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Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

theguardian.com

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Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#211

Post by Racing0461 »

kbelder wrote: post #207
Racing0461 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of bullshit that makes me against government death penality. If the supreme court can't throw out "administrative procedure" in favor of a "correct ruling", then where does one go next? Is the only way to get the "correct outcome" a BLM george floyd type protest? It seems like the court system is becoming like getting support from tech companies these days where the only way to get a "normal" level o…

But following proper administrative procedure is a key component of a fair justice system. It's not all that's necessary, but it is necessary, otherwise you have rules being bent on whims of justices, prosecutors, or public sentiment.

Yeah, i guess a governor's pardon is the systematic solution for a case like this (if he is indeed innocent).

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#212

Post by jncfhnb »

vorpalhex wrote: post #138
jncfhnb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very different problem from shaken baby syndrome. See adjacent reply.

Your assertion is simply wrong. SBS is not just a parent trying to shush a baby - it requires a very significant amount of force in a healthy infant. This is not a "oh shush let me hug you" thing, this requires repeatedly seriously jostling the baby hard enough to pinch it's airway off or bounce it's brain off the inside of it's skull. Usually repeatedly.

I’m not saying it’s “let me hug you” I’m saying it’s out of desperation. And one of the biggest ways to avoid it is EDUCATION for parents who do not know better. Because most cases of this are not people intentionally murdering children but people who are at their wits end and desperately need help, the bare minimum of which is a mental note that this particular form of desperate exhaustion is dangerous to the child.

And as a general rule, KILLING people because they made a mistake is really fucking dumb.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#213

Post by jncfhnb »

mcpackieh wrote: post #146
jncfhnb wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? Congrats, you killed some undereducated, desperate parents who fucked up and lost their child.

> And… what exactly is achieved by this sort of justice system? It suppresses the rate of vigilante justice. If the courts can generally do a better job than the vigilantes themselves, then society comes out ahead. If we were to live in a society where parents can abuse their children to death and receive nothing more than a scolding from the state to be more careful in the future, then we'd have a lot more people ki…

There are few enough death squads of vigilantes waiting for their chance to murder parents who accidentally killed their children that we can disregard this as a meaningful threat.

SBS deaths are largely vastly different from intentionally abusive parents. These are accidental harms.

Also sorry but… what? You seem to be proposing that if the law doesn’t support a very specific standard of Justice that vigilantes are the logical consequence. This argument is not supported by anything and could be applied to any level of Justice.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#214

Post by DoreenMichele »

jncfhnb wrote: post #15

The most bonkers thing here to me is giving a man a death sentence because of a believed shaken baby death that he promptly took to the hospital.

People who intentionally killed a kid "accidentally" may well promptly go to the ER to establish plausible deniability.

There may be no clear, bright line making it super obvious who is merely a dumb schmuck without parenting skills and who is a murderer.

We should do a better job of putting out quality parenting info for free and also provide appropriate legal consequences.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#215

Post by dakial1 »

As a father I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to lose a child and then being accused of doing it.

Also this brings to my mind a recent conversation I had with friends who live in the US (I'm Braziian) on how horrible the health system (even private) is. Hospital refusing emergencies to avoid litigation risk, no service given but bill sent anyway, totally superficial diagnosis no even touching the patient...

I'm not surprised that DRs and Nurses would simply make absurd statements like the ones in the article.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#216

Post by spacebanana7 »

guraf wrote: post #123
lotsofpulp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Science” is just the process of continuously evaluating and re-evaluating what you know using data and experiments, and changing what you “know” (or your mental model) to align with the new data. What people deify is certain conclusions, for myriad reasons.

Enough of this no true scottsmanship. "Scientific consensus" is taken as gospel by many people. Most on this very board. They don't care to learn how the consensus was reached (usually happens by just ignoring detractors). They just care to feel superior to people outside the consensus because "duh, science".

The scientific method is limited by the historical method, unless you perform the experiment yourself.

Determining the correctness of somebody’s experiment is pointless if the underlying observations are intentionally incorrect.

Just as you should be cautious trusting Josephus to be critical of the Romans, you should be cautious trusting a researcher report observations contrary to the interests of their social institutions.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#217

Post by dfadsadsf »

adfgiionio wrote: post #205
dsego wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good person will refuse to hurt others no matter how badly they want to. Does this include or exclude killing in self defense? Would a good person allow themselves to be killed rather than harming the attacker? Imagine that the assailant would be rehabilitated after serving 10-15 years for your murder and live a productive life with family and kids, does that change the equation? Is absolutist pacifism the end go…

No, no, no, and no. In all of those cases the killing is justified by more than just bloodlust. I am not a pacifist and never have been. Executions are different. People are not afraid to admit that they support executions because they like knowing that hated people will suffer. That is not something I will consider acceptable under any circumstances. If there were any evidence that capital punishment served a purpos…

Recidivism rate is high so People who commit murded will likely commit other crimes if released so removing them from society is a good thing. Keeping them in jail forever is a waste of resources so execution is right approach. The one thing is that process should not take 20 years and all appeals should run out in a year or two at most so justice is reasonably swift.

We should not torture them on purpose but besides that I do not particularly care if they suffer or not during execution.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#218

Post by Aeolun »

beerandt wrote: post #197
Aeolun wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that you don’t get shaken dead babies without visible external trauma. So saying it’s ‘shaken baby syndrome’ just because there are internal injuries is junk science.

Actually opposite. Many forms of trauma can cause these injuries (especially 'trio'), but alone and without matching external trauma, shaking becomes the most likely cause. Which isn't to say that shaking couldn't also cause some external trauma.

Isn’t the whole premise of the original article that the thing has been proven to be junk?

Just the fact it’s on mayoclinic doesn’t mean all that much.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#219

Post by thomastjeffery »

adfgiionio wrote: post #194
i80and wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely find this point of view viscerally repulsive. Maybe it's a common perspective, but I pray not. It really seems to be at the heart of a lot of issues with legal systems.

Most people, moral or not, would never kill. Most people rarely feel a desire to kill, and most people know they would feel guilty for killing someone. A person's feelings will keep them in line even if their character won't. The police add an extra incentive. But executions change all that. Whether or not a person supports capital punishment reveals if their morality is a flimsy thing of feelings and self-interest o…

The confounding variable in your test is this: people may simply be detached from the argument.

As bad as that may be, it isn't a sign of violent intentions.

Re: Texas death row inmate at mercy of supreme court, and junk science

#220

Post by thomastjeffery »

mcpackieh wrote: post #110
dsego wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's retributive justice, it's not a deterrent. To quote a post I recently found resonating with me: "Look, we don’t necessarily hang murderers to deter other people from committing the same offence. We kill them simply because the punishment has to carry the same weight as the offence. The family of the murderer must go through the same anguish and pain that the murder victim’s family went through. The killer has to…

Response to the deleted comment: "I genuinely don’t understand this point of view. I get why the victims would want this but why is that a reason for our legal system to adopt it as a guiding principle?" The pact the government has with people is that the government metes out justice so that people don't try to get it themselves. Some measure of retribution, it doesn't need to be the death penalty, works towards this…

A responsible government would punish the vigilantes instead of the innocent or rehabilitated.
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