, hopefully he will get beat up every day he's in jail, if someone doesn't kill him; it sure would take his mind off of his stretched and bleeding anus.
But maybe we aren’t satisfied with this. Should they break his bones and dislocate his joints to fit him in a microwave after all? Or should they just sever his head? Well, neither, if we want him to die a slow and painful death.
What a failure of justice this is. We had so many excellent ideas here—ideas that speak this man’s very language—ideas perhaps akin to his own mental processes. After all, those capable of such thoughts and actions have no place in civil society, not even behind bars.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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