Cleveland kidnapper may face death penalty for forced miscarriages
We need two separate poll questions asked of the public. Hopefully Rasmussen or Gallup or Pew or someone is game. Question one: Does Ariel Castro deserve death? Question two: Does Ariel Castro deserve death for forcing one of his captives to miscarry?
I wonder if the number who say yes to question one will be greater than the number who say yes to question two, as illogical as that may be.
~ Allahpundit, suggesting poll questions based on the fate of kidnapper Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man accused of kidnapping, raping, and torturing three women for ten years, Hot Air, May 9
Castro allegedly impregnated one of the women five times and forced her to miscarry by starving and beating her. Per the blog post: Under Ohio law, killing a woman’s child when it’s in the womb — if it’s against her wishes — constitutes aggravated murder. Prosecutors are considering seeking the death penalty.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Ty for reporting this story. Amanda Berry was cousins with my late husband’s older kids. Castro needs to be charged with murder for beating babies out of those girls. I never met Amanda but I have been to her sister Beths house. Amanda has the little girl conceived in rape. They are all at Beths house. Now the semantics are coming in about the fetus being human. I believe Ohio is going to charge him with murder. I’m glad they found these girls. I figured they were dead.
Everyone will die eventually. Seeking the death penalty in this case makes no sense at all. He is not a murderer. He is a brutal kidnapper and rapist. He should be in prison for the rest of his life.
Hi Denise…yes he will never get out. I am within. walking distance to the house of horrors. However Castro beat at least 5 babies out of Michelle Knight. That would be murder. Michelle is back in the hospital d/t the trauma she suffered. And beating babies out of a woman’s uterus is murder. Its been a media circus here.
I wonder if the number who say yes to question one will be greater than the number who say yes to question two, as illogical as that may be.
Actually, saying yes to question two presupposes saying yes to question one. So the number of people saying yes to question one must necessarily be at least as high as the number of people answering yes to question one. Just saying…
Denise,
We all die eventually……and some of us do heinous things to others and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law and sometimes justice demands the death penalty.
The irony of abortion juxtaposed with fetal homicide laws is BREATHTAKING.
@ Courtney: Yes, it is. That is part of why prosecuting him for murder is senseless. There is no way to be sure that, had the victim been rescued while pregnant, she would not have sought an abortion.
At any rate, the man is not a spring chicken. Even if condemned to death, he would almost certainly die of natural causes (or suicide). I used to correspond with a rapist-murderer in California. He’s been on death row for over 35 years and no execution date in sight as of today. Sentencing a middle-aged man to death is meaningless.
Denise: What do you think about what is happening in Ireland and the way they are using the X-case?
I used to correspond with a rapist-murderer in California.
This.
Good grief.
Yes Gloria Allred even spoke on CNN and said ” A woman has a right to terminate her pregnancy but nobody else has the right to kill it against her will. Alan Dershowitz said that charging this man with murder won’t work because we are only talking about a fetus!!! Let the semantics begin. Id say the girls word is good enough even if they don’t find fetal remains. Michelle was starved for 2 weeks and kicked in the stomach until a miscarriage took place. Come on Ohio n charge him with murder.
Of course if Michelle Knight says she didn’t want to abort and that he forced her to miscarry that is evidence against Castro. The other women might testify to that effect as well.
I read that the police were digging up the backyard looking for the tiny bodies. :(
Prob with the death penalty is that it’s not swift enough, and there are mistakes that lead to innocent people dying. Prob with life imprisonment is that it’s cruel to keep someone incarcerated for the bulk of their lives, and often life sentences are commuted. So the public is not adequately protected from repeat violent offenders.
Weighing what I know in the balance, I would support the death penalty for Castro. There seems to be strong evidence of murder, and the public needs to be protected from him.
Tyler says:
May 10, 2013 at 11:13 am
Denise: What do you think about what is happening in Ireland and the way they are using the X-case?
My email is Janatrude@aol.com. Please send me a link to this case.
Justice for victims is what we are after. Well, most of us.
