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Jared Loughner - A Plea for Mercy & Honorable Justice
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The United States Attorney would be in violation of his ethics if he could be lobbied by the public at large, or by congressmen, on what charges to bring in criminal cases.
There are only two places where popular will should ever enter into criminal proceedings - when twelve people enter the jury box and if a sentence is commuted by an elected authority.
I know your intentions are good, but conduct the thought experiment of considering a situation where a prosecutor was lobbied by congress to push for the death penalty when he would not otherwise do so. Such integrity as the system has depends on a certain amout of independence from these pressures.
And you are suggesting that the state should be unchallenged in executing murderers. I mean, let's leave your arguments aside: if Loughner is put on death row, will the state be doing it for utilitarian purposes, or will they be doing it out of a desire to seek retribution and 'deterrent' (in otherwise, using intimidation to enforce compliance)?
Going back to utilitarianism & victim care, Giffords - despite a headshot wound and obvious severe brain trauma - wasn't just shrugged at by her staff member or the paramedics who saved her life. Knowing that she didn't have a good prognosis, they tried to save her anyway and succeeded. A doctor at the Safeway also set-up triage and attempted to save the 9 year old, but didn't succeed. I guess you feel they should've just left the child alone to bleed out, since they wasted valuable time & energy on her?
I'm not exactly sure what use he has for our study. It's not like he's the first violent schizophrenic to ever wander afoul of the legal system.
I thought he'd said that in this case, where guilt is well known and expensive appeals processes (the things that make the death penalty more expensive than life incarceration) aren't a likely issue, that the death penalty is a sensible decision for removing this person from society.
I mean honestly that's how it read to me, loud and clear, from literally his first post in the thread.
I don't know where you're going with this. Why he supports it is what matters if you're arguing with him. This isn't a death penalty thread, it's a death penalty for Loughner thread.
He's going where he wants to, not where the signs point.
Roads?
First, I don't believe I requested anyone to to to lobby the attorney; I agree that this would be destructive to the legal process. My ultimate goal would be to have the death penalty removed wholly from the judicial process, with a short term goal being to influence the rhetoric. Right now, the rhetoric in Arizona is, essentially, 'hang him from the highest tree'. I would like to change that.
Except that you're also trying to dehumanize Loughner (calling him a 'monster'); make him out to be some disposable 'other'.
I very, very much doubt that your interest in seeing him dead has nothing to do with his deeds when you use that kind of language.
Why didn't you say that at the start?
You persist in making arguments that just make you look like an uninformed goose with an agenda.
No one knows how bad head traumas are until protocols are inacted. Giffords, like many head trauma victims, pull through because non-vital areas of the brain were the only areas damaged. I've stabilized head-shooting victims on numerous occasions who pull through or die sometimes months later from peripheral complications.
Stop making this argument. It's false equivalence and you're embarrassing yourself doing it.
If you want to exert your opinion, find a better way to do it. This analogy doesn't work.
I did.
Read the OP.
When I talk to my representative why am I telling him/her that I don't want to see Loughner killed? My representative has zero input on whether the guy is killed. So I assumed that you were just in the dark about government here and plugged your petition request in to the only public official who would be deciding at this stage anything about Loughner (the prosecutor) - or that you intended for the representative to talk to the prosecutor.
This is all badly thought out.
Given you aim your actual aim of influencing public discourse you should have asked people to write letters to the editor, or call into radio shows, or something. State representatives aren't driving public discussion about Loughner.
I'm not sure.
But he still hasn't explained to what ends he's looking for.
And the death penalty is extremely useful from a utilitarian and public safety perspective.
Yep. Hardly any murders in Texas.
Not like that shithole New Mexico, land of the lawless.
When someone is too dangerous to be in society and needs to be segregated permanently (public safety), the death penalty is a very sensible utilitarian solution.
Those are things he's actually said (or that can be inferred from the thread) and it's really unfair to put words into his mouth.
I've already acknowledged it's a terrible tool to deter crime. It simply doesn't work in that context.
That's not to say it's not a viable option for other reasons. In many cases, if not most, there are no reasonable deterrents to crime if a person is committed to the act, and certainly far less so in case of mental illness and crimes of passion.
Plus, Texas annually is just about equal with the national average in murders per capita.
EDIT: thanks, Ego
Right - in otherwords, you don't know ahead of time whether or not the venture will be a productive use of your resources. You can make an educated prediction, but it's unethical to simply say, "My educated prediction is that this person is no longer of any use. I'm not treating her."
Yes, the bullet only went through a single hemisphere - though my understanding is a large part of her survival can also be contributed to the fact that her brain didn't swell after the crucial 72~ish hour period.
