Quote Originally Posted by ThisYouWillDo View Post
Ok - I have the wrong impression about American cops - I get it from the way your film makers portray them.
Yeah, I guess that would be equivalent to my getting my impressions of English bobbies from watching Benny Hill. Not necessarily the best source.

Why is the killing of an unarmed woman who disturbs you during the commission of a crime, in the heat of the moment less bad than killing an armed cop who does the same thing?
Obviously, if the criminal kills the unarmed woman then he is, at least by my definition, a threat to society. He has and will kill indiscriminately. Even if he doesn't try to kill the cops when they approach him, he is a threat. But when he deliberately attacks an armed policeman he is either suicidal (in which case, take shoot the bastard and don't spare the bullets) or he's an even bigger threat to society (same result.) Obviously, anyone who is not afraid to attack an armed police officer isn't going to worry about killing anyone else.

If a man is a threat to society, because he is likely to kill anyone and everyone who gets in his way, he must be taken out of society: I would prefer that to be permanently gaoled.
I don't know about the UK, but in the US I'm not sure there is any such thing as permanently jailed. Far too many violent criminals manage to either escape or snow a parole board into letting them out.

And what if a policeman's wife kills him during a domestic dispute?
Again, each case has to be judged independently. In this case she's probably not killing him because he's a policeman, but because he's a bad husband, or for some other domestic reason. Chances are she's no threat to anyone else.

Finally, as lawyers are as important a part of the legal system as police officers are, why should their murders not be treated in exactly the same way.
It might come to that. If we reach a stage where criminals are killing the lawyers and judges who are prosecuting them, then obviously they are as much of a danger as if they were killing policemen.

It's obvious that you have a higher regard for the "sanctity" of human life than I do. I just feel like there are some people in this world who have proven by their own actions that they do not deserve to live with the rest of us. Jails don't always work with these kinds of people, and history has shown that penal colonies don't work well either. For the safety of law abiding citizens I think the death penalty is SOMETIMES the only solution.