Reason +1; NM abolishes the death penalty.Follow

I'm not sure. Life, no parole, solitary confinement, it seems hard enough for me.

Yesterday in the papers in the UK, they were all talking about this case. Had we had the death penalty, he would've been dead by now. Instead he only spent 27 years wrongfully imprisoned, which is a little bit less worse. When he was asked the first thing he wanted to do now that he was free, he said "To go and watch Sunderland play." I almost had a tear in the eye. Poor guy, he's gonna be so disappointed.

Read the article. His own defence lawyer said "Thank God we don't have capital punishment." Because if he we did, that's exactly the kind of case where it would've been applied: He confessed the murder and rape to 3 different people, retracted it and pleaded not guilty, and yet in each of his confessions he said some things that apparently no one else could've known. He was in the area at the time. He also shared blood type with the killer, which only 30% of the population have. That's what was put to the jury at the time. That's good enough in most legal systems to convict someone.

And I do read what you write, I just don't agree. I don't think "absolute proof" exists. I think that if/when it does come close, the person pleads guilty anyway and the death penalty isn't usually applied then. And even if we can find a case, once in a while, like Huntley, which is incredibly horrific and we're 99.999% sure the guy is guilty, I don't it's worth setting up this whole process just to kill these people. They are not special enough. Cell, solitary, life, no parole. I think that's probably worse than death anyway tbh.

when have I said that I wouldn't apply the death sentance if they plead guilty?

I'm not talking about the flawed systems that are in place, I'm talking about the system "I" would put in place should I be able to do so.

Absolute proof is obtainable in fact is often obtained, to say otherwise is incredibly naieve, can you tell me what possible doubt there could be over the murder of heather West by Fred and Rosemary, just as an example.

With all due respect to your superb intellect, I'm not entirely convinced you could come up with something better than what currently exists. I'm sure you realise that there are literally thousands of people that work in the criminal justice system, day in day out for 40 years, that some of these people are ridiculously bright, that some spend their lives researching the subject, or experiencing it, or just making a living in it, or being a victim in it, and they none of them can really agree on something fundamentally better. I'm just not convinced your 15 minutes of contemplation on the subject would be more effective.

Fine. State sanctioned homicide which stands a fair chance of being negligent homicide, if that suits you better.

The problem with Tarv's "absolute" proof system is that at the end of the day people still decide if the case at hand matches those conditions.

Tarv's conditions for "absolute" proof could be fine, great even, but I am unconvinced that the people making the actual decisions are at that level.



Don't mess with California: our prison system negligently kills more inmates then any state in the US kills with intent via poor health care.

You really think the death penalty is the best punishment for this guy?

Nah. Just leaves it without depth perception.

No, you are wrong. Deterrence isn't the only goal. They keep him in jail to prevent him from committing the crime for the period of the sentence. That's not punishment for punishment's sake.



Edited, Mar 19th 2009 11:02pm by trickybeck

Look, its an elegant point that you might just not be able to understand. Prisons are the best ways to humanely remove criminals from our society, which unfortunately destroys their freedom.

If there existed a way to remove the criminals from society without removing their freedom (and killing them removes their freedom, don't even try it), then it would be extremely preferable to use such a system over life imprisonment. The reason we (should) use lice incarceration is because it is the best possible method that is available top us for reaching the most number of our goals

Exile could accomplish this in the past I guess, and is a fitting consequence for any criminal really: You don't like the fact that you can't go on murder sprees? Well that's really just too damn bad; you are going to have to leave. The problem with exile is that we have no room.

"Leave can" mean a lot of things

murder
exile
-exiled then shot-
slavery
mass lobotomies
conscription

anyways what those all have in common is simpley that they remove unwanted members from society, what happens to them afterward is not our concern

now liberalism!

We still may chose from all of those definitions of being told to "leave" but as liberals (any individual who believes that there are inherent or otherwise created but definitly omnipresent reasons to resepect human beings

All of them

Not even baby rapers are allowed to give up on their inherent worth. Disagree? Fine, we dont have any inherent worth anyway and the baby rapper is just as amoral as you are when you're cutting your grass. When inherent rights are present, they can, by definition not be removed

The only moral option is to seclude the prisoner somehow away from sosciety, and provide them so that their stay there is adequate with even occasionally luxuries.

And this is where you make two of your biggest mis-steps. First, you assume humanely is the way to go. I do not. I would love to see pikes in front of the state house or town hall. I would love to see strange fruit dangling from a yard arm or the remains of the handled still tied to the post in the middle of the capital lawn. Second, you take issue with destroying their freedom. You'd have negotiated with the Axis powers and given them Europe and Southeast Asia, wouldn't you?

As for the rest of your post, I don't know what you are trying to say because you write like a ham-fisted mongoloid. I'd have better odds getting an intelligible argument out of Tony the Retarded McDonald's Garbage Man tomorrow at lunch.


I don't know who the f'uck you are, but I can tell you're not smart enough to make assumptions.

So I'm retarded for subscribing to an ethos that allows me to understand that fear is a better motivator than compassion?