It supplied far more information then the vast majority of murder cases. It showed motive, intent, action, and the result of those actions. Working backwards they were responsible for his death, they used excessive force, the force was prefaced with an implied threat.
Barring some bizarre event involving outside forces unseen in the video there isn’t a rational explanation for what occurred.
Of course not. I’ve tried really hard to point that out, and stated it explicitly several times.
Once more, justice system = red herring. Yes, the justice system shouldn’t care if its laws are morally justified—in fact, it can’t, it’s simply outside its purview, it’s not the kind of thing the justice system considers, at all. I get that, even though you seem to be quite taken by the idea that I don’t. But we do care, in fact, we must.
You might be of the opinion that it should be that way, and ideally, perhaps it might be, but in reality, it basically never is (as, again, shown by the fact that laws and the attending legal systems do get changed; there would be no need for that if they were perfect from the start).
The question is a simple one: is it just that the guy who killed on a Friday walks? But of course, you can’t really answer it either way—answering it affirmatively is patently absurd, but answering it in the negative is a severe problem for the arguments you have presented, since we could equally well have this whole conversation about just this sort of case. But I’d still like to see your answer.
So, then, the system of Nazi Germany was a good one? The Friday rule system is a good one, just as long as it applies it equitably?
But the actual question was ‘what other evidence was presented, or even could have been presented to ameliorate the evidence readily available’. Is that one of those I can ask, or one of those I’m not allowed to?
But you’re making it kinda hard. It’s like discussing the composition of the surface of the Moon with someone who, upon my proposal that it’s made of lunar regolith, launches into a diatribe about how it’s obviously not composed of green cheese, of how I confuse astronomy with the dairy industry, of how there aren’t even any cows in space, and so on, because they believed I had claimed it to be made of green cheese.
I’m joking of course, but if my clarification to you that
causes you to say
Then I must wonder a little how much influence what I actually say has on what you believe that I say.
But you must recognize that such a requirement can be too strict. Just take it to the extreme: a system in which it is impossible to prove guilt will never convict any innocents, but I would still consider it a bit of a shoddy deal (though maybe you want to disagree, since it works perfectly well according to the rules it works by).
Same way I reject yours. It’s an opinion. It is, by definition, not valid in objective discourse. How many times do I have to say the same things? I like anchovies on pizza. It’s an opinion. Your taste probably is different. Neither one of us is wrong.
Completely allowed. Just a bit pointless, since you aren’t actually putting forward a debatable proposition. Maybe it was UFO aliens. I’m not saying it was, I’m just raising the possibility. I won’t debate it. (But can you prove it wasn’t UFO aliens?)
Full trial transcripts and summaries of evidence are likely available. If you feel the need for full information, look them up. Read them in full. Inform yourself. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be cheap. But you can actually do this.
Some of this evidence has been mentioned in previous posts in this thread. The previous history of the victim was of some weight in the verdict. There was a lot of other evidence introduced. It’s all publicly available. Research it as if you were going to write a book on the subject. (Heck, there probably are people doing exactly that!)
Doesn’t this also apply to jury deliberations themselves?
Well, that’s of course a bad example, since it’s completely subjective; but not everything is. Often, people will have reasons for their opinions, which they may share, possibly widening one another’s horizons, maybe even creating agreement! I mean, there’s a lot of discussion about religion on this forum, I’ve noticed. Since nobody’s got any evidence there, it’s all just opinion—would you just have them shut up? And even if there’s evidence, people may have a different opinion regarding that evidence, its validity or applicability, and discuss that. I mean, you think opinions can’t be discussed, I think they can—and here we are discussing our opinions about that!
More seriously, anything ever debated comes down to ‘opinion’, because if there was an unambiguous fact of the matter, there would be no debate. You can’t debate facts; only opinions are debatable. There’s no debate whether there’s an elephant in my living room or not. But one may debate whether one should increase wildlife reserves for elephants is very much up for debate—based on what peoples opinions are.
Maybe it was. And it’s certainly something that might account for the evidence presented in such a way as to make a not guilty verdict seem reasonable. But unless you want to argue that everything logically possible is equally plausible, it’s not a very good argument. But nevertheless, it’s more in the spirit of the discussion that I had hoped to have than most of the posts in this thread.
