For all those of you who defend death penalty:

[miko2d]

DejaVu,
 This is an open board. HTC paid account is not required to access it, there is no policy stating who can post here and no one appointed you a guardian.
 The only thing a member of the community can do regardless other people posting is politely suggest a different topic which is clearly not the case here - this is the O'Club.
 Ram started a conversation here and invited everyone to share their thoughts on the subject. If you do not want to talk to him, you should have ignored his post.
 It is grossly impolite on your part to barge in and try to derail a conversation.
 Why don't you just set him to ignore and spare us your petty bickering.

 miko

[Eagler]

straffo

Relax, this is just a BBS not making law here-
good try at English better than my French  

The guy sounds guilty to me, let loose on a technicality. Most defense lawyers aren't worth the $500 pair of shoes they strut around in.

Eagler

[straffo]

Originally posted by Eagler:
straffo

Relax, this is just a BBS not making law here-
good try at English better than my French  

The guy sounds guilty to me, let loose on a technicality. Most defense lawyers aren't worth the $500 pair of shoes they strut around in.

Eagler

yep I own you an apology I should not post after having an hard discution at work  

Btw it's not english it's the kind of
FrenGlish I'm ashamed to use  

And it won't change my position on death penalty  : I'm against .I prefer having ten free criminal than having one innocent killed by the law  


ps : I'll delete my *)=*ù$^ previous post .

[miko2d]

Guys,
 From the point of view of justice, justice cannot be perfect because it is based on people and people are not perfect. Even if we were, jurors often act on incomplete information - basically geussing.

 From the morale point of view, a person who suffered a loss or hurt because of crime is often not as objective and detached as those who would "rather have many criminals go unpunished then have one innocent suffer". Plenty of innocents suffer daily at the hands of the criminals and that does not raise any moral uproar. People with such views are eligible voters of society, hence the current system.

 From the engineering point of view, society is a system and every system known to man is operatin with a certain degree of efficiency. So a percentage of waste is expected. In fact it is tolerated because the system is supposed to provide some benefits.
 Here is how it works - it saves many innocents from hurt at the expence of some inocents (including families of prosecuted criminals) getting hurt. As long as the tradeof is favorable, the system is stable.
 Where is the morality, you ask - nowhere.

 You could ask me if I personally like a chance to be executed by mistake in return for criminals being executed.
 I say yes because:
 1. If I am accused of capital crime by mistake and not executed, it does not mean that I will go free, but that I will go to jail for life. For me the difference is very slight - my life is still lost. I would actually prefer to die.
 2. I get into car every day and risk my life for the convenience of gettong places fast. We can predict very accurately how many people will die every year because of our use of cars, planes, antibiotics, electricity, tall buildings, farm machinery, healing drugs and treatments.
 There is nothing free in this world for us - innocent people, including justice.

 miko

[Eagler]

Gave you 5 stars on that one Miko  

Eagler

[-ammo-]

Just a few passages from the origional law..


Exodus 21:12 He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall surely be put to death

Exodus 21:15 And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death

Exodus 21:24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

[Fatty]

RAM, I think the point you're accidentally making here, is that justice is crappy because this guy might get off on a technicality, and that would be the injustice.

Iow a guilty man was almost convicted.

[Staga]

I've always wondered why tv-series like "Law & Order", "LA-Law" and others like those were/are so popular in States ?
Maybe your courts just are so laughable ?

Oh yes, from N.Y.Times:
3 billion dollars for smoker because man got a cancer from cigarettes?

   

[ 06-07-2001: Message edited by: Staga ]

[Toad]

Well, McVeigh is going to get his. That thought comforts me a bit.

[AKDejaVu]

Well, McVeigh is going to get his. That thought comforts me a bit.

I think the same thing... every morning I drop my wife off at the Federal Building.

