191–200 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.
It should be applied only when the evidence is physical and without doubts (eyewitnesses are insufficient).
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States that are not historically racist?
I don't know that there are states that are not historically racist, but we could assume there are states that are less historically racist than others - states without slavery and large pro-abolition movements might be better situated for historical morality, or states without sundown towns or counties.
It wasn't until war was pretty much inevitable that many, including Lincoln, started to realize that moving towards freedom/equality was the winning move, strategically, practically, and politically.
Even after admitting equality was the answer, he still wrote plenty of extremely racist rants about he didn't mean that legal equality didn't mean that the races were ever capable of being equal, etc.
The other blatant example that people misinterpret is the 3/5 compromise in the constitution.
It often gets framed that the slave states valued slaves lives as less (3/5) than free persons, but remember that the northern states that were against slavery were also against counting slaves as constitutional persons at all: they wanted 0/5s.
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You need to apply Bayes Theorem to DNA evidence, but courts typically don't.
I'm not sure either prosecutors or defense attorneys would, in general, like the idea of basically forcing a jury to hear about percentages that they can't somewhat control via expert witness narrative. Or the idea of introducing most jurors to advanced statistics for the first time. I mean, even a lot of reasonably intelligent, college educated professionals that have taken a statistics class get lots of things very…
But now that I think about it, I bet defense counsel already does this. They did during the OJ trial.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
States that are not historically racist?
I don't know that there are states that are not historically racist, but we could assume there are states that are less historically racist than others - states without slavery and large pro-abolition movements might be better situated for historical morality, or states without sundown towns or counties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know that there are states that are not historically racist, but we could assume there are states that are less historically racist than others - states without slavery and large pro-abolition movements might be better situated for historical morality, or states without sundown towns or counties.
Don't forget that most of the states against slavery, were also against those slaves being present in the country at all . It wasn't until war was pretty much inevitable that many, including Lincoln, started to realize that moving towards freedom/equality was the winning move, strategically, practically, and politically. Even after admitting equality was the answer, he still wrote plenty of extremely racist rants abo…
You're saying that 0/5ths was more racist than 3/5ths? That makes no sense, because the benefit of being counted was being given to the slave owners. I don't see any ambiguity or subjectivity here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know that there are states that are not historically racist, but we could assume there are states that are less historically racist than others - states without slavery and large pro-abolition movements might be better situated for historical morality, or states without sundown towns or counties.
Don't forget that most of the states against slavery, were also against those slaves being present in the country at all . It wasn't until war was pretty much inevitable that many, including Lincoln, started to realize that moving towards freedom/equality was the winning move, strategically, practically, and politically. Even after admitting equality was the answer, he still wrote plenty of extremely racist rants abo…
This actually gets the 3/5 compromise wrong worse than the view it (correctly) points to as being wrong.
The 3/5 compromise isn’t about “constitutional personhood” of slaves at all. The southern states actually wanted 5/5 (which they ended up after the war, when they replaced chattel slavery with penal slavery) and the northern states wanted 0/5 — which is how 3/5 was a “compromise” — because the issue wasn’t about how much legal personhood slaves were granted (which was zero and not being negotiated), it was about how much voting power in the federal government the people allowed to vote in slave states got as a bonus for having them in bondage. The position of the northern states was “if you keep humans in a condition where they are legally something like livestock or industrial machines, you don’t get any more extra votes for having them than you would for livestock or industrial machines.”
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I'd argue it's a minor component. Especially with something like a tick, that will go on to bite someone else. I am morally indifferent between life imprisonment and death, but life imprisonment costs more and can fail. On the other hand, the original comment framed death penalty as "hypocrisy" of "justice being about re-education"; I am saying justice doesn't have to be primarily about re-education, no supporter of…
> Punishment and re-education should be prioritized depending on the crime, but in any case both are just nice, optional perks. Again there is this framing about what is deserved and what is owed. This is in contrast to the framing of what is best for society — if your prevailing theory is that some people are safe and some people are dangerous (as opposed to some people are criminals and some people are owed), then…
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The presumption was that the items would have Lee's DNA on them and they did not.
1) That really isn't true. Studies indicated anywhere from 40-75% of the time you can't find "touch" DNA on objects that were handled by someone. That's not even considering whether he could have been wearing gloves or wiped the object after. 2) Since the testing was conducted by defense counsel, we don't really know what an objective test would even show. His lawyers statements are a bit weasel worded--"did not show…