The Case of Richard Glossip
pg.posthaven.com
pg.posthaven.com
Very few letters were of the type I was expecting at the time: "Play this Cradle of Filth song for me, or I will file down shards of my broken mirror in order to kill you". Along with very entertaining, if graphic, pieces of artwork.
Most of the letters were cordial, but gruff. Hard criticism of songs each inmate did not like, glorified praise for the songs they did like. Rarely, they would describe why a particular song was important to them and it was not anything alien to my freshman self: lost love, old buddies, family, trying times.
There was one I replied to and carried on a brief written correspondence with: Tilmon Golphin. Make no mistake, there is no excuse for his actions. But what I found fascinating was the attitude he decided to show in his letters; how true his words were I cannot accurately judge. He showed me major regret of brutally murdering officers of the law and provided no excuses, instead showing acceptance of what he had done with his brother.
I later learned that particular case of his and his brother's is one where the US Supreme Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons divided the sentences of the brothers. Tilmon was 19, and his brother 17, so while both were sentenced to death, the SCOTUS ruling means Tilmon is still on death row while his brother is not.
I never would have thought I would learn so much from being a heavy metal radio show host.
I hadn't heard of Golphin before, so I was curious to read more, and it seems that he's no longer on death row, as of December 2012: http://www.rrdailyherald.com/access/nc-judge-commutes-deaths...
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 want a burger, a high, an orgasm or a conviction, you generally will get it at some price that's ultimately...above market.
How much more prone to excess is someone in the heat of a moment? How unlike the event does its moment by moment reconstruction during a trial appear? The mismatch has always struck me as unjust. As people judging an event whose experience they haven't had and haven't attempted to recreate. Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.
An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation.
Any shade of grey zooming out from that seems too hard for any government system to decide well. I hear people say things in passing like "he only got 20 years". 20 years is a huge and devastating amount of time, as is one year. As we've ramped up the time on these sentences and made it an all or nothing proposition. Unfortunately, I don't think 20 years will do it if 1 year hasn't and I don't think death will do it if 20 years hasn't.
Regarding Richard Glossip. I don't know him or his case. I don't know the victim and while they won't return, there's a debt owed that I don't know how to pay. I want Richard Glossip to live. I don't think taking another life will pay the debt of the first. What I want most of all is for someone to tell me how to pay that debt.
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.
eric_the_read's comment notwithstanding, people subjected to extreme circumstances in their childhood years are less likely to be rehabilitated, not more.
The argument is that someone willing to shoot up a school for attention is beyond rehabilitation. His age is irrelevant to someone making that claim, and possibly argues in his favor.
Jail time is low in France because our jails are full. Any sentence below two years is automatically deferred to probation, which means that a large number of crimes are de facto not punished.
A quick google search will reveal a disturbing trend of violent crimes that don't result in jail time for this reason.
France has the opposite problem, and it's no better.
I find it good. So magistrates are constrained by capacity. Of course I'd prefer they don't fill up French prisons at 125%.
If we build more prisons, we'll fill them up. US is now famously known for having more people in jail than Stalin's gulags [1]. I quite appreciate France's leniency with penalties, because I'm not sure 3 months or 3 years is really different, apart from further distorting the social network of the inmate.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
My point is simply that not punishing people isn't a viable solution, either. France has the same problem as the US (too many people incarcerated) and an equally bad solution (stop incarcerating altogether).
"Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform."
How do you justify the statement that a jury is the best idea that we have? Germany has the concept of Schöffe, and some believe this offers results that stick closer to the law than the jury system:
http://www.britannica.com/topic/Schoffe
While any government of mortal human flesh must inevitably have some flaws, the jury system seems especially bad at overcoming popular prejudice. In the USA, "a jury of one's peers" has often meant a mostly white (or all white) jury judging a black person, a circumstance that has given the USA many hundreds of famous miscarriages of justice.
The system that grew out of English Common Law, and which dominates England, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, is not the only system known to liberal Western societies. The English system is unique in the authority it gives to juries. Most of the Continental judicial systems either lack juries or have juries whose goal is constrained relative to the English system.
A review of the legal traditions in liberal Western nations reveals a lot of good ideas, many of which are probably superior to the jury system.
1) That's UNAMERICAN. Courts and jury is the way god intended it to be.
2) Lol crackpot.
3) What if X turns out to be worse, sucks for the people who got trials like this during that time.
4) Lol crackpot.
Experimentation for political systems, judiciary infrastructure and the like is a really hard problem and I think de facto impossible. I applaud everyone who tries no matter how crazy it seems (seasteading) but at the end of the day I think there is no such thing as radical political entrepreneurship. I think it's unfortunate but I also can't envision how (rapid) experimentation cycles could be transfered to such systems.
One could argue, perhaps from the experience of China, that elections aren't the most effective means of choosing political leaders. But this misses the point of elections.
Our common law system has evolved to be resilient against many different things, rather than being designed to maximize efficiency of a few things. It is certainly not perfect, there is no doubt of that. Combined with the culture and other institutional patterns it has co-evolved with, it has proven incredibly stable, open to evolving for the better, and has served our common interests very well.
Perhaps Germany is better at overcoming prejudice, but that was after the common law countries were forced to physically restrain them from aggression and murder. The list of common law countries is also the list of countries that have not had even a hint of losing their democratic institutions in centuries. That is something you can't say about any other countries in the world.
Some civil law countries have suspended civil rights during the last 400 years. Some common law countries have suspended civil rights during the last 400 years (e.g.: English revolution, detainment of Americans with Japenese ancestry during World War 2).
> Combined with the culture and other institutional patterns it has co-evolved with, it has proven incredibly stable, open to evolving for the better, and has served our common interests very well.
Except when it doesn’t serve the common interests very well by, for example, maintaining the legality of slavery well past the point it was abolished in many (civil and common law) countries and by taking another 100 years to reconsider the whole apartheid thing. In comparison, the civil law countries in Scandinavia seem to have faired quite well on the civil rights front and it was also civil, not common, law countries that drove the spearhead for women’s suffrage.
> Perhaps Germany is better at overcoming prejudice, but that was after the common law countries were forced to physically restrain them from aggression and murder.
Ah, yes, the famous French common law system based not at all on the Code Napoleon and the equally famous Soviet common law system.
