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Stargirl
Skeptic Friend
USA
94 Posts |
 Posted - 04/20/2002 : 22:16:48 [Permalink]
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Hi, everybody this is my first post here though I've been lurking for several months from work. But I finally got a new used computer and thought I might join in occasionally.
This discussion is timely here in Illinois since as Dr Shari points out 13 death row inmates were found to be innocent in the past ten years. The police and prosecutors railroaded a number of those convicted. See this interesting article
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june00/deathpenalty_2-4.html
The governor declared a moratorium on executions and appointed a commission to study the problem.
Here's a quote from Illinois Governor George Ryan. By the way he was and still is a supporter of the death penalty.
I can't support a system, which in its administration has been so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare... the states taking of an innocent life.
The commission just released their findings on capital punishment in the state and their conclusion is that the system is extremely flawed. They recommend sweeping changes and one member of the commission said the system of capital punishment should be fixed or abolished.
For anyone who believes that this proves that the system works I'm afraid that just isn't true. Here's a quote from the above article by Elizabeth Bracket.
In 12 of the 13 Death Row cases in Illinois, new evidence of the condemned men's innocence was brought to the attention of the court, not from within the system, but by outsiders -- private investigators, law students, and even undergraduate journalism students. Anthony Porter was only two days away from execution when David Protess' undergraduate journalism students unearthed evidence that led to the real killer.
I'd always been in favor of the death penalty but what has happened here in Illinois proves that the wrong people are to often convicted.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him - Voltaire |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2002 : 12:25:32 [Permalink]
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Omega, excellent! Thanks for the links. Like I said before, in all the death penalty debates I've seen, I've never once heard of an anti-death penalty advocate mention this, even when the pro-death penalty advocate asked for just one case of an innocent being executed.
@tomic, like I also said, of course it is reasonable to assume that there have been, but in such a highly charged debate, one sure as hell better be able to site proof, if one is going to claim that "it has been proven".
You guys have read my first post on this topic, right?
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Truth above pride and ego; truth above all |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2002 : 12:40:46 [Permalink]
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I have seen a good enough pattern of wrongful convictions in the past to assume that while the vast majority are not wrongful there probably have been somewhat equal numbers in the past.
It does not seem unfair to take statistics from the present to make a case for what happened in the past under the same conditions.
@tommic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 04/21/2002 : 20:10:50 [Permalink]
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Thankfully, I live in a state which does not have the death penalty. I think that executing possibly innocent people would be the same as murdering that person in cold blood. The fact that so many people on Death Row in other states have been set free through dna testing should be reason enough for doing away with death penalties. They are barbaric. Locking murderers up for life should be enough punishment.
ljbrs
"Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error." Goethe |
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Chagur
New Member
USA
21 Posts |
Posted - 04/22/2002 : 21:08:32 [Permalink]
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Took a read through this thread and all I saw was a rehash that included most of the same arguements pro and con that have been put forward time after time. The one thing that no one seems to be willing to touch is the following:
The police are armed so that they can protect by using, if necessary, deadly force.
I don't hear any outcry to disarm the police yet I'm quite sure more than a few innocent people are killed each year. Whenever that occurs there's the good old standby: pay off the family.
Why doesn't the same routinely apply if convicted criminals are found to be innocent after execution?
Why, if an Officer kills while protecting another's life, even if unsuccessful, he is a hero. Yet if the prep is only wounded, a costly trial and an appeal process comes into play.
Seems like there is a lot more emotion than rational thought on this subject.
Take care.
"Fie, fie how franticly I square my talk!"
- Edwin A. Abbott |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2002 : 13:49:21 [Permalink]
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quote:
Took a read through this thread and all I saw was a rehash that included most of the same arguements pro and con that have been put forward time after time. The one thing that no one seems to be willing to touch is the following:
If noone has thought of something you just came up with before you, then there are two possibilities. Either you are a genius or... 
Maybee everyone is using the same old arguments because they are most relevant?
quote:
The police are armed so that they can protect by using, if necessary, deadly force.
But they are not given a license to kill. You have to work for the MI6 or the CIA for that.
quote:
I don't hear any outcry to disarm the police yet I'm quite sure more than a few innocent people are killed each year. Whenever that occurs there's the good old standby: pay off the family.
You don't? Where do you live China? Turkey?
In most civilized countries every policeshooting is folloed by an investigation and ,if you have a free press and a slow newsday, a public outcry.
quote:
Why doesn't the same routinely apply if convicted criminals are found to be innocent after execution?
Because paying of the relatives is (hopefully) not part of an official policie but a criminal activiety that would not work as well in accidental executions.
quote:
Why, if an Officer kills while protecting another's life, even if unsuccessful, he is a hero. Yet if the prep is only wounded, a costly trial and an appeal process comes into play.
Where do you take this from? You don't automatically become an hero when killing while wearing a uniform and thanks to lawyers hardly a chance to sue the authorities goes by unused.
quote:
Seems like there is a lot more emotion than rational thought on this subject.
Take care.
"Fie, fie how franticly I square my talk!"
