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I don't think "well, it's not an open and shut case" matters as much as the fact a death penalty exists. Once a person's declared guilty, that's it, even if they were just guilty or all the way guilty with guilt to spare. Guiltiness past adequate conviction isn't even factored into whether a person gets the death penalty or not, I don't think.
I don't believe it is valid to abhor the death penalty only for guys who might be convicted and innocent. You've got to go all one way or the other, because it's impossible to draw the line between death penalty being okay and death penalty not being okay. If you don't have faith in the judicial system to get an accurate verdict, that's another problem, and arguably immutable life would be just as bad in that case, because you'd be punishing an innocent person for the rest of their life.
which of these can we "correct" in the sense of letting a person later found out to be not guilty go free
- a sentence of life in prison
- a sentence of death
It is not impossible to draw a line. The death penalty is not ok. The judicial system will never, ever, be 100% accurate.
I think the line-drawing Paladin is referring to is whether the death penalty is okay for convicted murderers who don't profess innocence or have reasonable doubts surrounding their conviction.
For example, Lawrence Brewer is scheduled to be executed in Texas today (maybe he already was). Brewer is one of the men who lynched James Byrd Jr by dragging him behind a truck for 2 miles on an asphalt road, with evidence suggesting that Byrd was still conscious while his limbs were being torn off. After dumping Bryd's mutilated corpse, Brewer went to a picnic. Brewer is an avowed white supremacist, and has said that if given the chance to do it all over again, he would murder Byrd again.
This is all pretty terrible. I hope the clemency board actually listens, though I sincerely doubt they will considering their already-proven approach of plugging their ears while they hit the switch.
Come on Obama, get in the game on this one! I bet he'd consider it if it weren't a political landmine. Ugh.
I mean, as long as there is only a MINIMAL reason of doubt it's okay to kill someone, right state supreme court?
There's probably a minimal reason of doubt in most criminal cases. It seems like a lower level of doubt than "beyond a reasonable doubt."
while i am whole heartedly opposed to the death penalty, this does seem like the wrong thing to have a problem with. any court case that gets reviewed could likely have some sort of reason brought up for doubting that the trial occurred without any error. now, it seems like in this particular case the state supreme court was just wrong, there is more than minimal doubt. However, it seems like reaching the level of "minimal doubt" would be pretty easy.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
A black guy in Georgia was given life for receiving oral from a white girl a few years ago wasn't he? The North came out on the losing side of the civil war, because we had to take the south back. Collection of welfare states that take northern tax dollars with one hand and hold a "dont tread on me" flag with the other.
I'm not bitter or anything though
You're making it sound like they caught a black adult receiving oral sex from a white adult, and they sentenced him to life for being black and having sex with a white woman, but that's not the case; it was a case of statutory rape. 16 is the age of consent in Georgia, and the girl was 15, and he was 17. The law called for a mandatory sentence of 10 years prison and put on the sex registry list as a sexual predator.
There is however another case, where a 16 year old boy and a 16 year old girl were caught in the act by the mother, and he went to jail for receiving oral sex from her, which at the time was a misdemeanor offense, but he was also on probation, and any act of breaking the law sends you back to jail in those conditions. At that time Georgia's anti-sodomy laws were still in place, which could land married adult couples 20 years in prison if they were caught in the act of anal or oral sex, even in their own homes.
I think that a lot of people mix up the facts in those two cases when they bring them up.
Since then Georgia has ruled their anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. They still however have a law on the books stating that sexual relations may only happen between married couples, how that doesn't fall under the protection of a citizens right to privacy, as does the act of sodomy; I don't know.
Either way, I agree that Georgia's sex laws are absurd, and need to be abolished, but making it sound like someone went to prison just for being black and having sex with a white person is wrong.
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
Whether they find a life there or not, I think Jupiter should be called an enemy planet.
Even ignoring my universal disapproval of capital punishment, what really gets me about all of these kinds of cases (innocent people imprisoned, prosecutorial and police misconduct, &c.) is that we as a society are creating a new victim while ostensibly refusing to gain closure for the original victims. The man who actually did shoot that guy is free right now. That is a travesty above and beyond wrongful imprisonment and execution. Someone managed to ruin two family's lives and got away with it.