> The list of common law countries is also the list of countries that have not had even a hint of losing their democratic institutions in centuries.
Again, the English revolution comes to mind. Or that whole debacle where slavery was only abolished after a bloody civil war in the 1860s! Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland weren’t exactly hotspots of instability either. And to be honest, I am not sure that Quebec has seen many more fascist dictators than the rest of Canada, something that would be implied by its civil law nature?
> That is something you can't say about any other countries in the world.
Except, of course, when you can.
And dont forget CIA blacksites!
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-poland-cia-blacksi...
Bush admits to secret prisons(wikipedia sources are your friend): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5321606.stm http://web.archive.org/web/20060906193917/http://www.cnn.com...
We don't, as far as I know, have entire prisons where we hold people without trial because they 'know secrets' and we are afraid they might tell them. In fact, I don't know of a single instance of this, outside of people who agreed to keep some secret but then changed their mind (snowden).
>>Though we're not scared of what they'd do, mind you; usually it's what they'd say that's the problem. Non-allied parties who know classified information they shouldn't are effectively infohazards from a government's perspective.
I think that you here implicitly assume that there is overwhelming evidence of who is the author of the crime. For example, all of these: Many survivors testimonies (be careful, they are not so reliable in practice), many videos of the massacre were the face of the attacked is clearly visible, a perfect matching of the ADN in few blood spots, fingerprint in the weapons, gunpowder marks in the hands, he/she is detained in situ while trying to kill more people, ...
Does this case has overwhelming evidence?
Please read the rest of the post before commenting. It's possible to believe all of these things at once:
(i) An eye for an eye is useful and works.
(ii) Glossip should not be in jail, and even less so, killed.
(ii) pg is correct in his reasoning for why US should not have the death penalty.
My uncle who's a pastor gave me an interesting perspective on this phrase. Before Solomon it was common practice to escalate a transgression. So a theft begets a retaliatory murder, begets a retaliatory massacre. This adage is not as much about seeking equality in punishment, as much as a brake to limit escalation. "An eye for an eye and no more."
Finally -- and I know this is only a minor point in comparison -- it's worth noting that pg doesn't have anything to gain by writing this, and people who stick their neck out by writing about political issues inevitably get shouted at. Soon enough publishing anything stops being worth the aggravation. So credit goes to pg for standing up and speaking out, when it's all too easy to be silent.
What do you mean by "in combination with," here? If you mean that the death penalty is used to convince people to plead guilty, I'm with you. But if you're saying that a large number of people who are sentenced to death were pressured into pleading guilty, then I am skeptical, since it is unclear what the defendant is receiving in exchange for the plea. (Usually it is a lighter sentence...)
In short, every plea deal should be considered a grave injustice that needs to be corrected.
Of course, it will never happen.
Her children suffered from her crime but they are pleading to keep her alive. She is the only parent they have. Killing their only remaining parent is victimizing them again. Their pleas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8pgceAhqJo
Georgia parole board contact info: http://pap.georgia.gov/contact-us
That's on Kayla Gissendaner; nobody else.
I'm personally against the death penalty under any circumstances, but this particular case is no more or less egregious than any other.
https://www.readfrontier.com/investigation/two-truths-and-a-...
If not, it seems like a pretty remarkable procedure to arrive at such a strong conclusion, with no other information besides a brief summary by advocates for the defense. Has pg ever served on a jury? If so, would he make his mind up this way?
He may be wrong, and in particular "reasonable doubt" may not have the legal definition that he thinks it does (legal terms rarely match common sense). But his argument is not "Glossip is innocent", but "there is no way we have sufficient evidence to kill this man without risking that we are killing someone who might be innocent".
Have you served on a jury, by the way? I served as the foreman on one relatively minor criminal case, and it did more to shake my faith in the rule-of-law than any other (minimal) encounters I've had with the legal system. In the end, we reached a unanimous "not guilty" in the case.
This was a difficult decision for all of us to reach, since the only way this could be the "correct" decision was if both police officers who testified were lying about significant details both in their report and on the stand. And yet this is the conclusion we eventually all agreed upon as being the most likely explanation for the way the pieces failed to fit together.
The defendant may well have done other illegal things, and possibly the world would be a better place if he was behind bars, but as a jury we decided that there was sufficient reason to doubt that he was guilty as charged. And yet there was no particular guarantee that this case would turn out as it did. On a different day, with a different jury, a different judge, or different lawyers, (but the same defendant, witnesses, and evidence) a guilty verdict seems likely.
As a limited participant in the legal system (but a "logical" computer programmer) my assessment would be that if we have the death penalty, the American jury system is practically guaranteed to occasionally sentence innocent people to death. I'd guess that this is the part that bothers Paul as well, I'd guess that he probably does have experience that leads him to believe this, and I'd guess that his opinion on the matter is not likely to be changed by a counterpoint that makes Glossip's guilt seem somewhat more likely.
On one of these cases, I was the last juror to hold out. It was like "12 Angry Men" in reverse: "12 Hungry Men And Women." It was 5pm, I wanted dinner and so did everyone else, and I didn't want to bring 11 other people back again tomorrow. So I took the easy way out, as did 10 other people.
On our way out, the DA thanked us sarcastically and noted that the defendant had two prior DUIs. If we'd given him a third, she pointed out, there might actually have been consequences. As it was... I live in slight terror of glancing at a newspaper and noting that he's erased someone's six-year-old, just because I was hungry and wanted to go home for dinner.
To put it slightly differently: a few months ago, a woman in SF suffered the death penalty. She was innocent. She just wanted to look at the sea lions, or something. Unfortunately, San Francisco had sentenced her to death.
The executioner was an illegal-immigrant drifter who'd been pulled out of ICE's deportation pipeline by "sanctuary city" policies originally intended for intellectuals fleeing El Salvador in the early 1980s. A couple of days before, he'd smashed the window on a car and stolen a gun, which he was using (according to him) to shoot at sea lions. A bullet
Is her death an accident? How about Glossip's? I know of one billionaire who cares a lot about Kathryn Steinle. I know of another billionaire who cares a lot about Richard Glossip.
It seems to me both these deaths involve the action of the State, in choosing to allow a human life to be taken -- in one case intentionally based on the determination of guilt, in another case negligently, based on -- honestly, I couldn't even tell you what this level of carelessness is based on.