10 years of these ladies lives have been stolen!! 10 YEARS!! Not to mention the unspeakable horror they have lived and endured. I cannot wrap my brain around it.
The sentence should be HARSH against this rapist/murderer/kidnapper because we PUNISH those who do evil.
Denise, you know the case, you brought it up.
I would like to hear your comments on this website.
God loves even Ariel Castro. Castro should be charged with the murders he indeed committed, and given a lifetime without parole in prison to repent. Besides, his captives had hope that one day they would be rescued. It seems just that Castro will spend the rest of his life as a captive, without hope of rescue. Given his age, he would roughly spend one year in prison for each year stolen from each woman/girl until his death. Though he will be treated more humanely.
I do pray he repents btw.
But long for justice!!
It’s hard to trust ‘life without parole’ anymore.
That’s often not what happens.
@ Tyler: I’m not sure I brought up the specific case but I have discussed the possibility of pregnancy being so upsetting that it leads girls and women to suicide. I googled the case. WOW! This was tragic indeed! A 14-year-old rape victim was impregnated and threatening to commit suicide rather than carry to term. She and her parents tried to leave Ireland for England to abort but the Irish courts ordered she be detained until she gave birth. Then they are on to England again and — as in a soap opera, the nightmare solves itself when she has a miscarriage! That does remind me a lot of soap opera scenarios in which the woman goes back and forth, then she trips down the steps and — no more pregnancy!
This was REALLY a tragedy. It seems to me that SOME pregnant females — raped or not — WILL in fact commit suicide rather than carry to term. Carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term CAN be that horrifying. If she commits suicide, the embryo or fetus inside AUTOMATICALLY dies with her so the law meant to get it born was utterly futile.
OTOH, it is also true that there is a statistical connection between having abortions and committing suicide later on. I wrote the article on Fumiko Kimura who failed to kill herself but DID kill her two small children when she waded into the Pacific Ocean. Guess what? Fumiko Kimura had undergone an abortion in her teen years. IMO, the trauma from this was revived and re-triggered when she learned that her husband’s girlfriend had recently aborted.
I wrote an essay on the Oldenburg Baby, a Down Syndrome baby BORN during a saline abortion and left without medical attention for HOURS. The mother suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide 6 years later.
In all honesty, the link here is so troubling and confusing I’m uncertain what to make of it. Blocking a girl or woman from abortion CAN trigger suicide. In Ireland’s “X” case, this seems especially harsh since the girl was already victimized by rape.
OTOH, having an abortion is statistically a risk factor for suicide. I just don’t know how to balance these troubling things against each other.
It is a GOOD question!!!!
Sylvia says:
May 10, 2013 at 1:46 pm
God loves even Ariel Castro. Castro should be charged with the murders he indeed committed, and given a lifetime without parole in prison to repent.
(Denise) It is VERY unlikely he will repent. If he EXPRESSES remorse, it would likely be trying to manipulate the system.
Like some of the people with whom I’ve been “pen pals,” the capacity for empathy is not hard-wired into this man’s brain. The reasons are unclear but it appears clear that empathy is a BRAIN FUNCTION. The brains of some people didn’t develop right. Indeed, studies have shown that the brain tissue in specific areas may be thinner in such people. That might make it impossible for the person to access what they need for this vital function. It is also possible that certain CONNECTIONS aren’t made in their brains. If these connections don’t develop, the person has no ability to empathize.
At the present time, there is no way to develop empathy in an adult who doesn’t have it. Research currently being done may well lead to a way to actually help these people develop this function.
For right now, the only way to keep the rest of us safe is to lock them up — permanently.
Like it or not, abortion is LEGAL at the present time. Had the girl been rescued while pregnant, she could have legally aborted. How do we even know that the mistreatment was the reason she miscarried? Teen girls have high rates of miscarriage.
Teen girls pregnant under much more normal circumstances often ASK someone to repeatedly slug or hit them in the belly. Guess what? It does NOT cause a miscarriage.
This psychopath deserves to be in prison. Pursuing a death sentence is pointless.