Worst still, in the link given above regarding the polygraph;
"Quiana Glover, who did not testify at the original trial, said one of the witnesses who did not recant told her he was the real shooter"
This is all pretty terrible. I hope the clemency board actually listens, though I sincerely doubt they will considering their already-proven approach of plugging their ears while they hit the switch.
Come on Obama, get in the game on this one! I bet he'd consider it if it weren't a political landmine. Ugh.
Umm, Presidents can't pardon/grant clemency to people for State crimes just Federal ones. And Georgia's Governor can't pardon/clemency either. There's quite literally nothing he can do, even politically. Plus he is unfortunately nominally in favour of capital punishment.
This really is just reminding me how glad I am that Illinois finally abolished it this year and joined the ranks of civilization.
Signed. And my home state continues to disappoint me. I suppose I should be used to it.
I live in Augusta, GA but I attended high school in a little bumfuck town called Hebzibah (part of the same county). Some of the shit that would come out of those kids' mouth; they were obviously brainwashed by their parents. I remember one day, we were going past McElmery farm and spotted a precession of KKK members marching along the treeline. White hooded robes and everything. Some of the kids cheered and hollered at them, saying things like they were "doing God's good work." Sigh.
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
These are not equivalent. One is about women's right to choose what to do with their own body and the other is about the power of the state to murder people.
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
I'm curious to see where you're going with this.
I think we know where it's going, and while I don't wish to back-seat mod, I think we all know D&D well enough that it's a 20 page off topic tangent and/or a locking.
Of course, abortion threads don't usually fare very well either.
That said, I am pro-choice and have grown more and more opposed to the death penalty as I've grown older. When I was younger, it seemed sensible to me that society didn't lose anything by putting those who were convicted by rock solid evidence of heinous crimes to death.
As the years went by and I saw mistakes, miscarriages of justice and outright corruption lead to near misses or the deaths of innocent (or plausibly innocent) people, I have a harder time defending that stance to myself or others. If the costs are about the same (in terms of keeping a person in prison for their life versus the apparently significant costs of proceeding to the actual death sentence), I'm fine with keeping someone in prison as opposed to jumping through all the hoops to let people (with all our failings) potentially screw it up and kill innocents wrongly convicted.
The death penalty only makes sense to me in a perfect system. Obviously, what we have is not perfect, so using an absolute and irrevocable punishment against people we think deserve it is fraught with all kinds of hazards.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
I'm curious to see where you're going with this.
I think we know where it's going, and while I don't wish to back-seat mod, I think we all know D&D well enough that it's a 20 page off topic tangent and/or a locking.
Of course, abortion threads don't usually fare very well either.
That said, I am pro-choice and have grown more and more opposed to the death penalty as I've grown older. When I was younger, it seemed sensible to me that society didn't lose anything by putting those who were convicted by rock solid evidence of heinous crimes to death.
As the years went by and I saw mistakes, miscarriages of justice and outright corruption lead to near misses or the deaths of innocent (or plausibly innocent) people, I have a harder time defending that stance to myself or others. If the costs are about the same (in terms of keeping a person in prison for their life versus the apparently significant costs of proceeding to the actual death sentence), I'm fine with keeping someone in prison as opposed to jumping through all the hoops to let people (with all our failings) potentially screw it up and kill innocents wrongly convicted.
The death penalty only makes sense to me in a perfect system. Obviously, what we have is not perfect, so using an absolute and irrevocable punishment against people we think deserve it is fraught with all kinds of hazards.
Even in a perfect system you have to wonder how you'd treat people who weren't fully aware of their actions, or what consequences they might have, and you realize that anyone who would commit a crime of this magnitude in a perfect system would be not fully aware of their actions.
The death penalty should really be banned other than by direct act of government. So, you'd have the judiciary convict the person and then if you wanted him executed you'd need a bill passed to say "Execute John Smith". Hell, I'd go so far as to say that you'd have to get the people to vote as well in such a situation, and then 10 people at random who voted yes would have to go speak to the guy for 10 minutes and then watch him be executed. If any of them changed their minds, then he gets a stay of execution.
