yes i do shake.

stumbler that was just my oponion. and coming from a rape victim when i was 14 i think the guy should of had his dick cut off to make sure no other child would ever be put threw what i had to go threw! and of course you would only get the server punishment if it was a proven fact that you did the crime.

 

Yes it is! I made it up! I asked "what if such-and-such were true" and the only response you've ever been able to come up with is "it isn't." SO FUCKING WHAT! Either answer the goddam question or stop replying to me.

 

Which brings us back to wrongful convictions ... many people have been put to death because it was a proven fact, and then it turned out not to be.

 

Yes, that is true. However, many more people have been put to death when there was no trial, their murderer didn't allow them one.

Our justice system is not perfect, there are some flaws, but the ratio to me is totally acceptable.

 

Well I tried to ask that question a page and a half ago - if the number of murder victims saved was higher than the number of innocent people killed, is that a fair trade off? - and so far, the only response is from one complete moron who keeps insisting that it isn't higher, and completely ignoring the question.

 

The moron that you're referring to is a typical ultra-liberal, they cannot answer a question with reason, they are compelled to answer with another question which is off subject.

If we would speed up the appeals process and insist that evidence either way, be conclusive, we would eliminate most of the problems. Unforetunately even those UL's admit that they will do ANYTHING to stop the death penalty.

 

Actually, I find that ultra-anything tends towards the same problem. Certainly when it comes to the death penalty, most people know what their conclusion is before they are presented with any evidence, and all the evidence in the world won't ever change it. No matter how many times you prove that there's no correlation between the presence of a death penalty and a lower crime rate, people will still claim it acts as a deterrent.

That's why I'm more interested in asking a different question. If it DID act as a deterrent, and if you could quantify how many victims were saved against how many innocent people were executed .. what ratio, if any, would be acceptable?

 

Here's SO FUCKING WHAT. It is not hypothetical if it is a reality you pompous fool. Its what we are doing now and obviously if its what we are actually doing now most people consider the ratio acceptable.

If you know this then your "hypothetical" question is moot.

None fool. Killing innocent people is what constitutes murder. It does not matter whether or not it is done in the street or by the state. Legally it still constitutes murder.

 

I figured you did, it's almost a forgone conclusion. Why is it that so many people who believe in an all-loving and forgiving god are so quick to inflict horrendous pain and torment on other human beings?

Please, to answer.

-S-

 

Shall we wait together Shake. I'd be very much interested in hearing her answer while I hold my breath waiting for the OP to show his face on his thread again.

 

As I said awhile back, I had to loose my faith in god before I stopped supporting the death penalty. Once I began to really examine my beliefs and look at the effects of religion on society I realized that our insistence on the death penalty is largely based on biblical teachings.

-S-

 

I just had a discussion to this effect with Perv on another thread about the guy who killed two people and wounded several others when he opened fire on a congregation of the Unitarian Church. I wondered if he might have found the motivation and justification for his killing spree in the Bible and Perv buried me with about 50 verses that would work quite well for justifying a killing spree.

But I agree with this point and the one you made previous to this one. For some reason people who are supposed to believe in a loving, forgiving, all powerful and all knowing God somehow get the idea that they need to be God's little helpers and go around killing and torturing the people God forgot to kill and torment.

 

Whether you believe in a God or not, ethcal or moral behavior in a society is a key ingredient in it's success or failure. All societies are governed by a system of laws. A law is meaningless if there are no penalties imposed on those who chose not to obey the societies laws.

The penalties are generally devised in a graduated scale depending on the severity of the violation and the gravity of the results of the violation. Someone ignoring a parking regulation will be subjected to a lesser penalty than someone who causes an personal injury accident while exceeding the speed limit.

There is no crime worse than the taking of anothers life in a premeditated manner. If our laws consider that if one does this without remorse, they have forfeited their rights, the death penalty can be imposed.

This is not in anyway religious or vengeful, it is a penalty to be applied by a justice system that has been in existence for centuries. As are all penalties prescribed by societies laws. This is not to say that the justice system can not be corrupted, it has been so manipulated countless times in our countries history, by peoples who do not honor it's need to be evenly applied.

These corruptions are corrected however, by the use of appeals court system that will examine the case andrule on the validity of the verdict and penalty imposed. Further, corrections are made by the review of the laws in light of their constitutionality.

To assume that the proponents of the death penalty, as a viable punishment are somehow corrupted by their religions is ridiculous. If anything, it is the religions who fight the death penalty.

Stumbler is correct in saying that the death penalty does not reduce the number of murders in this country, his reasons however are IMO flawed. There are those of us who believe that the corruption of the system by those who wish to abolish the death penalty has resulted in a system that has been reduced to a holding pool of the condemned.

