The death penalty?

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I would think that, in a constitutional democracy with the rule of law, a person should care when someone is executed on faulty evidence. In fact, the only way I can possibly imagine a person not caring about this is feeling that the executed party did something to deserve his fate. T2, if you don't believe that he deserved execution, I'd like to know why you don't care that he was executed based on faulty evidence.

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Umm... that isn't in my post. I don't know when that was in there, or how long ago, or how it got there (I obviously typed or copied it from one of the sources I discarded due to inaccuracy, but I do not recall typing, copying, posting, or correcting that line) but it has been gone since well before your post.

I could accuse you of adding those words to a quote tag with my name on it solely in an effort to make me look bad, and there's no way you'd be able to prove you didn't - after all, my last edit happened 4 minutes earlier than your post - but I think you deserve the benefit of the doubt. A practical demonstration of why you shouldn't be demanding absolute proof of innocence before acknowledging that we have put an innocent to death. You can't prove a negative. That there was insufficient evidence to convict should be enough.

 

Yeah, it looks like I was writing my post while you were editing.

To quote from two of my previous posts:

I personally don't think the guy was innocent and so I have no problems with his fate (I view his actions on that day to be pure theatrics) -- I think it's also telling that his wife, who stood by him for so long, suddenly shifted her belief in him. The venom in his final words apparently aimed at that "betrayal" were the words of a controlling vindictive man who finally lost control of his victim (in my opinion) and solidify my beliefs about the man. As I said in the above post, go ahead and use the case as a bar we should meet before executing a person. Go beyond that as well, I think we should evaluate the quality of legal counsel before allowing a death sentence.

But then I also believe that evidence obtained illegally should be allowed in court (the person obtaining the evidence should face a harsh penalty though).

 

I dont understand how any means of obtaining evidence can be illegal, its just bureaucratic rubbish

 

I'd like to quote Reservoir dogs on this one : "If you f******g beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it f*****g so!"

 

Evidence gatherered in such a way would be unreliable, evidence still has to be credible to be useful.

 

Of course, she could have shifted her belief for a completely different reason. There are two sides to that coin, and when it comes to determine a person's guilt or innocence, he said/she said just doesn't cut it. I'd be pretty pissed, too, if my wife went from supporting me to denigrating me public after spending 12 years behind bars for a crime I didn't commit. I doubt I would use such language, but I am not inclined to take the words of a frightened and dying man as proof of guilt.

His account of what he saw and experienced within the fire was consistent with what one would experience in such a fire. It is possible he researched beforehand in order to "look" innocent and ensure that his account wouldn't fall apart under investigation. It is also possible that he gave that account because that is what he experienced, and I'm a big fan of Occam's razor.

In either case, courts don't base their decisions on public opinion, and Willingham would have been released from prison after the Texas panel had its say if were he still alive. Had the arson investigators made the correct initial interpretation of the events that led to the fire, it is also likely that his words at his daughter's funeral and his actions after escaping the home would have been interpreted differently by the public. Moreover, "I can't prove it, but I know you're guilty" doesn't cut the mustard in a nation that purports to have rule of law. Whether Willingham committed the crime or not, Texas executed "the wrong guy" by virtue of the fact that proving arson was necessary to prove Willingham's guilt, and the evidence did not actually point to arson.

 

Juries are fickle things. The prosecutor simply needs to ensure "reasonable doubt" is expelled from the minds fo the jury. I think with Willingham's representation the prosecutor could have won without the presence of liquid accelerator.

 

I think his criminal history of violence, coupled with his psychological profile as a sociopath, the witness testimony, the evidence of physical injury nonrelaed to the fire which supports the claims that he was abusing his children and the investigators evidence taken from the actual scene of the crime would be enough to convince any jury.
the report from the TSC would have been quashed by the report from the fire service pointing out the overlooked evidence from the actual scene of the crime, and the total lack of any other cause for the fire.

 

"Reasonnable doubt" doesn't mean innocent. It means maybe, just maybe there is a chance that it's not true. If there is reasonnable doubt that the person may be innocent, than there just shouldn't be a death penalty, even if there is a conviction (i.e. : if we discover that the suspect is indeed innocent, it is possible to release and compensate the person if he's in prison for life, let's say. If he's dead, there's no way to undo your mistake). Just the fact Drew is convinced that there should have been another trial proves there is ample reasonnable doubt.

 

... to Drew. Reasonable doubt only counts for the jury. Us spectators don't get a vote at all ... not even in the OJ trial.