So basically, this was a legal case of "Uhm...he did it." And they bought it.
And sentenced him to death.
Black dude in the South.
All else being equal, a black person is about 3.9 times more likely than a white guy to be sentenced to death in Georgia. I have heard lawyers admit that many paarts of Georgia are more likely to convict a black guy than other parts.
“Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past,” Jacobs said. “This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection.”
Another study finding reinforces this idea. Results showed that the number of death sentences in states with the most lynchings increased as the state's population of African Americans grew larger, at least to a certain point. The researchers believe that is because, as their numbers increase, Blacks are seen by the white majority as a growing threat.
...
The results of the study suggest that the United States is still a product of its past, Jacobs said.
“Historical events continue to influence the current behavior of important social institutions. But the main point is that our findings do not support claims that the death penalty is administered in a color-blind fashion.”
Those statistics are probably colored by the fact that Texas constitutes most of all executions since 1976 (when SCOTUS allowed them again) and Texas also was a Confederate/lynching state. Not to dismiss the findings or anything, but we really are talking about two different societies when we're talking about capital punishment. America sans Texas, and Texas.
I don't think "well, it's not an open and shut case" matters as much as the fact a death penalty exists. Once a person's declared guilty, that's it, even if they were just guilty or all the way guilty with guilt to spare. Guiltiness past adequate conviction isn't even factored into whether a person gets the death penalty or not, I don't think.
I don't believe it is valid to abhor the death penalty only for guys who might be convicted and innocent. You've got to go all one way or the other, because it's impossible to draw the line between death penalty being okay and death penalty not being okay. If you don't have faith in the judicial system to get an accurate verdict, that's another problem, and arguably immutable life would be just as bad in that case, because you'd be punishing an innocent person for the rest of their life.
which of these can we "correct" in the sense of letting a person later found out to be not guilty go free
- a sentence of life in prison
- a sentence of death
It is not impossible to draw a line. The death penalty is not ok. The judicial system will never, ever, be 100% accurate.
You can't ever give someone back the years you take from them. Death is death, sure. But I don't abide by the notion that it's unique because you can't correct it.
Even ignoring my universal disapproval of capital punishment, what really gets me about all of these kinds of cases (innocent people imprisoned, prosecutorial and police misconduct, &c.) is that we as a society are creating a new victim while ostensibly refusing to gain closure for the original victims. The man who actually did shoot that guy is free right now. That is a travesty above and beyond wrongful imprisonment and execution. Someone managed to ruin two family's lives and got away with it.
Hold on now. You are hearing "black man" and "south" and "witnesses changed their story" and you're jumping to some pretty weak and far-reaching conclusions. There was ballistics evidence in the case against him, linking the bullet shells to another shooting that Davis was convicted of (though not completely conclusive evidence). And there was forensic evidence against him - bloody shorts found in the dryer at his house - that was ruled inadmissable over a disagreement about whether the search was legal. These witnesses who have changed their story were unconvincing and shown to be inconsistent when they recanted. Most of them pointed to a specific other person as the real criminal, and yet the defense didn't even summon that guy. The conviction has been upheld by courts up and down and all over. The death penalty in general is a problematic thing, but I'm pretty sure this guy is guilty. His innocence seems to be based entirely in fashionable cause and sensationalist press, not in fact.
This really is just reminding me how glad I am that Illinois finally abolished it this year and joined the ranks of civilization.
Was that the state that had executions temporarily shut down for a while? I forget the reasons...corruption investigation? possible innocent executed?
Yeah, the system was being investigated/considering reorganization to ensure that it actually would work and not be a constant source of miscarriages of justice after ~20 people were exonerated by DNA evidence and the like. Instead the legislature managed to eek out enough support for abolition and the governor signed it early this year.
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
I'm curious to see where you're going with this.
I think we know where it's going, and while I don't wish to back-seat mod, I think we all know D&D well enough that it's a 20 page off topic tangent and/or a locking.
Don't back-seat mod.
But yes, what you said.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
It boggles me that there is a Western Democracy that still has Capital punishment...
