And- you win, hands down. It isn’t your argument that “the killing of an innocent prisoner is any more, or less, repungant than the killing any other innocent person” that is stupid. That’s just “Hey, I don’t approve of the death Penalty”- which is a reasonable position. It’s the “So Shodan, are you willing to sacrifice your spouse, parent, brother, sister, child as one of the innocent people put to death by the DP?” statement which is the most stupid goddamn argument I have even seen on this board. And you share this honor with plnnr.
(And I was around during jack-whats-his-face and his constant debates against circumcision- and you got him beat.)
Being against the death penalty isn’t stupid- in fact it can often be 'the moral high ground". But *your *argument isthe most stupid fucking argument in the history of the SDMB. You win. Congrats. Come by and pick up your trophy sometime.
Shodan is so willing to sacrifice the innocent death row prisoners, why is it a stupid question to ask him if he would be so willing if the prisoner happened to be a family member? Would he be so willing to send prisoner to the gas chamber if one of those prisoners happened to be someone he loved and who he truly believed was innocent? There are people on death row whose families are fighting for their lives because of overwhelming evidence showing they are innocent. (www.wm3.org for example) Would Shodan make any attempt to save the lives of his own loved ones or is he so firmly set in his belief that a few innocent prisoners put to death is worth some bizarre payoff that he would be willing to sacrifice their lives?
Go ahead and think it is a stupid question and I will go on thinking you are a moronic jackass who doesn’t understand the reason behind the question. While we are at it, please explain exactly why this is an award winning stupid question.
Did you even understand the question? My guess is no.
Incidentally- there are many good arguments aginst the DP:
It’s not moral.
We are doing to the killer what we have said is the ultimate wrong.
We have a (very small but still there) chance of executing the wrong person. And we should not be making that decision if so.
There is also a good answer to Shodans argument (which is extremely well done, BTW): Yes, statistically speaking, by letting 100 killers live that means the odds are that one innocent will die because of it. This is mathematically & logically true. But the moral counter to this is; “Yes, but then the killer has made the choice to kill again. If WE kill him, WE are making the choice to kill. I choose not to make that choice.”
However- “But would you want your sister to marry one???” is still the stupidest fucking argument made here. Ever. of course- the perfect count to that stpuid fucking argument is “But would YOU want YOUR spouse, parent, brother, sister, child to be the one that the escaped convicted killer find when he gets out & tortures to death?”
So- even though this is the PIT and we don’t demand perfect debating behaviours and 100% logical debates- this is still the goddamn SDMB, and Ignorance is still wrong- PIT or no PIT. And- that’s an Ignorant argument.
I am neither Pro nor Con on the DP incidentally. Morally I am against it, but Logically I am for it.
As the one who originally raised this argument, I’d like to remind folks that I did so in response to some jackass asking me whether I’d be willing to let a killer go if he killed my family. I deliberately raised it as a stupid argument to show that it was a stupid argument, and said so in the post wherein I raised it.
Gah! No, we’re not–you are. There are two sets of murders here:
Actual murders, which put people behind bars, and which cannot be stopped by the death penalty.
Hypothetical murders, which people who have been convicted of murder in the future may commit, and which may be prevented by the death penalty.
It’s the latter set of murders that I’ve been discussing. If you’ve been discussing the former, can you explain their relevance to jsgoddess’s statement?
I think you DO need vast numbers of statistics, if you’re standing by the bloody calculus that I think you’ve proposed. That calculus states that by strapping innocent people down to tables every now and then and poisoning them to death (chanting of the black Mass optional), we can ultimately prevent more innocent people from being murdered, tortured, etc…
Your bloody calculus works best if it’s very clear that there are a lot of innocent people being killed by convicted murderers serving a life without parole sentence. If that’s not the case, then there are solutions to the problem that aren’t as severe as your bloody calculus.