Supposing Glossip is innocent -- which doesn't seem terribly likely once we read the piece above, which is far more detailed and down-to-earth than the emotional appeals that triggered pg. Then, his death would be an accident, wouldn't it? The State did not set out to kill an innocent man. It didn't set out to kill an innocent women, but it did that as well -- with far less thinking than went into Glossip's case.
Suppose our other billionaire, the one we adore here instead of laughing at for his ridiculous hair, had chosen to care about the other human life in question. Or, more to the point, the next 1 or 10 or 100 that might be sacrificed in this absurd and cavalier fashion. What would your response have been?
Personally, I'm not against the death penalty in theory. In certain cases, executing criminals may be the best course of action. But I'd like it to be reserved for cases where the guilt is certain and the debate is about the severity of the punishment, rather than ones like this where the guilt itself may be in doubt. My statement that juries are likely to occasionally sentence innocent people to die does not necessarily mean that this is not the least bad of the available bad options. I don't know enough about this particular case to know whether this applies here.
> Supposing Glossip is innocent -- which doesn't seem
> terribly likely once we read the piece above, which is far
> more detailed and down-to-earth than the emotional appeals
> that triggered pg.
> What would your response have been?
I probably don't understand your question --- I think you are asking my opinion on whether we should deport illegal aliens who are convicted of violent crimes? If so, then yes. But more importantly I think we should realign the rules we have on the books with the enforcement of those laws. I generally have a stronger belief in rule-of-law as a principle than I have belief that any particular law is or is not correct. I could be happy either with stricter enforcement of current law, or movement toward something like Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitanism
My point is that if your concern (or pg's) is strictly of the form "minimize the number of innocent people being killed unjustly," there are much more effective reforms available than abolishing the death penalty. For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Japan
Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year. And I mean certainly innocent lives, not conceivably innocent lives (like Glossip's).
Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.
Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the general concern for Glossip, what is?
> The other billionaire is Trump, of course.
> For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:
> Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably
> save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year.
> Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the
> opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is
> suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.
> Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of
> innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the
> general concern for Glossip, what is?
Having such an expectation is today commonly considered naivetee, but I think a lot of the progress made in America in previous generations was because there was a belief that such a system was possible. I'd like to try to restore some of that faith, and avoiding high profile miscarriages of justice (I don't know if this is one) is an important part of that restoration.
You could say: our means of increasing faith in justice is to tell everyone that miscarriages occur all the time, even if they maybe don't, so that good ordinary Americans will become more and more concerned and prevent miscarriages, which will increase faith etc.
This is a very complicated and indirect way of purportedly getting the result you want.
However, if you wanted exactly the opposite result - that is, you wanted to decrease faith in the criminal justice system - what would you do? Answer: give as much publicity as possible to miscarriages of justice, purported or real.
Which is exactly what you're doing, right? Have you ever heard the thing about what to do when you're in a hole?
Also, I'm quite aware that Americans aren't Japanese. On the other hand, I seldom hear that awareness from people who point out how much better urban life is in, say, Reykjavik rather than Detroit. And appear to believe that the problems of Detroit can be solved by adopting the ideology and/or governance structures of Reykjavik. (Which, in fact, has pretty much already happened - if anything, the flow is in the other direction.)
As for throwaways: stay on the reservation, and you'll have nothing to fear. Duck under the barbed wire, and you'll find out...
Many who have looked closely at this case think Glossip is innocent. I think so. I encourage you to learn more about it and form your own conclusions. But one thing is certain: there is a reasonable doubt.
I just read the article you linked to from start to finish. From that article alone "on the opposite side of the case" I draw the same conclusion: there's reasonable doubt.
Further, I think your paragraph that starts "If not" is an awful lot of followup to your presumed answer to your unanswered question. Couldn't you even have prepended a perfunctory "If so, great" to it?
It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a check to the ACLU to help limit the damage. Any ideas?
There are incentives to cheat; as long as there are no ramifications for it, it will continue.
1) abortion clinic bombing changed nothing; if anything it helped raise funds (you'd almost think they were false flag operations? Is there anything that helped the pro choice cause more than the bombings?)
2) the War on drugs has ruined uncountable lives, certainly far more than drugs have ruined, none the less neither the fear of drugs or the more realistic fear of the war on drugs keeps people sober, business has always been booming.
3) the war on black men has gotten about 1/3 of them involved in the criminal justice system. The result? None, no change. They haven't become refugees, their culture has changed as little as possible under the circumstances, no serious rebellion...
In those three examples taking normal level actions and turning them up to 11 has either been utterly ineffective or counterproductive. I'd have to say the tsotha theoretical model fits observed reality better, although I admit further research could find observations overturning that... although I don't expect it.
1) The public and perhaps even many scholars are split on abortion - I personally don't think there's a clear cut "correct" answer.
2) I wouldn't expect people to quit. Drugs are fun, most are relatively harmless, using them is not immoral, and you most likely won't get caught.
3) Similar to #2, and much of the issues here are a direct result of #2
Turning it up to 11 (great expression btw) to be effective should be used only when there is obvious wrongdoing, when innocent people are clearly being railroaded by people who either know the person is innocent, or made no effort to determine innocence (which, let's not forget, is the job they are being paid very handsomely to perform). I'm not sure if this particular case is a valid example example for turning it up to 11, but there are certainly plenty. I think this would be effective, and I believe there would be widespread public support with sufficient communication.
Considering that fear of ramifications has proven entirely ineffective in preventing certain kinds of behavior in other aspects of the justice system, I don't think this would be as effective as you might think
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 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.
It's more like proof of the law of large numbers.
> The appeals processes seems too restrictive to allow for proper review in many cases.
Appeals processes should be restrictive, otherwise the time and expense of the trial itself are essentially squandered. That said, I have no doubt that at least in some, and possibly many systems, it's over the line.
> Just because a system has existed for a long time doesn't mean it's ideal in any way.
I hope you didn't think I suggested anything to the contrary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Attorney_General_el...
Far more than 0.01% of elections have narrow margins of victory, particularly less well known ones like attorneys.
