The government has more power to hurt me than any individual person can. The government can legally imprison me, detain me, and execute me. If we don’t make sure they use the power fairly and equally none of us are safe from mistreatment. It is my responsibility as a citizen to keep watch on my government. They are for the people, after all.
Of course one of the powers the government has is to help maintain order, but that’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about the need to ensure justice is uniformly applied to give a just society. You are conflating different issues.
Perhaps if your own posts were specific to the case under discussion, interlocutors would not be confused about the points you were trying to make and feel the need to extract specifics by means of questions.
There was a general suggestion made above that this did not constitute a “real” confession. You appear to have buttressed that point by bringing up due process. If your comment was merely a general one, and not a suggestion of denial of due process in this specific case, then I agree with you that the admission of a confession requires observance of due process. Thank you for that cogent and timely reminder.
Correct. And it’s because the government can do those things that your neighbors aren’t capable of stringing you up for looking at their daughter funny.
Oh, please. Make a modicum of effort to read the quotes back if you’re confused. And even if you are, ask a direct question or make direct statement rather than your Socratic game of gotcha.
Well, yeah. Who said they didn’t? We were discussing what justice is. But they require diligent oversight to make sure they don’t abuse such power. Diligent oversight includes citizens challenging the results of their actions to make sure they are serving the people well.
Smapti, have you read any of the links I provided you, or is it your contention that you already know so much that you don’t have to examine any new evidence, since you’re far smarter than any of us?
I’ve looked at then. Some of the older ones from before the advent of DNA testing may have been innocent. We’ve fixed that problem. Most of the others basically boil down to “the defendant said he was innocent, and nobody accused of murder would ever lie, so they must have executed an innocent man”.
I think you’re assuming that every case has DNA testing as part of the evidence. I really doubt that is the case. DNA technology may be quite reliable, but it is possible to plant this evidence and it’s also quite likely that the evidence didn’t exist. Not every killer leaves DNA. Can you admit that mistakes can happen when DNA is not found?
You’ve answered my question, Smapti. What you write has nothing to do with those links. You haven’t bothered to read them. Look, if you truly think we’re so worthless that you can’t spend time reading any of our links (or, apparently, any of our posts), then there’s no point in you contributing to a thread. You’re just wasting your time (and ours too, to be honest).
Of course mistakes get made. That’s why the appeals process exists - to catch those mistakes before the sentence is carried out. As far as anyone can demonstrate, it’s been working flawlessly for the last several decades.
The person I was answering, who apparently is still having trouble grasping the concept that there may have been more than one report of this happening.