Death penalty is wrong, this is why..

[Tricky]

Oh hell, not outbreaks of rationality again. We never have this problem when we're arguing with trolls.

 

[Bob Klase]

Oy, oy, oy....

Read my posts, and the links I provided. Understand what they say. They do not say what you think they say. You have gotten it seriously wrong, many times.

The links don't say what you think they say.

I am not saying I know the numbers of how many innocent were among the executed. I specifically said that we can't know that, precisely because nobody checks.

That's exactly right- you can't know. And you can't know how many innocent are among those on death row. but since not knowing interferes with your argument you pick some numbers and try to make a correlation where there is none.

The 121-125 number is the number of exonerated people on death row since 1973.

No one has disputed that number- only your attempts to correlate it to other numbers is wrong.

We know that whenever there are 8 people executed, there's another one exonerated. 1 in 9.

So apparently we should execute more people so we'll exonerate more people. We're going to find another innocent person for every 8 we execute (according to you).

The 372 number is what you get, if you take 1/9th of the 3,350 (jan 2007).

That's correct- if you divide one number by another number you'll get a third number. Problem is that you're trying to use those numbers to support something they don't support.

Personally I think a better number would be the total that have been on death row since 1973. That should get you up to at least 1/15 or 1/16.

Even better would be the total number of murders that have been committed since 1973. If you add up the numbers from here http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

it's well over 500,000. So if we just use 500,000 to keep the math simple for you, that means that for every 4000 murders we find an innocent person on death row.

1 in 4000 is a much better number than one in 8. And both numbers have are just as valid in this discussion.

Do you understand now?

I understood before. I understand that you wanted a number and you couldn't find a valid number so you just took two other numbers and divided them to get a number. You don't really care whether your number means anything because you can claim it means something even when it doesn't.

That's what it boils down to, yes. Which leads to the inevitable question:

The problem is not whether you're for or against the death penalty. The problem is that you can't stick to facts to make your argument and you have to resort to meaningless numbers you going to make up because you can't find numbers that actually correlate to something.

How many innocent people being executed are you willing to accept?

I'll just give up and go with your numbers- I'll accept one innocent person for every 8 guilty ones that we execute. Then (using your numbers ) we'll exonerate all the innocent ones as soon as we execute all the guilty ones.

Or we could use my number and I'll go with one for every 4000 murders committed. That way we'll still find all the innocent ones and we don't have to execute any one to find them.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

You are so wrong.

Why do you think food companies take samples of a production line?

Well then can you show your working? And answer the questions I asked? What do you think the stat you posted means in simple English... a nice worked example would be lovely.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

But the jury, which decides to send to death ( or not ) a person, is made of people, right?
People who take decisions according to what they know about a crime.
Now, if the jury can send people to die, even if they do not know about a crime that much, why can not the husband, who has much more info, in this particular case, about the crime?

I would have thought the difference is quite clear. The jury is acting on behalf of the state. In a democracy if we don't like the way the state works then you can change it. There are checks and balances in place, the system is fairly transparent for people to see and there is regulation and control of what can and cannot be done. Its not perfect but nobody expects it to be, and the flaws are ones that people have agreed to accept.

None of the above applies to vigilante justice, and while you can argue specific, hypothetical, fairy tale cases where people will say its fine in the real world these cases don't exist and you can't have people dishing out their own version of justice to people on the streets. There is no control, no transparency and no way to change the system if you don't like it. It simply comes down to 1 man's opinion of what is right.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Basically, I do.

If only one wrongful execution happens, nothing differentiates the state from a cold blood, premedidate, murderer..

Nothing at all? How about 'intent'?

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Handsomely said, W. I agree that we agree to disagree.

*tips cap*

DR

Darth,

I think I could be swayed by an argument that a non-zero number of wrongful convictions is acceptable based on the benefits of having the death penalty in place...

...but could you explain to me what the benefits are? And is there any evidence to support them?

A lot of the arguments I have heard for the death penalty simply go along the lines of 'well he did something bad so he deserved it' which might make some people feel better but is not really terribly beneficial for society.

