well that’s a valid worry but we entrust decisions to untrained people who send the innocent to death and let deadly criminals go free. Judges do have some power to invalidate a jury decision so there is that safety valve.
Well, I never said anything about absolute moraliy or certain knowable truth, and the argument doesn’t imply it; nor does it even need to be possible to take a god’s eye view, it merely needs to be conceivable. But it seems you have chosen to attribute this stance to me no matter what, so I guess if that’s what you want, then I can’t change that.
But as I pointed out, if your conception of justice system requires the metaphysical impossibility of objective morality, then you’ve got a very strange position to defend: first of all, whether or not your system applies depends on metaphysical details that we don’t currently know and perhaps never will; second, of course, all the familiar objections to moral relativism apply, in fact, your stance seems contrary to that of most philosophers on the matter, who believe that a justice system is far more easily conceived off if it is built on objective morality. Furthermore, of course, you don’t strictly have any recourse to the guiding principle that presumption of innocence is the morally right guiding principle to construct a justice system, as there is to you no morality apart from that system (and if there is, then that’s the sort of morality applicable to the god’s eye view).
“Shut up if you don’t like it” is not a very good guiding principle in a democratic system, I think. All social progress starts with people who don’t ‘just accept it’.
But you aren’t promoting progress. You haven’t made any concrete proposals for improving the system, so as to make such events less likely.
“I don’t like it” is, of course, free speech, and I hope you will note that I never told you to “shut up.” I just don’t see the point of complaining, “The system failed” without taking the effort to point out exactly how it failed, and what could/should be done to change this.
You mean like the way that Italy does things?
That I don’t have a ready-made solution doesn’t mean there’s no problem, and doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to point to what I see as problematic. This kind of head-in-the-sand attitude leads to ignoring the problems until they get sufficiently bad that they can’t be ignored anymore, which typically doesn’t end well for those doing the ignoring.
Has anyone said “you’re not allowed” to post whatever you want? No: no one has. Bit of a straw-man there.
I said it seems pointless to me, and I stand by that.
Meanwhile, well…keep working on specifics. I’ll happily debate you (heck, I might even agree with you.) But not until we’re more clear on what is being debated.
You seem to be not marking a distinction between a just system and a just verdict. HMHW is talking about whether a system is just or not. You are talking about whether a verdict is just or not. HMHW has said as much, but I’m not sure you’re understanding that point.
HMHW is arguing that a system which makes it legal to commit murder is an unjust system. In that sense, he can say that a case like this shows an injustice built into our system.
You don’t disagree with that, do you?
I missed this comment. It looks like y’all got the misunderstanding straightened out so nvm.
I know you saw and responded to my later comment, but I’ll just make a quick reply to this. The reason I’m arguing this way, about my belief that an acquittal in that circumstance would be moral and just, is that this thread came from questioning why the cops were acquitted. When discussing specific cases, one should take the law and how it’s applied as a given, not attempt to treat a specific case as though the law were otherwise, no matter how much you may disagree with it. Changing the law should be discussed, IMHO, as a general thing, though obviously with references to specific cases that highlight the problems with it.
Huge agreement. Simply saying, “This verdict was unjust” is…uninteresting. It isn’t helpful. Okay, maybe it was. (I say that about the O.J. Simpson verdict… And I also say “So what?” to myself!)
Do wrongful verdicts happen? Well, I guess so. We’re human. We don’t have the “omniscient” system speculated upon upthread. If being fallible means the system is “unjust,” then I got news for the world: life ain’t fair.
I want to hear concrete proposals for improving the system. I’m sure they exist! Los Angeles is currently going through a scandal involving prisoner abuse. That’s not acceptable. (And I do have a concrete proposal: reduce prison crowding!)
Then how should I understand posts telling me that I ‘should just accept it’ or ‘shouldn’t complain’, or even that I couldn’t complain because it’s impossible for acquittals to be wrong?
Well, the debate was, roughly (not that I haven’t explicitly spelled that out half a dozen times): was there in fact anything wrong with the verdict in the Kelly Thomas trial?
But oddly, nobody seemed all too keen to engage that question; rather, all the replies that came were in one way or another attempts to dissuade people from asking it (you haven’t got all the information, you’re not allowed to complain without offering a solution—not that anyone really complained in the first place, acquittals are never wrong, etc.).
To me, it seems a reasonable strategy to first discuss whether there is a problem, and what the problem is; you evidently feel differently, to which I think I can finally only repeat the answer you seem to favour towards my attempts, which is, ‘well, so what’.