AKDejaVu

[MrBill]

Good thread guys!
RAM
you be the judge, this is a actual happening from the late 60's

This guy kills a little girl, the prosecuters case is weak (a lot of evidence is disallowed for various reasons) so they plea bargain it down to man slaughter.
parole board lets the guy out and he is paroled to a different state where he is arrested for killing 2 girls on a beach.  
For some reason, known only to god, the judge lets the guy out on bail until the trial.
Ta Daa, the guy splits, (big surprise)
We next find him, a couple days later, in a third state where he is caught, by the police, red handed (so to speak) stabbing a woman on her front lawn as she tried to get away while he killed her husband and, I think it was two sons, inside their home.  A daughter had called 911 from a phone upstairs, she was the only member of the family to survive.
The jury recommends the death penalty but this state allows the judge to make the final determination.
 How would you rule?

After you reply I'll post what eventually happened.

[takeda]

Guys, don't you have TV there in the USA?
That guy was declared yesterday NOT GUILTY by a jury in a new trial. There was no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no reasons,no real proof that he even knew the victims, the prosecutor did not brought his main witness out of fear of being ridiculed, and the only one he could get to accuse was later contradicted by her own sister (a cop btw). And the guy would have been fried without the money raised by his parents. Now he is prolly on a plane heading home.

Pathetical note:
His ex-wife, who brought police onto him out of jealousy, might be suing him for failing to pay her the monthly fee for their children's feeding and education while he was in the death row. I bet she gets on with it....

[Staga]

ROFLMAO !

Uhh... Nice law system you got there. First death penalty and then prosecutors don't even have any waterproof evidences  

Good thing they didn't had time to BBQ that guy don't you think?

[ispar]

Wait a minute miko... your saying that because there's good chance of you dying anyway, what does it matter if you get killed in a car crash or by lethal injection? WTF?

My view on the death penalty... I have a few main reasons for opposing it:

First of all, the system is so far from being "just" that it's disgusting. I know that mistakes will always be made, but as it is it's ridiculous.

Second has to do with my particular sect of Christianity and our collective stance on the issue. The reason given is that any person is a potential messenger of God, and should not be put to death, regardless of how misguided they seem at the time. Personally, I don't like this explanation, but to each his own.

My take: Invoking the death penalty is taking a life. Period. It is not anyone's right to take another's life, in any circumstances IMO. The instant you kill someone, in retribution for a crime, you are committing a crime. Everyone involved, the prosecutors, angry family members, and others who pushed for a death penalty, the judge that ordered the sentence - all of them are killers. This does not mean that they are bad people, and that retribution is undeserved. But it doesn't change the fact they were involved in the taking of the life of a fellow human being.

For those of you that take your morals from the Bible, a source I don't defer to very much at all, here's one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not kill. I add another word to the end of that one, myself. "Ever."

Thou shalt not kill. Ever.

-ispar

[MrBill]

Guess I'm feeling frisky on this topic  

Please take nothing from the following as a personal attack.

---------------------------------------------
"Wait a minute miko... your saying that because there's good chance of you dying anyway, what does it matter if you get killed in a car crash or by lethal injection? WTF?"
---------------------------------------------

In case anyone is uninformed ... the minute anyone/thing takes a first breath they/it begins to die.  The truest statement on the human condition I ever heard was  
"Don't take life to seriously ... you can't get out of it alive no matter what you do"
It is also true that what a person does in the in-betweens that can elongate or shorten their own individual stay.

------------------------------------------

"For those of you that take your morals from the Bible, a source I don't defer to very much at all, here's one of the Ten
Commandments: Thou shalt not kill. I add another word to the end of that one, myself.
                        "Ever."
---------------------------------------------

I have never read that in any bible? In all the versions I HAVE read the quote is
"thou shalt not murder"  
I really can't see "god" putting a species on earth that MUST eat to survive and then commanding them not to kill anything!  

Of course if we are rewriting history I guess the bible qualifys.

To those who are of a moral Christian religious persuasion opposed to the DP.
Where would Christianity be if Christ got 1 to 5 with time off for good behavior?  

[ 06-07-2001: Message edited by: MrBill ]