What I'm saying is that your utilitarian argument is not practical in the real world, you're just using it as an excuse in favor of the death penalty (and then you went into a bunch of hand-waving about how patients really can be just tossed out to avoid admitting that your philosophy doesn't work).
EDIT: And everyone has an agenda. I don't know why people insist on using that weasel word.
If you're arguing that it's actually more utilitarian and beneficial to indefinitely keep Loughner alive and in a specific place, those specifics and the explanation for that are on you.
And no, vague appeals to non-specific hypotheticals do not count.
More or less my point.
I'm a little unclear how it is so terribly important from a utilitarian/public safety perspective.
We're talking mostly philosophically. Most likely Loughner will be placed in a high-security psych facility for the rest of his life, or put on death row and wrack up bills in the appeals process before he is finally put to death 15-20 years from now.
Those are really the only two likely scenarios, I feel. The rest of the hot air here is just wankery about political/civil philosophy.
It wouldn't be, except in a case (where guilt is hugely obvious) like this one and the appeals process doesn't have to eat up so much time and money. Not that it wouldn't. This is largely hypothetical. That's pretty much a position from which the argument is predicated.
Costs.
But that's all just wishful thinking, i.e., Loughner isn't going to have restricted access to the appeals process should he be put into gen-pop.
Basically I wish it was cheaper to do away with those on Death Row in instances like these where the evidence is so apparent. But it won't be, so it's just a bit of talk to go on about it.
Loughner is either going to die or do life; I'm fine with either. The utilitarian changes I would like to see aren't likely to happen.
My understanding is that appeals are never based on questions of evidence. You can only appeal things like rulings the judge makes during trial or improper prosecutorial conduct etc. Questions of law and how the law was applied.
Trials involving mental illness are full of those kinds of things, so no, the fact that he shot a bunch of people in front of a bunch of witnesses actually isn't going to impact a death sentence appeal process.
Even if we go with the absolutely ridiculous presumption that we should even consider that, a lifetime of being cheap (but cared for) labor for the state is going to do more for society than him sitting in a box for 23 hours each day for 14 years.
Your representative interacts with the press, and often has friends within the local press, that this sort of discourse runs through. They (may) also bring these petitions to larger legislative bodies, where they are given wider exposure.
My experience has been that, so long as there is a sufficient body of people willing to petition, writing to a local legislator is more effective than simply writing to local echo chambers.
It's late, though, and I'm just tilting at windmills (again).
Here's to hoping that nobody reading this is ever condemned to the maximum penalty hanging over Loughner's head, no matter what evils they do.
If you read any of those five pages, you'd know that's not at all what we're talking about.
Guilt or innocence aren't the issue when you are applying the death penalty - the issue is whether to apply the death penalty.
If you are obsessed with cost then I would think the real position would be to remove this second expensive step from the equation.
If you are in the game of wishing for things that can never happen in the real world (like killing people without having legal safeguards while still living in a just society) then maybe you could take it a step further and just be of the opinion that no one should ever commit a crime. It's about as divorced from reality.
Yes, there were a few posts about whether or not he'd actually get the death penalty. I skimmed.
Which is highly unlikely, from what I can see.
Not that I particularly care for the economic justification for slave labor, but I see no reason to believe that the guy wouldn't be restored to sanity by treatment.
Or, as some have implied, create a special criterion for obvious crimes such as these wherein the cost associated with the death sentence can be amended to a more reasonable amount.
Trust me. I've worked in those facilities. Those people aren't there to get better, they're there to be away from everyone forever.
I pretty clearly stated that this is not my motive. The bolded is the sum total of my position, I have no reason to be shy about demanding revenge if that's what I wanted (it isn't).
This is why I'm dubious that the defense will be able to make a case for mental illness:
It's trivial to demonstrate that Loughner's actions were pre-meditated, and that he knew right from wrong (his entire reason for engaging in the assassination attempt, according to him, is that he thinks the government was out to do all sorts of wrong to him - which strongly suggests he has an accurate moral compass). So, the defense would essentially have to argue that Loughner was so enveloped by the deranged conspiracy theories he bought into that they warped his judgement and made him act in 'self defense' of sorts.
Okay, fine... except he shot the congresswoman, and then turned around and opened fire on a crowd of bystanders, targeting people (it seems) more or less at random. That has nothing to do with any of his conspiracy theories; it's a pure act of malice.
In what possible way is life without parole in an isolated supermax prison more merciful than a quick, painless death? If I had to pick between the two I'd certainly pick the latter.
Well, what if you got your pick of super max prisons?
You'd choose death over, say, a life stay in a Denmark prison? (not that you could stay there for life anyway; the maximum penalty in Denmark is 15 years).
How is this at all relevant to this discussion?