I’ve spent a great deal of time engaging with that question, both specific to this verdict and on the matter of acquittals in general. You seem to think that because I have a different opinion to you, and that I am able to back up my opinion with arguments, that I think you shouldn’t have an opinion.
You still won’t answer the specific question why you think the verdict may be wrong. Ultimately the presumption is innocence, the presumption is that an acquittal is correct, and the burden of proof is on those claiming it’s wrong. So, please tell me on what basis you think the verdict was wrong, on what basis you think the jury should have convicted.
You are of course allowed to question, and as a general rule should be encouraged to do so. But when you’ve received the answers to your questions, to reject them because they’re not answers you like is foolish.
Well, but, see, this is exactly beside the point: the debate was whether or not the verdict was wrong, not what should be done given that it wasn’t. The presumption wasn’t that something went wrong, but to discuss whether something did.
And the reason one might have questions about the verdict is, as again has been pointed out numerous times, that the video and forensic evidence seem to paint a conclusive picture, yet nevertheless the jury ruling was in opposition to that picture. So the invitation basically was to try and find additional grounds on which the jury verdict would be reasonable, given the evidence we can dig up; your stance that the verdict is reasonable ex hypothesi just misses the point. You entered the discussion on the wrong foot, arguing that since some people felt there was reasonable doubt, there probably was reasonable doubt; but that just wasn’t the question, but rather, to try and find out what were the grounds for reasonable doubt.
I ultimately provided about the only material in that direction (with the exception of what DrDeth posted) I’ve seen so far myself, with the summary of the closing arguments in this post. This is the sort of thing I was looking for in this thread (speaking, of course, only for myself, not for the OP): what the actual arguments and evidence were that prompted the jury to vote the way they did. And I’m sorry if I’m misremembering, but I don’t recall you providing something similar.
The problem is that what I have received are by and large the answers to different questions.
In any case, if you’re willing, here’s a last question I would like you to answer: take a scenario in which wrongdoing was involved—say, for definiteness, a murder. Now, take two hypothetical continuations of that scenario: in one, the murderer is caught, brought to trial, and convicted; in the other, the murdered is likewise caught and brought to trial, but not convicted, for the reason that some key piece of evidence was missing—say, the surveillance tapes showing the accused putting a bullet into the victim’s head.
Now, clearly, in both situations, judge and jury acted appropriately: guilt can’t be established without the tapes, so there’s no basis for a conviction. But does that really mean that both verdicts are equally good? Wouldn’t you rather that the tapes had been available in the second case, in order to properly convict the murderer?
Personally, my preference is clear: of course I would want the killer to be brought to justice. So even though in both situations, I agree that proper procedures were followed, nevertheless, I think socially, we’re worse of in the second, with a killer on the loose. Thus, I greatly prefer situation 1 to situation 2 (that I would prefer both to another situation 3 in which an innocent was convicted has no bearing on the matter).
However, based on the way you’ve been arguing so far, I think you won’t express a preference. The situation is essentially one in which the ‘god’s eye’ viewpoint is readily available, and of course, shows that there is no need for an absolute morality or a certain knowable truth for the argument. It’s a clear case, to me, in which one verdict better realizes the intent and purpose of the criminal justice system than another. It’s also a clear case where the acquittal is wrong, in the sense that the accused actually did it, and would have been convicted had the tapes been available.
That’s the problem right there. I really don’t know how else to explain it, I’ve tried many times, but you have the burden of proof backwards. Grounds for reasonable doubt exist until and unless it is proven otherwise. In general, one can’t provide a single piece of evidence that provides reasonable doubt, that’s akin to proving a negative. Sometimes, of course, one can prove innocence, but cases where innocence is provable, such as with a solid alibi, rarely come to trial. Not never, of course, but in general the single easily presented piece of evidence that clears someone at trial is Hollywood fiction.
No, you’re correct, I didn’t, as I’ve not found anything. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of easily findable reporting of this case that goes into more detail that your cites.
That said, they show that there was disagreement among the medical professionals as to whether the police officers caused his death, and so that is grounds for reasonable doubt.
Yes, I would also prefer the killer to be brought to justice. In the second case, however, you do not know who the killer is. Obviously, it would be better if the tapes were available.
You make your prejudice clear when you refer to the second man as a murderer, even though you cannot know that.
