Remembering George Stinney: The price we pay for the death penalty

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, I'm glad that you've put so much detailed thought into the methodology you'd be using.

Have you considered working for NASA? You could put some colonies on Mars by just kind of going there and building them.

he said sarcastically, ignoring the other half of my post that then touches on the details.

None of those details involved how you're going about eliminating errors.

 

[prideandfall]

he said sarcastically, ignoring the other half of my post that then touches on the details.

None of those details involved how you're going about eliminating errors.

and what, you expect me to write a legal thesis in this thread to appease your idle expectation of me?
tell you what, i'll write up as detailed a treatise on how to avoid mistakes and errors as you write one on how to create a system that doesn't include any in the first place.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

None of those details involved how you're going about eliminating errors.

and what, you expect me to write a legal thesis in this thread to appease your idle expectation of me?
tell you what, i'll write up as detailed a treatise on how to avoid mistakes and errors as you write one on how to create a system that doesn't include any in the first place.

I specifically said that we couldn't build such a system. That was the entirety of my issue. You can't just handwave away the issue of innocent people getting executed by saying it's something you'll figure out the details of later.

 

[prideandfall]

You can't just handwave away the issue of innocent people getting executed by saying it's something you'll figure out the details of later.

i never hand-waved it or said it would be figured out later, i said that the way to not execute innocent people is to not execute people who are innocent, pretty cut and dry.
then i said to come up with a guilt standard past "reasonable doubt" that would be used only in cases where there is no possibility of error, and then only if the crime committed is one that justifies removing the person from society forever should the death penalty be used, rather than wasting everyone's time and effort with a life sentence.
hell i even gave 4 practical real life examples of both the criteria for people never being allowed back into society and unwavering surety of guilt - what more do you want than that?

 

[arkirk]

You can't just handwave away the issue of innocent people getting executed by saying it's something you'll figure out the details of later.

i never hand-waved it or said it would be figured out later, i said that the way to not execute innocent people is to not execute people who are innocent, pretty cut and dry.
then i said to come up with a guilt standard past "reasonable doubt" that would be used only in cases where there is no possibility of error, and then only if the crime committed is one that justifies removing the person from society forever should the death penalty be used, rather than wasting everyone's time and effort with a life sentence.
hell i even gave 4 practical real life examples of both the criteria for people never being allowed back into society and unwavering surety of guilt - what more do you want than that?

In our totally broken "criminal justice" system, with its arbitrary rules of evidence and satisfaction that blacks are guilty of everything, I feel you are never going to get what you are looking for...even in the most obvious of cases. The court system itself with its arbitrary exclusion of argument and evidence and a profound belief that issues must be settled at trials thus controlled can be considered a booby trap for hapless minorities. I am sure all the jurors in the case in the OP believed unwaveringly the kid committed the murders. For it to take 70 years for this matter to clear up...This is just another example of WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE DEATH PENALTY. These stories will continue to trickle into our consciousness as long as we still have a death penalty.

 

[prideandfall]

In our totally broken "criminal justice" system, with its arbitrary rules of evidence and satisfaction that blacks are guilty of everything, I feel you are never going to get what you are looking for...even in the most obvious of cases.

well, i think the most obvious of cases would be easy, but that's obvious to the point of not being useful for the 99.9999% of the rest of the justice system, so functionally speaking yeah i totally agree with you.

This is just another example of WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE DEATH PENALTY.

i continue to disagree with this as i have since my first post in this thread, because you're detailing the very real and valid points of a massive issue with the legal system and then concluding by declaring it's a problem with something not remotely associated with that.
there's nothing wrong with killing people if you don't want them around.

These stories will continue to trickle into our consciousness as long as we still have a death penalty.

i don't really see how that's the case either, or how it follows in any way from the case in the OP.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I think you can reserve it for cases of undoubtable guilt (Boston Marathon bombings for instance), in order to stave off the innocent issue. Not certain how easy that'd be to codify.

Legally speaking, once you have a conviction, you are as guilty as the Boston bombing suspect. Even when that conviction is in error.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

You didn't answer the question.

the question is superfluous and not in any way connected to the story with which you very dubiously tried to link the question, so in the context of this thread you might as well have shown a video of someone baking a cake and then asked "is wearing fur worth drinking soda with artificial sweetener?"

