The Death Penalty

[elpiggo]

Most of the people in the US are worthless morons.

I noticed.

 

And you're obviously clueless about how criminal trials work. Your life isn't in the hands of a well-trained judge, it's in the hands of the 12 people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty.

Even if they are stupid, if 11 of them say guilty, that's enough to go by. That's why there's 12, not 3.

[Landsknecht]

I don't trust the government that much. Point #1 is true in theory, but our government doesn't even do a very good job of getting "as close as possible"

Why are people so critical of the government? With the exception of a few politicians, everybody working for any government is highly intelligent, so shouldn't they be the ones making the decisions? Would you rather put your trial in the hands of somebody with a degree in law, or a 16 year old school dropout who works in McDonald's?

 

Read Triple Cross by Peter Lance, it will give you an idea of how incompetent the middle management is in our intelligence agencies and FBI. Now in theory, that is were we place some of our best people, imagine what the rest of the bureaucracies (don't even get me started on how inefficient ours is) look like.

 

And you're obviously clueless about how criminal trials work. Your life isn't in the hands of a well-trained judge, it's in the hands of the 12 people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty.

Even if they are stupid, if 11 of them say guilty, that's enough to go by. That's why there's 12, not 3.

 

So we have 12 stupid people instead of 11, your point? 12 is not some magic number which cures stupidity. And if the jury is not full of stupid people, its full of people who do not understand the legal system and just want to get back to their lives. Remember how most people view jury duty?

[elpiggo]

So we have 12 stupid people instead of 11, your point? 12 is not some magic number which cures stupidity. And if the jury is not full of stupid people, its full of people who do not understand the legal system and just want to get back to their lives. Remember how most people view jury duty?

So you think that just because somebody is on the jury means they're stupid? All twelve? I guess that's just ignorance on your part.

[Landsknecht]

So we have 12 stupid people instead of 11, your point? 12 is not some magic number which cures stupidity. And if the jury is not full of stupid people, its full of people who do not understand the legal system and just want to get back to their lives. Remember how most people view jury duty?

So you think that just because somebody is on the jury means they're stupid? All twelve? I guess that's just ignorance on your part.

 

Nice strawman. I never said it automatically made someone stupid. What I said is that 12 is not a magic number which will prevent an all stupid jury. You also missed the point about how people do not want to be part of the jury or ignorance of the legal system.

 

Point: Juries are currently to flawed to decide whether someone lives or dies.

[Dilvish]

Interesting article about the death penalty as deterrent to murder.

 

Link

[Vagrant0]

Point: Juries are currently to flawed to decide whether someone lives or dies.

Not to disrupt your argument that much, but you're really placing too much value on the lives of people who are accused of, and have enough evidence supporting any crime that would call for the death penalty. Also, usually these things go through a juror selection process where lawyers can filter out anyone that has beliefs which might make their case harder than it needs to be. Really, it's the stupid people who come into it without any ideas of their own who are of most use to the lawyers since they can easily be manipulated. The jury doesn't need to be smart, or even really know what the hell is going on, it's ultimately the lawyers and the evidence which decides who lives or dies, the jury is just there to make it look fair and honest.

 

At any rate, once you're accused of such a crime, you'll never fully recover, even if you are found innocent. I would prefer death, even a painful, brutal death, than to live with people always questioning the verdict. I have faith in the system, as flawed as it is, it's good enough. Besides, being dead is certainly better than being someone's female dog for 20-30 years.

[Landsknecht]

Point: Juries are currently to flawed to decide whether someone lives or dies.

The jury doesn't need to be smart, or even really know what the hell is going on, it's ultimately the lawyers and the evidence which decides who lives or dies, the jury is just there to make it look fair and honest.

 

True enough in most cases. My problem with juries is on the cases on the cusp, where they seem to have a "guilty until proven innocent" view (opposite of what our justice system should view the accused to be). Now it is those cases where there is a risk of possibly executing/imprisoning someone innocent.

[Vagrant0]

True enough in most cases. My problem with juries is on the cases on the cusp, where they seem to have a "guilty until proven innocent" view (opposite of what our justice system should view the accused to be). Now it is those cases where there is a risk of possibly executing/imprisoning someone innocent.

That's the problem of the legal system and lawyers who make mistakes, not the jury. If you remove the jury, and have the decision based solely on the judge, the same thing could still happen... And while I know nothing about legal history, believe the whole point of a jury of your peers was to make those instances less common. It's really only the high profile cases where it becomes an issue, and even then they try to filter out any jurors who have such biases. With longer trials, they usually end up having to dismiss jurors or call for a mistrial if such things happen. Even still, in criminal cases the jury usually just decides if the person is guilty or not, not what the penalty should be. People may end up getting a life sentence if they're innocent, but they aren't going to be killed unless more than a few people screwed up, or didn't care about their future of practicing law.

[Crisb92]

"An eye for an eye, and soon the world will be blind," Ghandi.

 

You have to look here, not at an act of revenge, but of a way of protecting the population and deterring future criminals. While the death penalty could be called an effective way of protecting the nation, it is important to scrutinise the process behind it, after all, any jury can be swayed either way by persuasive arguement.

 

Isn't it funny how there are few rich people on death row?

This shows that true justice can never be achieved while we have humans judging other humans, which unfortunately until true Artificial Intelligence exists will be the case. The better lawyer you have, the more likely it is that you will get off, as, after all, it is not the evidence that matters, but how that evidence can be interpreted by others.

 

So, no, I do not agree with the death penalty, I think that it is not in the interests of society to allow it to continue to be the punishment for severe crimes. True, it achieves revenge for those that have been hurt, but there are better ways of going about it, while still not letting guilty people free to reoffend.

[Vagrant0]

Law isn't an area I'm familiar with, but I'm fairly certain that there has to be certain criteria for the death penalty to be an option. As I can only think of really bad/screwed up people getting the death penalty, mass murderers mostly, while even significantly terrible crimes like kidnapping, torture, and rape, multiple homicide end up getting life in prison or life in psychiatric care. The reason why there aren't as many rich people on death row is usually because rich people don't normally commit those sorts of crimes, with enough evidence pointing to them, yet can't afford to get a lawyer which could lessen the sentence... Besides, for those people death is really a better alternative to life in prison.