It’s really a shame about these innocent people’s lawyers
You’re being obtuse. Derek Bentley was an English prisoner who was hanged in 1953 and posthumously pardoned in 1998. Now, given that every step in the death penalty process hinges on the judgement of fallible humans, and given that, in time, the execution of an innocent is a mathematical certainty, it really is incumbent upon you to prove that the same mistakes which doomed Derek Bentley couldn’t possibly happen in America.
And incidentally, why is it that American right wingers can’t trust the government to do anything except execute the right people 100% of the time? The gospel of New American Republicanism is very clear on this point: Government is inherently corrupt, inefficient, and unresponsive. Why, Shodan, do you feel so comfortable trusting the government to perform this most grave and onerous responsibility perfectly every single time out?
Did you have an example that applies to what we were talking about - people who were executed in the US since 1976 who have been shown to be innocent, by DNA testing or the like?
Possibly because your statement of my political beliefs is grotesquely wrong.
Let me know if you run out of straw.
Regards,
Shodan
No. I only have the example of an Englishman wrongly executed since 1953. I ask again, is there anything inherent to the American judicial system which precludes even the possibility that a person may be executed for a crime he didn’t commit?
I believe I’ve represented your beliefs accurately. Where am I going wrong?
But so were the people that were convicted, sentenced to death, and on Death Row awaiting execution. Right? They were also proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Since you acknowledge that being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean actual innocence in all cases, what about the people for whom no DNA evidence was available? Why are you so confident in their guilt?
Shodan, i’d add to Bricker’s inquiry by reiterating my own question from post #78.
Because no evidence has been produced to overcome the fact that they have been shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
You need to prove your case. If you allege that any of those on death row are innocent, show the evidence that contravenes the evidence produced and sworn to in court.
Put it this way.
Correct me if I am wrong, but you are arguing that we cannot execute anybody because in some instances, they have been exonerated by DNA evidence. Do you believe that Roger Coleman belongs to the class of “People not to be executed”?
Regards,
Shodan
The decreased use of wigs?
Two things:
One, courtrooms and juries and appeals judges aren’t governmental departments run by bureaucrats, and they aren’t subject to the political whims of congress.
Two, we don’t trust courts and juries to be right 100% of the time, or at least I don’t. But we do believe that on balance many fewer innocent people are executed than are killed by paroled murderers or by convicted murderers in prison.
Then when we add in the additional benefits of justice having been served, an important degree of closure achieved for the family and loved ones of the murder victims, and the deterrent effect that the death penalty has (and would have more of if not for 22 year appeals processes), then there is no question that the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for murder.
It always surprises me how readily death penalty opponents are to discount the innocent lives lost to killings committed by previously convicted murderers. Why do those lives not count? It is a social injustice of the highest order that someone should lose their life or the life of a loved one because we have allowed a convicted murderer to live and kill again.
You’re ok with innocent people being killed by the government because you think it’s a necessary sacrifice for the “greater good”. Two questions:
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How would you feel if you (or someone you love) were trapped on death row for somebody else’s crime?
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Given that you’re okay with innocents being executed, what real difference exists between you and the murderer’s you’re so intent on punishing?
As for the issue of recidivism among the incarcerated and paroled? Well, a mandatory life sentence for murder, along with increased prison security, would go a long way toward clearing that up. And if someone was found to be innocent after twenty years, we’d still have a chance to rectify the mistake.
I’m against the death penalty, I don’t like SA, but this kind of crap is annoying as hell to read.
He’s not “OK” with innocent people being killed. He doesn’t want it to occur. But he accepts that we live in the real world where the possibility exists and may have occured. It’s akin to me saying that since you accept the risks that come with driving a car, you’re “OK” with your family being killed in a car accident.
I also find the “what if it happened to you or a loved one” to be a load of hooey too. It’s a bad thing, an evil thing, no matter who it happens to.
Finally, the difference between murder and the carrying out a death sentence are absolutely different.
There are dozens of great arguments against the death penalty. You shouldn’t need to pull this kind of crap.
