98%* of the people I prosecuted were found guilty. Does that mean that the next person I prosecute is a “virtual certainty” to be guilty too?
Or do we make determinations on these issues on a case by case basis? Do we look at the evidence, and make determinations on that, rather than relying on odds, percentages or being “virtually certain”?
I too, am against the death penalty. I think it is a tremendous waste of resources for an already overburdened system and serves no real purpose as it is currently used. But I have yet to find a compelling case where an innocent person has been executed in the modern death penalty era. Which is why so many people have to resort to “the odds are” as opposed to an actual case for arguments. I fully admit, it is possible that an innocent person has, or could be, put to death for a crime they didn’t commit. If the existence of that possibility makes it impossible for you to support the death penalty, that is perfectly fine, too.
*not an actual stat. I hate prosecutors who know their conviction rates to a percentage. They’re usually assholes.
I think this was exactly the claims made by those arguing against Shodan, (certainly the point I was trying to illustrate) he just chose to ignore them. I’m not sure how they were absurd?
[ul][li]That the SDMB’s much-vaunted skepticism and rigorous insistence that every assertion be backed up with credible cites tends, for some reason, to disappear in some circumstances. Funny, ain’t it?[/ul][/li][ul][li]A wise, well-respected and debonaire Doper has remarked[/li]
This makes sense to me, and it is a standard I think appropriate. Thus I will refuse any effort to shift the burden of proof in any individual case. [/ul]
If someone wants me to believe that so-and-so who was executed is actually and factually innocent, then I will be asking them to fulfill the burden of showing that so-and-so is actually and factually innocent. I will not assume it. Because in every case, at least of recent years, so-and-so has been shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and that verdict has stood thru years and decades of repeated appeals.
If someone wants to assert that in some specific case, we actually have incontrovertible proof that so-and-so was innocent as the dewy dawn but mean ol’ Scalia went ahead and executed him anyway, I am going to ask to see this alleged evidence. And I haven’t, yet.
Maybe it happened sometime that some innocent was convicted forty years ago and that conviction survived all the appeals and he got offed. Maybe. If you want me to believe that “maybe” means “this time for this guy” then let’s see why I should think so. Because the prosecuting attorneys already proved to twelve of my peers and a buttload of judges that it didn’t mean “this time” or “this guy”, and there wasn’t any reasonable doubt about it.
Since the person being brought forth was originally factually found guilty in a court of law, doe you likewise require a court of law to find someone innocent to accept it as fact?
Because that is really the only way the argument can be made.
Innocent people on death row who are lucky enough to have their cases re-opened in light of new evidence that exonerates them aren’t executed. Any innocent people who aren’t that lucky, we don’t know about by definition. But statistically we can prove that such people must exist, in fact with the right data and modeling we might even be able to estimate how many there are with a certain degree of confidence. But we still won’t be able to say which particular one is innocent.
I don’t understand why you would snip my post where I point out that determinations of guilt and innocence are not made by solely statistical analysis or modeling, but rather by evidence, and then repeat the very argument I was addressing.
It is a total waste of time to do so before you tell us what your minimum standard for “factually innocent” is in the first place, otherwise we spend the next few pages playing your game of “No, that doesn’t qualify.” “No, that doesn’t qualify.” “No, that doesn’t qualify either.” “No, I’m not going to tell you what does qualify, but keep 'em coming-I can do this all day.”
I don’t know why you are complaining about standards, given that you can’t decide what constitutes a standard in the first place. In the title of your OP you claimed that a court had found this kid “innocent”, and then later admitted that it was a fact that courts do not actually find people “innocent”. So even by your own standards the OP doesn’t work.
Is all of your belief in innocently executed people like that, where you simply assume things without evidence? It’s fine if you do, as long as you don’t ask the rest of us to buy into it.
It seems obvious that if you find in a testable sample 10% of mistakes, the logical assumption isn’t that the non testable sample will have zero mistake.
Also, what are the venues open in the USA to reopen the case of an already executed individual?
We’re already doing that. That’s the justice system today. It’s empirically failing.
We *know *that deciding on the evidence of each case has resulted in an error rate of at least ten percent of those on death row. Whatever we’re doing, we’re not doing it well. It’s a systemic problem.
Nobody’s saying stop finding people guilty, they’re saying stop with the irreversible punishment.
You’re advocating for fixing problems at the individual case level, when the whole system demonstrates it can’t be trusted.
