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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actual innocence is a grounds for vacating a conviction.
In the USA, innocence isn't grounds for an appeal. Actual, post-conviction DNA tests aren't a basis. Errors at trial are. So good lawyers find one. Jury instructions, evidentiary errors, procedural, etc., which is why money buys justice.
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote some of his most significant works after his execution by firing squad was stayed at the last minute. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fyodor-dostoevsky... There is a vivid description of his experience in the novel "The Idiot", you can read it here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2638/old/20081222-2638.txt , search for: "As to life in a prison" Or see it here with English subtitles:…
Oh no, he'd published two novels before that, both significant, but for different reasons. Poor Folk was a maudlin debut but it made him the hottest new writer in Russia, briefly. Belinsky, the biggest critic of the day, famously kissed him when they were introduced.
Now that he was a celebrity he thought he'd show them what he really could do, and came up with The Double, which is genius. But it bombed, and Dostoevsky became a has-been in his mid-twenties. It's still one of the best things he ever wrote, equal parts comic, tragic, and weird. It's also short, so one of the best first things to read by him.
All that happened before he went to Siberia, which of course was transformative. His memoir of the prison camp, Notes From the House of the Dead, is another masterpiece and a sort of decryption key for all his later work. It was Tolstoy's favorite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the USA, innocence isn't grounds for an appeal. Actual, post-conviction DNA tests aren't a basis. Errors at trial are. So good lawyers find one. Jury instructions, evidentiary errors, procedural, etc., which is why money buys justice.
What are you smoking? I'd ask for sources but this is an absurd idea. You don't even need innocence in the US. You need to show there is reasonable doubt that the individual is guilty. At least that's how it works during trial. I'm not going to claim this works flawlessly, nor that it justifies a death penalty, but let's be real here.
That is for the first trial, and the first trial only
After that you are guilty, the only thing that matters to the legal system then is their arbitrary rules. The other commenter is 100% correct that actual innocents is irreverent for any appeal.
The US Legal System is completely off the rails of any common sense, justice, or rational thought at this point.
"The law perverted! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!" -- Frédéric Bastiat
This would have been a far more interesting article if he had spoken more about his thoughts and feelings, rather than the mechanical processes.
In the United States, innocence has never been grounds for an appeal, a stay, overturning, or clemency. Here in Florida, I could write an accurate algorithm for calculating the application of the Death Penalty. Skin darkness (literally, not race), IQ, wealth, sex are the relevant factors. The elements of the case are not. I'm not against the Death Penalty on general principle grounds; I'm against it because we clearl…
Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime And Punishment) was sentenced to be executed by the Tsarist government in 1849. He was actually in front of the firing squad , waiting for his turn to die, when he learned that his sentence had been commuted to a measly 10 years hard labor in Siberia. One could argue that this was the defining moment of his life, and most of his greatest works were motivated in some way by th…
In the United States, innocence has never been grounds for an appeal, a stay, overturning, or clemency. Here in Florida, I could write an accurate algorithm for calculating the application of the Death Penalty. Skin darkness (literally, not race), IQ, wealth, sex are the relevant factors. The elements of the case are not. I'm not against the Death Penalty on general principle grounds; I'm against it because we clearl…
>>>I'm not against the Death Penalty on general principle grounds You should be... When you kill someone outside the conditions of self defense that is murder and is immoral. I do not care if the government doing it as some kind of "punishment" or a person doing it for another reason, murder is murder, "capital punishment" is murder. If we want a peaceful, just and free society, it can not include capital punishment.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the USA, innocence isn't grounds for an appeal. Actual, post-conviction DNA tests aren't a basis. Errors at trial are. So good lawyers find one. Jury instructions, evidentiary errors, procedural, etc., which is why money buys justice.
Just going to jump in here and point out rayiner is an appellate lawyer.
More importantly, it would be procedurally problematic if convicted criminals could appeal on the basis of a claim of innocence, even if it's due to new evidence. Following procedures is more important than getting at the truth. (I conjecture it's because getting at the truth is unreasonably difficult. For example, there's no guarantee that a subsequent trial will be more reliable than the original.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>>I'm not against the Death Penalty on general principle grounds You should be... When you kill someone outside the conditions of self defense that is murder and is immoral. I do not care if the government doing it as some kind of "punishment" or a person doing it for another reason, murder is murder, "capital punishment" is murder. If we want a peaceful, just and free society, it can not include capital punishment.…
It's very easy for me to have a preferred moral code that is almost like yours except that I do not axiomatically declare that capital punishment is equivalent to murder.
How do you define murder?