That's why I find death penalty highly controversiall...
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Obviously, I can't pronounce on whether the guy was guilty or not. However - and this applies to every country - at least 10% of the people in clink for serious (and especially violent) crimes, including capital ones, are innocent. The police are often pressured to obtain convictions for political or statistical reasons and they often simply don't care whether the right guy is dragged before the courts, especially if their victim isn't intelligent enough to understand what the words fall guy mean. Britain has had some enormous miscarriages of justice, as the unconsecrated graveyard in Pentonville could testify. Some of the ones in the last 50 years involve IRA activities. Several people have been freed and whitewashed after having served many years behind bars: they are the lucky ones, because they would have had their necks stretched had it happened a few years earlier.
However, although this is the strongest argument against capital punishment (or summary execution), there are many others that the more civilised nations have listened to.Brian (the devil incarnate)
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Originally posted by Brian EllisObviously, I can't pronounce on whether the guy was guilty or not. However - and this applies to every country - at least 10% of the people in clink for serious (and especially violent) crimes, including capital ones, are innocent. The police are often pressured to obtain convictions for political or statistical reasons and they often simply don't care whether the right guy is dragged before the courts, especially if their victim isn't intelligent enough to understand what the words fall guy mean. Britain has had some enormous miscarriages of justice, as the unconsecrated graveyard in Pentonville could testify. Some of the ones in the last 50 years involve IRA activities. Several people have been freed and whitewashed after having served many years behind bars: they are the lucky ones, because they would have had their necks stretched had it happened a few years earlier.
However, although this is the strongest argument against capital punishment (or summary execution), there are many others that the more civilised nations have listened to.
Now, back to reality. We are not all-knowing, perfect beings who can dole out justice in anything like a perfect way. Every sentence will be imperfect. Yet, because of this, should we abandon trying? Should we not do our best to assure that violent criminals will not bring the rest of us down? Is this not our duty to our wives and children, that we should not see them or other innocents raped or murdered because we were too lily-livered to act? If 10% are not guilty as charged (I won't use the term "innocent,") Then 90% are guilty and were rightly convicted. Your solution to this dilemma would be to incarcerate all these people for life, rather than take the off chance that you are executing the wrong person. This might salve your idealism, but what does it do to save such people from an even worse fate being exposed to the brutal inhumanity of prison for the rest of their lives? Many would say that any sane person would rather be executed than live in such hopelessness and squalor. And someone must pay for these people to be incarcerated. If someone does not take up their case and prove their innocence, what difference does it make for the wrongly convicted? Might as well execute them and end their misery, as well as the drain on resources better used elsewhere.
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I am saying that idealism is for college freshmen. It's very nice, but we must deal with our limitations in the real world, and our limitations will always bring about some injustice. We should work hard to rid our society of those things which foster injustice, such as corruption and such, but letting 90% of violent criminals rot in prison and anally rape and eventually murder the 10% who are innocent is not justice for the innocent, now is it?
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I do not think it is a totally different topic. In fact, we are addressing the very practical question of what to do with a convicted murderer here. Do we execute him or put him in prison? You think it's wrong to execute someone, and I say life in prison for some might be a fate worse than death, especially if they are truly innocent.
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Originally posted by KvHagedorn[...]life in prison for some might be a fate worse than death, especially if they are truly innocent.
So we should prolly all convict them to prison and only if they turn out to be innocent we kill them becuase prison is so hard on them.Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
[...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - Veblen
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:shakes head:
edit: I might as well comment a bit...
Originally posted by KvHagedornI do not think it is a totally different topic. In fact, we are addressing the very practical question of what to do with a convicted murderer here. Do we execute him or put him in prison? You think it's wrong to execute someone, and I say life in prison for some might be a fate worse than death, especially if they are truly innocent.Last edited by Nowhere; 22 November 2005, 03:50.
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I don't think a comparison with Nazis in this discussion is relevant, practical, warranted or neccessary or benficial in any other way imaginable.Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
[...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - Veblen
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Originally posted by KvHagedornI do not think it is a totally different topic. In fact, we are addressing the very practical question of what to do with a convicted murderer here. Do we execute him or put him in prison? You think it's wrong to execute someone, and I say life in prison for some might be a fate worse than death, especially if they are truly innocent.
If what you say is true you would want them executed as fast as possible just to spare
them from the nightmares of prison. Fighting for their freedom would be pointless because of the time it would take for anything to happen and the damage of prison would be already done.
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Originally posted by NowhereSo...execute me.Join MURCs Distributed Computing effort for Rosetta@Home and help fight Alzheimers, Cancer, Mad Cow disease and rising oil prices.
[...]the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. - Veblen
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Well, if we take KvH's argument that execution is better than imprisonment to its logical conclusion, let's just close all the jails and murder every Tom, Dick or Harry who would otherwise go there. A good-looking 18-y.o. who robbed the local convenience store because he was hungry, would be easy meat for the sodomists, but you would consider it more humane to kill him in cold blood. Thank God I don't live in a country with such a lack of Christian ideals (before you reply to this, as you claim to be a good Christian, please read and digest the Gospel according to St Matthew from chapter 5 onwards).
Please answer me one thing, if life in prison is less preferable than death, why do many persons awaiting execution, often for many years in inhumane systems, are always trying to get their sentences commuted or, at least, stays of execution?
As for the thought that any jurisdiction would have a legal system that would allow the death penalty to be executed, in the knowledge that 10% of the victims were innocent, it makes the gorge rise. It is barbaric, and I'm not a college freshman but a thinking septuagenarian - and I've been against the death penalty for over 50 years. Maybe, had you lived 2000 years ago, you would have been one of the Sanhedrin crying to Pilate for our Lord to be crucified.Brian (the devil incarnate)
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