On 2010-09-27 01:19, balducci wrote:

Quote:

On 2010-09-27 01:01, magicfish wrote:

Its easy for some to say she was borderline retarded, (we don't use that word in canada) but if she was retarded, she would not be criminally responsible. Here's the point. She wasn't retarded- at all.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think you are confusing mentally retarded with criminally insane. As of 2001 anyway, twenty-five U.S. states still permitted the execution of offenders with mental retardation:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/27

Apparently the woman (Lewis) tested as borderline mentally retarded.

Also, one of the killers (post-conviction) said that he duped and used the woman:

http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2010/......esa.html

---
In 2003, Lewis pleaded guilty to capital murder and was sentenced to death by a judge who called her "the head of this serpent." One shooter, Rodney Fuller, made a deal with prosecutors in return for a life sentence. The judge sentenced Shallenberger to life, saying that was only fair because of Fuller's deal.

But Shallenberger, who dreamed of becoming a mob hit man, later told a former girlfriend in a letter that he had used Lewis because he wanted money to go to New York and become a drug dealer. He committed suicide in prison.
---

On 2010-09-27 04:30, tommy wrote:
To injure, disfigure, or make imperfect by removing or irreparably damaging parts to deprive of a limb or other essential part. Lopping an hand off or stretching a neck or frying somebody’s brain is an act of physical mutilation, whether or not it results in death, as death is irrelevant to the question of whether or not a body has been mutilated. One can mutilate a dead body. The executioner in the USA mutilates the body one way or another. The mutilation is so designed to result in death. One could design mutilation of body as a punishment to lesser degree’s to fit the bill. Such as lopping off a hand for not paying tax or frying a brain for murder. Its just the same idea when all said and done. The USA also uses torture on the accused to make him confess and get information from him, so I don’t see why the Americans are so squeamish about lopping a hand off or whatever.