 

There is a difference between reasonable doubt and just plain ignorance/stubborness. Some people simply will not to be convinced because they don't want to be.

at the time there certainly wasnt any doubt, a study 5 years later which may have swayed some opinions doesnt really do anything, knowing what went wrong with Challenger doesnt do anything for the crew, saying that the person laying dead in the middle of the road shouldn't have stepped out because there was a car coming doesnt do anything. We can only work with what we know to be true at the time, we cant second guess things because what may happen in the future, if we did we wouldn't do anything because this could happen, or that could go wrong. The crew of the challenger knew the space shuttle was safe for flight, Joe Bloggs dead in the road knew it was safe to step out at the time he did.

 

I agree that we can only work with what we know to be true at the time, which is why I believe we should not employ the death penalty. Society is made no safer by a murderer executed than it is by a murderer imprisoned for life -- and the death penalty has never been demonstrated to deter more crime than life without parole. If society is not made safer by the death penalty, and if no additional crime is deterred by its use, then those inevitable occasions where an innocent falls through the cracks and we execute the wrong guy are not counterbalanced by another tangible benefit. Our use of the death penalty, from a societal standpoint, has no upside.

 

I'll have to use UK figures as I dont have access to American figures. The cost to keep a prisoner in jail each year is est £25,718, in a private prison it is est £31,502.

Here are some examples of how that money could be better spent:

Police officer (MET) £28,605
Fire fighter £24,976
Registerd Nurse £25,411
Paramedic £21,176

Just some ideas on how society could be made safer by executing a prisoner.

 

Shoshino, we can't deny our inmates of their constitutional rights of due process, their rights to appeal, or their rights to state-appointed representation. As it stands right now, the death penalty in the US is actually more costly than a sentence of life in prison. The death penalty doesn't save the government money -- it costs the government money.

I'll use California as an example:

Using conservative rough projections, the California Commission estimates the annual costs of the present (death penalty) system to be $137 million per year. The cost of the present system with reforms recommended by the Commission to ensure a fair process would actually increase to $232.7 million per year. The cost of a system in which the number of death-eligible crimes was significantly narrowed would be $130 million per year. Finally, the cost of a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty would be $11.5 million per year. California would stand to save a minimum of $120 million per year if it abandoned the death penalty in favor of life in prison without parole.

It isn't just California, either. This pattern repeats itself in every state that employs the death penalty and has studied its costs -- even in Texas, which tends to fast-track its death row inmates. Each death penalty case in Texas costs taxpayers about $2.3 million -- about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.

Unless we plan to amend the constitution to strip death row inmates of the same basic rights every other person in our penal system currently enjoys (an impossibility) and the states go along with this and amend their constitutions, too (another impossibility), there is no way that the death penalty will ever save our government any money. Put that idea out of your head, at least where the American justice system is concerned.

 

Drew, do not be silly, due process is for sissies. What we should do is to go Judge Dredd on people, judge, jury and executioner in one. Quick, easy and cheap.

 

And effective, unlike the current justice system which puts law abiding citizens at risk because it is unable to deal with criminals because of a poorly written document which is only ever cited when someone wants to wipe their arse on society, and when something doesnt sit with the government they change it.

How about your convicted, you get 1 appeal which must be used within 1 year, exactly 1 year from the conviction, the prisoner is taken out back and shot.

unlike, sentence being set for 10 years, launch appeal after appeal just with blind hope that someone somewhere will be convinced of your story and draw as much media attention as you can to get on board any politicians who will use this for their personal gain and interfere with the system and of course a whole host of celebs who need attention too.

 

Shoshino, the US is a constitutional democracy. The changes you suggest would require constitutional amendments at the federal level and very often at state levels. Amending the constitution is very, very hard to do. Your disdain for our Constitution is noted, Shoshino, but I take offense to your assertion that the constitution is "only ever cited when someone wants to wipe their arse on society." Acknowledging the Constitution is (specifically, our bill of rights), in our legal system, acknowledging an reality.

The Constitution is invoked because it is our founding document, providing the framework both for our government and our legal system. I don't really expect you to understand the importance of thsy document or the importance of case law and the appeals process in our legal system, particularly where questionable legislation or procedural matters are concerned -- you aren't American, you aren't a lawyer, and the UK has no written constitution. Suffice it to say that any of our resident US lawyers will be happy to explain why what you suggest is both unconstitutional on its face and impossible to implement from a procedural standpoint. Legal proceedings are expensive, they take a long time, and everyone is entitled to appeal all the way up to the US Supreme Court if their case is worthy of such an appeal. Nothing is going to change that. It isn't possible.

 

All steps should be taken to study criminal behavior and create effective reform procedures before things like the death penalty should be considered. Obviously we don't know everything, but there is a good amount of research that has already gone into this and it should be applied. Prison should be a place for attempted reform for those who are going to get out, it's completely stupid how we have a system that turns non-violent prisoners into violent ones when they get out. And we call it a correction facility