Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon • Hacker News Board

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#61

Post by nabla9 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #29

nabla9 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's not possible. It would be horrible idea. Law is a process, punishing people who do their duty for the errors in the process when they have not been involved in misconduct would not be justice. Death penalty itself is wrong.

> Law is a process, punishing people who do their duty for the errors in the process when they have not been involved in misconduct would not be justice. There are tons of ways to perform badly without misconduct. Companies punish/fire/demote/etc employees who underperform all the time, for example. Or who make bad decisions consistently. Or even a single costly bad decision. Why should "life of death judging" offici…

Because their 'performance' is to perform their part best they can.

In common law systems (US, UK for example) the trial proceedings is adversarial system. If someone should lose money because the innocent is convicted, it should be the defense lawyer. The trial is a game.

In civil law jurisdictions (like in Continental Europe) the trial is fact-finding public inquiry. The court is more actively involved in investigating the the case.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#62

Post by alex-yark » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #17

momothereal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the country in question has a good track record of punishing judges, prosecutors, and LEA, then it would be abolishing the death penalty _de facto_, as no-one would take that sort of risk over just imprisoning the person for life. If the country does not have a good track record, it doesn't really change anything.

There are sometimes sitautions where someone's guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt; I don't imagine prosecutors would be particularly afraid to pursue the death penalty for someone like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik (who got 21 years in jail for the murder of 77 people).

Whilst that's the maximum permissible sentence in Norway it's worth highlighting that it can be extended indefinitely if he is considered still a risk to society - the requirement to review the need to continue detaining him (on a semi frequent basis) being considered a human right.

Based on his activity since being convicted I doubt he'll be released for significantly longer than his minimum sentence.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#63

Post by kingsuper20 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

LocalH wrote: post #12

The death penalty should be abolished, end of discussion. If even a single innocent person is murdered , then an obscene and heinous crime has been committed by the state.

The state is sure good at killing innocent people in other countries.

I'm going to have to vote for the death penalty, of course with high standards of proof. If anything, the whole idea of bolting people into a small box for 50-60 years is a much more perverse idea. Only the US could invent something like a Supermax prison (although the Black Dolphin looks like no picnic, the Russian answer to abolishing the death penalty).

edit: I'll add that the US justice system (and probably any other) appears quite arbitrary in it's punishment. The sentences people receive and actually serve can be all over the map.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#64

Post by barbazoo » Sat, May 22, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

aqsalose wrote: post #35

Concerning DNA testing in general. Recently there was a case where the Finnish police arrested a person as a suspect for a robbery of a convenience store on basis of DNA evidence: the robber had dropped a plastic glove, presumably to hide fingerprints, on the floor of the store. Officers isolated DNA from the glove, searched archives, found a match with a person who had had some minor offense years prior, and brought…

That's an adorably bad animation but it explains it perfectly

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#65

Post by kingsuper20 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

ta988 wrote: post #19

LocalH wrote: post #12

The death penalty should be abolished, end of discussion. If even a single innocent person is murdered , then an obscene and heinous crime has been committed by the state.

I wonder how this argument would be applied to police murders of innocents. How do we deal with that?

> I wonder how this argument would be applied to police murders of innocents. How do we deal with that?

Realistically I think you'd have to drastically lower the perceived risk of a public interaction to the police. As long as they think they are going to get hurt, they'll feel the need to get in front of the problem.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#66

Post by dlhavema » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:00 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #3

> In an effort to prevent his execution, Lee's attorney sought in the post-conviction appeals process to finally have the DNA evidence in the case tested for the first time. [...] Their request was denied. "The reasoning given by the judge was it wouldn't matter, that there were three people who saw him at or near that neighborhood on that day and time and honestly the DNA just wouldn't matter," Short said. Wow. Like…

While I agree with you seems like this was a sketchy case to go forward with the execution, like me, you already had a strong opinion about capital punishment before you read the article.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#67

Post by gjsman-1000 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

kingsuper20 wrote: post #63

LocalH wrote: post #12

The death penalty should be abolished, end of discussion. If even a single innocent person is murdered , then an obscene and heinous crime has been committed by the state.