IMO it’s obvious that the judicial system is far from perfect and that if as many people are executed as should be executed, then a lot of innocent people will be executed. If there have not been innocent people executed in recent years, then it’s only because the death penalty is so uncommon.
But you can’t make too much of that. That’s letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Probably about as shitty as if I were about to be killed by an escaped or paroled murderer.
The fact that the miniscule to non-existent number of innocents being executed have not been killed wantonly or to cover up some other crime.
Look, there are going to be collateral killings whichever way we go, and history has shown that far more innocent people are killed by convicted murderers than have ever been killed through wrongful execution. So what we have to do is decide which is better. Me? I’m going with the method that results in the fewest innocent people being killed.
Nope, mandatory life sentences are just one Supreme Court decision away from being non-existent, and thus far virtually no prison security system has been created that will eliminate prisoner-to-prisoner murder. Probably because to do so would be so restrictive as to raise complaints of inhumane treatment and civil liberties issues.
Who says? Are there four justices on record as opposing mandatory life sentences? And since when do you give a flying fuck in a rolling donut hole about intraprison murder?
As I said when you asked me the same question in the other thread:
Do you have even the slightest evidence beyond your own knee-jerk biases for thinking I don’t?
Nah, he’s okay with it. In much the same way as a coin will come up heads a hundred times in a row if you just keep on flipping, a state which administers capital punishment will eventually execute an innocent person. It’s a mathematical certainty, and not a matter of if but of when. Given this, the only rational position for people opposed to needless loss of life is staunch opposition to capital punishment. Starving Artist supports capital punishment. The execution of innocents may trouble him, but not enough to make him actually do something about it. By my lights, he’s okay with it.
No. It’s nothing like it at all. Driving is a personal choice, and if you’re okay with the dangers then all power to you. You don’t have much choice about being jacked up, thrown in a cell for twenty years, and then flung into a gas chamber to die. And this shouldn’t be necessary risk of simply existing in society.
I’m just trying to personalise it for the guy. It’s all too easy to be all hard nosed if you never bother putting yourself in an innocent death row victim’s shoes. I want to know how he’d feel if it was him, or one of his kids.
Not when you look at the big picture. No aspect of the capital process is exempt from the possibility of error. Therefore, people like Starving Artist who support capital punishment do so knowing in advance that sooner or later an innocent person will die at the hands of the state. He doesn’t know this person, and most likely will never pay him a moment’s thought. He, along with every other supporter of capital punishment in the 36 states in which it is practised, have effectively selected, as if by lottery, a sacrificial lamb to die in service of their idea of a greater good. Do you live in a death penalty state, Hamlet? It might be you someday. You never know.
So I ask again, what real difference exists between people like Starving Artist and the murderers he is so intent on punishing?
Since you’d just as soon kill the condemned, why should you care if they kill each other?
I’m seriously beginning to question your intelligence. Do you honestly believe that imprisoned murderers only kill other murderers? What about the kid doing five years for drug charges or writing hot checks? Lots of short-timers have been murdered in prison.
Like I said, innocent people are going to be killed either way. And since more innocent people have been killed by escaped/paroled killers than ever have by wrongful execution, I’m going with the method that results in the fewest innocent deaths.
Why do you hate innocent people, George?
So how about we abolish the death penalty and stop paroling convicted murderers?
That’s not a real difference. The dead don’t really care why they’ve been killed. And I can hardly imagine that a man strapped to a gurney inside a maximum security prison would be able to console himself with the knowledge that he’s at least not being killed by someone to cover up another crime. Instead, he’s being killed to satisfy someone else’s idea of justice. And that’s much better.
This isn’t an accounting exercise. We are morally obligated to prevent the needless deaths of innocents whenever possible. Abolishing capital punishment closes off one avenue by which such tragedies could occur. If the reintroduction of convicted killers causes problems further down the line then we should deal with those as they arise. What we absolutely shouldn’t do, is simply execute everyone convicted of murder, because that’s the only way that you will absolutely guarantee that innocents will definitely die.
But they exist right now. Why not use them?
How about solitary confinement for murderers?