There are some offenses that demand the ultimate sentence. We’ve got
individuals down in Los Angeles — for example, the Grim Sleeper case which
is pending — this gentleman killed 23 young women, in the most cruel,
inhumane way. Life without possibility of parole is not the appropriate
sentence for somebody who slaughters so many of his fellow citizens. Cop
killers, baby killers, serial killers — they deserve the death penalty. In
my county, we only seek the death penalty in 11 percent of the
special-circumstance cases, and they are well-selected and well-deserving of
the death penalty.
So the contrast is a full supporter on one hand, and someone who, at minimum, is conflicted about the use of the death penalty and widely acknowledges the racial disparity in its application.
I would call that a real difference, though in case it isn't clear, I would support banning the death penalty on both humane/equality and financial grounds.
NB: Prop 34 would have banned the death penalty in California. It lost by a couple percent [4]
[1] http://blogs.kqed.org/election2012/2012/10/11/two-district-a...
[2] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-death-penalt...
[3] http://ballotpedia.org/Kamala_D._Harris
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_34_(201...
It appears that someone had been stealing money and cooking the books at the hotels Glossip managed, and about the time his boss became aware of the theft, the boss was murdered. He admits to knowing that the boss was murdered and Glossip admits attempting to cover up the murder, his plan being to dissolve the body in acid. Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body. The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip. Glossip also split money from the wallet carried by the man that was killed with the killer.
Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.
So maybe the death penalty is good, maybe it is bad. Clearly there is a serious debate there, and I am not attempting to defend the death penalty here. There is almost no chance that Glossip is innocent, and it seems clear, to me at least, that the state demonstrated he is guilty to the required standard.
- Is he guilty
- Should he be executed
These are independent questions. One is a question of fact, and there seems to be almost no credible reason to doubt his guilt.
The other is a question of ethics and policy.
As for your argument on why the death penalty is barbaric, it is not a valid argument. Reductio ad absurdum, your argument implies that every punishment is barbaric, because all punishment is the result of people's 'misplaced confidence' in their opinions. So if the death penalty is barbaric, it's certainly not because of the reason you say.
Don't take that as an attempt to justify the death penalty. I believe that almost all the prison sentences handed out in the US greatly exceed the severity of the crime being punished. I can't understand why any prison sentence would be for longer than 5 years in those cases where there is no chance of a repeat offense, no matter what the crime was. I also can't understand why we would ever want to let someone out of state supervision (prison or other) if there is a very high chance they would commit additional crimes if released.
I remember reading that the opposite is actually true. All the cost of trials, retrials, etc. is apparently more than housing the inmate for life.
For example, there are tons of people in prison for 5 years, 20 years, lifetimes that don't have the intelligence, resources, or opportunity to 'have their punishment stopped'. They will serve out their time despite being innocent, and despite not getting the death sentence. It in theory could be stopped, since it's not irreversible, but it will not be stopped and nothing will be done.
I find it hard to believe that a form of punishment is more just or better in any other way because it 'can, but actually won't be, stopped'.
Punishment's unpleasant (that's its nature); death and imprisonment are unpleasant.
And yet, there are crimes which deserve death. Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice.
That's a minority position. At least 100 countries don't use the death penalty at all. Another 50 countries have a death penalty but haven't executed anyone for at least 10 years. The 30 to 40 countries left are a list of oppressive regimes or countries with corrupt justice systems or justice systems that do not comply with human rights laws.
It's more likely that the US is in violation of human rights laws than all those other countries have profound miscarriages of justice.
> That's a minority position.
It's also correct. If 100 other countries jumped off of a bridge, would you?
Although, if you do want to argue from popularity, polls consistently show majority support for capital punishment even in countries without it. From that standpoint, abolition of execution is undemocratic.
There are many crimes for which the only just sentence is death (c.f. the Oklahoma man executed some time ago, who raped & buried alive a young woman, or the man in Washington, D.C. who tortured & murdered a family in their home): not to impose it is itself unjust. For, say, Hideki Tojo to have died peacefully in his bed after the deaths of millions would have been a moral outrage: his hanging was the only appropriate sentence.
The State's monopoly on force is predicated on it assuming the duty of exacting vengeance on behalf of its citizens: if a State refuses to exact that vengeance in every circumstance, regardless of evidence and certainty, then its monopoly on violence loses its legitimacy.
You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life?
Likewise with imprisonment. Innocents will die in prison even if they don't die on the gallows.
> You think it is more just to kill the innocent than simple imprison the 'deserving' for life?
Those aren't the choices: the choices are to be just in execution of the depraved (and unjust in accidentally executing the innocent) or to be unjust in imprisoning the depraved (and unjust in accidentally imprisoning the innocent). IMHO the justice delta between executing & imprisoning the truly evil is greater than that between accidentally executing & imprisoning the innocent.
> Not to murder murderers, ... is a profound miscarriage of justice.
There, FTFY.
For example, suppose you have a family friend, Randall, who is accused of being a child molester. If you are perhaps 5% certain that Randall is a child molester, you would be justified in not letting your children stay at his house unattended. Just to be safe. If you are 51% certain that Randall is a child molester, that's more certain than not, but 49% is still "reasonable doubt". Ok, let's say we're about 90% certain Randall is a child molester, which is probably enough to get a jury to convict. 1 out of 10 times, that's a false conviction, but that's ok because people can be released from prison and dropped from the sex offender registry if it turns out they were innocent. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that we agree that child molesters should get the death penalty. What level of certainty is needed before we kill Randall? Surely more than 90%, or else 1 out of 10 people we kill will be innocent, and while that's an acceptable margin for imprisonment, it's probably not good enough for doing something completely final and irreversible. So does the level of certainty have to be 99%--so that 1 in 100 executed inmates is innocent? 99.9%--perhaps 1 out of 1000 is a more palatable rate of innocent people being executed? 99.99% then?
The question isn't whether someone is guilty, the question is whether we are confident enough in his guilt to take the risk of killing an innocent man. "Is he guilty?" isn't a binary question of fact, it's a question of certainty and implicit in that question of certainty is the acceptance of killing some innocent people as well.
The more nines we need to kill someone, the fewer people are left as candidates for the death penalty. Getting those nines means an exponential increase in legal costs. It also means spreading the fixed costs of execution infrastructure over a smaller number of executions. At some point, either you have to stomach a lot of innocent people being executed or the death penalty just becomes completely impractical, even if you start from the assumption that it's morally justified.