So, the next time somebody asks a question about some scientific topic, am I to tell them to study the relevant quantum field theory and general relativity and at the very least some basic string theory before they can ask that question?
That way, of course, every debate can be settled—just avail yourself of all the information, then you’ll reach some decision, but don’t bother me. Of course, this reasoning effectively eliminates one of the chief methods to do this info searching, but then I guess that’s just too bad.
No, it’s not even slightly absurd, and I’ve answered it repeatedly. If it is legal to kill on Fridays, it is absolutely just, right, moral, equitable, and whatever else you care to say that anyone who kills on a Friday is found not guilty by a court, and walks free.
It is utterly immoral, wrong, unjust, unfair, whatever for a court to find guilt when the law, and the evidence, do not support that decision.
None of this has any bearing on the morality, justice, rightness, and so forth of the killers acts. You are still making the false assumption that, because someone’s acts are wrong, immoral, what have you, that it is *necessarily *right, fair, just or moral to punish them. It is not.
Oh, and this remains a silly question no matter how many times you ask it, and shows a continued deep misunderstanding of the criminal justice system. Or are you looking for a piece of evidence that would show that the officers conduct was moral? I doubt you’ll find that, but that’s not really relevant to anything here.
OK, so, let me get this right. Are you actually claiming that the rules the system works by determine what is morally right? Are you actually wanting to argue that it’s perfectly just in Nazi Germany that Jews were sent to work camps, since it’s the law?
I mean, of course it’s ‘right’ for the court to judge according to the law, but that, again, is not the question. The question is, is it just that a killer is punished for his acts if committed on a Thursday, but not on a Friday?
No. The stance I’m arguing from is that when a harmful, morally wrong act is committed, then it is desirable for the justice system to ‘punish’, or in whatever other way appropriately treat, the guilty parties.
No, I’m looking for a piece of evidence that casts reasonable doubt upon their guilt. So far, I haven’t seeen any. And before you try to play the ‘you don’t know all the evidence, so presumably there’s some somewhere’-card again, here are the play-by-plays, as I was able to find them, of the final three days of the case, with the closing arguments; I didn’t find anything new, but maybe you’ll have better luck.
Note that there’s two different strands of argument here, which you may be getting mixed up. One is the original purpose for this thread: was there, in fact, reasonable doubt in the guilt of the police officers? Taking into account what I know, I don’t believe so.
The other is brought on by the responses to this question from you and others that were along the ‘you can’t ask this question’-line. This is the argument that no matter what the concrete details, a reasonable justice system must always be questioned, and continuously so, because even if it works perfectly well according to its own standards, that doesn’t imply it’s a good justice system, and it must be refined if it is found wanting.
So when I’m talking about the Friday rule case, then I’m not necessarily considering it analogous to the Thomas case—it may be, but only if the system worked according to its own rules, and if nevertheless, the verdict wasn’t just, neither of which I take as given.
No. I’m saying that, if the Nuremberg trials had decided that there was no law the could convict the Nazis, and so let them off, that would be moral and just. I am saying that a system that convicts people despite a lack of evidence they broke the law is immoral and unjust.
Yes, absolutely that’s just and moral. Someone should not be punished for legal acts. To punish them for that is wrong, unjust, unfair, immoral, and anything else you like to add.
I’m well aware what you are saying. You are wrong.
I’ll read them, thanks for the links.
By all means question the system, but claiming that it’s failed when it’s worked perfectly is silly, quite frankly.
If the system worked according to it’s own rules, the verdict was just. That doesn’t say anything about the morality or justice of the system of a whole, or the acts of the acquitted men.
Having read the first two of those links, the differing medical testimony as to whether they caused his death alone provides reasonable doubt. The acquittal was correct.
How do we, as a society, determine whether or not a given act is harmful or morally wrong?
Do we hold a trial? Or do we listen to the opinions of individuals on internet discussion boards?
Or, for that matter, how do we determine whether or not the claimed harmful, immoral act definitely occurred?
Or the very definition of immoral! “Harmful” is relatively easy to define, but “immoral” is way, way out there. I ate a ham sandwich today; there are millions who hold that to be immoral (or at least unclean.)
