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Burning someone to death is very cruel...

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i saw a video of a village in africa burning people alive who they thought were witches. not only that, but if burning them alive wasn't enough, they beat them with sticks.

Reply 41

fran.ha

Liquidus Zeromus

Anyone who does puts an animal in pain for their own gratification is no better than a savage dog, imo.

I agree, although I'd say worse than a savage dog. I think we can all conclude that an animal such as a dog or cat does not have the exact intelligence of a human, but a dog would be highly driven by instinct and only have a mediocre grasp on right and wrong. A human should know better.

Reply 42

butthead7

i can't understand what goes through some peoples heads. they're scum

Reply 43

simcard2007

Additionally, the ethics must come into play on this. 4th degree burns to an Ant would not result in such a sentence. Even such torture to a human would result in more.

Where then is the species of animal 'ok' to torture?

Reply 44

happy watermelon

That is ******* disgusting. How could you do that to an innocent creature? Sick sick sick.

Reply 45

shark67

Whats the point in arguing over an opinion? I don't get it. My opinion is that 25 years is quite ridiculous. Then again, we are talking about America here.

Reply 46

username234673

shark67

Whats the point in arguing over an opinion? I don't get it. My opinion is that 25 years is quite ridiculous. Then again, we are talking about America here.

I agree. 25 years is far too much for burning a friggin cat.

Reply 47

Edmindu

lets be fair maybe 25 years is a bit much, but 24 is perfectly acceptable, if you can do it to a cat, you can do it to a person.

Reply 48

Marco1

Sentence sounds justified to me considering they broke in, tortured a cat and nearly ended up burning a building full of other people. Mindless and cruel.

Reply 49

mja

Edmindu

lets be fair maybe 25 years is a bit much, but 24 is perfectly acceptable, if you can do it to a cat, you can do it to a person.

But that simply isn't how sentencing works. If I punched someone and gave them a black eye, I would probably get a caution, maybe a community penalty. But you could say "if he can punch someone and give them a black eye he could punch someone and kill them".

After all, that punch could have killed. So I should be sentenced on that basis as if I were guilty of manslaughter - several years imprisonment. But that simply doesn't happen.

The 25 years quoted is the maximum possible sentence. You could say that a kid who steals crisps from a shop "could go to prison for 7 years" - the maximum for theft. But since we know that that wouldn't happen, quoting the legal maximum rather misses the point.

Reply 50

KingJoe

bj_945

You would have to be very careful but my personal intuition is that if they had the same intelligence levels and levels of self-consciousness as a cat, no, they could not be considered a true "person", and I think an injury of this sort to them would not be as grievous as to a fully autonomous, intelligent human being (that"s not to say that it would not be a bad thing).

Peace x

So if someone then horifically burnt this "non-person", they wouldn't deserve 25 years in jail?

Reply 51

quadruple_twist

Ugh. Some people should have come into this world as abortions.

Reply 52

wildcat123

Urgh. Absolutely disgusting. How mindless do you need to be to do such a thing.

Reply 53

Edmindu

mja

No i understand, i was just joking, i dont expect the judges to say things like "if you can shoot a rabbit, you can shoot a human." i just think if your cruel enough to set a cat on fire then your personal morals aren't exactly very good.

Reply 54

ImperceptibleNinja

quadruple_twist

Ugh. Some people should have come into this world as abortions.

Normally I'd be explicitly against such remarks, but I almost agree with it on this one.

Gratuitous, mindless animal cruelty is one of the few things that can draw a stream of expletives from me.

Reply 55

Conure

RamocitoMorales

Why isn't it a "person"?

You're seriously asking how a cat isn't a person?

Reply 56

bj_945

KingJoe

So if someone then horifically burnt this "non-person", they wouldn't deserve 25 years in jail?

I think it would be slightly more concerning behaviour since the cat-human would at least appear a lot closer to a human and so it shows up something about the way they may treat humans. Intuitively it seems worse than the cat because the person would resemble a human (who are normally people) and so we associate that physical action with the act of injuring a person.

However, on rational grounds I would struggle to justify giving out 25 years for that action because it does not appear to cause the same amount of suffering as the act of hurting a fully developed human being (for the sake of this I will ignore the practical problem of whether we could determine the degree of self-consciousness of this person).

Peace x

Reply 57