Wikipedia Wrote:
•2011 - As of 5 May 2011 executions have been reported in the following 9 countries during 2011: Bangladesh, China, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, UAE, USA.
Amnesty International Wrote:
Executions happened in only 18 countries last year with five accounting for the lion’s share: China (thousands), Iran (388), Iraq (120), Saudi Arabia (69) and the US (52).
The death penalty should really be banned other than by direct act of government. So, you'd have the judiciary convict the person and then if you wanted him executed you'd need a bill passed to say "Execute John Smith". Hell, I'd go so far as to say that you'd have to get the people to vote as well in such a situation, and then 10 people at random who voted yes would have to go speak to the guy for 10 minutes and then watch him be executed. If any of them changed their minds, then he gets a stay of execution.
That would be absurdly unconstitutional, and for good reason. The fate of an individual should never be left up to politics.
I don't think "well, it's not an open and shut case" matters as much as the fact a death penalty exists. Once a person's declared guilty, that's it, even if they were just guilty or all the way guilty with guilt to spare. Guiltiness past adequate conviction isn't even factored into whether a person gets the death penalty or not, I don't think.
I don't believe it is valid to abhor the death penalty only for guys who might be convicted and innocent. You've got to go all one way or the other, because it's impossible to draw the line between death penalty being okay and death penalty not being okay. If you don't have faith in the judicial system to get an accurate verdict, that's another problem, and arguably immutable life would be just as bad in that case, because you'd be punishing an innocent person for the rest of their life.
which of these can we "correct" in the sense of letting a person later found out to be not guilty go free
- a sentence of life in prison
- a sentence of death
It is not impossible to draw a line. The death penalty is not ok. The judicial system will never, ever, be 100% accurate.
You can't ever give someone back the years you take from them. Death is death, sure. But I don't abide by the notion that it's unique because you can't correct it.
While it is true that you cannot un-ring a bell you can still provide some degree of compensation and corrective action after the fact, if the person is still alive to receive it, in order to provide some degree of justice and renumeration. The same is not true for Frankensteining.
Even ignoring my universal disapproval of capital punishment, what really gets me about all of these kinds of cases (innocent people imprisoned, prosecutorial and police misconduct, &c.) is that we as a society are creating a new victim while ostensibly refusing to gain closure for the original victims. The man who actually did shoot that guy is free right now. That is a travesty above and beyond wrongful imprisonment and execution. Someone managed to ruin two family's lives and got away with it.
Hold on now. You are hearing "black man" and "south" and "witnesses changed their story" and you're jumping to some pretty weak and far-reaching conclusions. There was ballistics evidence in the case against him, linking the bullet shells to another shooting that Davis was convicted of (though not completely conclusive evidence). And there was forensic evidence against him - bloody shorts found in the dryer at his house - that was ruled inadmissable over a disagreement about whether the search was legal. These witnesses who have changed their story were unconvincing and shown to be inconsistent when they recanted. Most of them pointed to a specific other person as the real criminal, and yet the defense didn't even summon that guy. The conviction has been upheld by courts up and down and all over. The death penalty in general is a problematic thing, but I'm pretty sure this guy is guilty. His innocence seems to be based entirely in fashionable cause and sensationalist press, not in fact.
I don't know enough about the specifics of this case to declare the guy innocent, fair enough, but my point still stands. There are numerous other cases of this kind that I can comfortably point to as the travesties I suggested. (If you'd like I can go hunt down a list with links.) Not only has someone been unjustly robbed of years and in some cases decades of their life which, as you noted, they can never get back. That would be horrible enough on its own. But to top this horror cake off with a cherry of extra deplorability, their innocence means that the crime was never actually solved. Another victim was created while the original victims are still waiting to see justice done, and with the passage of time it becomes that much less likely to happen, and all the while we've had a murderer wandering the streets safe from any harassment over a 'closed' case. And it doesn't have to be restricted to capital offenses. Our Justice System is failing pretty miserably at its job. That is fucked up beyond my ability to express cogently.
moniker on
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ShivahnUnaware of her barrel shifter privilegeWestern coastal temptressRegistered User, Moderatormod
Executions happened in only 18 countries last year with five accounting for the lion’s share: China (thousands), Iran (388), Iraq (120), Saudi Arabia (69) and the US (52).
