>If they saw Home Alone 2 (there is a brick-
>throwing scene in that; I must sorrowfully admit
>that I've watched it) they really wouldn't have
>known that throwing bricks at people kills them.

Bull. Anyone who has ever so much as banged their head against something knows that things that are hard and heavy hurt like hell when they hit your head. So at the *very* least they knew that what they were doing was causing extreme pain. Maybe they didn't understand death (Which I still don't buy, because I understood death when I was 5--my dog died when I was 5, and I remember that my mother didn't have to explain to me that he wasn't coming back, I knew that already) but they most certainly knew they were causing extreme pain. I can't chalk it up to "experimenting" or anything like that, because one hit with a brick would have been plenty to make any expirimenter realize that their experiment was causing terrible pain and that they were doing something horribly wrong.

Personally, to step back and give my honest opinions, I really think the penal system should be about punishment first, then rehabilitation. I think the punishment should be harsh and severe in proportion to the crime. If it's not, then people won't mind being sent to prison, because it'll just mean days full of lifting weights and studying for law degrees while the state pays for it all. But rehabilitation should be a serious consideration because severe punishment *without* rehabilitation (which is essentially what we have a lot of places in the US now) just produces more hardened criminals.

But I also believe that capital punishment is justified as the most severe punishment available to the state. And I *do* think that human governments have the right to administer capital punishment, because the whole *reason* for governments to exist is to protect the rights and provide safety for the citizens. Certain criminals are most definitely unrepentant and beyond rehabilitation. Death is the fitting punishment, to keep protect society from them.

Did these kids deserve to die? I don't know. But I definitly think it should have been an option.

-- Dave