Self-government isn’t for wimps. It’s bloody hard work, and we’ve been at it for thousands of years. If an occasional “wrongful acquittal” is the price we pay for a functional democracy, it’s a bargain!
You most certainly can. All laws are based on morality. If the laws are not congruent with morality, they must be changed. A court that does not make decisions that are based on morailty is an immoral court and must be fought, changed, resisted. Pot laws being a case in point. At this point, they are simply evil, and any court that gives a person jail time for simple possession is just plain evil, and is any human being that supports such decisions.
The laws need to be changed, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the courts shouldn’t enforce them. The jury has the right to nullify if they agree with you, though. In this particular case I agree with you, but I’m not prepared to generalise it to all laws that are wrong.
But I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about the calls for people to be convicted and punished even when the evidence isn’t compelling, or when what they did should be illegal but isn’t. I consider that a conviction in that case would be wrong, immoral, and yes, evil. Your description of a court who convicted someone for pot possession is pretty much exactly my view of a court that, in the hypothetical, would convict someone of killing on a Friday, or in the real world would convict without enough evidence.
In short, the court should always strongly favour the defendant.
But that was a wholly different system then; and what that system found is that the Nazi’s acts were wrong. And they were wrong, but independently of the Nuremberg trials judging them to be so. They merely correctly demonstrated this wrongness, which was present even when those acts were committed, that is, when the Nazi system worked perfectly well according to its own rules. Otherwise, the Nuremberg trials could not have established this—so the fact that the Nazis were condemned despite acting only according to their own system seems to be in direct contradiction with your assertion that there is no notion of right and wrong beyond the system.
Nobody’s saying anything against that, so you can stop repeating it.
But then, the Nazis shouldn’t have been punished, no? Their acts were perfectly legal according to their own system; it was only bringing them under another system that caused them to be held accountable for their crimes. But that would not be possible if there were no system-independent notion of right and wrong.
It’s not desirable that the justice system treats the guilty appropriately? Interesting stance.
I’m not claiming that it failed, I’m raising the possibility, as a response to your earlier assertions that when the system works according to its own rules, its verdict is unquestionable. This is not the case. The Nuremberg trials are an example of questioning the verdicts of a system that worked according to its own rules.
Of course it does. If the system reaches an immoral verdict, then that verdict is not just, regardless of the system’s functioning. Again, say proving guilt in the system is so hard that everybody walks free. Or go further, consider a system in which the innocent are punished, and the guilty aquitted. Do you think that system’s verdicts are just?
It may be just—or at least, defensible—that in this system, a jury votes to acquit—they don’t have any other choice, and you can’t fault them for doing the only thing they were able to do (though one could argue that there may be a moral responsibility to disobey an immoral system; just doing what you were told to do is not typically considered a valid defense). But that doesn’t make the fact that murderers and other guilty parties walk free, face no consequences for their actions just (the fact that we have a system in place that intends to punish them shows that we as a society don’t consider this just). These are two separate issues, which you fail to distinguish.
Well, I still think the DA make a correct case that this controversy was largely manufactured by the defense; and in any case, what exactly is the suggestion here? That Thomas just coincidentally slipped into a coma and died? This is too implausible to create reasonable doubt in my eyes. It seems clear to me that if the officers had taken a different course of actions, Thomas’ death could have been prevented, in numerous ways, and they were well aware of the necessity for them to act.
Typically, by voting those people into office that we hope will eventually pass laws we believe to best ensure that morality is upheld (a process which includes even the opinions of individuals on internet discussion boards).
I’m not saying it’s easy, but there’s just no alternative. Further, pointing out that there doesn’t seem to be a catch-all solution for the problems present (or that I don’t have one) doesn’t mean there are no problems.
But who calls for that?
How so? The court condemning the pot user would act within the laws, while the court that convicted the Friday-killer would act against them.
To a point. Again, a system in which the defendant is favoured absolutely, and always walks free, clearly would be wrong, since it offers its subjects no protection against harmful acts.
Half Man Half Wit, you are simply repeating points I’ve already presented my arguments against, you are not bringing anything new. All I can say is that a system that lets people walk free when they haven’t been proven to break the law is absolutely not immoral or unjust, no matter what you say.