No; more precisely, the statistics show that if you pick 100 convicted killers that were let go, then just over one of them will have been re-arrested for murder within three years. I have spent quite some time demonstrating that:
[ul][li]This does not mean that DP is the only alternative to letting them go,[/li][li]it does not mean that the DP is the only way of lowering that recidivism, and[/li][li]it does not mean that the DP represents a net benefit in terms of innocent lives.[/ul][/li]If you examine Shodan’s argument, you find that it is far from “extremely well done”; it is based on facile simplifications and obvious misunderstandings, but most of all a complete abuse of statistical certainty. I understand that you oppose the DP on moral grounds, as do I. However, I would urge you to re-evaluate the analytic argument, as it seems to me that there is no reason to cede this ground to DP proponents. I’ve shown most of Shodan’s figures to be out by at least an order of magnitude, with remaining unexaminable assumptions giving uncertainties of as much again. To me, logically and mathematically, the figures show that we can have no reasonable idea whether the DP as practiced represents a net saving of lives, and still less idea whether Shodan’s proposal to execute all murderers would be beneficial. This leaves us either to base our decision on moral grounds, or seek better numbers.
I’ve been discussing both. By executing for the former, we prevent the latter as a side benefit.
The relevance to her statement was that she stated that it is OK to execute the truely guilty, and that it is moral to punish for committed wrongs. Thus the DP is morally OK.
No, you only need a few.
The premise of the OP seems to be that one single instance of an allegedly innocent person being executed invalidates the whole concept of the DP. My premise is that, since I can point to multiple instances of murders committed by those still in prison, LWOP is even more invalidated as a measure to protect the public.
Since then we seem to have shifted arguments, so that one innocent execution outweighs a dozen innocent victims of murder for reasons that have not made clear. And indeed, that the whole notion of fact-based argumentation is off-topic, since the DP opponents have freely admitted that the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. It is essentially a case of special pleading.
No, we don’t know that. You have stated yourself that Cantu’s innocence has not been established. If we assume that it has, then the maximum of executed innocents is, at most, one in a thousand.
And, incidentally, if we want to nitpick about “basic mathematical niceties”, it’s 997, not 987.
I’m repeating myself. And, as I mentioned, it’s a waste of time. You are assuming the figures are wrong, because you don’t want them to be right, and you don’t base your position on facts at all.
So, is the DNA testing that you said was nearly complete a year and a half ago been started yet?
I’d pick “all of the above,” because that’s how the legal system (supposedly) works. But anybody who has the balls to actually state how many innocent people they’re willing to execute is welcome to break it down in to “actually” and “technically” innocent.
I’d like a figure for both, though.
You’re wrong. It’s more like 1/987, minimum. That’s .001%, for those of you playing at home.
I’m just looking for the error rate that Shodan, and you, I guess, are comfortable with.
Fuck’em Clothahump. They’re all a bunch of whiney jealous bitches who know not of which they speak. Just let them go about there pathetic little hum-drum lives while we bask in the glory that is Texas. Nothing they could possibly say could ever take away that with which we have been blessed, much less merit a response.
Would you please quit putting words in my mouth? My position is that his innocence is obvious by any reasonable standard, and that there is no method by which it can be “established” to your satisfaction. As I have already pointed out, this is a far fucking cry from “admitting” anything.
So by your logic, if we assume that there has been at least one innocent executed, giving an error rate of 1/997, then the error rate must somehow be less than that? How in the holy fuck do you work that out? Do you think he’s going to get less innocent as time passes? Do you think there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever that any further error has been or will be committed? On what do you base this, other than blind faith?
Oh, I do apologise; clearly not knowing the difference between “greater than” and “less than” is as nothing next to the horror of the Typo of Doom!
I’m not assuming the figures are wrong, I’m showing it. My position is that the facts that you claim support your position do no such thing. I have repeatedly shown this, in the face of your repeated prevarication and denial of the very basics of statistical certainty. I can thus disaver the validity of your argument both factually and morally. Just because I deny the facts support your argument does not mean that my own position is not fact-based. If you can’t grasp this very simple concept (and nothing in my prior experiences with you leads me to believe that you really are that stupid), then there simply is no point continuing, as you are missing the whole point of debate.