The state is sure good at killing innocent people in other countries. I'm going to have to vote for the death penalty, of course with high standards of proof. If anything, the whole idea of bolting people into a small box for 50-60 years is a much more perverse idea. Only the US could invent something like a Supermax prison (although the Black Dolphin looks like no picnic, the Russian answer to abolishing the death p…

Furthermore, consider the view of repentance. Let's say that you are at least willing to admit the possibility there is an afterlife with judgement. Having a defined date when you will die means you are more likely to repent than when you die of old age 60 years from now at some undefined time.

Also, have you investigated how much it costs the US Taxpayer to house a prisoner in a Supermax prison? If it was income, that prisoner would be making money in the upper 5%. It's also perverse to make the taxpayer pay so much to house a prisoner, who committed atrocious crimes normally worthy of death, for so long.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#68

Post by newacct583 » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #3

> In an effort to prevent his execution, Lee's attorney sought in the post-conviction appeals process to finally have the DNA evidence in the case tested for the first time. [...] Their request was denied. "The reasoning given by the judge was it wouldn't matter, that there were three people who saw him at or near that neighborhood on that day and time and honestly the DNA just wouldn't matter," Short said. Wow. Like…

> Wow. Like, I completely fail to comprehend how it's legal in the US judiciary system to ignore any piece of available hard evidence in a case that is punishable by execution?

It wasn't "completely ignored". It was presented to the court and the test was requested, and the request was denied. Evidentiary rules are complicated and subject to abuse, yes, but they protect all of us. It's not like we'd be better off if discovery was unlimited.

Your complaint isn't about the way courts treat evidence, it's with the punishment. Death is final and not subject to appeal. And fundamentally that's an argument for why it shouldn't be available to courts at all.

But really, there's nothing especially wrong with evidentiary process in US criminal law. There are problems with it like any bureaucracy, but on the whole it does pretty well.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#69

Post by beerandt » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

AcerbicZero wrote: post #16

How does the state justify this behavior in 2017? We execute so few people and it’s already so excessively expensive what’s the logic for refusing to test and retest everything? 20+ years in jail waiting to be executed seems pretty cruel, if not all that unusual IMO. Tangential but I also strongly oppose lethal injection as a method of execution - if the state lacks the will to line up a proper firing squad, it has n…

If your complaint is that it's too expensive and takes too long, then allowing additional appeals (once the conviction is final) isn't the answer.

Re: Four years after a man was executed, someone else’s DNA found on murder weapon

#70

Post by staunch » Sat, May 22, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

qalmakka wrote: post #54

The death penalty is plain hypocrisy, because it strips away any supposed appearance of justice being about re-education and not about plain punishment. It is not also about preventing dangerous individuals from causing harm on other people because again, that is already plainly achieved by incarceration. The death penalty is 100% state-mandated revenge against the perpetrators of heinous crimes. It is been known for…

1. Execution absolutely guarantees that the criminal will not hurt anyone ever again. In prison, criminals can still hurt prison guards and other prisoners. They can also escape or be freed by mistake. There is a clearly benefit in terms of risk to innocent people. There are certainly innocent people that have been spared harm or death by virtue of executions.

I don't view execution as punishment or revenge. I view it the same way I view putting down a rabid animal. I would never take pleasure or vengeful satisfaction in it, even if the criminal had hurt me or someone I knew.

2. It's not significantly more ethical to keep someone that is innocent locked up in a prison for their entire life. Someone being freed after 50 years in prison has had their life stolen from them, even if they were not actually executed. The stakes for life imprisonment are just as high as execution. Arguably, the torture of prison makes it worse than execution in many cases.

3. Execution makes sense in some rare cases, where the criminal is very clearly guilty (e.g. video evidence of them murdering multiple people) but only as a way to prevent them from hurting people in the future. Not as a deterrent, punishment, and not for revenge.

4. If I was a sociopath serial killer that couldn't help myself, I might view execution as a relief. Even if outwardly I was begging not to be executed, I might appreciate that my society had the courage to kill me instead of leaving me to rot in prison for 50 years.

5. Ultimately, we need to be able to cure these people and release them back into society. Science just isn't there yet, so for now we have execution and life imprisonment as our primary tools. No one should be satisfied with either option. They're both terrible options that are not as dissimilar as some portray them to be.