There is no way you can know whether situation 2 is, in fact, situation 3. None. You simply cannot distinguish between them. You say that the extreme of my argument is that there could be no convictions. The extreme of yours, that we don’t want any killers going free, would be to convict everyone.
There is, based on your hypothetical, no sense in which the accused actually did it but we don’t have the evidence. If we don’t have it, we don’t know. It is literally unknowable, unless and until we develop accurate mind reading technology - and even then there’s issues with false confessions, delusions, and false memories, which is why confessions alone aren’t proof beyond reasonable doubt.
So, to answer your hypothetical in the only way I can - either in case 2 there is sufficient evidence without the tapes to convict him, or we as a society are better off if we let him go, as we do not know if he is a killer or not.
And the question is: how does the video + forensic evidence not prove otherwise? And there, it is reasonable to expect additional evidence, because I am not asking for what establishes reasonable doubt, but for what obviates the conclusion reached via the evidence available to us.
Which is of course readily possible. There’s no elephant in this room—looks around—proven! (I’m sorry, but that just happens to be one of my favourite internet skeptics slogan that, all in all, probably has done more harm than good. Things are rarely that easily sloganizable, as should be readily apparent by noticing that ‘you can’t prove a negative’ is a negative, so if we knew that to be true, it would be false.)
If you genuinely didn’t know, you also couldn’t say that it would be better if the tapes were available, as you wouldn’t have access to the counterfactual.
But I do, it’s just the jury that doesn’t. I’m not within the system. This is, really, the critical distinction: what actually happened, happened independently of what the jury knows, and how the jury rules. In this scenario, I have supplied an explicit reference frame outside of the system, from which we—meaning specifically you and myself—can make our judgments, but even without it, there would still be a fact of the matter regarding the killing. In one situation, that fact is readily discoverable, in the other, it’s obscured; but a fact it is in both. You recognize this when you say that you would prefer the tapes to be available, but then again shut it out, narrowing your focus to be within-system only again.
No. The extreme of mine would be that all murderers would be brought to justice. In the case of the tapes being available, the conviction can only be made because the tapes establish guilt, a guilt which, however, exists prior to and independent of the judgment. In an ideal system, such a judgment would occur if and only if this guilt is present, leading exactly to the conviction of the guilty, and the acquittal of the innocent. Such a system is, regrettably, impossible, but nevertheless, we should strive to approximate as best we can.
But of course there is. Even if we can’t know it, he’s either done it, or not—what we can know of the world does not change what happens (at least not at length scales above a micrometer or so). I mean, you’re not literally saying that if the jury can’t know whether somebody put a bullet into someone’s head or not, there is no fact of the matter regarding whether they did, are you?
But here, in admitting that if there were such technology or something like it available, there would be a way of establishing guilt, you admit that there is an independent fact of the matter regarding guilt. In that sense, the accused actually did it, but we don’t have the evidence.
Yes, the society in situation 2 is better off not convicting him based on insufficient evidence; this I am not arguing against. But there is a clear sense, to me at least, in which the society in situation 1 is better off than the society in situation 2: there’s less murderers walking around free. In this sense, the acquittal in situation 2 is wrong, as it fails to accord with the actual fact of the matter regarding guilt. Of course, nothing can be done about that in situation 2 that wouldn’t likely lead to greater injustice. But that’s not the issue.
I addressed this question and received no reply. I think it’s pretty clear that their is a fair amount of favoritism when it comes to police being charged with murder while on duty. There is enough subjectivity that the jury tends to be more forgiving toward police than a regular civilian. I showed why young men can be convicted of murder (in Indiana) with extreme extenuating circumstances, and then asked why not police officers? If your actions result in the death of another, regardless of intent, there should be legal consequences for those actions. In this case, I think it was pretty clear that the officers were not doing their best to stay within reason when conducting themselves. Jurors are more forgiving of police officers because they think they have still done more good than bad.
I think this is too idealistic of a take on the “innocent until proven guilty” mantra in the US. Sometimes innocent people are forced to spend a year in jail before their trial reaches a verdict of innocence. Essentially ruining their lives, or at least disrupting them significantly. Not that these policeman were innocent. I think it’s pretty obvious that the police officer was in the wrong when he held his fists in Kelly’s face and said, “Now see these fists? They’re going to fuck you up.” To be acquitted of ALL charges seems laughable. I can see maybe dropping the charges on the second and third officer, or finding them innocent, but the first officer seemed to have played a major role in setting the tone for the entire altercation.