I should have said the question the articles are conflating are:
- Is he guilty?
- Should we have a death penalty?From https://theintercept.com/2015/07/09/oklahoma-prepares-resume... ,
"[the victim's] brother Kenneth, who took over operation of the motel after the murder, testified in 2004 that the motel’s financial shortages were “really insignificant amounts of money” and would not have worried Barry. The Oklahoma City motel, he said, was a “very profitable operation.” "
> Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in, reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the body
"Sneed would [later] testify that he was the one who told the maid to ignore Room 102."
> The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip.
From http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...
The murderer was threatened with the death penalty unless he fingered Glossip. He says he would recant his testimony in a heartbeat if he could be assured he wouldn't be executed himself.
> Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.
Said one juror, "“If the defense would have presented the case that they are presenting now in the original trial,” the juror said, “I would have not given a guilty verdict.”"
A couple of weeks ago when Glossip was all the rage, the various sources arguing that he should be spared somehow neglected to mention any of this. They did mention though that the actual killer is the the one who fingered Glossip, which made me sympathize with the man's possible innocence. I must say, I'm far less sympathetic now.
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...
People see more motivated by orders of magnitude to get death penalty cases right relative to life incarceration cases.
Counterintuitively, justice may be better served by abolishing life imprisonment and mandating the death penalty for cases where periods of imprisonment would exceed 20 years or so.
If the innocence rate for executions is 4%, then surely the innocence rate for long term incarceration must be much higher.
I've seen several people already share this sentiment and it really confuses me. Because
1) It's made by people who have never, and come from a background where they most likely never would, have to seriously make such a choice. (If I'm wrong let me know).
2) I would venture if you really were faced with such a choice it would not be the automatic "kill me if I get more then 20 years" one that you flippantly imply you would make. I have a feeling when faced with the actual prospects of death vs imprisonment of 20 years or more, rather then on some hypothetical situation in an internet forum, you might decide differently.
3) Even if it was the case you were to decide death over long term imprisonment, what would give you, or the justice system, the right to decide that for anyone else facing that situation? I have a feeling most people would still choose life, even if faced with perpetual imprisonment, over death.
And finally lets just assume Richard Glossip was unjustly found guilty of this crime, I know nothing about this case so lets just assume. The problem isn't specifically with the sentence but the fact that he is in fact not guilty, but was deemed guilty by his peers. By killing him you eliminate any possibility of recourse, he already paid the ultimate price. At least with life imprisonment there is still a chance for having some just conclusion, even if it's late and inadequate to the penalty he suffered.
In our current system innocent people accused of capital crimes are often faced with the choice of pleading guilty or going to trial and facing the death penalty.
This isn't a highly just arrangement.
Not necessarily. If Sneed, the guy who actually committed the murder, had not faced the death penalty then would he still have tried to claim that Glossip put him up to it?
Of the 49 European countries, only 1 (Belarus) still has the death penalty and executes people.
Last time a civilian executed in Mexico: 1937, Canada: 1962, UK: 1977, Russia: 1999
In 2014, only these countries executed more people per million than the US: Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, China, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan, Afghanistan and Egypt And North Korea N/A.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country
Internationally seen as against the universal human rights:
1948: The United Nations adopted without dissent the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Declaration proclaims the right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life. It states that no one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment. The death penalty violates both of these fundamental rights.
2005: The UNCHR approved Human Rights Resolution 2005/59 on the question of the death penalty, which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to abolish the death penalty completely and, in the meantime, to establish a moratorium on executions.
2007: The UN General Assembly (UNGA) approved Resolution 62/149 which called for all states that still maintain the death penalty to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/inte...
2015, the current year: 20 persons executed in the US
At least 278 persons executed in the US just since the last UNGA Resolution.
I'm not particularly pro-death penalty, but using the UN as an appeal to authority doesn't really work.
The human rights and the world.
So, both fiscally and an understanding of government's failing will often lead people on the right to be against the death penalty. It is really about which pillars of conservative belief you hold most dear.
And what about the universal human rights? "The right of every individual to protection from deprivation of life" and "no one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment."
The basic argument against that is that a person who has committed such a crime has broken their social compact with the rest of society. Having declared war on their fellow people they deserve none of the protection of their fellows.
// also, doesn't Japan still have the death penalty?
I beg your pardon?
> the will of the American voters
"A 2010 poll by Lake Research Partners found that a clear majority of voters (61%) would choose a punishment other than the death penalty for murder." (deathpenaltyinfo.org)
And between 1967 and 1977 not a single person was executed in the whole US, independently of the possible will of some states. The Eighth Amendment from 1791, the visible public disapproval and stuff.
And please tell where you've found any "emotional pleas"? Edit: or even "outrage"?
Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, District of Columbia
http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...
In this case:
Means: he knew the person who committed the physical attack and had influence over this person
Motive: the victim was accusing him of embezzling $6000
Opportunity: plenty
Proof defendant actually acted on the motive: he attempted to hide the body from discovery, helped hide the victims car, contributed to a conspiracy to cut the body up and dissolve it in acid, split the money from the victim's wallet with the other man involved, and made sure that cleaning staff that he managed were reassigned so that they would not find the body. None of this is in dispute!
This is by itself enough to convict him.
Until we carefully scrutinize the incentives facing the judicial system as a whole (and see how unbalanced it is), this is bound to be the norm.
And nothing more need be said. I don't understand how it seems impossible to force into people's heads the two notions that the burden of guilt lay with the prosecution and that guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
We use the phrase "paying your debt to society" but no one pays any debts. They only incur debts. Debts to their family who they can't support. Debts to a society that ends up weaker than it started. The cruelty of this system isn't best exemplified in the death penalty.
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 implementing cap & trade to combat climate change, privatized health insurance, trade embargoes, promoting harmful nutrition guidelines, lack of food safety standards/inspection, lack of any required safety testing for new chemicals, etc.
It is interesting to look at the graph at the top of the article, though. Why do justifiable homicides for police and private citizens track each other almost identically? I can't think of any explanation.
According to: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-kil... the number of police homicides have also been under reported, historically. It appears (if the Guardian's reporting is correct) that some states don't even report at all some years.
