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It is so easy to ruin your life.
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
I heard a little about one incident in AZ.
Sirhan Sirhan has spent the last 43 years in the hospitable care of the taxpayers of California thanks to the wisdom of that great state's supreme court.
And don't we all feel better knowing John Hinkley recently got his driver's license.
But hbarcat's point is legitimate. The death penalty is used when it shouldn't be and not used when it should be. What's up with that?
Sometimes. But that's the problem. There should be no room for error in a system that can hand down a death sentence. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect.
This. It's happened so much in Illinois that they abolished the death penalty in the state last week.
Not really applicable for those who are convicted of first-degree murder and get true life sentences.
If we had a perfect court system, I'd be in favor of putting every 1st degree murderer to death, but we don't, so I'm against it. One wrong execution to me is worth not executing everyone.
Or let everyone out of jail on the off chance they may have received a wrongful conviction.
It's happened with a few of the mass shootings in shopping malls, and schools. Most of them have video Camera's and lots of witnesses.
Well put, my take is except the no doubt obvious cases like Virginia Tech or the recent shooting in AZ I agree. And in those cases appeals should be radically limited. Those scum shouldn't be in court on death row for twenty years. But I would consider those cases not just homicide, but mass murder. Most homicide convictions don't have eyewitnesses or clear video evidence, they are cases based on forensic evidence and circumstantial evidence. In those cases the death penalty should not be an option.
The one unarguable plus with the death penalty is that it is an excellent recidivism deterrent for the guilty party. A life in prison inmate can kill a prisoner or prison guard, they can escape, and in some cases get parole or a furlow program. An criminal put to death will never kill again.
Then those would fit the criteria I mentioned earlier.
Yes, as I said earlier, those would be cases where there is overwhelming evidence.
For the record, I'm in favor of a whole lot of prison reform stuff. I think there are some serious flaws in the way we jail people as a nation, and that these problems need to be addressed.
But that's all I'm going to say about that, because that's far into the TBOT no fly zone.
Understood, and I agree with you. But, when overwhelming evidence makes it clear beyond all doubt that someone committed the crime, I'm all for my plan.
That's misleading. DNA evidence is a very new technology. Of course, with the advent of DNA evidence, innocent people have been exonerated. That being said, with DNA being examined in all *new* cases, there are far fewer wrongful convictions in the first place.
Personally, Im not the biggest fan of motoring, but being that I am employed such a great distance from my domicile I have no choice but to motor.
Also, I cannot fathom carrying all the necessary equipment to conduct a performance at an establishment that I have resigned to putting said equipment into my motor vehicle and motoring to and fro.
Bingo.
The very basis of the US justice system is tied to Blackstone's formulation.
Most of the overturned death penalty convictions involve folks originally convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony.
Let's just say eyewitnesses have a hideous track record.
Huge +1. Eyewtiness testimony is always perceived as being way more reliable than it actually is in reality. This is a very serious bias in juries, legal professionals and the whole justice system.
I remember being in a store one time when a person came in and stole a donation jar for a sick kid. I did not get a look at the person's face except for his chin (he had a hoodie pulled over his head.) He was fair skinned, with stubble on his chin. He was about 6' 2" and skinny. I could not tell if he were white or a fair black person from what I saw. Several of us who were witnesses stayed for the police. When the police talked to me, I said I could only see his chin, but it was fair, and I guessed he was probably white. A Latino woman got visibly annoyed with me, and insisted he was black. After the police left, a white man told me the guy was white.
Another case I know about because the victim wrote an editorial for the NY Times. In this case, the victim, a white woman, was raped in her home by an African American man. The police took her to the station, and show her some suspects, apparently they suggested one person, and she indentified that person as the rapist. The man insisted he did not do it, but on the strength of her eye witness testimony, he was convicted and sentenced to life. Over time, evidence mounted that the man was innocent, and eventually DNA was used to show it was not him. It turned out that the actual assailant was a much more fair skinned man who looked nothing like the man she fingered.
The whole eye witness issue is pretty shaky.