I completely missed her saying any such thing. Can you link to it?
The problem, of course, is that when a guard gets murdered by an inmate, the onus isn’t on you to prove that the guard is innocent. When the state executes an inmate, the onus IS on us to prove that the inmate is innocent.
It’s not the case that one instance of an innocent execution invalidates the concept of the DP. The argument is that this is one that we’ve found out about, and that there may well be more.
If you can show that even true sentences of life without parole will result in more innocent deaths (of guards, for instance) than could conceivably accounted for by the execution of innocent people, then you’ll have a strong argument. I’ll still be likely to oppose the Death Penalty on other grounds, but I’ll concede you these grounds.
Actually, I’ve just read all her posts to this thread, and I’m just about certain that she DIDN’T say any such thing. Are you confusing her with someone else?
I think “actually” vs. “technically” is a useful distinction to be kept in mind. Since I am arguing morally, not legally.
This is basically a counter to a lot of anti-DP arguments, which tend to combine assertions about actual innocence, where he really didn’t do it, to arguments about technical innocence, where the search that found the murder weapon was illegal or the instructions to the jury were wrong, things like that, and on into arguments that he merely shouldn’t get the DP, because his accomplice who testified against him only got twentyfive years, or such. These tend all to get conflated into “HE’S INNOCENT! THE SYSTEM IS UNFAIR!”
I’m concerned mostly with actual innocence. If they found the weapon with his fingerprints on it, and the victim’s blood on his shoes, and he told his stoolie cellmate that he did it, then I tend to be untroubled by arguments that there weren’t enough blacks in the jury pool or the police failed to say “Mother may I?”
Actually, zero would be the minimum. Since Cantu’s innocence has not been conclusively demonstrated.
And again, it’s 997, if you are citing the number of people executed in the US since 1976.
How about “one less than the number of innocent lives that would be lost to repeat murderers”?
If you need a percent, then if you like your .001% figure, it would .0009%.
Cripes, Daniel, I thought Diane was fulfilling the role of Village Idiot in this thread.
My statement made NO REFERENCE to the death penalty for committed wrongs, or to any punishment.
“React to” does not equal “kill for” or even “punish.” You keep reading my statement as “Because it is more moral to kill for the wrongdoing of others…” and that is not what I said. I did not define “react to.”
I didn’t say what you say I said (doo dah, doo dah), but I said something that could be understood as saying what you say I said (oh da doo dah day).
In theory, I could be indifferent to the death penalty. I don’t think I would ever be in favor of it, because I think it’s stupid. But I think lots of things are stupid that I wouldn’t try to stop–like drug use or Carrot Top.
For me to attain that indifference, certain standards would have to be met. Maybe I could say even that only one standard would have to be met. 100% certainty.
So, you could argue that I am not anti-death penalty.
On the other hand, since you could argue that 100% certainty is completely impossible (ooh, am I 100% certain of that?), then I am, for all intents and purposes, anti-death penalty. My standard cannot be met, certainly not by you.
But if you want to claim I’m on your side, go for it. Most reasonable people would probably disagree with your characterization.
I don’t want to jump down your throat. But, please, read the thread. I have provided several cites of people who killed while serving time in prison, who were not paroled. I have also mentioned Willie Horton, who was not prevented from committing several horrific acts of torture, rape and assault over a period of hours (although, admittedly, not a murder) by being sentenced to life without parole. Likewise for Ed Wein, who was also sentenced to life without parole before kidnapping, raping, and murdering a woman at a bus stop.
So no, life without parole does not eliminate attacks, including murders, on the innocent.
Shodan’s Rule of Thumb: When I start repeating myself, and people start denying that they have said what they said, the thread is over. Unless someone has something new, I’m done.
I certainly agree- it is a damn stupid argument.