Stay classy USA. And what the fuck China!
While I don't want to defend China because that is fucked up, China has over eighteen times the population of Iran, and over forty two times the population of Iraq. So unless the "thousands" is over like seven thousand, it's not even higher per capita than Iran.
Those statistics are probably colored by the fact that Texas constitutes most of all executions since 1976 (when SCOTUS allowed them again) and Texas also was a Confederate/lynching state. Not to dismiss the findings or anything, but we really are talking about two different societies when we're talking about capital punishment. America sans Texas, and Texas.
I don't know anything about the study's methodology other than what's in the press release, and i don't know the history of population growth in the South, but Texas is only #3 for lynchings 1882-1964 by a decent margin (MS - 539 black people lynched in that time frame, GA 492, TX 352. Next is AL with 299. Numbers from Tuskegee Institute). I don't doubt that Texas's liberal use of the death penalty affects the findings and I know you're not dismissing them. Just pointing out that Texas may not have been the keystone of the study, and I'm not sure how or how much the findings would differ if Texas weren't included.
Hold on now. You are hearing "black man" and "south" and "witnesses changed their story" and you're jumping to some pretty weak and far-reaching conclusions. There was ballistics evidence in the case against him, linking the bullet shells to another shooting that Davis was convicted of (though not completely conclusive evidence). And there was forensic evidence against him - bloody shorts found in the dryer at his house - that was ruled inadmissable over a disagreement about whether the search was legal. These witnesses who have changed their story were unconvincing and shown to be inconsistent when they recanted. Most of them pointed to a specific other person as the real criminal, and yet the defense didn't even summon that guy. The conviction has been upheld by courts up and down and all over. The death penalty in general is a problematic thing, but I'm pretty sure this guy is guilty. His innocence seems to be based entirely in fashionable cause and sensationalist press, not in fact.
1. Ballistics evidence is not worth the slime spraying from the prosecutor's mouth. It's almost as bad as 'gunpowder residue' (did you know that if you haven't washed your jacket in the past - I think it's about 6 months? - it will very likely test positive for 'gunpowder residue' simply due to environmental contamination?). Trajectories are almost impossible to precisely pin down after the fact, and bullets & casings are shared among a large variety of weapons. And in America, a lot of people have personal firearms.
2. Ooh, bloody shorts. How damning. Was is MacPhail's blood? If not, 'bloody shorts' are something that sounds menacing while meaning nothing for the particular case, just like finding narcotics or weapons. Maybe Davis cut himself, or maybe it was MacPhail's blood, sure, but the shorts were bloody for any number of explanations that don't involve Davis being MacPhail's murderer.
3. Witness testimony shouldn't even be in the court system. Human testimony is the worst form of evidence possible; we're extremely bad data recording mechanisms.
The point is that there is a giant heap of reasonable doubt, and it's being ignored in order to make somebody pay for killing a cop, evidence be damned.
I think the people I despise most in this are the people saying "STFU GUYS THE COURTS SAID HE WAS GUILTY SO HE IS GUILTY WHATEVER THEY SAY IT'S THE TRUTH."
So you uh, you wanna explain what makes this controversial? Cuz that video sure as fuck doesn't.
Oh I don't know, maybe it has something to do with the fact that a possibly innocent man is going to be executed tomorrow maybe?
Did you ever think about maybe putting that in your OP? Because right now it's pretty barren. I mean you don't even have link + discuss, which is bad enough, you just have link + snark which somehow manages to be worse.
As to the matter at hand; personally I'm universally opposed to the death penalty. So...boo death penalty.
I'm okay with the idea of the death penalty in principle, but staunchly oppose it in practice. Mainly because...well, because of this. I mean, seriously? It's like we aren't even trying not to execute innocent people.
Yes, but everyone please keep in mind that "it takes guts to execute an innocent man".
As for this guy's guilt. Keep him in prison for the evidence that has been collected if he has to be punished. You should need a lot stronger evidence for the death penalty. But, I am sure a lot of people in that region feels that as long as someone is punished then justice is served and all is good (as long as no one they know or like is punished).