 

[CFLarsen]

Food companies take samples from their production lines since they know that the chance of a given product being bad is independent of whether or not that product is chosen for sampling, hence they can assume that their small sample is representative of the whole.
On the other hand with the death penalty whether a person is later exonerated is most definitely not independent of whether or not they are executed. We don't know what the relationship is, really, but we know that there is one so we cannot say that the statistics for the entire group (1/9 later found innocent) will apply to a smaller portion of that group (the number actually executed) - that smaller portion is not randomly selected.

It is a sad fact that he who can pay the better lawyer, wins the case. What you are arguing is that only people on death row who are rich enough to get proper legal defense are innocent. The poor are the guilty ones.

That's exactly right- you can't know. And you can't know how many innocent are among those on death row. but since not knowing interferes with your argument you pick some numbers and try to make a correlation where there is none.

There is no correlation? O....K. It isn't a case of you not understanding. It is a case of you not wanting to understand.

You sure don't understand what "correlation" means.

So apparently we should execute more people so we'll exonerate more people. We're going to find another innocent person for every 8 we execute (according to you).

Of course not. Stop executing people at all.

That's correct- if you divide one number by another number you'll get a third number. Problem is that you're trying to use those numbers to support something they don't support.

They support that there are innocent people on death row.

Personally I think a better number would be the total that have been on death row since 1973. That should get you up to at least 1/15 or 1/16.

Even better would be the total number of murders that have been committed since 1973. If you add up the numbers from here http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

it's well over 500,000. So if we just use 500,000 to keep the math simple for you, that means that for every 4000 murders we find an innocent person on death row.

1 in 4000 is a much better number than one in 8. And both numbers have are just as valid in this discussion.

The problem with your argumentation is that not all murders result in the death sentence. Nor is it only murder, but also rape, that will land you on death row.

We have to look at actual convictions that send people to death row compared to actual exonerations. 1 in 9. Indisputable facts.

I understood before. I understand that you wanted a number and you couldn't find a valid number so you just took two other numbers and divided them to get a number. You don't really care whether your number means anything because you can claim it means something even when it doesn't.

The problem is not whether you're for or against the death penalty. The problem is that you can't stick to facts to make your argument and you have to resort to meaningless numbers you going to make up because you can't find numbers that actually correlate to something.

You can deny reality as much as you like.

I'll just give up and go with your numbers- I'll accept one innocent person for every 8 guilty ones that we execute. Then (using your numbers ) we'll exonerate all the innocent ones as soon as we execute all the guilty ones.

Or we could use my number and I'll go with one for every 4000 murders committed. That way we'll still find all the innocent ones and we don't have to execute any one to find them.

Your argument is invalid, since people are still being exonerated from death row. That means all innocent ones are not found.

 

[wollery]

Oh hell, not outbreaks of rationality again. We never have this problem when we're arguing with trolls.

 

[Matteo Martini]

Nothing at all? How about 'intent'?

I wrote:
" Originally Posted by Matteo Martini
Basically, I do.

If only one wrongful execution happens, nothing differentiates the state from a cold blood, premedidate, murderer.. "

The intent in both cases is to kill.
I can not see much difference between a cold-blood murderer, who kills, for example, his wife for revenge, and the state, who kills an inmate, because they did not give him enough time/rights to prove his innocence.
Maybe, there is a difference, but, it dies not matter a lot, if you are that inmate

 

[Matteo Martini]

I would have thought the difference is quite clear. The jury is acting on behalf of the state. In a democracy if we don't like the way the state works then you can change it. There are checks and balances in place, the system is fairly transparent for people to see and there is regulation and control of what can and cannot be done. Its not perfect but nobody expects it to be, and the flaws are ones that people have agreed to accept.

None of the above applies to vigilante justice, and while you can argue specific, hypothetical, fairy tale cases where people will say its fine in the real world these cases don't exist and you can't have people dishing out their own version of justice to people on the streets. There is no control, no transparency and no way to change the system if you don't like it. It simply comes down to 1 man's opinion of what is right.

