#1. What the fuck does Abu Ghraib have to do with the U.S. criminal justice system?
#2. I am not aware of anyone who has been executed in the US lately who was later exonerated of their crime, do you have a cite for such a person?
#3. Even though some innocent men are undoubtedly on death row, the effort at proving their guilt and the long appeals process demonstrates that this is not something that is done lightly or cavalierly by the state at all.
#4. None of the above has anything at all even remotely in common with the death by torture (slow hanging meets my definition of torture) of a 16 YO girl “guilty” of nothing but opening her mouth. The fact that you think they are comparable acts leads me to doubt that we’ll even find anything to discuss since our opinions are so wildly different.
A slight quibble here: execution is not murder.
This from Miriam-Webster:
1 : the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought
2 a : something very difficult or dangerous <the traffic was murder> b : something outrageous or blameworthy <getting away with murder>
And from dictionary.com:
***1. The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice. ** *
*2. Slang. Something that is very uncomfortable, difficult, or hazardous: The rush hour traffic is murder.
- A flock of crows.*
(bolding mine).
Note that in both cases the killing must be unlawful in order to constitute murder. I’m not necessarily saying you are wrong in opposing capital punishment, as you are entitled to your opinion…but it’s inaccurate at the very least to call capital punishment murder.
And that excuse is no excuse at all because it just isn’t true. I know a lot of Persians and they look upon such acts with greater horror than we Americans do.
Anyone actually read the second article?
The penalty in Iran for having sex with an unmarried man is jail time and 100 lashes. The victim had been convicted of this offence and received that punishment 5 times previously. This “crime” and its punishment is not nice, not fair, arguably not right, but it’s not punished by execution.
The execution was pursued by the judge, personally. A LEGAL system which allows a judge to impose such a sentence when and where they choose is wrong.
The people of the town were shocked and appalled at her execution, so it can hardly be argued that it was “cultural”, when the majority of people from that culture find it just as wrong as people from outside it do.
I’m against capital punishment, too, and if I have a chance to vote to sway my reps agaisnt the death penalty, I will happily do so. But Ludovic seems to be ignoring the fact that the U.S. justice system is at least AIMED at punishing the guilty, rather than the innocent as is clearly the case in Iran where women are concerned.
I understand some Iranians don’t like the Iranian justice system, but guess what, they’re stuck with them, just like I’m stuck with Bush and Rummy and all those other assholes that my fuckin’ moronic countrymen re-elected. If someone wants to call America a nation of moronic gun freaks who are completely cool with people getting tortured for re-electing Bush, I’ll understand. Those Iranians better understand that so long as this kind of SHIT happens in their country, their country will be considered a shithole.
I’m saying that Ludovic’s post seems to indicate that Death Row is populated entirely with noble innocents.
That’s nice, and certainly that’s a good thing, but I wasn’t speaking about Persians. That comment was directed straight at that group of Americans who continuously maintain that one has no right to judge other cultures. It doesn’t matter what the issue is, since we are not part of their culture, we have no room to talk goes this line of reasoning. It’s complete bullshit.
Yeah, they have to live with knowing freak judges are out there that can get away with stuff like that. (We have judges over here who would do it if they could, but thankfully the local law department would have something to say about actually carrying out the sentence personally.)
But we have to live with knowing we execute innocent people, and don’t care enough to stop. The difference is that we can make a difference at the ballot if enough of us agree, whereas over there it’s a more informal process.
I’d wager that particular judge won’t go very far in his career, due to being an embarassment to the establishment, but that hardly makes up for what he did.