gbaji wrote:
Ok. I can accept this. But what alternative would you propose? That we not hold accused people in jail? We can debate the problems and benefits of our current bail and arraignment process if you want. Again though. None of that has *any* bearing on the death penalty. Those two would have been held for exactly the same amount of time regardless of death penalty availability in their state.
Honestly, I dont have a proposal. There is no good solution. It's an all around terrible situation. We have no 100% accurate way to determine guilt or innocence.
The system is broken. It may be the best system we have and it may be the best system we ever come up with, but that doesn't change the fact that it sucks. Given how unreliable and inaccurate I think people are at this whole determining guilt vs innocence thing (myself included), I could never advocate the death penalty.
I'll admit, when I first heard what my father-in-law was being charged with, my first thought was "how could he be so stupid?" I am a family member and I even thought he was guilty at first. It actually took a lot of research, digging through bank records, ATM receipts, hospital records, etc to dig up enough evidence to piece the puzzle together. There were parts of it that seemed totally unrelated unless you looked at the time stamps on ATM receipts in relation to when certain people were in the hospital, when my father in law was gone driving a truck across country, etc. Without our lawyer piecing all this together, the other guy would never have admitted to specifically trying to get my father-in-law thrown in jail. There is no doubt in my mind if he had not had enough money to hire a great attorney he would be in jail. In fact, when my wife was looking for an attorney for him most of them wouldn't even consider helping him fight it. They just wanted him to consider making a deal.
When it costs $50,000 just to keep from going to jail for something you didn't do, something is wrong. What about the people who don't have the money? If it happens to be murder they are convicted of, we just kill them?
I just dont think we are good enough at this to go off killing someone based on them being "proven" guilty.
And I'll admit, I'm a little too emotionally involved in certain aspects of this to make a decent argument and I keep getting waaaaaaaaaaay off track :)
But, even if you don't feel the same way, I think you can see my basic point. I don't trust any of us and I'm sure not going to advocate killing someone based on convincing the right 12 people of their guilt.
That's just how it is to me. *shrug*