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The Case of Richard Glossip

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Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#41

Post by tbrooks »

msabalau wrote: post #9

It's increasingly seems that the powers of prosecutors are deployed in arbitrary and unjust ways: either overreaching (as in the case of Aaron Swartz or Xiaoxing Xi) or non-prosecution of police brutality or corporate crime (just changing now that the statute of limitations run out on those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis) It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a check to…

Prosecutors have almost absolute immunity. A prosecutor can intentionally cheat the system, get a conviction, put a person in jail, and if caught, there is no lawsuit that can be filed against them and it's almost impossible to get them disbarred.

There are incentives to cheat; as long as there are no ramifications for it, it will continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqChMa4GV3w

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#42

Post by savanaly »

x0x0 wrote: post #33
savanaly wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant (and I'm also curious) what we could individually do that would have a tangible difference. Not what could a large swathe of people in the US do collectively, which is a different question.

Kamala Harris beat Steve Cooley in the 2010 CA attorney general election by 74k votes. That's a relatively direct impact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Attorney_General_el...

One vote is nowhere close to making a difference there? And that is the edge case, 99.9% of elections won't even come down to that.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#43

Post by striking »

Alex3917 wrote: post #26

The crazy thing is that although salient, of all the ways the US government kills innocent people, the death penalty probably has one of the lowest total body counts. At least in comparison with wars of aggression, foreign coups, the war on drugs, subsidizing cars, subsidizing fossil fuels, subsidizing tobacco, weak pharma regulation, promoting antibiotics in food, cop shootings, fast food subsidies (via corn), not i…

They also burn an absolutely astronomical amount of money in the process of trying to kill these people.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#44

Post by trevmckendrick »

peterwwillis wrote: post #36
InvisibleCities wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can opine in harsh language about whether or not this guy made the "smart" choice all you want, but why is our "justice" system forcing this man to make such an unfair choice in the first place?

The justice system isn't for only doing what is just at all times, it is for enforcing the consequences of laws. The point of a law is simply to put down the rules by which order is maintained, and that order is dictated by the morality of the majority of people who hold power in government. The justice system merely upholds the law set down and doles out what the law defines as a 'just' punishment or judgment. A law…

"We can't just selectively enforce or not enforce laws."

No one is suggesting the DA pick and choose which laws to enforce.

The point is that there appears to be reasonable doubt that he committed the crime and therefore, according to the very laws you demand be enforced, should be acquitted.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#45

Post by TillE »

cbsmith wrote: post #14
msabalau wrote: post #9

It's increasingly seems that the powers of prosecutors are deployed in arbitrary and unjust ways: either overreaching (as in the case of Aaron Swartz or Xiaoxing Xi) or non-prosecution of police brutality or corporate crime (just changing now that the statute of limitations run out on those responsible for the 2008 financial crisis) It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a check to…

Keep in mind that you're survey of examples is likely biased by what makes a good story... and journalists have become very good at figuring out which cases will make a good story. It's a problem that there is enough material to keep the stories coming, but let's not conclude that the stories we read about represent the bulk of the justice system's operations.

The fact that the egregious examples exist is proof enough of the insanity and incompetence that's permitted by the justice system. The appeals processes seems too restrictive to allow for proper review in many cases. Just because a system has existed for a long time doesn't mean it's ideal in any way.

The murder of Meredith Kercher is another prominent example in another country. All evidence pointed to one murderer, who was duly convicted. And then the state decided to spend years prosecuting two innocent people based on some odd behavior and not the slightest shred of credible physical evidence. They're just lucky they finally got a sane judge at the highest level.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#46

Post by x0x0 »

savanaly wrote: post #42
x0x0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kamala Harris beat Steve Cooley in the 2010 CA attorney general election by 74k votes. That's a relatively direct impact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Attorney_General_el...

One vote is nowhere close to making a difference there? And that is the edge case, 99.9% of elections won't even come down to that.

when the margin of victory is under 1%, then yes, a relative handful of people can swing an election

Far more than 0.01% of elections have narrow margins of victory, particularly less well known ones like attorneys.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#47

Post by plaguuuuuu »

lazyant wrote: post #32

Appalled that people are killed legally based only on a criminal's word. Also appalled that we still have the death penalty in some countries, these are pretty much all backwards countries with the outliers of US and Japan; it's a litmus test for humans rights imho.

Define backwards?

Singapore has the death penalty. Taiwan has the death penalty. Singapore is probably the most advanced economy in the world. one of Taiwan's main exports is computer engineering R&D for most of the hardware in your PC (as the hardware itself is now manufactured and assembled in China)

Taiwan has nationalised health care - score 1 for Taiwan over the US.

I consider any country implementing the death penalty to be a cultural backwater. Many parts of the US are basically the definition of a cultural backwater anyway.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#48

Post by cortesoft »

peterwwillis wrote: post #18
URSpider94 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if I'm innocent, I should take a plea bargain (which, let's not forget, involves me standing up before God and everyone and saying, "yes, I did it," so that I can spend the rest of my life in a maximum security penitentiary, so that I can avoid being put to death? Not sure I agree with your logic there.

Here's a diagram of the logic. Do you want to die? Y -> Reject offer. -> Death penalty. N -> Accept offer. -> Life in prison. I don't know how I could simplify this further.

That wasn't the choice given. It was "Accept this deal for life in prison" or "Have faith that your innocence will prevail in the court of law and you will be exonerated."

If I, an innocent man, was given that choice... I would probably try it out in court. I would assume my innocence would prevent the court from convicting me.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#49

Post by eric_the_read »

verbin217 wrote: post #40
johnnyg wrote: post #15

RE: How people are and the death penalty The other day I was driving down the road and thinking about how people are. It was 33 years coming but here's what hit me: people do what they want, even in the face of devastating consequences. See that long line outside any burger joint? See the stats on the amount of hard drugs guaranteed to destroy your world we consume? See that person cheating? See that DA wanting a win…

"If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation." Unfortunately most of the people who do this are children. They're usually in situations people would rather ignore. They're desperate. They want attention and they get it at some price that's ultimately... above market.

According to http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-m... the average age of mass shooters in general is 35.

Re: The Case of Richard Glossip

#50

Post by csomar »

I live in a country with a terrible human rights record. Yet, since 1991, it never had a death penalty applied. [1] You might get sentenced to a death penalty (on extreme cases), but it's not applied. The law still legalise it but there is some pressure to remove it currently.

I find the news that 1) a death penalty is about to take place in the U.S, 2) hastily and 3) with little evidence really shocking, disturbing and unacceptable in a country which is supposed to be at the front of defending human rights.

1: http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-post.cfm...

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