Denise, it’s simple. If Michelle Knight says she didn’t want an abortion in even one of the five pregnancies then we’re looking at forced abortion, which is illegal in that state.
If the other women corroborate the story, and if the fetuses are found, the evidence mounts.
Btw, Michelle is not a girl, as you stated. She wasn’t a teen when kidnapped and enslaved. She is now 32. Calling her a girl could be perceived as dismissive, which I don’t think is your intent. Please check your facts.
And another fact check- slugging pregnant women in the belly and starving them most certainly can cause miscarriage.
Prosecutors will look at intent as well as physical evidence. If Castro intended to forcibly abort or cause a miscarriage that will be considered evidence against him.
I want justice for the women and children he hurt or killed, and I want the general public to be reliably protected from people who do these horrid things. That is the two-fold purpose of seeking the death penalty.
I don’t believe in the death penalty, but this guy should serve life in prison without the possibility of parole to protect the public.
I heard a reporter on CNN this morning say that he may get the death penalty for murdering fetuses…The liberal left must be in quite a dilemma over this. How can you murder someone you do not believe is alive?
There may well not be any great numerical difference between questions one and two.
Those who oppose the death penalty will say no to both questions.
Those who support the death penalty will salivate over any basis on which to apply it.
Susan Smith also attempted suicide after an abortion. The pregnancy was from an affair with a married man. She swallowed a bottle of pills. Smith later met David Smith and married him. I believe lack of recovery from her abortion played a part in her breakdown as PAS wasn’t recognized then as it is now.
As most of the world knows Smith had an ongoing relationship with a man who dumped her. She snapped and killed her 2 young sons.
Denise I remember the Ireland case well.
I don’t believe in the death penalty, and frankly death is too easy for Castro. It leaves no chance for punishment or redemption. But I do detest the thought of him ever getting back out into society again, and it is indeed infrequent that anyone gets life with no chance of parole and it sticks.
Concerning this case, I heard Steve Walsh of America’s Most Wanted today on Sean Hannity’s afternoon radio show. He said most other criminals detest rapists, especially of children, and that Castro should be left in the general prison population with them.
That sounds like a fitting punishment to me. Why should he get any special treatment or protection?
“The irony of abortion juxtaposed with fetal homicide laws is BREATHTAKING.”
You are so right, Courtnay. And that is the hypocrisy of political correctness and greed.
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“Those who support the death penalty will salivate over any basis on which to apply it.”
.
How insane.
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It is like saying that pro-aborts salivate over having more women choose abortion. I think we all know people who haven’t really given much thought to abortion one way or the other but would call themselves pro-choice. They certainly don’t salivate over the thought of more abortions any more than people who support the death penalty salivate over executions. That is just stupid.
Those who support the death penalty will salivate over any basis on which to apply it.
Not really. The bottom line is, “Is what Castro allegedly did to those fetuses worse than what he allegedly did to those women?” I’m sure that plenty of people here would say “yes.”
Well then just like Reality you would be wrong. Both of you KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!
Keep assuming!! :)
Keep generalizing! :)
What Castro did to innocent human beings both born and preborn was equally HEINOUS!!
I support the death penalty when there are no bloodless means by which to protect the public.
When ‘life without parole’ really means that, I’ll be glad to see capital punishment done away with.
Mary Ann says:
May 12, 2013 at 12:24 am
I support the death penalty when there are no bloodless means by which to protect the public.When ‘life without parole’ really means that, I’ll be glad to see capital punishment done away with.
(Denise) Life without parole means exactly that. Georgia is a death penalty state but juries are increasingly going for LWP because they realize the criminal is taken out of circulation for good.
That’s not the case where I’m from.
In my city there was a young convicted rapist/murderer in for LWP. He was released, and did it again. Twice. Until the appeals process is scrutinized I’m not going back to gullible.
Yes Denise I am aware as I have read 2 books about Smith. I think she killed the boys in 95. She originally said she was going to drown herself with the boys but opted out and killed them.