It'll be alright. I mean, sure, what's about to happen may seem cruel and barbaric, but it's really all in the name of greater justice & decency.
I am completely sure that at the end of the year we will be able to look at the crime statistics in Georgia and see that the death penalty has served as an effective deterrent against violent criminal activity.
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
I'm curious to see where you're going with this.
Surely Pro-life could make more sense? I don't see the conflict between it's not a person and the belief you shouldn't kill people. However the opposite, you must not kill an innocent, however dangerous or unpleasant the situation caused by it's existence may be does make sense. Pro-life and death penalty are completely opposed, but pro-choice and anti-death penalty are very different issues.
[edit]How did that happen? That was like an hour at least of posts all at once.
No stay, just a temporary delay from the supreme court while they decide whether or not to issue a stay.
While this is potentially good news I honestly can't see how this isn't tantamount to torture, isn't this the fourth time there has been a relatively late intervention?
You can't ever give someone back the years you take from them. Death is death, sure. But I don't abide by the notion that it's unique because you can't correct it.
Maybe not; but you can at least try. Although I don't think all states even have restitution laws/policies for released innocents, which is such crap.
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I think the line-drawing Paladin is referring to is whether the death penalty is okay for convicted murderers who don't profess innocence or have reasonable doubts surrounding their conviction.
For example, Lawrence Brewer is scheduled to be executed in Texas today (maybe he already was). Brewer is one of the men who lynched James Byrd Jr by dragging him behind a truck for 2 miles on an asphalt road, with evidence suggesting that Byrd was still conscious while his limbs were being torn off. After dumping Bryd's mutilated corpse, Brewer went to a picnic. Brewer is an avowed white supremacist, and has said that if given the chance to do it all over again, he would murder Byrd again.
Come on Obama, get in the game on this one! I bet he'd consider it if it weren't a political landmine. Ugh.
while i am whole heartedly opposed to the death penalty, this does seem like the wrong thing to have a problem with. any court case that gets reviewed could likely have some sort of reason brought up for doubting that the trial occurred without any error. now, it seems like in this particular case the state supreme court was just wrong, there is more than minimal doubt. However, it seems like reaching the level of "minimal doubt" would be pretty easy.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
You're making it sound like they caught a black adult receiving oral sex from a white adult, and they sentenced him to life for being black and having sex with a white woman, but that's not the case; it was a case of statutory rape. 16 is the age of consent in Georgia, and the girl was 15, and he was 17. The law called for a mandatory sentence of 10 years prison and put on the sex registry list as a sexual predator.
There is however another case, where a 16 year old boy and a 16 year old girl were caught in the act by the mother, and he went to jail for receiving oral sex from her, which at the time was a misdemeanor offense, but he was also on probation, and any act of breaking the law sends you back to jail in those conditions. At that time Georgia's anti-sodomy laws were still in place, which could land married adult couples 20 years in prison if they were caught in the act of anal or oral sex, even in their own homes.
I think that a lot of people mix up the facts in those two cases when they bring them up.
Since then Georgia has ruled their anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. They still however have a law on the books stating that sexual relations may only happen between married couples, how that doesn't fall under the protection of a citizens right to privacy, as does the act of sodomy; I don't know.
Either way, I agree that Georgia's sex laws are absurd, and need to be abolished, but making it sound like someone went to prison just for being black and having sex with a white person is wrong.
And just out of curiosity, how many of you who are opposed to the death penalty are pro-choice?
Worst still, in the link given above regarding the polygraph;
"Quiana Glover, who did not testify at the original trial, said one of the witnesses who did not recant told her he was the real shooter"
Umm, Presidents can't pardon/grant clemency to people for State crimes just Federal ones. And Georgia's Governor can't pardon/clemency either. There's quite literally nothing he can do, even politically. Plus he is unfortunately nominally in favour of capital punishment.
This really is just reminding me how glad I am that Illinois finally abolished it this year and joined the ranks of civilization.
I'm curious to see where you're going with this.
