Death Penalty

[Chris_Halkides]

@Chris_Halkides
Err, no, that's the alternative version argued by his defence.

The Guardian reported, " There’s no dispute that Moore arrived unarmed; Mahoney carried a gun on him and the store had two firearms behind the counter." Do you have a citation for your claim?

 

[HansMustermann]

Err... your own quote?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

One of my citations was CNN, and CNN used the phrase "prosecutors asserted" at the end of the quote that I provided. If the prosecution claimed that Mr. Moore intended to rob the store when he entered, that is risible. No one disputes that he was unarmed.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I need no introduction to the concept, but the facts are a little gray. Mr. Moore was unarmed and intended to buy something. The felony (of taking the money) occurred after the shooting. CNN reported, "Moore was convicted of killing a White convenience store clerk, James Mahoney, during a 1999 robbery. Moore, who entered the store in Spartanburg County unarmed, pulled Mahoney’s handgun away from him. Mahoney then grabbed a second gun and shot Moore in the arm before Moore fired a fatal shot at Mahoney, prosecutors asserted." Even if this were felony murder by the legal standard, Mr. Moore is not the worst of the worst IMHO.

My guess is if the positions were reversed and a white shopper shot a black clerk in such a situation, he wouldn't even be charged for the theft. South Carolina after all.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

That's ...cathartic, I suppose, that idea, but probably too far-fetched to ever make for serious consideration. But certainly, those involved, like the prosecutors, judges, so forth --- the individual policemen as well, maybe, if their role is standout in the miscarriage of justice, as sometimes/often does happen --- should be penalized, and penalized seriously. Not just a rap on the knuckle, but certainly dismissal without benefits, as well as being barred from holding positions of similar responsibility, as well as actual jail time, not just some token thing but serious jail time, like maybe a year or two or similar.

If you commit a miscarriage of justice then your penalty should be at least the same as imposed on your victim, but with no chance for parole.

And if you're willing to kill somebody, you should be willing to suffer the same fate if one of your victims was innocent.

 

[bruto]

I start out thinking Gulliver Foyle's suggestion a bit too extreme, because some mistakes are likely to happen even if one is diligent and honest, and penalties too great might make prosecution too risky. On the other hand, the "eat your own dogfood" approach has some merit in that it brings home the realization of how extreme and irreversible the death penalty is. So I think if you could present it in the form "if you want a death penalty, here's the way it must be done," it would result in an end to the death penalty. But I think there's a danger too, in this bizarre and skewed society, in which, if the penalty is so extreme, it would result instead in a system whereby, instead of instilling caution in prosecutors, it would insure that initial error is irreversible, and exoneration simply ignored or disallowed. We've already seen a couple of examples of this, in which execution was urged or even carried out on the grounds that the exonerated person had not met some time line or procedural rules.

In the mean time, I'd favor Chanakya's approach. For corruption or purposeful error, big penalties, for mere incompetence or failure of diligence, lesser perhaps, but at least dismissal with prejudice. There's an old English common law principle, that a dog is not vicious until proven otherwise. Every dog gets one bite. That's the bite.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I start out thinking Gulliver Foyle's suggestion a bit too extreme, because some mistakes are likely to happen even if one is diligent and honest, and penalties too great might make prosecution too risky. On the other hand, the "eat your own dogfood" approach has some merit in that it brings home the realization of how extreme and irreversible the death penalty is. So I think if you could present it in the form "if you want a death penalty, here's the way it must be done," it would result in an end to the death penalty.
But I think there's a danger too, in this bizarre and skewed society, in which, if the penalty is so extreme, it would result instead in a system whereby, instead of instilling caution in prosecutors, it would insure that initial error is irreversible, and exoneration simply ignored or disallowed. We've already seen a couple of examples of this, in which execution was urged or even carried out on the grounds that the exonerated person had not met some time line or procedural rules.
In the mean time, I'd favor Chanakya's approach. For corruption or purposeful error, big penalties, for mere incompetence or failure of diligence, lesser perhaps, but at least dismissal with prejudice. There's an old English common law principle, that a dog is not vicious until proven otherwise. Every dog gets one bite. That's the bite.