IMO the death penalty as a concept is fine.
the idea of a group deciding that there are some crimes for which the perpetrator loses their privilege to live within society is fine with me, and since exile is no longer an option and (despite how monumentally fucked in the head most people are in thinking this is a good idea) prison is far more fucked up conceptually than just killing someone, i have no beef with the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds.

so basically, i can't answer the question because the question is a non-sequitur, there is no answer because the question is bullshit.
the solution is simple: never execute an innocent person.

you can not guaranteed that no innocent person will be executed. So you are fine with executing an innocent person in order to have thee opportunity to kill a guilty one, right?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The only way I see the death penalty making any sense is if there were actually dangerous super villains in the world who seem to be able to escape from prison every few months.

yeah. In a world with Lex Luthor, the Joker, the Reverse Flash, or the Red Skull, dr. doom, or the Hellfire Club, I have always felt we should just shoot em. And don't get started on the Skrull.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The only way I see the death penalty making any sense is if there were actually dangerous super villains in the world who seem to be able to escape from prison every few months.

maybe you (or anyone) can explain this...

let's take for example charles manson, or jeffrey dalmer, or that boston bomber kid, or whatever and whomever.
is it reasonable to assume that you (or whomever else) would feel that the crimes that these people have committed warrant life in prison without parole? do you think there is anything that could convince the general public that it's safe to allow them to freely rejoin society? i'm not asking if you personally are some tree-hugging hippie who can forgive anyone of anything, i'm asking if you think there's any possibility that society would collectively ever be OK with that.
based on what i understand of how humans think, the answer to that question is no - there is a class of act perpetrated which will singularly void the social contract, and negate an individual's privilege to exist within free society for the rest of their life. i guess argue that point if you disagree with it?

anyways, in that circumstance, i can conceive of absolutely no reason to keep them alive: just take them out of the courthouse to the back lawn and put a bullet or three in the back of their skull.
keeping them alive for absolutely no purpose is immeasurably more fucked up and morally depraved to me than to simply kill them.

I could killl a person who killed someone I loved. And I think there are people on This planet who deserve a killing. But what does it say about us as a people that we codify and legitimate our baser instincts to do the very thing for which we are about to kill an individual? We, as the preacher says, all for short of the glory, but does that mean we should not aspire to live better, think better, act better than the most depraved of our emotions? and until we do, what moral authority do we have to condemn anyone?

 

[arkirk]

well, i think the most obvious of cases would be easy, but that's obvious to the point of not being useful for the 99.9999% of the rest of the justice system, so functionally speaking yeah i totally agree with you.

This is just another example of WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE DEATH PENALTY.

i continue to disagree with this as i have since my first post in this thread, because you're detailing the very real and valid points of a massive issue with the legal system and then concluding by declaring it's a problem with something not remotely associated with that.
there's nothing wrong with killing people if you don't want them around.

These stories will continue to trickle into our consciousness as long as we still have a death penalty.

i don't really see how that's the case either, or how it follows in any way from the case in the OP.

Have you ever heard of the Innocence Project? It has led to the release of dozens of wrongfully convicted prisoners. If you ever watch Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show, about every week she has someone on that has just been released from prison (exonerated completely) after serving thirty or more years. It isn't just the death penalty. It is simply that the racism is so deeply ingrained in the penal system that these attrocities remain. Let's quit fooling ourselves about certainty.

 

[prideandfall]

But what does it say about us as a people that we codify and legitimate our baser instincts to do the very thing for which we are about to kill an individual?

what does it say about us as a people that we codify and legitimize our baser instincts to take a shit? or to fuck? or to sleep?
killing is as fundamental and inherent an aspect of our nature as eating, shitting, sleeping, fucking, and thinking - the elimination of a real or perceived threat or rival is an essential aspect of biological life on this planet, so i have no particular problem with that part of it.
now, on the flip side, we've decided to do this whole civilization thing which is pretty heavily dependent on the idea that we don't go killing each other all willy-nilly, so we've set up some ground rules dictating under which conditions you can act on your impulses to murder someone directly in the face, and in some circumstances if you break the rules you don't get to be part of the civilization anymore... and since exile is no longer an option, killing them is the next most efficient option.

We, as the preacher says, all for short of the glory, but does that mean we should not aspire to live better, think better, act better than the most depraved of our emotions? and until we do, what moral authority do we have to condemn anyone?

moral authority only exists within the confines of who has the biggest stick, so really it's the same thing either way.

 

[prideandfall]

you can not guaranteed that no innocent person will be executed.

sure you can.

