171–180 of 206 posts
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.
Emotional slogans should be abolished, end of discussion.
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The neighbor witness followed the suspect to a place where he was known/recognized.
I didn’t see that in the article, but it’s still trivial to come up with reasonable doubts: 1. What does known/recognized mean? It’s perfectly possible for additional people to make a mistake in identification, especially if prompted by others. 2. Even if it was him, the crime wasn’t witnessed; he’d be agitated just by having seen the scene, I imagine The big thing that adds to number 2 is that people often forget th…
It didn't mention anything about any contradictory evidence, except to say the judge felt enough existed.
Debating the death penalty is one thing, but advocates for abolishing it aren't helping themselves by relying on this type of propaganda. This was and is a solid conviction of a guilty man.
There are enough legitimate concerns to debate without taking the word of the click bait.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The neighbor witness followed the suspect to a place where he was known/recognized.
I didn’t see that in the article, but it’s still trivial to come up with reasonable doubts: 1. What does known/recognized mean? It’s perfectly possible for additional people to make a mistake in identification, especially if prompted by others. 2. Even if it was him, the crime wasn’t witnessed; he’d be agitated just by having seen the scene, I imagine The big thing that adds to number 2 is that people often forget th…
If they could (and did!) do that without needing DNA evidence, the presence of someone else's trace DNA, or absence of the suspect's on one specific piece of evidence isn't likely to change that, even if it's the murder weapon.
All evidence is imperfect, and I personally think we'll start to publicly realize that DNA evidence is just as malleable as eye-witness testimony. Just run more PCR iterations until some other DNA is amplified above the signal/noise floor! (If people knew the amount of analytical probability that goes into PCR/ matching DNA samples, they'd have a lot less faith in the technology, but that's another topic.) Same thing for manipulated/edited video and even deep-fakes.
Which, isn't too say all evidence is crap and therefore no convictions are valid.
It's why we put faith in the system and in our peers serving on petit-juries...
and why it's up to a them and the judge to evaluate the evidence, and decide whether or not to convict...
And why we don't have a computer run a PCR and automatically say: "Positive dna-sample: go directly to jail".
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What a weird argument for the death penalty. If you worry about this aspect surely you can just ask the convict if they prefer to stay in prison or if they prefer to die. And not in a philosophical thought experiment way, but in the most direct way possible: “You have been found a very bad egg by the rules of the area you are in. We decided to never let you out again. Since this decision you have been in this facilit…
"You have been found a very bad egg by the rules of the area you are in." If a person is being sentenced to death, this is a ridiculous statement and it betrays your worldview. It implies that they are only being put to death because of the rules that somebody came up with, rather than for having done things that are objectively, unspeakably, bad. You don't get the death penalty for stealing purses at Walmart, protes…
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…
Why would there need to be appearance of re-education? The society doesn't owe anyone a re-education. It's not really about punishment either... If someone doesn't respect others' life and property, why would theirs be respected at all? There's no more revenge here than in drowning a tick that bit you instead of releasing it back into the wild. In abstract, I'd apply it to many more crimes with an unambiguous victim…
And on the matter of death penalty, does one lead with an attitude of "Why should we help unless we owe you?" Is that the right moral motivation for death penalty? I mean, that's the attitude of big business in commerce.
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Justice involves the victims not the state. The Kantian idea of justice should have died out centuries ago.
Judicially sanctioned revenge killing as a civil remedy is an interesting thought exercise, though. ...if your argument is that the victim and not the State is entitled to justice.
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.
So, if a single person is killed by a government-mandated airbag, we should throw away all the safety trade-offs (the numbers of people killed and saved by airbags) and remove the airbags? Emotional slogans should be abolished, end of discussion.
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I ran a simulator system for a couple of years for a military law course. The idea was to give those in the course first-hand experience with ROE/RUF concerns through the eyes of the people they'd be writing ROE/RUF for. The scenarios presented were laughable, badly-acted and completely unrealistic. Worse, every single one ended, by default, with the suspect pulling out a gun and shooting at the user. All of them. Th…
No these were interactive scenarios, with a human behind the controls. So it really depends on the human of course. But you can select where the situation goes, raise the tone of voice or aggressiveness of the actor (real actor videos smoothly integrated) of course the operator can make it shoot and you also need to simulate that. The subject in the simulator has a prop taser and gun that work pretty realisticly (bla…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t see that in the article, but it’s still trivial to come up with reasonable doubts: 1. What does known/recognized mean? It’s perfectly possible for additional people to make a mistake in identification, especially if prompted by others. 2. Even if it was him, the crime wasn’t witnessed; he’d be agitated just by having seen the scene, I imagine The big thing that adds to number 2 is that people often forget th…
As for your what-if's: that's what a jury is for. Determining matters-of-fact from presented evidence. They convicted. If they could (and did!) do that without needing DNA evidence, the presence of someone else's trace DNA, or absence of the suspect's on one specific piece of evidence isn't likely to change that, even if it's the murder weapon. All evidence is imperfect, and I personally think we'll start to publicly…
That’s a pretty shockingly huge amount of faith you’re putting in a system with well documented shortcomings and biases, especially in a capital case with a black defendant.
Also, it seems frankly absurd to claim that the absence of the subject’s DNA on the murder weapon isn’t material to the decision to convict . It’s surprisingly hard not to get DNA on things, and the prosecution’s case appears not to have painted the defendant as some sort of methodical dexter-type.
Nobody has claimed that we should rely solely on DNA tests - that’s an absurd straw man. I think it’s even more absurd to defend this sequence of events in a capital case.
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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 investiga…
> Because their 'performance' is to perform their part best they can. Well, this "best" should be judged and rewarded or punished too.