The Case of Richard Glossip • Hacker News Board

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#221

Post by emgoldstein » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 4:29 PM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #160

emgoldstein wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've served on two juries. In both cases, a drunk driver was acquitted. In both cases, the defendant's guilt was obvious, and the cause was a single juror who hated cops. (Or, more indirectly, the cause was an arrogant young DA who wasn't aggressive enough in voir dire.) On one of these cases, I was the last juror to hold out. It was like "12 Angry Men" in reverse: "12 Hungry Men And Women." It was 5pm, I wanted dinn…

I appreciate the genuineness of your response, but again, I think you may continue to misinterpret Paul's stance. I'm also not clear if Paul is the "other billionaire" you refer to? I presume he's financially successful but I don't know the degree. I should also be clear that I don't know him personally, don't know his politics beyond broad strokes that he has written about, and am interpreting based on what is writt…

The other billionaire is Trump, of course.

My point is that if your concern (or pg's) is strictly of the form "minimize the number of innocent people being killed unjustly," there are much more effective reforms available than abolishing the death penalty. For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan

Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year. And I mean certainly innocent lives, not conceivably innocent lives (like Glossip's).

Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.

Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the general concern for Glossip, what is?

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#222

Post by nkurz » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

emgoldstein wrote: post #221

nkurz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the genuineness of your response, but again, I think you may continue to misinterpret Paul's stance. I'm also not clear if Paul is the "other billionaire" you refer to? I presume he's financially successful but I don't know the degree. I should also be clear that I don't know him personally, don't know his politics beyond broad strokes that he has written about, and am interpreting based on what is writt…

The other billionaire is Trump, of course. My point is that if your concern (or pg's) is strictly of the form "minimize the number of innocent people being killed unjustly," there are much more effective reforms available than abolishing the death penalty. For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probabl…

  > The other billionaire is Trump, of course.

I understood that you were referring to Trump. I was (and still am) uncertain if you were referring to Paul Graham as the (other) "other billionaire", or whether this role was being played by a third party. I haven't previously seen Paul referred to as a billionaire on this site, although I suppose he might be one.

  > For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:

Whether a good or bad idea, I don't think there is a reasonable mechanism for switching our justice system in a wholesale manner. Alex Kozinsky (a US 9th circuit judge) has an excellent paper (mentioned in another comment and previously discussed here) on possible ways to improve rather than replace the system: http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...

  > Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably
  > save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year.

There is a great deal of confounding between societal norms and criminal behavior. I'd expect (for example) that if we somehow transplanted the US system to Japan, that crime rates would remain low. I don't know what the effect would be if we somehow switched the US to a Japanese system of justice while leaving the other elements of US society in place.

  > Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the
  > opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is
  > suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.

I think you underestimate the degree of diversity of opinion on HN, and that your sense of "you and everyone" is misguided. Consider your own example of serving on a jury: the visible average opinion may not adequately reflect the individual views. I'm also surprised that you would feel that posting this under a throwaway account is necessary.

  > Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of 
  > innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the
  > general concern for Glossip, what is?

I don't have a particular concern for Glossip, and had not heard of him before reading the parent article and the counter-article that you posted (which I appreciated). My concern is not for preserving the lives of murderers (if they are) but for preserving societal faith in the expectation of an impartial and fair system of justice.

Having such an expectation is today commonly considered naivetee, but I think a lot of the progress made in America in previous generations was because there was a belief that such a system was possible. I'd like to try to restore some of that faith, and avoiding high profile miscarriages of justice (I don't know if this is one) is an important part of that restoration.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#223

Post by emgoldstein » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

nkurz wrote: post #222

emgoldstein wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other billionaire is Trump, of course. My point is that if your concern (or pg's) is strictly of the form "minimize the number of innocent people being killed unjustly," there are much more effective reforms available than abolishing the death penalty. For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probabl…

> The other billionaire is Trump, of course. I understood that you were referring to Trump. I was (and still am) uncertain if you were referring to Paul Graham as the (other) "other billionaire", or whether this role was being played by a third party. I haven't previously seen Paul referred to as a billionaire on this site, although I suppose he might be one. > For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice…

Consider your objective of "restoring faith" and the means you (and many in society who seem to agree with you) adopt to bring it about: propagating the idea that miscarriages of justice frequently occur. Even if this isn't a miscarriage. Even if Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Ahmed Mohamed, etc, aren't miscarriages.