So you are fine with executing an innocent person in order to have thee opportunity to kill a guilty one, right?

i'm just generally pro-human-death in whatever circumstance, so in the context of trying to have a general argument about this i'll always be on the side that results in the highest number of dead people.
but coming from a position of a moral and ethical argument, i would say that executing zero innocent people while also sparing ourselves the bother of keeping around certain undesirables would be the most efficient way to go.

 

[prideandfall]

Have you ever heard of the Innocence Project?

of course i have. i'm not a troglodyte.

It isn't just the death penalty. It is simply that the racism is so deeply ingrained in the penal system that these attrocities remain.

i completely agree with this.

Let's quit fooling ourselves about certainty.

i don't think it's fooling ourselves, i think it's just a simple reality that you can be absolutely certain some of the time, and it's acceptable to act a certain way when you can be absolutely certain, and you can't be absolutely certain most of the time and so it's not acceptable to act in the same way when you can't be absolutely certain.

these are two completely different scenarios, i don't get why you guys keep trying to act like they're not.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

sure you can.

So you are fine with executing an innocent person in order to have thee opportunity to kill a guilty one, right?

i'm just generally pro-human-death in whatever circumstance, so in the context of trying to have a general argument about this i'll always be on the side that results in the highest number of dead people.
but coming from a position of a moral and ethical argument, i would say that executing zero innocent people while also sparing ourselves the bother of keeping around certain undesirables would be the most efficient way to go.

So your are not pro death penalty, just pro everybody die. then why take a position on the death penalty either way? If your stance is everybody die, quilt or innocence doesn't matter but in the death penalty it is the main thing that does matter. By supporting the death penalty you are letting people not eligible for that penalty off the hook. You are giving them the right to live.

 

[prideandfall]

So your are not pro death penalty, just pro everybody die.

true, i guess really i'd have to describe my stance as "not anti-death-penalty" to be the most accurate, though i'm less pro "everybody die" than i am pro "whoever is gonna die, just do it already."

then why take a position on the death penalty either way?

because its existence with the framework of a social structure is interesting to me, and just because i'm personally highly ambivalent towards human life doesn't mean i'm not fully aware of the broader context of civilization around the issue, which also presents a lot of very interesting questions.
also, the way that in the US the legal system fucks over racial minorities and such is pretty god damn atrocious, and i'm quite passionate about being opposed to that (one of many things i've very passionate about that has absolutely no bearing on me whatsoever, which is a weird phenomena that i've been thinking a lot about lately).

If your stance is everybody die, quilt or innocence doesn't matter but in the death penalty it is the main thing that does matter. By supporting the death penalty you are letting people not eligible for that penalty off the hook. You are giving them the right to live.

everyone has a right to live, and everyone has a right to kill - nobody said that the universe was fair or logically consistent.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The only way I see the death penalty making any sense is if there were actually dangerous super villains in the world who seem to be able to escape from prison every few months.

They don't need to escape to be deadly. What about those with comrades that take hostages to trade for them?

 

[credoconsolans]

You didn't answer the question.

the question is superfluous and not in any way connected to the story with which you very dubiously tried to link the question, so in the context of this thread you might as well have shown a video of someone baking a cake and then asked "is wearing fur worth drinking soda with artificial sweetener?"

IMO the death penalty as a concept is fine.
the idea of a group deciding that there are some crimes for which the perpetrator loses their privilege to live within society is fine with me, and since exile is no longer an option and (despite how monumentally fucked in the head most people are in thinking this is a good idea) prison is far more fucked up conceptually than just killing someone, i have no beef with the death penalty on moral or ethical grounds.

so basically, i can't answer the question because the question is a non-sequitur, there is no answer because the question is bullshit.
the solution is simple: never execute an innocent person.

Agree.

- - - Updated - - -

of course i have. i'm not a troglodyte.

It isn't just the death penalty. It is simply that the racism is so deeply ingrained in the penal system that these attrocities remain.

i completely agree with this.

Let's quit fooling ourselves about certainty.

i don't think it's fooling ourselves, i think it's just a simple reality that you can be absolutely certain some of the time, and it's acceptable to act a certain way when you can be absolutely certain, and you can't be absolutely certain most of the time and so it's not acceptable to act in the same way when you can't be absolutely certain.

these are two completely different scenarios, i don't get why you guys keep trying to act like they're not.

Also agree.

 

[bleubird]

The death penalty is rooted in the idea that there is an afterlife.The convoluted logic of why we can make these judgments is beyond me.
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