I live in Augusta, GA but I attended high school in a little bumfuck town called Hebzibah (part of the same county). Some of the shit that would come out of those kids' mouth; they were obviously brainwashed by their parents. I remember one day, we were going past McElmery farm and spotted a precession of KKK members marching along the treeline. White hooded robes and everything. Some of the kids cheered and hollered at them, saying things like they were "doing God's good work." Sigh.
These are not equivalent. One is about women's right to choose what to do with their own body and the other is about the power of the state to murder people.
I think we know where it's going, and while I don't wish to back-seat mod, I think we all know D&D well enough that it's a 20 page off topic tangent and/or a locking.
Of course, abortion threads don't usually fare very well either.
That said, I am pro-choice and have grown more and more opposed to the death penalty as I've grown older. When I was younger, it seemed sensible to me that society didn't lose anything by putting those who were convicted by rock solid evidence of heinous crimes to death.
As the years went by and I saw mistakes, miscarriages of justice and outright corruption lead to near misses or the deaths of innocent (or plausibly innocent) people, I have a harder time defending that stance to myself or others. If the costs are about the same (in terms of keeping a person in prison for their life versus the apparently significant costs of proceeding to the actual death sentence), I'm fine with keeping someone in prison as opposed to jumping through all the hoops to let people (with all our failings) potentially screw it up and kill innocents wrongly convicted.
The death penalty only makes sense to me in a perfect system. Obviously, what we have is not perfect, so using an absolute and irrevocable punishment against people we think deserve it is fraught with all kinds of hazards.
Even in a perfect system you have to wonder how you'd treat people who weren't fully aware of their actions, or what consequences they might have, and you realize that anyone who would commit a crime of this magnitude in a perfect system would be not fully aware of their actions.
The death penalty should really be banned other than by direct act of government. So, you'd have the judiciary convict the person and then if you wanted him executed you'd need a bill passed to say "Execute John Smith". Hell, I'd go so far as to say that you'd have to get the people to vote as well in such a situation, and then 10 people at random who voted yes would have to go speak to the guy for 10 minutes and then watch him be executed. If any of them changed their minds, then he gets a stay of execution.
The Death Penalty: Adding time pressure to situations so it's even more likely that innocent people are murdered by the state
I just hope he has a damn good lawyer who is currently in full delay mode right now, fighting for his client's life.
Go legal red tape and inefficiency that I otherwise hate, go!
"Death Sentences Linked to History of Lynching in States"
Was that the state that had executions temporarily shut down for a while? I forget the reasons...corruption investigation? possible innocent executed?
You can't ever give someone back the years you take from them. Death is death, sure. But I don't abide by the notion that it's unique because you can't correct it.
Hold on now. You are hearing "black man" and "south" and "witnesses changed their story" and you're jumping to some pretty weak and far-reaching conclusions. There was ballistics evidence in the case against him, linking the bullet shells to another shooting that Davis was convicted of (though not completely conclusive evidence). And there was forensic evidence against him - bloody shorts found in the dryer at his house - that was ruled inadmissable over a disagreement about whether the search was legal. These witnesses who have changed their story were unconvincing and shown to be inconsistent when they recanted. Most of them pointed to a specific other person as the real criminal, and yet the defense didn't even summon that guy. The conviction has been upheld by courts up and down and all over. The death penalty in general is a problematic thing, but I'm pretty sure this guy is guilty. His innocence seems to be based entirely in fashionable cause and sensationalist press, not in fact.
Yeah, the system was being investigated/considering reorganization to ensure that it actually would work and not be a constant source of miscarriages of justice after ~20 people were exonerated by DNA evidence and the like. Instead the legislature managed to eek out enough support for abolition and the governor signed it early this year.
Don't back-seat mod.
But yes, what you said.
Wikipedia Wrote:
Amnesty International Wrote:
Stay classy USA. And what the fuck China!
That would be absurdly unconstitutional, and for good reason. The fate of an individual should never be left up to politics.
While it is true that you cannot un-ring a bell you can still provide some degree of compensation and corrective action after the fact, if the person is still alive to receive it, in order to provide some degree of justice and renumeration. The same is not true for Frankensteining.