You could say: our means of increasing faith in justice is to tell everyone that miscarriages occur all the time, even if they maybe don't, so that good ordinary Americans will become more and more concerned and prevent miscarriages, which will increase faith etc.

This is a very complicated and indirect way of purportedly getting the result you want.

However, if you wanted exactly the opposite result - that is, you wanted to decrease faith in the criminal justice system - what would you do? Answer: give as much publicity as possible to miscarriages of justice, purported or real.

Which is exactly what you're doing, right? Have you ever heard the thing about what to do when you're in a hole?

Also, I'm quite aware that Americans aren't Japanese. On the other hand, I seldom hear that awareness from people who point out how much better urban life is in, say, Reykjavik rather than Detroit. And appear to believe that the problems of Detroit can be solved by adopting the ideology and/or governance structures of Reykjavik. (Which, in fact, has pretty much already happened - if anything, the flow is in the other direction.)

As for throwaways: stay on the reservation, and you'll have nothing to fear. Duck under the barbed wire, and you'll find out...

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#224

Post by joshuaheard » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #122

joshuaheard wrote: post #90

Government is too incompetent to have the power to take your life.

So if a government was sufficiently competent, you'd be in favor of them executing people for some crimes? I don't ask this to be snarky. I'd like for the death penalty to be abolished. But I do want to know if that's your true reason for rejecting the death penalty.[1] If it's not, perhaps there's a different, stronger reason for your view. 1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/wj/is_that_your_true_rejection/

I used to be for the death penalty, until the spate of prisoner releases based on DNA evidence after DNA forensic technology hit the mainstream. If there was a fool-proof method of proving guilt, then yes, and eye for an eye. But with any system based on humans, you will have human error.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#225

Post by brlewis » Tue, Sep 29, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

emgoldstein wrote: post #128

I have to wonder: before writing this essay, did pg read anything written by anyone on the opposite side of this case? For instance, this? https://www.readfrontier.com/investigation/two-truths-and-a-... If not, it seems like a pretty remarkable procedure to arrive at such a strong conclusion, with no other information besides a brief summary by advocates for the defense. Has pg ever served on a jury? If so, would he…

The "strong conclusion" pg came to:

Many who have looked closely at this case think Glossip is innocent. I think so. I encourage you to learn more about it and form your own conclusions. But one thing is certain: there is a reasonable doubt.

I just read the article you linked to from start to finish. From that article alone "on the opposite side of the case" I draw the same conclusion: there's reasonable doubt.

Further, I think your paragraph that starts "If not" is an awful lot of followup to your presumed answer to your unanswered question. Couldn't you even have prepended a perfunctory "If so, great" to it?

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#226

Post by justin_vanw » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 3:50 AM UTC

hobs wrote: post #208

pjc50 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was talking about Guantanamo, presumably ("extralegal holding facility")

I honestly question if GP is being sarcastic because this is a thing acknowledged by the US government, they wont even release some prisoners from gitmo that they acknowledge are innocent of crimes. And dont forget CIA blacksites! http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-poland-cia-blacksi... Bush admits to secret prisons(wikipedia sources are your friend): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5321606.stm http://web.…

We do have prisons where we keep people without trial.

We don't, as far as I know, have entire prisons where we hold people without trial because they 'know secrets' and we are afraid they might tell them. In fact, I don't know of a single instance of this, outside of people who agreed to keep some secret but then changed their mind (snowden).

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#227

Post by peterwaller » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 8:17 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #108

swehner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask "Is that seriously the point PG is making here?" I think that is indeed the case. I also suggest that your writing doesn't make any kind of valuable argument against that suggestion. Yes, of course, "because the system is not perfect, we should remove death penalty altogether." That's the way it is. When you write "There should be strong consequences for murder and certainly Death Row has its place as well,"…

> I think that is indeed the case. Then why is that PG article coming up now? It's not like it's a newsflash that we have innocent people dying in the Death Row. it's been happening for years. Is it an epidermic reaction of some sort ? The news effect, just like people who can't fall asleep for 15 mins because they saw something horrible on TV and then forget it and go on with their lives the next day ? If you are re…

This narrow view seems to miss the fact that the world is a complicated place, where mere revulsion frequently isn't sufficient to actually enact meaningful change.