That’s not a debate. That’s a question.
There are two answers:
Procedurally, from the point of view of someone interested in the justice system, the answer is, no. There was nothing wrong with the verdict. It was arrived at by due process, according to the rules, under strict supervision.
Ideally, from the point of view of absolute truth, the answer is, maybe. Maybe the verdict was wrong, and if we had all the information that God has, we’d know this for sure.
The latter is an unobtainable ideal, with supernatural requisites, and so doesn’t interest me a whole lot.
Definite agreement! I’ve always hated that slogan, and, in fact, I’ve often used “no elephant in this room” as an example. To be slightly technical, you can prove a negative in circumstances that permit an exhaustive search of the experimental space.
I couldn’t prove that there are no elephants in Argentina, because I can’t search all of Argentina at a level of resolution of the size of an elephant. But I can search all of “this room” at a scale of around one cubic foot, and that excludes all but “microscopic elephants.” (Which some wags have inserted into the discussion to try to rebut your point. However, that falls through the cracks of my “exhaustive search at an appropriate scale” argument, and thus fails for moving the goalposts.)
At some point, you’ll really have to give a list of things you consider worthy of debate, I keep running into these weird proscriptions. You can’t discuss/debate the answer to a question now? I mean, there’s like five questions in the ten topmost GD threads at the moment, maybe you should give them an update, too.
Well, that’s a possibility, and maybe should be the default, but it’s not automatically given: mistrials happen, and sometimes, a trial will reach a verdict without due process being observed. So it’s not really true that this is ‘the answer’: it’s certainly debatable.
But we can strive to better approximate that ideal. I mean, presumably, you wouldn’t be OK with a system that says, eh, absolute truth is unattainable, we’ll just flip a coin. And why? Because the current system is orders of magnitude better at producing an appropriate verdict than random chance—because it better approximates the underlying fact of the matter. So saying ‘we can’t know ultimate truth’ doesn’t absolve you from discussion, either.
Yes, but that’s beside the point, really. The problem is that people are confused regarding inductive reasoning: no finite amount of non-observations of elephants suffices to strictly logically establish the non-existence of an elephant. But that’s not a feature of the negative, but of the inductive nature of observation, and as we know since Hume, induction never establishes anything with certainty. But that goes as well for positive as for negative propositions: the observation that the sun rose yesterday and every day before that does not logically entail that it will rise tomorrow.
Additionally, of course, there is no strict category of ‘negative’ statements, logically speaking: what you can formulate positively, you can formulate negatively. So there’s just no sense in which the negative is special; the most we can say is that a finite set of observation never strictly justifies a general proposition. But of course, inductive reasoning is one of our most important guide posts in the world, so it doesn’t really make sense to give it up.
Well, once more, no one here has put any restrictions whatever upon your speech.
And I’m sure you actually do comprehend the nature of a debate, and are only engaging in Socratic Irony by pretending you don’t. But, if it helps, my request is that you make a definitive claim, which, in debate terms, constitutes your resolution. You’ve asked a lot of questions, but I’m damned if I know what you are actually stating.
Agreed. I think we have an excellent system, with profound safeguards against all kinds of error. And, yes, I think there is room for improvement. I believe, at this point, we are well into the region of diminishing returns, as we have already made all of the easy reforms.
By the way, something I should have said earlier: yes, the system produces “bad verdicts” all the time – and very often corrects them by the appeals process. There is also the noteworthy “Innocence Project” and other non-governmental groups of the same kind. The ACLU and the NRA are “plug in” components of the overall system, and serve heroic duty in keeping it free from corruption.
Agreed all around. If it helps any, allow me to repeat my deepest admiration for you and your posting history here when the subject is that of the sciences. You know that stuff better than I ever could.
re the legal system…I won’t claim to any deep knowledge, only just enough to be pretty sure I don’t agree with some of what you’ve said.
My biggest complaint is this: You say the verdict, in this case, might likely be incorrect. But you have never provided any suggestion whatever for how we could learn the true answer to this question. Was the verdict bad? How can I answer that question? How would anyone here go about discovering it? What is your “method” for learning?
Would you hold a new trial? Or an appeal of the trial? If those don’t end the way you feel is right, would you then demand a further round of hearings? Should the Supreme Court be asked to weigh in?
If I had the power to prohibit you from saying anything, I would not use it. But I do kind of wish I had the power to compel you to answer this one question: what is it you actually want?