But let's assume that there are 15,000 homicides per year by non-police and that 1000 of them are deemed justifiable homicides (double the reported ones to account for under reporting). That's about 7% of homicides that are justifiable.
In the second link, it says that 19 out of 547 were killed by police after they were taken into custody. 31 were killed by tasers. 119 were killed while unarmed. What percentage of these killings were justifiable?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged... claims 41 police officers were charged for shootings in a 7 year period. That is about 5.86 per year. The original link claimed about 87% of killings were shootings, so let's assume that police are charged with killing linearly and we get about 7 officers charged per year. I think it is telling that I can't find the success rate of prosecution anywhere :-P
So if we assume all 7 officers were found guilty, that means we get 540 out of 547 killings to be justified, or 98.7%.
So the average citizen has an upper bound of somewhere around 7% of having a homicide found to be justified, while the police have a lower bound of around 98% of having a homicide to be found justified. This despite the fact that 3.5% of police homicides happen after the suspect is in custody, 5.7% happen as a result of the suspect being hit with a taser, and 21.8% of the suspects are unarmed.
While I wouldn't say this is a case for "blanket immunity", I have to say that the numbers do not seem reasonable to me. Especially if 20 people are killed by police while in custody and there is not an expectation that a charge will be laid in any of the 20 cases, that does not seem reasonable at all given that at least 93% of civilian homicides are deemed not-justifiable.
But even more worrying is the sorry state of affairs for the reporting of this data (if the newspapers I browsed while doing my back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct). If they don't have better reporting, I don't know how anyone is supposed to scrutinize it.
Anyway, I hope someone found this interesting. Apologies if I made any math mistakes along the way.
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.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWSW94-P3Y
Article: https://news.vice.com/article/president-obama-heads-to-priso...
Richard Glossip's case is similar in many ways to Troy Davis[1]. You may recognize that name--in 2011, when he was executed, he was the world's most famous death row inmate. Like Glossip, Troy Davis had no physical evidence against him. His conviction (of murdering a police officer) was based primarily on 9 eyewitness testimonies. SEVEN of those eyewitnesses recanted or altered their testimonies, many citing police coercion or intimidation. Ten new witnesses came forward saying one of the two non-recanting witnesses, Sylvester Coles, confessed to the murder.
A few days before he was executed, ONE MILLION people signed a petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Despite this, and the many doubts in his case, Troy Davis was executed on September 21, 2011.
I was close friends with Troy--I first visited him on death row in 2008 (when I was 15), and spent the next three years visiting him, corresponding with him, and talking to him on the phone. Troy was so well-known because his case epitomized everything that is wrong with the American justice system and the death penalty--racial bias (he was a black man accused of killing a white cop in 1980s Georgia), an overzealous DA with a history of prosecutorial misconduct, police coercion and witness tampering, the execution of innocents (over a dozen death row inmates have been exonerated since he was executed in 2011...how many innocents were executed in that time?) and a justice system so rigid and brittle that it would not even commute his sentence to life imprisonment, despite even a federal judge admitting Troy had shown at least a "minimal" level of doubt in his case.
Troy's last words, recorded minutes before he was executed, are haunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98dlGv0k2MM
In 2012, I raised 11k on Kickstarter to write a book on my relationship with Troy Davis called Remain Free[2]. It talks about many of the ugly aspects of his life on death row and of the legal corruption in his case that he (and I) couldn't publicly talk about while he was still alive. Since the book is built on hundreds of recorded conversations, in person visits, and letters with Troy, you really get a sense of who he was as a person and the kind of toll two decades on death row takes on him and his family.
If you'd like a copy, you can order it on Amazon[3] or through http://remainfree.com. All profits go to the Innocence Project [4], a non-profit that works to free wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing. Alternatively, email me (gautamnarula[at]gmail.com) a screenshot of a $10 donation to the Innocence Project, and I'll send you the e-book for free. Donate $20 to the Innocence Project, and I'll send you a physical copy for just the cost of shipping ($3 in the US).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Remain-Free-Memoir-Gautam-Narula/dp/09...
But please, enough with the rest of the world is enlightened and America is basically gun-loving racist troglodytes. It's not true and it's not an argument which will change anyone's mind.
As pg very well says, you cannot have human lives depend on other human's lack of rigor, stupidity and incompetence
Depending on the state, a trial with a death penalty could cost anywhere from half a million dollars more, to millions more than a trial without a death penalty.
Even at the absurdly high price of $35k per year per prisoner, life without parole is likely a cheaper option for tax payers than the death penalty.
I don't mean to say this is the only reason why the death penalty is wrong. We know for certain that provably innocent people have been put to death.
It's just that in addition to being morally wrong, it's also expensive and a waste of resources. The only reason I can theoretically imagine for keeping it around is that supposedly criminals might be less likely to commit a crime for fear of the death penalty. I think every serious study has shown that harsher penalties don't deter crime.
One of the best ways to actually reduce crime is to provide better early education for poor people.
It is hard to imagine technology restriction working, because we have to get past imagining this terribly powerful tool being wielded by our utterly incompetent and corrupt rulers. The same problem exists in contemplating effective protectionism. The most obvious outcomes of both these tools simply amount to featherbedding if not outright theft. As a result, protectionism has gained a bad name, and technology restriction is well outside the policy landscape. Yet in actual reality, the problem is not with the tool, but the wielder. Once we admit that USG isn't working and has to go, we can imagine replacing it with something that doesn't suck—and can actually wield such a tool.
—Mencius Moldbug, "Sam Altman is not a blithering idiot" (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-alt...)
I believe in extreme circumstances, society should reserve the right to "not turn the other cheek". Nothing is black and white. The government is not completely incompetent, and not all cases have reasonable doubt. But cases like this, no way. Define some clear-cut parameters and apply it to every state uniformly.
We literally pay these people to put their lives on the line for us, but it seems to have become OK for them to "shoot first and ask questions later". They have lighter restrictions on the use of force than we had in a war zone in the Army.
Perhaps it's time that we DO say that they're too incompetent to protect our lives. Perhaps it's time to vote for an actual change while we still have time.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
The logical next step is, "so the government should not be in the business of killing people."
Life in prison? Sure, though I'm personally not sure depriving someone of their freedom for the rest of their natural life isn't also unacceptably cruel.