Wait a second.
This is eactly the point.
What does it mean that the process system is " transparent "?
Does it mean that it is , in this particular case, better?
I would not think so..
Transparent to the media, to the public, to everybody else, but, what does the public know about this murder?
Nothing more that what is publicly available.
And, so the jury.
THe husband knows more.
So, why the jury can send the man to die ( or not ), and the husband can not?

 

[Matteo Martini]

But wollery, as a skeptic you should know that there are no absolutes.

The sentence " there are no absolutes ", is not it an absolute?

 

[Matteo Martini]

Don't assume that.

So, do you think the behaviour of the husband was moral or immoral or.. ?

 

[Matteo Martini]

Certainly the law would allow the death penalty in such a case.*

The question is whether it would be sought and, if sought, whether it would be assigned.

In the United States, the administration of the death penalty in notoriously uneven. That's one of the problems with it, and the reason it was briefly declared unconstitutional in 1973. It was decided that the system was horribly unfair. Generally, if the prosecutor seeks the death penalty, it is because he thinks the jury will have little sympathy for the defendant.

In this case, what you have presented us with is a case in which the accused (the husband) has had his wife and son murdered. The accused firmly believes that the victim was in fact the murderer. As presented, there is also good reason to believe that the accused is correct, and that a jury might be persuaded that he was merely doing a job that the courts failed to do. That generates a lot of sympathy for the victim. In such a case a prosecutor in America would have reason to fear that he could get a conviction at all, because he knows that all it takes is one person out of 12 to say "not guilty". If the prosecutor goes all the way and asks for the death penalty, he knows that that one person might hold out and refuse to convict, regardless of the evidence.

One thing you haven't told us about in the hypothetical example is anything about the public lives of the husband or of the (original) murderer. Whether or not it ought to make a difference, if the husband was a crack addicted unemployed loser who was living off his wife's income, he would be much more likely to be executed than if he were an investment banker who voluteered at the local food bank. Likewise, if the newly deceased had reformed his life in the 10 years since the original murders, and was now a model citizen, that would play a role. If he was still a ne'er do well suspected of breaking into peoples' homes, you might manage a conviction for disorderly conduct on the guy who shot him.

*Actually, in the United States, there must be "special circumstances" to qualify for the death penalty, and I don't know whether the case you have presented would qualify in every state where the death penalty is allowed. Here in Michigan, you just don't hear about that sort of thing, because we don't have the death penalty. Our state was one of the first to abolish it, way back in the early 19th century.

I agree that, for what the husband did, it was not, by any means, automatic that the husband would have gotten death sentence.
I am looking at what would happen in the worst-case scenario.
I admit that.

 

[Tricky]

The sentence " there are no absolutes ", is not it an absolute?

Only to the extremely pedantic who would remove this definition of the word "no" from our vocabulary.

 

[Matteo Martini]

Only to the extremely pedantic who would remove this definition of the word "no" from our vocabulary.

I do not get it..
If I say " there are no asbolutes ", I am stating an absolute value, is not it?
A sentence that contradicts itself.
Like the sentence, " this sentence is a lie "
Etc..

 

[jsfisher]

So, do you think the behaviour of the husband was moral or immoral or.. ?

Why do you keep dodging your own topic? How about instead of asking everyone else what they believe or not believe, you simply support the claim you made at the beginning?

 

[Bob Klase]

There is no correlation? O....K. It isn't a case of you not understanding. It is a case of you not wanting to understand.

You sure don't understand what "correlation" means.

You don't understand that matching numbers with no correlation does nothing to support your contentions.

They support that there are innocent people on death row.

The fact that 121-125 innocent people have been found on death row supports that. No one has disputed it. Connecting that number to the number executed adds exactly nothing. Extending that number to cover everyone merely makes it look like you're too desperate to stick to actual facts.

The problem with your argumentation is that not all murders result in the death sentence. Nor is it only murder, but also rape, that will land you on death row.

Not every 8 executions results in finding another innocent (that's only an aveRage). Connecting my numbers to the innocent is just as valid as your connection- because there isn't one in either case.

