Perhaps the easiest patch would be to make all life sentences “life plus 500 years”. Methuselah can work around it this way; it should cover everyone else...
In roughly 2520, this will give rise to the l+500 problem.
A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
91–99 of 99 posts
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#92At some point, artificially extended life spans may become feasible and common. It seems to me if/when that happens, a life sentence should be considered cruel and unusual.
Depends. Do immortals become more good / lawful, less good / lawful, or does it vary?
What are you going to do about the incorrigably unlawful / evil?
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly think there's nothing more disgusting than imprisoning someone. I've actually made this argument in my social sciences class that the reason prison sentences are so long is that people generally thought/think the afterlife exists. It's easy to take away an individuals right to life when you think there's going to be another one in another life. I would personally much rather have the death penalty than any…
Do you believe that imprisonment is more disgusting that premeditated murder, rape, felony assault? If so, can you please elaborate? What alternatives do you suggest as sufficient deterrence to and effective punishment for the crimes of murder, rape, and felony assault?
I think in the short term we're kinda fucked. But in the long term I would like if we tried to make these crimes not happen. Find out why they're happening.
Can we help these criminals before they become criminals essentially?
And I wasn't saying we should get rid of prison, rather allow the person to choose death if they wish.
I'd also like to see if we can actually slowly introduce them back to society, slowly give more freedoms back or help them take jobs that gives their life meaning.
It's a hard problem and we definitely don't have the correct solution right now.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
The logic there is if the criminal appeals and gets a charge dropped due to a technicality or some other issue then they are still in jail. Not ideal but not without logic.
"Technicality" is a euphemism for "constitutional rights". You don't get out of prison because the cop spelled your name wrong as he booked you. You get out because, in the eyes of the system that sentenced you in the first place, someone steamrolled over rights enshrined at the heart of the American system. Those rights are meaningless if governments may violate them without repercussion. The sum of all the "technic…
I not sure where you're going with this. If someone committed 10 murders, but the turns out to have been wrongly accused for the 11th, should that be a get-out-of-jail for the other 10?
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an interesting world we've come to where "you are alive, therefore you have not yet died" can be considered an idiosyncratic personal viewpoint.
I did not say anything like that. I said the judge is trying to effectively inject the judge’s notion of common sense in an extralegal way. The impression of whether the judge’s common sense is valid or invalid has utterly nothing to do with this issue at all. The issue is that off the cuff common sense reasoning is not rigorous legal reasoning, it can have all kinds of unintended consequences.
> I did not say anything like that. I said the judge is trying to effectively inject the judge’s notion of common sense in an extralegal way.
The judge is describing the existing, well-established law in a slightly jokey manner.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#96If he is now alive then he has never been dead.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#97I see a lot of people playing language lawyer with what it means "to die." I think another fruitful thing to think about what "for life" means. It is not unreasonable to interpret "for life" as "while living", instead of "until dead." Indeed, the sentence if "life in prison" is logically equivalent to "no life outside of prison." No one debates the fact that this man is alive now. If his sentence is to live only in p…
But remember that this is America, where super-natural sentencing is a norm. Prisons are filled with people serving double, triple or "life plus 100 years" sentences. Logic isn't running this show.
This so much. Not only are the length strange but it seems like if you don't have a good lawyer and you really didn't do anything you get convicted for attempted (fill in the blank) I've seen people get convicted of attempted assault what even is attempted assault.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
But remember that this is America, where super-natural sentencing is a norm. Prisons are filled with people serving double, triple or "life plus 100 years" sentences. Logic isn't running this show.
This so much. Not only are the length strange but it seems like if you don't have a good lawyer and you really didn't do anything you get convicted for attempted (fill in the blank) I've seen people get convicted of attempted assault what even is attempted assault.
Attempted assault is a bit weird, simply because the crime of assault is typically defined to include both attempts at and successes at causing bodily harm to another.
That said, the concept of punishing attempted crimes is well established. After all, if one of the goals of having a criminal legal system is to prevent crime, we should punish those who attempt to commit crimes.
If someone fires a loaded gun at you, and you're lucky enough for them to miss, they should still be punished for the attempt to inflict harm on you or potentially kill you.
We can certainly debate whether the legal system should take more of a "no harm, no foul" kind of approach, but I hope the explanation above helps to clarify why our current legal system penalizes attempted and successful crimes.
Re: A Prisoner Who Briefly Died Argues That He’s Served His Life Sentence
#99I'm not fully convinced the courts got this one completely right. This is a very interesting legal argument and lays emphasis on the need for legislators to express their intentions in writing more fully as opposed to writing laws with such loose and widely applicable terms such as "Life" without giving the term or their intent in using it more context. If, as the Judge argues, that "he did not legally die as his pre…
The word "God" doesn't appear in the US Constitution, which also doesn't make mention of any "superior force". People whose hearts stop on an operating room table and are subsequently resuscitated aren't issued death certificates.
> And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures
From the Articles of Confederation.
The present Constitution doesn't even have that much of reference, and that is by intention of the Framers.