Long time gone

[Gob]

[Grim Reaper]

And Ariel Castro has taken the easy way out. He was content with imprisoning three women for up to a decade, but couldn't handle even a couple months in prison.

[Gob]

Ariel Castro, who kept women captive at his home in Cleveland, Ohio, has died after being found hanging in his cell.

Prison officials said he died in hospital late on Tuesday, after prison medical staff failed to revive him.

Castro, 53, held three women against their will for about a decade until May this year. He kept his victims chained up and raped them.

He was sentenced on 1 August to life imprisonment without parole plus 1,000 years. The house was demolished.

The former school bus driver abducted Michelle Knight, 32, Amanda Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, 23, from the Cleveland streets between 2002-04.

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, JoEllen Smith, said: "He was housed in protective custody which means he was in a cell by himself and rounds are required every 30 minutes at staggered intervals.

Heads should roll for that, if you'll excuse the pun.

[eddieq]

I'm personally torn on this, because I truly believe that all life has value, even those who've done such depraved and horrible acts, but I can't help but not grieve his passing. I won't jump for joy, but he certainly won't be missed.

[Lord Jim]

I'm personally torn because I believe he should have suffered far more and longer before getting this exit, (and I worry that his victims may feel that justice has been in a way cheated because he didn't spend years in captivity like they did) but on the other hand, the world is certainly a better place without him. Also now he will be unable to try and further harass and torment his victims, (like his plan to try to get visitation rights with his daughter, )

I think it's going to be interesting to find out how he was able to do this....

[Big RR]

I agree Jim; especially if the protective custody is run like they say.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I did wonder a little at this statement (source CNN):

The Cuyahoga County prosecutor had tough words in the wake of Castro's suicide.

"These degenerate molesters are cowards," Timothy J. McGinty said. "... This man couldn't take, for even a month, a small portion of what he had dished out for more than a decade."

I hope he's referring to the confinement itself and not.......... well, I hope.

[Gob]

LOL!!

[Lord Jim]

The more I think about this, the more I'm sorry it happened...

At the very end, Castro was able to be in control and determine his fate... (this is not a great analogy, but somewhat like Herman Goering champing down on a cyanide capsule right before he faced the hang man's noose at Nuremberg...)

Control over his own fate...

Precisely what he should have been denied...

The greatest punishment this narcissistic dirt bag could have suffered was to lose control over his fate...

And he found a way to keep that in his own hands...

[Joe Guy]

Maybe he had a little help.

And maybe we will never know.

[Lord Jim]

Maybe he had a little help.

And maybe we will never know.

And maybe we shouldn't...

The level of evil that this person represented, and what he did, raises some interesting moral/philosophical issues...

To posit a couple of scenarios:

You're a jail guard looking after him...you've made your 30 minute watch, but you've seen things that led you think he may have had some self destructive course of action in mind...but you decide to ignore it...and he hangs himself...

You're a jail guard, and you happen on Castro on your watch after he's hung himself, but he's not dead yet, but you know if you just wait a couple of more minutes he'll be dead...

I think I might decide to go out for a smoke in that situation...

[Big RR]

Perhaps Jim, but the job of a jail guard is not to abet suicide (or murder if it was that), it's to protect the parties in the jail, including the inmates. I know there's kind of a "good riddance" feeling with this guy (I even felt it myself), but there are more important things here, including what we want our jails to be. Personally, unless the guy was mentally ill, I think he should be allowed to commit suicide, but apparently the Us government thinks differently, hence we force fed the Gitmo inmates who refused to eat.

[Guinevere]

I'll say it more affirmatively:

the job of a jail guard is not to abet suicide (or murder if it was that), it's to protect the parties in the jail, including the inmates.

There should be no dilemma -- if you can't do your job, then don't take that job. It is not the right of one prison guard to override what the state has determined is the appropriate sentence, regardless of how despicable the inmate is. (And god yes, this guy was one of the worst.)

[Jarlaxle]

Prisons should offer a seminar to all inmates. Call it, "Suicide 101: Getting it Right tje First Time."

[Crackpot]

I doun't think you could trust the instructors to deliver on that one.

[dgs49]

Exclamation point to what Jaraxle said!

All of our jails and prisons should have "Suicide Counselors," and suicide pills should be freely provided. If a prisoner or detainee wants to end it all, throw a fucking party, as far as I'm concerned.

Like it or not, our prisons are not in the "revenge" business. They are custodial. If any inmate doesn't appreciate or want the accommodations, they should be able to opt out.

[rubato]

I can't say that I care about this individual either way. In prison or dead makes no difference to me.

But the desire to enslave others, to use them, is much more common than you would like to think. Most in the 1st world do so by economic means, indirect means, but in the 2nd and 3rd world it is not in the least rare for it to be by direct use of force. Sometimes clothed in the trappings of the local culture.

Strom Thurmond used sexually a 16-year old black servant of his parents, ruined her socially by getting her pregnant, and then paid her 'hush money' for many decades to cover up his crime.

When I was younger, naively, I had thought that the arc of history was such that slavery was now morally repugnant to nearly everyone in the world. Either enslavement of others or submitting to being a slave was now almost universally reviled and most people would not tolerate it either way. They would not submit to being a slave nor would they tolerate among them people who enslaved others.

But I was wrong.

The desire to enslave and the weaknesses of people which enable their own enslavement are common, not rare at all.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

When you have nothing to say, change the subject. Is that the American way of dong things?

[Lord Jim]

Is that the American way of dong things?

Keep your dong to yourself...

[Joe Guy]

Is that the American way of dong things?

Keep your dong to yourself...

Gob better be careful. He could end up with a dinged dong.