A poet I'm not, but for your memes I'm hot!!!

I knew he was sentenced to death and transferred to Holman Prison to be executed but no one told me that inmate hanged himself. I worked at Donaldson until 2003 but word never got to me about that. I looked him up for wondering if he had ever been executed. For appealing, an inmate can last as long 30 or 40 years on death row. Built much later than old Holman, the third of Death Row housed at Donaldson has cells designed to lend no way for an inmate to hang himself. All executions take place at Holman.
https://www.al.com/spotnews/2010/01/a...

It's best to go to the original source and look at what Ayn Rand herself published to see what her position was. In this case the source is hard to find without having The Objectivist, and the TAS article you referred to did not (if I found the right one) reference it -- you have to know where to look. I don't know if the January 1963 article is on the web, though some excerpts can be found quoted.

If you want to read the original The Objectivist Newsletter article I can scan it for you (it's a brief article), or The Objectivist Newsletter (1962-1965) is sold at https://estore.aynrand.org/p/210/the-... but is currently back ordered. Higher priced used copies are at amazon, with bookfinder.com better https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac...

The original article is longer than what I wrote above and does make a distinction between the legal process and its moral base, but not in terms of something the TAS article called "practical epistemology" (whatever that is intended to mean) . The moral base begins with consideration of the criminal himself, but also includes the affect on the innocent. The legal process could sweep up the innocent in false convictions (as it is known to do) because it does not operate with full certainty. How to formulate and implement legal processes concerns philosophy of law as a specialty, including standards of legal proof, and is not part of general philosophy.

The TAS article went on say that the issue is "in debate in Objectivist circles", but that isn't about Ayn Rand and her definitive position, and it did not invoke anything about arguing both sides against the middle and didn't say there is no answer.

Thank you for the history.

It is good to know that the facility was named after him.

It could have been that the attacker would have been elevated to hero status as it is the SOP these days.

What happened to the murderer?

You're a poet. Didn't know it.

That's it. It's named after a late Officer William Donaldson. It was originally named the West Jefferson Correctional Facility due to it being in Jefferson County where Birmingham is.
Donaldson was among those who relieved the officers I happened to be with that day in an Administrative Segregation Unit where really bad boys are housed,
Donaldson did not leave that post alive. He was escorting a nurse performing pill call from cell to cell when an inmate tossed coffee on the nurse.
Donaldson and whoever was operating doors in the cubicle became so angry they forgot the dang rules. Donaldson should have had at least one officer wit him when that cell door was opened. Donaldson charged in baton in hand.
The inmate was waiting with a shank and stabbed him in the heart. Because the prison is a half hour out in the boonies from Bessemer a rescue chopper was sent for but it was already too late. Learned the murderer was already a cop killer. This was before the future Donaldson prison picked up a third of death row. So why that inmate was not on death row down at a prison in south Alabama I have no idea.

To believe.....your Aleve......would relieve.....
could be naive.....

Me dino can send you some of my Aleve.

Poor guy.

How does his disproportionately strong punishment compare with those sentences the court hands out to murderers, in the name of Sanctuary Laws, in San Francisco?

Dino, is the facility you worked the one on the photo? Impressive building.

Forgetting about the aspirin factory?? That's enough to give one a headache!!

The Atlas Society must be wrong, then. See their interpretation of Ms. Rand’s position on capital punishment.

Not just the victim's trauma, which is bad enough, also the threat to his life. That plus the previous history should not be ignored with a sensationalist headline claiming he was imprisoned for so long for only $50. The restitution due to the victim is a lot more than $50 and so is the nature of the punishment.

Out for good behavior after some period of time? Maybe, with both evidence that he can be trusted to be back in public and sufficient punishment for the sequence of accumulating crimes, but restitution is not the primary purpose of sentencing for a crime. But we can be thankful that his later better behavior at least reduced the risk to dino.

Ayn Rand's position on capital punishment is very clear. She did not "argue both sides against the middle" on this or any other topic.

Her position was that fallibility in legal proof of guilt precludes the death penalty because of the risk to the innocent improperly found guilty. A murderer morally deserves the death penalty, but not at the risk of the innocent falsely accused. The legal principle for what to do must be based on both the guilty and the innocent. (The Objectivist Newsletter January 1963)

That is not situational ethics or arguing both ends against a middle.

I'll help pay for the wall.

Maybe it could happen in terms of who has to pay for selected things. Only leftists vote and pay for illegal immigrants for example.

Me dino knows a split will never happen.
Just having fun here.
Why? Why not?

A splitup is never going to happen. Britain cant even secede from the EU

Oh, I dunno. The "yankee" side would have all the snowflake wimps who'd lack safe spaces from drill instructors who'd scream in their faces at the boot camps.

Given the desire on the part of the Union to take over ALL the land between atlantic coast and pacific coast, it wouldnt have mattered who shot first. The confederate states seceded, and they had to be put down. Same thing would happen today

Last time the South made the grievous mistake of shooting first by bombarding Fort Sumter.

I would go for that. Unfortunately, look what happened when the south tried that last time...

Me Alabama boy sez Yeehaw! The South shall rise again!

Its time for the country to split into two parts- those who want a republic, and the other for open borders and total democracy and rule of the mob.

I'm lucky I lived through all that.

Thanks! Me dino had forgotten all about that aspirin factory.