If we were trying him in 1946, it would be. If we were trying him today, he’d be 125, and probably not really in much condition to try.
So since it’s not a crime in Iran for a Muslim to kill a Jew it’s wrong to refer to the torture and killing of a Jew by a Muslim as murder? :dubious:
Really?
Anyway, in various U.S. states, the legislature voted on it, the governer signed it and if you as a citizen don’t like it, fuck you. Go whining to some activist liberal judge and hope he’ll use his Solomon-like wisdom to subvert the democratic process on your behalf.
Execution is not an injustice. Letting them live after the horror they have inflicted on others is the injustice. That our society will not let them receive the suffering they deserve is injustice.
Not by the legal definition. Always assume Bricker means that, rather than the common-sense definition. Although in this case I’m not going to hold it against him. It’s certainly murder by our sensibilities.
For quite a few people, it sure is.
What, to you, would be an acceptable number of innocent people executed in order to make sure “they” suffered as much as you think they “deserve?” And who, exactly, are “they,” if only 96-99% of them are actually guilty?
Cite for the proposition that it’s not a crime in Iran for a Muslim to kill a Jew?
The gap between “convicted” and “executed” in that study is a huge one that so many people try so hard to ignore.
Why is that important? So under the legal system, 4% of those who were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death were in fact innocent. Why does that not give pause in and of itself? Here the system said these 4% were guilty beyond reasonable doubt and deserved to die- only they weren’t guilty. What difference does it make if they were actually executed? They were wrongly sentenced to die. That is wrong whether they were all actually executed or if none were.
Because “convicted” means that the defendant has not yet gone through all the protections of the entire criminal justice system, including appeals, post conviction hearings, or commutation/pardon.
If you believe that study and it’s “inventive math”. I don’t.
Of course it’s wrong to convict innocent people. Nobody is contesting that whatsoever. And that’s true whether a person is sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. But there is a world of difference between “we shouldn’t have the death penalty because it’s possible an innocent has been executed” and “we shouldn’t have the death penalty because an innocent has been executed”.
What is wrong with the study? Do you think they simply lied? What “invented” math did they use?
You have to read the study itself to understand but they were basically guesstimating the number of factually innocent people.
In addition to **Hamlet’**s comments, which echo my concerns about the methodology of the wrongful death penalty conviction study, I’d like some clarity about just what exactly “exonerated” means, as well as how the study authors defined “innocence.”
Does exonerated or innocent mean that the accused was peacefully sitting at home playing Parcheesi, or otherwise had nothing to do with the criminal episode, while the murder occurred? Or does it mean that one of the aggravating factors, necessary in most states to impose the death penalty, was later found to not have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt? Or that the defendant was involved in the fight, but wasn’t proven to have struck the fatal blow? (Ray Lewis nods approvingly.) Are they counting, for example, all of the Illinois prisoners that had their sentences commuted by Governor Ryan? How about all of the juvenile or mentally retarded prisoners that had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Roper v. Simmons or Atkins v. Virginia? Because when I hear “exonerated”, or “innocent of capital murder,” I’m not thinking of defendants in those cases.
The study does make a great sound bite for death penalty opponents though, especially as the misrepresentation, “4% of people who’ve been executed were innocent!”
The quote “inventive math” was in the very story.
I can also find you studies, including one that Scalia quoted in Kansas v. Marsh, indicating: “That would make the error rate .027 percent—or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent.” Or one here that says: “Let’s generously assume that there is clear and convincing evidence that 40 factually innocent inmates have been released from death row, " their convictions overturned by (such) evidence of innocence”. . That represents 0.6% of the approximately 6,500 sentenced to death row since 1973 (3). Is there any other criminal sanction, anywhere in the world, that can show 99.4% factual guilt accuracy …" from death penalty advocates.
The fact is, it is nearly impossible to tell the true rate of innocents being found guilty, and there are disputed studies on both sides. I have very little faith in DPIC and their studies, and even less in Scalia, but I find nothing in the description of this particular study that would indicate to me that its guesstimate is anymore reliable than any other.
I’m sure it depends upon who’s using the term. The Innocence Project uses DNA testing to determine whether or not the samples collected at a crime scene were in fact left by the person convicted of the crime. If the semen sample recovered from a rape/murder victim was not in fact left by the convicted person, that’s pretty damn conclusive of actual innocence, not just of raising a doubt whether there’s sufficient evidence for a conviction.
Given the number of wrongful convictions later exonerated, the chances that every single person executed in America was guilty is so vanishingly small that to dispute the factuality of wrongful executions truly belongs in the realm of mathematics (where even something with a probability of “1” will not definitely occur,) rather than science, let alone every day discourse where the bar is even lower.
The likelihood that there have been be no wrongful executions in the history of ever is a proposition whose likelihood falls somewhere between the chances of the Yellowstone Caldera erupting tomorrow and the chances that all the matter in my room will spontaneously arrange itself in the upper right corner.
Well, first I’m discussing the modern death penalty, i/e since 1973, not every single person executed in America. And I don’t think your accurate when you conclude that, since there have been exonerations before the sentence is carried out, there must be some after because of … well, math.
I see a bunch of conclusionary statements and not much to back those statements up.
But it certainly can be murder done by the prosecutor if the prosecutor knows the fellow is innocent and proceeds anyway, either ignoring or covering up exculpatory evidence or fabricating it. Bunch of cases in Illinois where that happened. Morally speaking, that is murder.
What do you think the chances of a wrongful execution are? Less than 1 in 2000? People are really that infallible? Unless the chances that 12 random people could be trusted enough to make the correct decision 1999 out of 2000 times, the chances of at least one wrongful execution having taken place since 1973 (and really, that’s moving the goalposts) is 50%.
If the chances move to a more reasonable 1%, then the chances of this having happened at least once are 0.999999033. About the only things scientifically shown more accurately than this is relativity.
A false rate of 1 in 2000 is ludicrously low. While 1% may (may!) be high, it doesn’t seem that way to me given the 1.5% overturning rate. Some of these people may have been guilty, but you certainly are not going to simultaneously ask for extraordinary evidence to show that the jury is not nearly infallible, while simultaneously claiming that the exoneration process is full of false exonerations without also providing unassailable evidence, right?
I guess you could further claim that the exoneration and appeals process catches a further 99 out of 100 false convictions, but considering the reluctance of judges to overturn convictions this is another quite laughable proposition. Because not only would you have to believe that judges also have a pope-like infallibility to weed out the truth in nearly every circumstance, you would also have to believe that every such appeal actually rises to the standards where actual guilt or innocence is reconsidered.
This cite implies that this is not usually the case.
ETA: and of course the jury miss rate could actually be higher than 1% if most innocent false convictions are not overturned, which is not hard to believe considering the difficulty of overturning on appeal. But even given a fairly liberal view of jury and judicial competence, the chances of false executions are pretty staggering.
Execution, like all forms of punishment, aren’t meant for the criminal. It’s meant to bring closure to the victims and to make the rest of us feel better about ourselves.
And I don’t get all this hand-wringing over the death penalty due to the 1% who may be innocent (I doubt it’s that high, anyway.) People get punished for things they’re not guilty of all the time; why does it matter if it’s life in prison, losing your job, or being made to stand in the corner? Injustice exists – like it or not, it’s part of our imperfect world. Deal with it.