But we could add in the rapes if you want- that would at least double my 500,000 and then we could expect to find one innocent for every 8000 convicted- even better than 1 in 4000.

We have to look at actual convictions that send people to death row compared to actual exonerations. 1 in 9. Indisputable facts.

You claimed that 1 in 9 was innocents vs the number executed. Then you extrapolate that 1 in 9 to an assumption that it applies equally to everyone on death row and claim your assumption as indisputable fact.

Hardly a fact. Certainly not indisputable .

Originally Posted by Bob Klase
I'll just give up and go with your numbers- I'll accept one innocent person for every 8 guilty ones that we execute. Then (using your numbers ) we'll exonerate all the innocent ones as soon as we execute all the guilty ones.

Or we could use my number and I'll go with one for every 4000 murders committed. That way we'll still find all the innocent ones and we don't have to execute any one to find them.

Your argument is invalid, since people are still being exonerated from death row. That means all innocent ones are not found.

We don't *know* that all the innocent ones have not been found although that's a reasonable assumption. But I'm using your numbers and your claim- if we continue executing them we'll find another innocent for every 8 people we execute. You made that connection- now you claim that it's invalid.

 

[Tricky]

I do not get it..
If I say " there are no asbolutes ", I am stating an absolute value, is not it?
A sentence that contradicts itself.
Like the sentence, " this sentence is a lie "
Etc..

Not really, because in common usage, to say "there are no _____" means that (whatever you filled in the blank with) are uncommon or that they have never yet been discovered. If that phrase is used to mean an absolute, then it is "almost never" correct. You can't even say "there are no white crows" because all you can say with certainty is that you have never seen or heard of any white crows. Yet, even if it is technically inaccurate, the phrase is in wide usage and most people have little difficulty understanding it.

But if you must pedantically insist, I will modify my statement to say "there are few if any absolutes." Personally, I feel like such verbosity is unnecessary to communicate meaning.

But speaking of "absolutes", I find it interesting that death penalty opponants do not find it necessary to say that in order to reverse a conviction, the accused must be found "absolutely, 100% innocent beyond any shadow of a doubt". After all, if absolutes can be applied on one extreme, then why not the other? This is why I find that it is "almost always" foolish to use absolutes. We should all (can I say "all"?) be aware that "few if any" systems are perfect, and direct our efforts to make them as good as reasonably possible.

 

[CFLarsen]

You don't understand that matching numbers with no correlation does nothing to support your contentions.

Why are they not correlated?

The fact that 121-125 innocent people have been found on death row supports that. No one has disputed it. Connecting that number to the number executed adds exactly nothing. Extending that number to cover everyone merely makes it look like you're too desperate to stick to actual facts.

Nonsense.

Not every 8 executions results in finding another innocent (that's only an aveRage). Connecting my numbers to the innocent is just as valid as your connection- because there isn't one in either case.

Yes, it is an average, but you can't call it "only". That's precisely what averages are for: Finding averages.

But we could add in the rapes if you want- that would at least double my 500,000 and then we could expect to find one innocent for every 8000 convicted- even better than 1 in 4000.

What you are doing is comparing exonerated from the group of death-row convicted to the larger group of non-death-row convicted. That, you cannot do.

You claimed that 1 in 9 was innocents vs the number executed. Then you extrapolate that 1 in 9 to an assumption that it applies equally to everyone on death row and claim your assumption as indisputable fact.

Hardly a fact. Certainly not indisputable.

We don't *know* that all the innocent ones have not been found although that's a reasonable assumption. But I'm using your numbers and your claim- if we continue executing them we'll find another innocent for every 8 people we execute. You made that connection- now you claim that it's invalid.

Huh? Where do I do that?

 

[fuelair]

I was under the impression there were legal principles that prohibited that sort of thing...one of the estoppels, perhaps?

A good lawyer can get around silliness like that - especially if psychiatric interviews are made and are part of the testimony - besides I would be totally suspicious if no testimony was allowed on the original case - on that basis alone I would likely acquit (vote for) since it would automatically prevent being sure that the crime was as described and only as described.