Being in a state of revulsion requires valuable energy. If you spend all your time being revolted, then you won't actually be able make friends and influence people, as it were. PG is in the position that he's got a sphere of influence, and now you chide him for what? Expressing a valuable thing in such a way that he can potentially cause a coherent constructive interference of an important community. I'd say that was quite a good thing. He also used timing to his advantage to get people to listen.

In your post you imply he doesn't think about this regularly, but you have no evidence for this. He could be thinking about this all the time, but we don't get to hear about that.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#228

Post by hobs » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 12:52 PM UTC

justin_vanw wrote: post #226

hobs wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly question if GP is being sarcastic because this is a thing acknowledged by the US government, they wont even release some prisoners from gitmo that they acknowledge are innocent of crimes. And dont forget CIA blacksites! http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-poland-cia-blacksi... Bush admits to secret prisons(wikipedia sources are your friend): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5321606.stm http://web.…

We do have prisons where we keep people without trial. We don't, as far as I know, have entire prisons where we hold people without trial because they 'know secrets' and we are afraid they might tell them. In fact, I don't know of a single instance of this, outside of people who agreed to keep some secret but then changed their mind (snowden).

Fair, but I dont think anyone made that claim.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#229

Post by wtbob » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

drabiega wrote: post #177

wtbob wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that you can't get someone his life back: you can't give back someone the empty years he spent in prison; you can't remove the pain and agony of years removed from polite society; you can't remove the cruelty and abuse he experienced from other prisoners. Punishment's unpleasant (that's its nature); death and imprisonment are unpleasant. And yet, there are crimes which deserve death. Not to execute vicio…

Well, you can't just execute those people. You either execute no one or you execute some innocent people along with the 'deserving'. You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life?

> You either execute no one or you execute some innocent people along with the 'deserving'.

Likewise with imprisonment. Innocents will die in prison even if they don't die on the gallows.

> You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life?

Those aren't the choices: the choices are to be just in execution of the depraved (and unjust in accidentally executing the innocent) or to be unjust in imprisoning the depraved (and unjust in accidentally imprisoning the innocent). IMHO the justice delta between executing & imprisoning the truly evil is greater than that between accidentally executing & imprisoning the innocent.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#230

Post by wtbob » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #199

wtbob wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that you can't get someone his life back: you can't give back someone the empty years he spent in prison; you can't remove the pain and agony of years removed from polite society; you can't remove the cruelty and abuse he experienced from other prisoners. Punishment's unpleasant (that's its nature); death and imprisonment are unpleasant. And yet, there are crimes which deserve death. Not to execute vicio…

> Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. That's a minority position. At least 100 countries don't use the death penalty at all. Another 50 countries have a death penalty but haven't executed anyone for at least 10 years. The 30 to 40 countries left are a list of oppressive regimes or countries with corrupt justice systems or justice systems that do not comply with h…

> > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice.

> That's a minority position.

It's also correct. If 100 other countries jumped off of a bridge, would you?

Although, if you do want to argue from popularity, polls consistently show majority support for capital punishment even in countries without it. From that standpoint, abolition of execution is undemocratic.

There are many crimes for which the only just sentence is death (c.f. the Oklahoma man executed some time ago, who raped & buried alive a young woman, or the man in Washington, D.C. who tortured & murdered a family in their home): not to impose it is itself unjust. For, say, Hideki Tojo to have died peacefully in his bed after the deaths of millions would have been a moral outrage: his hanging was the only appropriate sentence.

The State's monopoly on force is predicated on it assuming the duty of exacting vengeance on behalf of its citizens: if a State refuses to exact that vengeance in every circumstance, regardless of evidence and certainty, then its monopoly on violence loses its legitimacy.