Death Penalty

I don't want to swim to work in blood and have blood for my dinner.

Nor do I... which is why I want violent offenders off the streets permanently.

O-o-o-o-o-o-o-oo-KAY.

unless you let emotion affect the punishment of the killer, I don't see how this could be possible; the purpose of prison is to protect the rest of the world from the violent person. if we don't think the person is going to be rehabilitated, we kill them. keeping them in for life is pointless, unless you want them to "suffer" in jail which is really not the purpose of the law.



it seemd that way in Robin Hood...



that's sad, that means a lot of killers and rapists and child molestors are getting away...we need to bring these numbers up people!



there is never absolute certainty. the result of the case is always decided by the jury and that means human interpretation. facts might indicate one thing, but there are always alternative possibilities...dna testing is just another piece of evidence, it's no magic drug. i'm sure DNA testing has convinced many jurors of a man's guilt, but proving someone has BEEN there is not the same as proving they committed a murder there.

" The exonerating power of DNA evidence reveals the unreliability of other forms of incriminating evidence.
"In something like one-quarter of DNA exonerations, there was a confession," Professor Dow said. "In something like three-quarters, there was an eyewitness."

Mr. Neufeld estimated that biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing to identify the guilty is available in fewer than 10 percent of violent crimes.

Adam Liptak, You Think DNA Evidence Is Foolproof? Try Again, N.Y. Times, Mar. 16, 2003

http://www.law-forensic.com/cfr_houston_lab_11.htm
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In cases where there is no DNA evidence at the crime scene then eyewitnesses and/or confessions contribute heavily to conviction rates.

There are 3500+ people on death row.

Lets say that 15% of them have DNA evidence. Thats 525 cases. That leaves 2975 cases without DNA evidence.

Lets say that the numbers of false convictions based on confessions is less than the 25% in the article: lets say its 10%. It stands to reason that there will be 297 innocent people who confessed to a crime and are nonetheless currently scheduled to die. There will be no DNA evidence to exonerate them.

In cases where the conviction is based on eyewitness testimony the number of innocent people on death row is 800+.

If keeping innocent people from harm is the criteria then elimination of the death penalty will save more innocents then keeping it.

That ain't no philosophical fluff.

John
That was very informative. Thank you.

Well, stuh, this differs - where you live, and especially, what type of law you.

The theories of punishment you fellow, are very old ones, which were left in Europe a couple of decades/centuries ago.
[Unfortunately, the Nazis digged this out again and changed the German laws for 12 years re such.]

I haven't read this whole thread, so I won't say much, but I'd like to just agree with edgar, if that's alright, give him a little moral support. I agree with you edgar

Agrote
Edgar is the one a2k poster I agree with all the time.

John,

that's a nice lot of statistics...but they don't mean anything. first of all it would take some very rare situations for DNA evidence to prove or disprove man's innocence. I'm sure that in 95% of all of the cases where there are no DNA evidence, DNA evidence would not make a difference if some of it were found....because it usually doesnt mean anything! found a hair near the crime? big deal, accused murdurer was probably the girl's father. etc. and if they didnt find DNA evidence during the evidence, who's going to find it 10+ years later? nobody's looking! and if they were, the evidence would be gone now. so we can forget that idea.



how does where you live affect the purpose of prison? the purpose is so simple...to keep criminials off the street. I'm not talking about some sect in the middle east where the purpose is torture.

Well, I live in a democracy with a democratic legal system

So, the puprose of prison is regulated not by popular vote, the masses on the street, stuh505's or Walter Hinteler's opinion but by law.

I know that the theories and objectives of punishment vary between countries, but I'm not sure, if your's is conform with the US actual legal system.

You think it means nothing that 75% of the people who were exonerated by DNA evidence were initially convicted based on eyewitness testimony?

I'm not sure, whom you are addressing, john/nyc, but perhaps read something about eyewitness' testimonies.

Looking back at my experience at courts and in the legal business, I certainly would believe more on a DNA evidence than on any eyewitness.

Walter,

I live in the US, my country has a democracy on the front-end at least. Yes I am sure that our prisons are designed to keep innocent people protected from violent people! I'm pretty certain of this, in fact, totally certain!



"DNA evidence" could mean anything. It could mean that they found the hair of a dog on the murder victims porch from 10 years ago. Obviously this is not relavent to the case!

"eyewitness testimony" also could mean anything. We don't know what each witness claimed to see. I would wager that none of those eyewitness testimonies were claiming to actually see the murder take place.

The point is that you cannot just compare forms of evidence like this, without comparing the CONTENT of the evidence!

To say that DNA evidence is better than eyewitness evidence is ridiculous. It depends entirely on the case and the evidence that was picked up there.

Just as a matter of very personal interest: that was/is taught at which Law School?

no lawschool, because it is not a matter of law...

??? what are you talking about

Walter, I think maybe you are having difficulty understanding the meaning of my words in English...I've noticed your comments are very poorly translated and you are German so I think our little "disagreement" is probably just because you've got a word mixed up or something

Thanks for your critics re my knowledge of English, stuh. I will try harder.

There aredifferent theories and objectives of punishment with these topics:
- Retribution,
- Deterrence
--General deterrence
--Individual deterrence
- Incapacitation
- Rehabilitation

And all that is no matter of law in the USA?

Here's the problem I have with the death penalty as it is currently aministered in the US:

"One landmark study of death sentencing patterns in Georgia is particularly noteworthy, both for its thoroughness and its profoundly disturbing conclusions. Professor David Baldus and his colleagues examined more than 2,000 murder cases, including those before and after judicial reforms in 1973 intended to prevent discriminatory sentencing. The survey found that the frequency of cases in which death sentences were obviously excessive declined following the reforms. However, after accounting for some 200 variable factors in each case (such as the depravity of the crime or previous criminal record of the defendant) a clear pattern of racial disparities remained. When all conceivable legal factors were accounted for, the odds of a death sentence were four times higher for cases with white victims than for cases with black victims. The odds of a death sentence in cases in which blacks killed whites were as much as 11 times higher than the capital murder of a black by a white.

Of the 500 prisoners executed between 1977 and end of 1998, 81.80 per cent were convicted of the murder of a white, even though blacks and whites are the victims of homicide in almost equal numbers nationwide. In 1972, the US Supreme Court ruled that the administration of the death penalty was unacceptably arbitrary and declared all existing state statutes to be unconstitutional.11 Four years later, the Court approved new trial and sentencing procedures intended to ensure that the death penalty would be imposed in a consistent and rational manner, by fairly distinguishing the few murder cases which met the criteria for death sentences from the many which did not.12 However, research in the years following that 1976 decision continued to show a disproportionate number of death sentences imposed on minority groups, as well as wide geographic variations in its application within some states.13 "

Since 1976, 34.0% of those executed have been black, while blacks make up only 12.7% of the total population. 57.4% executed have been white, while whites make up 80.7% of the population.

This means that blacks are being executed at a rate more than 4 times that of whites."

http://www.amnestyusa.org/rightsforall/dp/race/race-1.html#Statistical

Could it be our justice system needs to be improved before sending people to death?

While I will grant that blacks may have committed crimes at a higher rate than whiltes, I do not believe that the difference is this high.

We need to make it equal justice for equal crimes, and eliminate the mistakes before continuing to kill people.

***

Here's a weird side-note, really unrelated, one that might cause some flames:
There was this case of an this anti-abortion fanatic who killed this abortion clinic doctor. Got the death penalty. Its like, in his mind, the doctor was killing babies. So he killed the doctor. So society killed him. Weird. Are we like amoebas, or what? A kills B. So C kills A. So D kills C.

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