I don't know enough about the specifics of this case to declare the guy innocent, fair enough, but my point still stands. There are numerous other cases of this kind that I can comfortably point to as the travesties I suggested. (If you'd like I can go hunt down a list with links.) Not only has someone been unjustly robbed of years and in some cases decades of their life which, as you noted, they can never get back. That would be horrible enough on its own. But to top this horror cake off with a cherry of extra deplorability, their innocence means that the crime was never actually solved. Another victim was created while the original victims are still waiting to see justice done, and with the passage of time it becomes that much less likely to happen, and all the while we've had a murderer wandering the streets safe from any harassment over a 'closed' case. And it doesn't have to be restricted to capital offenses. Our Justice System is failing pretty miserably at its job. That is fucked up beyond my ability to express cogently.
While I don't want to defend China because that is fucked up, China has over eighteen times the population of Iran, and over forty two times the population of Iraq. So unless the "thousands" is over like seven thousand, it's not even higher per capita than Iran.
I don't know anything about the study's methodology other than what's in the press release, and i don't know the history of population growth in the South, but Texas is only #3 for lynchings 1882-1964 by a decent margin (MS - 539 black people lynched in that time frame, GA 492, TX 352. Next is AL with 299. Numbers from Tuskegee Institute). I don't doubt that Texas's liberal use of the death penalty affects the findings and I know you're not dismissing them. Just pointing out that Texas may not have been the keystone of the study, and I'm not sure how or how much the findings would differ if Texas weren't included.
1. Ballistics evidence is not worth the slime spraying from the prosecutor's mouth. It's almost as bad as 'gunpowder residue' (did you know that if you haven't washed your jacket in the past - I think it's about 6 months? - it will very likely test positive for 'gunpowder residue' simply due to environmental contamination?). Trajectories are almost impossible to precisely pin down after the fact, and bullets & casings are shared among a large variety of weapons. And in America, a lot of people have personal firearms.
2. Ooh, bloody shorts. How damning. Was is MacPhail's blood? If not, 'bloody shorts' are something that sounds menacing while meaning nothing for the particular case, just like finding narcotics or weapons. Maybe Davis cut himself, or maybe it was MacPhail's blood, sure, but the shorts were bloody for any number of explanations that don't involve Davis being MacPhail's murderer.
3. Witness testimony shouldn't even be in the court system. Human testimony is the worst form of evidence possible; we're extremely bad data recording mechanisms.
The point is that there is a giant heap of reasonable doubt, and it's being ignored in order to make somebody pay for killing a cop, evidence be damned.
Fuck.
I think the people I despise most in this are the people saying "STFU GUYS THE COURTS SAID HE WAS GUILTY SO HE IS GUILTY WHATEVER THEY SAY IT'S THE TRUTH."
Yes, but everyone please keep in mind that "it takes guts to execute an innocent man".
As for this guy's guilt. Keep him in prison for the evidence that has been collected if he has to be punished. You should need a lot stronger evidence for the death penalty. But, I am sure a lot of people in that region feels that as long as someone is punished then justice is served and all is good (as long as no one they know or like is punished).
Edit: NAACP says he has received a stay. Family say that's not the case. No one seems to know for sure.
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It'll be alright. I mean, sure, what's about to happen may seem cruel and barbaric, but it's really all in the name of greater justice & decency.
I am completely sure that at the end of the year we will be able to look at the crime statistics in Georgia and see that the death penalty has served as an effective deterrent against violent criminal activity.
Surely Pro-life could make more sense? I don't see the conflict between it's not a person and the belief you shouldn't kill people. However the opposite, you must not kill an innocent, however dangerous or unpleasant the situation caused by it's existence may be does make sense. Pro-life and death penalty are completely opposed, but pro-choice and anti-death penalty are very different issues.
[edit]How did that happen? That was like an hour at least of posts all at once.
While this is potentially good news I honestly can't see how this isn't tantamount to torture, isn't this the fourth time there has been a relatively late intervention?
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Maybe not; but you can at least try. Although I don't think all states even have restitution laws/policies for released innocents, which is such crap.
For the lie detector or just reconfirmed the death penalty?
3DS friend code: 4811-7214-5053
3DS friend code: 4811-7214-5053