Frankly, the US "justice" system is so skewed that additional corruption from that angle is pretty much a non-issue.

 

[bruto]

Frankly, the US "justice" system is so skewed that additional corruption from that angle is pretty much a non-issue.

Likely so, but I think it would be an additional spur that would make a certain sort of corruption almost mandatory, including, perversely, a reluctance to pursue things that ought to be pursued. We see hints of this when other mandatory sentences are seen as so unjust that prosecutors are reluctant to pursue the crimes involved. But I'm sure at the end we're both pretty much agreed that the quick and effective solution to all the potential complexities of capital punishment, real or speculative, is just to eliminate it altogether.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Likely so, but I think it would be an additional spur that would make a certain sort of corruption almost mandatory, including, perversely, a reluctance to pursue things that ought to be pursued. We see hints of this when other mandatory sentences are seen as so unjust that prosecutors are reluctant to pursue the crimes involved. But I'm sure at the end we're both pretty much agreed that the quick and effective solution to all the potential complexities of capital punishment, real or speculative, is just to eliminate it altogether.

Definitely. Despite my fantasies of stringing the likes of T****y up by a lamp pole, the death penalty is never a good solution.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

NBC News reported, "Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, an independent research program, said Trump’s intention to execute child rapists in particular may appeal to his “tough-on-crime” supporters, but is more nuanced. He said the National Registry of Exonerations, which tracks sentences resulting from wrongful convictions, has found that child victim cases pose special dangers of wrongful conviction because they “can be extremely emotional, often pitting family members against each other,” and frequently rely upon false forensic evidence." Elsewhere this article indicated that a 2008 SC ruling would seem to prohibit the death penalty for child sex abuse cases, an idea that President-elect Trump has advocated. The Intercept reported that Project 2025 calls for expanding the death penalty.

 

[bobdroege7]

I think if the US is to keep tge death penalty it would be only fair that if a miscarriage of justice is found out, the prosecutor and judge involved and the state governor signing off on it are automatically sentenced to the same fate as the convicted, viz they get the death penalty, even if their victim is exonerated before execution. This sentence should be automatic and immediate, and also cover anybody found deliberately covering up the miscarriage of justice or creating it in the first place.

If you're willing to put somebody else's life on the line in an extremely flawed system, then you should be willing to put your own on it too.

A little too biblical for me.

 

[theprestige]

I need no introduction to the concept, but the facts are a little gray. Mr. Moore was unarmed and intended to buy something. The felony (of taking the money) occurred after the shooting.

It's not really a factual gray area, the neutralizing of a victim as step one of robbing them. Nobody says taking out the clerk has nothing to do with robbing the store, just because you neutralized first and robbed second.

 

[Norman Alexander]

I need no introduction to the concept, but the facts are a little gray. Mr. Moore was unarmed and intended to buy something. The felony (of taking the money) occurred after the shooting. CNN reported, "Moore was convicted of killing a White convenience store clerk, James Mahoney, during a 1999 robbery. Moore, who entered the store in Spartanburg County unarmed, pulled Mahoney’s handgun away from him. Mahoney then grabbed a second gun and shot Moore in the arm before Moore fired a fatal shot at Mahoney, prosecutors asserted." Even if this were felony murder by the legal standard, Mr. Moore is not the worst of the worst IMHO.

Sounds to me much more like "a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun". Or Stand Your Ground and Armed Self-Defense doctrines in action.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

It's not really a factual gray area, the neutralizing of a victim as step one of robbing them. Nobody says taking out the clerk has nothing to do with robbing the store, just because you neutralized first and robbed second.

You are begging the question of Mr. Moore's intent, which is contested. It was reported, "Just weeks before the trial began, one of those witnesses, the drug dealer whose house Moore went to that night, had changed his story." I am not saying that Mr. Moore acted as he should have, but when witnesses start changing their stories, it raises some questions.