But as a species, we're a long way from selecting government officials who don't want to kill. These freaks crave power.
And Glossip had the chance to take life if he confessed. He chose death. Just goes to show that cruelty is subjective.
Incompetence that leads to my wrongful conviction and death is probably just as likely as the incompetence that would lead to my death when I'm supposed to be protected. It's a hell of a lot less likely than the death of those whom I'm not-exactly being protected from, such as the countless victims of "collateral damage".
I don't ask this to be snarky. I'd like for the death penalty to be abolished. But I do want to know if that's your true reason for rejecting the death penalty.[1] If it's not, perhaps there's a different, stronger reason for your view.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/09/2...
"When the order delaying the execution for two weeks came down, Glossip was so close to his scheduled execution time that he had already been served his final meal (which included chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, fish and chips and a strawberry malt).
In addition to their requests to the Oklahoma court, Glossip’s attorneys had also asked Gov. Mary Fallin (R) to stay the execution, arguing that the lethal injection should be halted due to new evidence. However, Fallin denied these requests, and she said her office determined that none of the evidence presented by Glossip’s attorneys changed her mind.
“After carefully reviewing the facts of this case multiple times, I see no reason to cast doubt on the guilty verdict reached by the jury or to delay Glossip’s sentence of death,” she said in a statement earlier this month. Fallin also said her office would respect the appeals court’s decision."
It's not your politicians who are keeping the death penalty, it is your citizens.
"I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2) Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure."
Capital punishment exists so that people don't go get guns and kill lunatics that have done them harm. For some crimes, only being told "We're going to kill him" holds the social fabric together.
It's not justice, it's not fair, and it's a terrible way to run things. One could make the pragmatic argument that if you're going to have a death penalty, then hanging them outside the courthouse the day after the trial is the way to do it. Otherwise you're just making a mockery of trying to be fair -- which this was never about in the first place.
When you see somebody kill his family and then say "I deserve the death penalty", when you see families torn apart by evil who demand that the criminal must die, when you see people who are never going to be anything but killers being set free to kill again? Even though you might be against the death penalty, it's pretty obvious why it exists.
So I've given up fighting against the death penalty. These things move in cycles. Another 50 years we won't have one and people will be clamoring for one again. Instead, I'm extremely pissed about what pg mentions in closing: prosecutors playing hardball with plea bargains.
Whatever you want the laws to be, I've seen enough prosecutorial misconduct over the last decade to last several lifetimes. The vast majority of the time they're doing a great job. But 1-10% of the time the public is getting screwed. The incentives are all wrong and oversight in nonexistent. I've seen them cover for bad cop decisions, screw over aaronsw, refuse to take DNA evidence that would release innocent people from jail -- the list goes on an on. Something is really rotten and needs to be fixed.
Even if you believe in the death penalty, you have to admit that the criminal justice system is so broken that it's way beyond a reasonable doubt that we're executing people we shouldn't. The system needs fixing. Not only will this save lives, it will result in many people either not going to prison or serving much less time than they currently are.
Couldn't the President of the United States, Governor of Oklahoma, or other federal judges below the level of the Supreme Court intervene, at least temporarily?
I not sure about the court side.
I don't see how you can argue for the death penalty. Killing people doesn't help anyone. Who has lived a happy and healthy life as a result of a death row execution of someone with a life sentence?
Run the table "CAPPUN" vs "RELIG". Nearly every major religious position in the US (including atheist/agnostic/none) is largely in favor of the death penalty, with only Muslims and Native Americans coming out as more than 50% opposed in both sets, and "other eastern" being over 50% in the newer set.
Also of note: whites are much more in favor of the death penalty than other races, Republicans are slightly more in favor than Democrats, people with higher incomes are more in favor than those with lower incomes, and people with average education (high school or 2-year college) are more in favor than those with either very high or very low education.
(I'm from a religious subgroup that's anti-death-penalty, anti-war, pro-life, etc. and I would argue that the death penalty isn't consistent with a Christian ethic, but plenty of people obviously disagree with me.)
The level of corruption/manipulation/etc. in some of these death row cases is very frightening.
It should be made clear that this statistic was not derived from counting up actual innocent people who were sentenced. It was a statistical estimate with a number of assumptions built in to it. Not defending the death penalty, just pointing out something that was not stated precisely in my opinion.
Reasonable doubt is not an observable quantity, like water on Mars; the question is whether jurors in the case doubted of the culpability of the accused. Obviously they didn't.
If they did, that may save this man's life, but do nothing against death penalty. Death penalty is barbaric; if you can make the case that guilty people should not be executed, I think it's much stronger than if you just argue in favor of the innocent.
... notwithstanding the fact that Scalia argued in 2009 that executing innocent people was perfectly fine: "This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent". (You have to love the quotes around the word 'actually').
- - -
Completely OT: inconsistent number of spaces after periods is very annoying (the second paragraph has one, the third or 7th have two for example; the 6th paragraph has both). The correct number of spaces after a period is ONE, but if you disagree, the least you can do is be consistent.
There is no punishment that fits both the guilty and the innocent. There is no compromise.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JYWVYLY
I was incredibly eye-opening how common this kind of thing is. It makes me sick.
I wouldn't want it on my conscience, so how can I demand if of someone else? No innocent person deserves that responsibility.
Deleted comment
Obviously pg's writings are favorites of the community here, but if you look back through the history of HN you'll find that right from the beginning there were selected political stories that were on topic.
Is there a precise criterion? Nope. But as pg once said, note those words most and probably. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426.
The DA basically told this guy point-blank that if you don't want to die, take this deal. If you do want to die, don't take the deal.
He chose not to take the deal.
Is there a chance that "good sense" could have prevailed, and that by some fluke, some part of the system wouldn't work, and so he would be saved from the death penalty? Maybe. But if he had taken the deal, he would definitely not have died.
This guy chose to play russian roulette with a six-shooter with five bullets in it and lost. And this is the reason we shouldn't kill people? Because a guy who can't do the basic math of "which choice is more likely to end in my death" chose poorly?
No. The guy should have taken the deal. Much like the rest of the people on the planet who choose to take huge risks with their life, he's going to lose out on this bet. And that has nothing to do with why we should stop the state from killing people.
