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Unveiling Singapore’s Death Penalty Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Public Opinion and Deterrent Claims

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While Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) maintains a firm stance on the effectiveness of the death penalty in managing drug trafficking in Singapore, the article presents evidence suggesting that the methodologies and interpretations of these studies might not be as substantial as portrayed.

Will Florida put Nikolas Cruz to death by lethal injection or commit him to live out his life in prison?

"There were explicit warnings. Two students told an assistant principal the year before the tragedy that Cruz might hurt others and even shoot up the school."

The most vicious killer in South Florida history will spend the rest of his life in prison for the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

“You will not come out until you are no longer alive,” Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer told Nikolas Cruz Wednesday before accepting his guilty pleas at a hearing in Fort Lauderdale.

The only remaining question is whether Florida will put him to death by lethal injection or commit him to live out his life in prison. The punishment will be for 12 jurors to decide next year, following the 34 guilty pleas Cruz entered — 17 for first-degree murder and 17 more for the attempted first-degree murder of victims who were shot but survived.


There are good reasons why the life-sentence alternative is the better one in this case despite the savagery of Cruz’s horrific murder spree with a legally purchased assault weapon: Even with the question of guilt resolved, it often takes years of appeals and decades of delays before a death sentence is carried out. To limit the horrific anguish, we need to close this hideous chapter sooner rather than later. But it will linger if there are death sentences that are appealed.

Mike Satz, the retired state attorney who remains in charge of the case, steadfastly refused defense offers to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences. He appears determined, perhaps obsessively so, to make a death sentence for Cruz the capstone of his 44-year career.

The defense strategy to plead guilty without a deal serves as an appeal to the jury as well as to the victims’ families. Some would accept a life sentence, but others want him executed.

In remarks to the court in a soft but clear voice, the killer explicitly addressed the families.

“I just want you to know I’m really sorry,” he said, “and I hope you give me a chance to try to help others. I believe it’s your decision to decide where I go, whether I live or die, not the jury’s. I believe it’s your decision. I’m sorry.”

By law, it’s not the families’ decision, it’s the jury’s — with input from the families and others.

As Satz and some victims’ families see it, if the Parkland murders don’t warrant the death penalty, what would?

It’s a reasonable question, but it begs others. One is the overbroad reach of Florida’s death penalty, which covers even unpremeditated murders where guilt is in doubt. Another is the potentially appealable issue of mental illness in this case.

The commission appointed to investigate the tragedy acknowledged that, finding that Cruz “was a troubled child and young adult who displayed aggressive and violent tendencies as early as three years old … There are reports of behavioral issues at all of the schools he attended. He was under the care of community and private mental health professionals from age 11 until he turned 18 and refused further services.”

There were explicit warnings. Two students told an assistant principal the year before the tragedy that Cruz might hurt others and even shoot up the school. The many missed opportunities do not excuse what he did, but they cast doubt on whether the vengeance of the death penalty is an appropriate remedy.

In New York, Massachusetts, Virginia and 20 other states, this case would be over. That includes Colorado, whose death penalty was still in force when James Holmes was tried for killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a theater in Aurora in 2012. The jurors rejected his insanity defense, but three of them chose life. He is now serving a 3,000-year sentence.

Thirty-four consecutive life sentences for Cruz would serve Florida just as well.

Source: The Sun Sentinel, Editorial Board, October 21, 2021


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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