Maybe I misunderstood your post. But I was trying to point out that in many cases we can know that there exists an example of a particular phenomenon without being able to put our finger on a concrete example.
For example if there was a multiple choice test in which B was the right answer, and of 100 people surveyed 40 said B and 20 each said A, C, D. Then it would be pretty clear that 80% of the students were guessing and that half of those who said A didn’t really know and just guessed. But if you then asked me which of the 40 were the ones who guessed I couldn’t tell you
Are you under the impression that anyone thinks that the criminal justice system is flawless? Do you believe that I think every conviction obtained is absolutely correct, and that appeals, which apparently aren’t part of the system, should be done in because god knows we’re never wrong. Do you imagine that I think the criminal justice system is right 100% of the time?
Do you think that anything less than that is “failing”? I fear we have different views of what is “failing”. But I would love to hear your solution to the “failure”. What would you recommend to make sure nobody else innocent is convicted? We can find solutions. Perhaps make everyone be convicted by jury twice? Or three times, to be really sure? Or do away with plea bargaining, and instead make everything go to trial? How do you propose we deal with this “failing” system?
Because even if you take the death penalty off the table (which I’m fine with, once again), according to you, it’s still “failing”.
It’s actually closer to 4%, if you believe the latest studies. And what would you replace “deciding the evidence of each case” with? Statistical analysis of the likelihood of guilt as shown through conviction raters?
As I said before: “I fully admit, it is possible that an innocent person has, or could be, put to death for a crime they didn’t commit. If the existence of that possibility makes it impossible for you to support the death penalty, that is perfectly fine, too.” If you think that, since it is impossible for the criminal justice system to be perfect, we should never have the death penalty, that’s fine. But the inflamed rhetoric of a “failing” system and that it “can’t be trusted” is just that, inflamed rhetoric, of little to no value to the discussion.
But if there is to be any balance in the debate, who is going to remove the inflamed rhetoric from the politicians, prosecutors and police organizations that support the death penalty and fight tooth-and-nail against any reviews of individual cases and/or the system itself?
Whatever, you anti-establishment hippie scum who wants to coddle murderers. Why don’t you take anyone convicted of murder home with you, since you think they’re innocent. And won’t anyone think of the children?
Convict, but don’t execute. And, of course, try to improve evidence gathering and police procedures, etc.
No, just at the rate it’s happening.
So is a 4% false conviction rate acceptable to you? What’s your threshold?
What’s your source for that, by the way? My sources for the 10% number are 1389 executions and 139 exonerations since 1976. Also, if memory serves,*** False Justice*** gave a figure of 10%.
But trying to avoid doing what a lot of people are doing in this thread, answering questions with questions and willfully misrepresenting the opposing argument, a 4% failure rate is shocking and unacceptable to me, even for hard time, much less execution.
So is ten percent, obviously (to me).
Does the old (paraphrased) quote ‘better to let a hundred guilty men go free than convict one innocent man’ still hold sway? I could accept that for hard time, and maybe something like 1 in a billion for execution.
I’m genuinely curious, what’s an acceptable false conviction rate for you, in capital cases?
Except, of course, for those such as the one mentioned in the OP.
But there is another important point to consider. As soon as a person is convicted of and executed for a capital offense, the matter is closed. In a case such as the one in the OP, somebody brutally murdered two girls: we now know that it was not John Coffey, but we may never discover who it actually was and serve that person with justice (how convenient it is, the way novels tie things up). The execution saps any impetus there might have been to continue to examine the case, the real murderer walks and may never have to answer for the heinous act.
Yes, false conviction and execution is probably quite rare, but when it happens, the justice system has twice failed most tragically.
Which is why I pointed out that 1) being against the death penalty because of the possibility of getting it wrong, and 2) saying that an innocent has been put to death, are two different things.
For everything, or just the death penalty? I’d love 0%. How about you?
I think I can guess.
National Academy of Sciences. Personally, I think it’s bullshit, because in order to reach that conclusion, you have to all but ignore the appellate system, which, believe it or not, is part of the criminal justice system. But whatever.
So when will I get your recommendations on lowering that percentage? Because a vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people who are wrongfully convicted are not subject to the death penalty.
As I said, I’m against the death penalty. So 0% would be the answer.
My problem with your comments is the rhetoric that the system (again, ignoring the appellate courts as part of the criminal justice system, which is baloney) is broken because innocent people get convicted is absolutely useless. Of course innocent people get convicted, which is a horrible thing and should be avoided if at all possible, but it is impossible to have a system without that failure.