Our system of justice is based on laws and rules. They can't be broken arbitrarily, which is why innocent people are put to death. Not because we're mean. Not because we're stupid. We make the rules, and we have to enforce them. In this case, one of our rules is, if you do X, you die.
So, if you don't believe in killing innocent people, by all means, get rid of that rule. But don't tell me we should get rid of the rule because the rules weren't perfect.
Do you want to die?
Y ->
Reject offer. ->
Death penalty.
N ->
Accept offer. ->
Life in prison.
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.
did you do it?
Y -> address "do you want to die" question
N -> "I don't deserve to either die or spend my life in prison" -> rely on the justice system to do the right thing
Are you saying that every person charged with a capital offense should instantly take a plea deal for life in prison? Because that's what your flow chart is suggesting.
If so, then that's seriously messed up.
The punishment for making a bad decision on a deal presented to you should not be death. If your crime deserves the maximum sentence, and you are in subway helpful to the criminal justice system, then maybe you deserve a pass. However, if you didn't commit the crime, or if there is reasonable doubt as to whether you did, I don't care if you mooned the DA when they offered a plea bargain: you shouldn't get killed.
That's not arbitrary justice. That's just justice. You can't justify punishing innocent people.
Now, the nice thing about other punishments is, in the case where justice if misapplied, you can try to make up for it later. With the death penalty, that option isn't available to you, which is one of many reasons people question whether it at all makes sense.
Missed the autocorrect foo. Sorry.
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 can say literally anything, like, "Black people may not marry White people", or "Women may not vote", "Gay people may not get married", etc. Or they can say things like "At an intersection, the left-most lane may turn left onto the street it intersects with, but not the right-most lane." It can say anything; it doesn't have to do with "fairness" and "justice", it has to do with maintaining order.
The laws, once put down, are enforced, as long as they remain laws. The results of those laws being enforced will only stop once the laws are abolished (and even then, sometimes the states just like to keep going with 'em even if they've been abolished anyway).
We can't just selectively enforce or not enforce laws. Then there would be no point to the law. Then literally any local government official, judge, court, president, etc could abuse the rights of citizens or allow people to go free simply because they felt like it. And that's not in the public interest.
Therefore, laws which are deemed to be unfair or unjust must be amended or abolished. But - and this is the important part - they must simply be made by decree by will of the representatives of the public, and must not always meet a measurement of justice or fairness. Not only because there are plenty of laws which simply define what the proper procedures of daily life are, but because we'd literally never get any laws passed if we had to have a philosophical discussion about the potential pros and cons of the impact of the law on justice as a general idea.
So why are they forcing him to make an unfair choice? Laws aren't designed to be fair. Only the consequence of the law can be fair, according to that law. In this case, if you ask a guy if he wants to live, and he says, "No", is it fair to give him death, assuming he was of sound mind and body and understood the consequences of his decision?
Yeah.
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.
Still not a reason to abolish the death penalty.
Is it immoral? Yes. Impossible to reverse once enforced? Definitely. The government screwed up this one case so the law should be abolished completely? Nope.
2. Telling someone that I intend to kill them, means that is would be stupid to not kill them?
'Cause that would be silly...
What I object to is the praise he's gotten, from Obama to Zuckerberg. Without even one look at the facts of the situation.
Mmm? So, because the system is not perfect, we should remove death penalty altogether? Is that seriously the point PG is making here?
IRL there is no perfect system whatsoever. Yet we learn how to live with risk and deficiencies and hopefully improve things as we move forward to make less mistakes. Whether that applies to the US Judicial system, I don't know, but that's not a good reason to remove the death row altogether. There are a number of criminals who are well known to have no empathy and can kill without remorse or emotion, and I don't see how this kind of individuals can be rehabilitated in any way within society. On top of that, every individual who is conscious about their actions should also face responsibility - that's part of the "social contract" on which we base our actions every single day. There should be strong consequences for murder and certainly Death Row has its place as well.
But yeah, there is no discussion that we should have due process to make sure ONLY convicted criminals (with proper evidence) go to Death Row.
When you have plea bargains and negations and hardball if one doesn't just plead guilty irrespective of guilt, the concept of justice has been irrevocably subverted. And that's where we are at. And it's why we can't have the death penalty anymore. Because the system isn't working like it should.
For the record, I'm not opposed to the death penalty. In fact, I think in an ideal system it would be used rapidly and impartially from time to time. Some people are probably not redeemable. Some people probably shouldn't live anymore. Death happens to all of us... I don't believe it to be the tragedy some consider. The problem is... right now we have a horribly broken system that has zero business killing anybody.
I think that is indeed the case.
I also suggest that your writing doesn't make any kind of valuable argument against that suggestion. Yes, of course, "because the system is not perfect, we should remove death penalty altogether." That's the way it is.
When you write "There should be strong consequences for murder and certainly Death Row has its place as well," well, maybe you need some more time to think about what those "strong consequences" are?! My impression is that you'll have a difficult time coming up with reasons to support your choices.
I always find people who worry about the death penalty have some kind of delusion, are somehow obsessed with the question, for no good reason. Unable to cope with the world as it is.
Then why is that PG article coming up now? It's not like it's a newsflash that we have innocent people dying in the Death Row. it's been happening for years. Is it an epidermic reaction of some sort ? The news effect, just like people who can't fall asleep for 15 mins because they saw something horrible on TV and then forget it and go on with their lives the next day ?
If you are revolted against something, that should be on your agenda every single day of your life, not just when the news talk about it.
Being in a state of revulsion requires valuable energy. If you spend all your time being revolted, then you won't actually be able make friends and influence people, as it were. PG is in the position that he's got a sphere of influence, and now you chide him for what? Expressing a valuable thing in such a way that he can potentially cause a coherent constructive interference of an important community. I'd say that was quite a good thing. He also used timing to his advantage to get people to listen.
In your post you imply he doesn't think about this regularly, but you have no evidence for this. He could be thinking about this all the time, but we don't get to hear about that.
Let's not make the butchers the victims. When you kill several people, what kind of redemption do you expect?
> why should the state have the right
Just as the State has the right to kill innocent people overseas. If you are worried about saving innocent lives, it's way more effective to prevent your state from going to war than to save the unfortunate innocents stuck in the death row. There are WAY more innocents killed in conflicts.