- Edwin A. Abbott
You are probably right on the emotion part.
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Omega
Skeptic Friend
Denmark
164 Posts |
Posted - 04/24/2002 : 16:49:42 [Permalink]
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ljbrs> Execution IS cold-blooded murder. It is 1st degree murder, if anything is. The question of guilt aside, you have the murder planned in advance and carried out with clinical precision.
It is just one of the reasons I'm appalled by the death-penalty.
And, Tokyodreamer, I know what you mean. That in a debate such as this, one needs names and facts. Especially when arguing with people who're for cold-blooded mur… I mean, the death-penalty.
It's actually one of the things I do not understand. If murder is wrong, then it is wrong. No matter who does it.
Stargirl> are you still in favour of the death-penalty?
"All it takes to fly is to fling yourself at the ground... and miss."
- Douglas Adams |
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Stargirl
Skeptic Friend
USA
94 Posts |
Posted - 04/25/2002 : 22:17:25 [Permalink]
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Omega, sorry it took so long to answer you question. Had a 15-hour shift Wednesday and was too tired to reply. The funny thing is as tired as I was I tossed and turned half the night thinking about your question.
I have to admit that there are still crimes - heinous murders, terrorist acts that I hear about where my initial reaction is often one of that SOB deserves to die. It was especially true after my brother's homicide. And I would only be kidding myself not to believe that will probably always be the case. But thankfully reason takes over and I know that what I'm feeling is more a desire for revenge than of justice.
The 13 men on death row here in Illinois who were released because they were found to be innocent has made it clear to me that the risks are too great that an innocent person will be executed. And I doubt the proposed reforms could guarantee that tragic mistake wouldn't happen. Particularly considering the fact that the police and prosecutors deliberately lied and falsified evidence to convict a number of those men.
So yes my opinion of the death penalty has changed. I no longer consider it a viable option.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him - Voltaire |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 06:45:24 [Permalink]
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quote:
And, Tokyodreamer, I know what you mean. That in a debate such as this, one needs names and facts. Especially when arguing with people who're for cold-blooded mur… I mean, the death-penalty.
Yes. And inflammatory emotional rhetoric should be avoided also. 
How do you define murder? The dictionary explicitely states that murder is "unlawful" killing. When killing by the state is legal, how can it be murder?
As for my own position, ethically, I have no problem with killers being executed. They aren't worth the air they breathe, much less the cost of room and board.
But I can't support the execution of convicted killers by our legal system, because they screw up too much (both accidentally and purposefully).
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Truth above pride and ego; truth above all
Edited by - tokyodreamer on 04/26/2002 06:45:56 |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 10:45:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
How do you define murder? The dictionary explicitely states that murder is "unlawful" killing. When killing by the state is legal, how can it be murder?
Ask and you shall receive. When an innocent person is convicted and executed I call that murder. The State also gets to decide what is a crime and what is not and that is open to abuse and has been abused. I do not think that I can blindly trust the state, any state, to be good and just all the time. Can you?
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Omega
Skeptic Friend
Denmark
164 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 17:02:32 [Permalink]
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Tokydreamer> The state makes the definitions. How can you even have such an odd contradiction as murder AND lawful, in the same sentence?
Why is murder allowed by the state? By soldiers? By people who drop bombs from air-planes?
To me, abstaining from calling an execution cold-blooded murder is the REAL rhetoric.
“As for my own position, ethically, I have no problem with killers being executed. They aren't worth the air they breathe, much less the cost of room and board.”
What does this accomplish? Is it not the utmost barbarism to put a price on a human life?
Soldiers are killers. Do you want them executed, too?
Being strongly opposed to murder of any kind, I think the only exception I can think of, are crimes against humanity. Government leaders ordering massacres and ethnic cleansings. Milosovic, Hitler, who-ever ordered the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Stalin I would not and will not stand up for.
"All it takes to fly is to fling yourself at the ground... and miss."
- Douglas Adams
Edited by - Omega on 04/26/2002 17:21:19 |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 17:12:30 [Permalink]
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Hiroshima? You got a problem with targeting civilians or something?
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Omega
Skeptic Friend
Denmark
164 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 17:26:06 [Permalink]
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Atomic> Hrmrm… Seeing a it's late over here in Europe: Was that a rhetorical question?
If not it, when I talk about crimes against humanity it's not only the sheer size but the horrors and terrors involved in massacres like in ex-Yugoslavia for example.
"All it takes to fly is to fling yourself at the ground... and miss."
- Douglas Adams |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 17:28:28 [Permalink]
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I was kidding.
@tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular
USA
1447 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2002 : 18:31:53 [Permalink]
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quote:
When an innocent person is convicted and executed I call that murder.
I can agree with that.
quote:
I do not think that I can blindly trust the state, any state, to be good and just all the time. Can you?
Surely you aren't seriously asking me this question?! If you are, I would have to say that you are insulting my intelligence.
I've made it abundantly clear that I don't support the death penalty in practice by the state.
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Truth above pride and ego; truth above all
Edited by - tokyodreamer on 04/26/2002 18:34:59 |
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