If a person was to consider the odds of ever being put to death for murder, he would view it as a damned sure bet that he wouldn't. The worse he would get is life in prison, the norm would be a release after a very short term.

The death penalty is not a deterant because it is very rarely enforced, when it is there is a reduction in capital crimes.

 

I was just wondering, if there is no crime greater than taking an innocent life with premeditation what does that say about a society and individuals in it that support mistakenly taking an innocent life through their government in the form of the death penalty?

I posed this question earlier but never got an answer to it.

Try this scenario. Someone pulls a gun. In response another person pulls a gun and shoots and kills the person with the gun and the person standing next to them that is unarmed and uninvolved. Is that OK?

 

Sorry, I didn't know you asked me those questions.

No, it is not okay to take an innocent life in the name of justice. However, depending on the situation that caused the grievous error, investigation and proscecution of the party or parties who commited any crime in the course of events leading to the execution should be conducted. A person who commits perjury in a capital case, should receive the harshest of penalties. An attorney who willing subverts the law, likewise should be dealt with severly. Overzealous proscecutors who withhold or manipulate evidence should themselves be held accountable. An attorney is an officer of the court and should be ridgidly held to the rules of evidence and procedure.


In the scenario you gave, too much is missing. The person who initially pulled the gun, was it a criminal act?? Was it an person acting within and upon a legal authority?? Same questions of the one who reacted by drawing and firing the weapon.

If the shooter was not justified by law, then I would think the least they would be guilty of is manslaughter, worse second degree murder. First degree if it is proven that the innocent victim was the intended target.

If the person who fired the fatal shot was acting legally, then the killing of the innocent person would be accidental or otherwise unintended. Any legal recourse, I would think, would be civil not criminal.

 

Two things that need to be considered in false convictions involving the death penalty are the most common reasons for a false conviction are eye witness testimony, and juries that are highly motivated to render guilty verdicts.

The testimony from eyewitnesses is one of the primary reasons minorities, especially blacks, have a disproportionate number of false convictions. Studies have also shown that juries are more likely to convict minorities especially if the victim was white.

 

Actually the reason for most false convictions is the "stacking" of evidence by the proscecution. Since the proscecution has the investigative resources of the municipality or state, they have an easier time gathering evidence than does the defense. The temptation to bring forth only the evidence to convict is difficult to overcome. In almost every case that I have seen recently, the withholding or omission of evidence that could have established reasonable doubt is the grounds for dismissal or retrial.

Since blacks who are brought to trial are more likely to use underfunded public defenders, they are not well represented in court, particularly in a highly emotional murder trial. The effect of the overzealous proscecution is felt much stronger in these cases.

 

"If you ranked eyewitness errors first, you were also right. Erroneous eyewitness accounts showed up in a stunning 71 percent of these cases. ...

https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-do-innocent-people-go-to-prison.html

His case illustrates the dangers of relying on what used to be seen as the best kind of evidence—a person who was present at the scene of the crime who can attest, "I saw him do it." Time and again, thanks to DNA evidence, we've seen that a victim can be absolutely sure in identifying her attacker—and be absolutely wrong. Amy Klobuchar, prosecutor for Hennepin County, Minn., which includes Minneapolis, says faulty identifications are "the single most common error" generating bad convictions. [Ed—Klobuchar vacated this position in 2006 when she was elected to the U.S. Senate.]

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125756.html

 

I will have to admit I have leaned more towards fence-sitting several times after reading threads like this. I definitely do think there are many people the world would be better without, but after looking at how many jackasses in the world that are so certain that someone should die for bad reasons, it makes me fear I might be one of the jackasses. There is enough stubbornness and arrogance in me though that I am ready to fully convert.

 

The Justice Project studied the 4,578 capital cases, out of a total of 5,760, that were appealed between 1973 and 1995. It was the first statistical study of its kind ever undertaken.
One in 19, or 313 of these cases, resulted in an execution. The study found “serious, reversible error” in 68 percent of cases—or nearly 7 out of every 10—that were fully reviewed at the state and federal level.
The study's authors note: “Capital trials produce so many mistakes that it takes three judicial inspections to catch them—leaving grave doubt whether we do catch them all. After state courts threw out 47% of death sentences due to serious flaws, a later federal review found ‘serious error'—error undermining the reliability of the outcome—in 40% of the remaining sentences”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/dp-j22.shtml


Pretrial discovery is another crucial safeguard that helps make the legal system more transparent and ensures due process. Suppression of exculpatory evidence was a factor in more than 30% of the first 74 DNA exonerations, and expanded discovery laws during the post-conviction process have contributed to overturned verdicts in several cases by bringing to light exculpatory evidence not turned over to the defense.

Someone is asleep at the switch. These errors, if intentional, are a subversion of justice. The perpetrators need to be weeded out.