I live in an imperfect world, legally speaking. You want to make it worse.
As for the morals of killing, that’s just your opinion, and as far as I’m concerned, a reprehensible one.
How many people have specifically argued that intent or negligence or some other factor indicating culpability should be completely eliminated?
If your question hasn’t been answered, it’s because it’s irrelevant to the topic.
This comment is ironic, in that you ALSO live in a world that differs dramatically from your professed standard with respect to the efficacy of potentially biased witness testimony.
I agree with this, but it also seems kind of irrelevant: the situation under discussion is where there’s some evidence (biased or not) that there was no legitimate self defence.
What is “hi use law”? A google search doesn’t return any results.
That’s autocorrect for “homicide”
Yes, it is.
For some bizarre reason, once people disagree with a poster, many of them seem dedicated to defending each rhetorical hill to the death rather than conceding points like this, which you correctly identify as irrelevant. Then Steohan – rather than defending his opinion – can shift to showing how foolish the lack of concession is.
Much better to concede the irrelevant point and then return to the main point: this opinion about evidence law has no real world existence. It’s simply a fantasy Steophan has created. He’s free to fantasize, but not to suggest that his fantasy is real.
The Shadow, obviously. He knows what evil lurks in the heart of men.
I was a juror on a murder trial several years ago. The facts were that three men stormed into a crackhouse, taking two people hostage in a basement. Two assailants then went to the first floor and robbed and murdered a drug dealer. All three fled.
One assailant was quickly arrested and found guilty of felony murder. The two remaining assailants were tried together a few years later. The main evidence against the two men was testimony from the man who was already convicted, and testimony from the two people who were held hostage. There wasn’t any physical evidence such as fingerprints or DNA that tied the two defendants to the scene of the crime.
The defense argued that the convicted man was bribed into testifying against the two defendants by reduction of his sentence from life in prison to “merely” 70 years (or something like that). The defense also argued that the two people taken hostage were trying to frame the two defendants because they were members of a rival gang.
Under your principles, is it fair to say that you think the jury ought to acquit the two defendants? After all, the alleged co-conspirator could be biased because of the reduction in his sentence, and the two hostages may have an axe to grind against another gang.
Seems to me that you are saying that the jury cannot be trusted to evaluate the credibility of the testimony simply because a lawyer can dream up some way in which all of these witnesses just might have a bias, but the jury would be prevented from judging whether that bias actually changes their testimony. Am I correct?
I seriously doubt that, since “hi use” isn’t a word or phrase in the English language.
Why would “homicide” auto-correct to that?
Never used auto-correct, have you?
I just tried it on my phone. That’s not how it works.
You just tried what on your phone? Typing in homicide?
You’re right. That’s not how auto-correct works. For one thing, you need to misspell the word, first. If you want to reproduce a specific auto-correct error, such as Acsenray’s “hi use” error, you’d need to misspell it in exactly the same way Acsenray did. And you’d need to be using the same auto-correct software, since each one works a little differently. And they’re adaptive, so likely, you’d need not just the same software Acsenray used, but the actual phone he typed it in.
But hey, nice try anyway.
The jury should be trusted to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses. That evaluation should include being certain beyond reasonable doubt that the witnesses are not lying to get their prison sentences reduced, or to frame a rival gang member.
That evaluation would normally involve comparing the witness statements to the other evidence to see if it’s supported by it - corroboration.
If there is no such corroboration, and no judgement that the witnesses are telling the truth beyond reasonable doubt, then the jury should not rely on those statements for a conviction.
Were I a juror at your trial, based solely on the evidence you provided, I’d find not guilty. There is reason to doubt the witnesses, there is no other evidence, so the case is not proven beyond reasonable doubt.
You’re a dream juror for the defense.
Good.
Hey Bricker since you’re here post #129?
CMC fnord!
I don’t think we can debate the philosophy coherently without understanding words and phrases like “uncorroborated” and “potentially biased”. The way you use them defies understanding – if the Dunn case’s witness testimony is “uncorroborated”, then nothing is… and every human witness is “potentially biased”.
No, there’s literally the Dunn case to discuss. That’s a topic that human beings are able to converse on. Specifically, how does the word “uncorroborated” apply to the Dunn case? Why does the additional evidence that supports the witnesses’ testimony not count as corroboration?
Are you kidding? How does his use of “uncorroborated” and “potentially biased” count as “logical argument”? How can we understand his philosophy as he applies it to the Dunn case?
You think he’s lying? Autocorrect makes some weird choices based on past patterns. In fact my ipad routinely changes “good” into “food”. Good isn’t even spelled wrong!
Why does the sun rising in the west not count as corroboration?
If there were additional evidence that supported their testimony, it would not be uncorroborated, and therefore it would be irrelevant to my claims.
I am not, and have never been, talking about evidence that is not uncorroborated, and I wish you’d stop going on about it. You believe the evidence in that case was corroborated, I believe otherwise.
This thread is about whether juries should base convictions on uncorroborated testimony. If you do not believe that happened in the Dunn case, stop talking about it.
Either explain why Dunn should have been convicted despite the uncorroborated evidence, or talk about a case where you actually believe they were convicted based on uncorroborated evidence.