Re: OT: A Bowl in Honor of Governor Arnie


Joe LaVigne wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:23:53 -0700, mark tinsky wrote:
>
> > Well dispassionately,and reasonably written Shel.
> > While I and not against capitol punishment,FYI excuting someone is a
> > lot, I mean a real lot more expensive than life imprisonment.
>
> This is not *exactly* true...
>
> Executing someone is much cheaper han life imprisonment. The endless
> appeals are the expensive part.
>
> While I agree that the appeals help to serve the purpose of not making a
> mistake (which surely must happen even with them), there has to be a better
> way.
>
> I am not against capitol punishment, but I am against doing it under the
> same burden of proof as imprisonment.
>
> If we are going to kill someone, we'd better be damned sure they are
> guilty, not just "beyond a reasonable doubt". If there is any doubt, no
> matter how reasonable or unreasonable, the person just should not be
> executed.
>
>
> --
> Joseph M. LaVigne
> jlavigne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.thelavignefamily.us/MyPipePages/ - 12/14/2005 3:47:12 AM
>
> A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in
> his mouth. -- Anonymous
I take it you are not familiar with the study done by the University of
Ohio tested one of their states largest Death Row Prisons Inmates
evidence, pre-DNA and came-up with almost 15% innocent. S-ok, almost no
one is.
Funny, it was covered up pretty quickly and did not go over the wire.
Texas A&M wanted to do it and, then Gov. George Dubya said No for some
reason. Guess he did not care who he and the people of Texas murdered,
huh?
"The death penalty alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an
inmate is executed, nothing can be done to make amends if a mistake has
been made. There is considerable evidence that many mistakes have been
made in sentencing people to death. Since 1973, at least 121 people
have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence
emerged. During the same period of time, over 982 people have been
executed. Thus, for every eight people executed, we have found one
person on death row who never should have been convicted. These
statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent. If
an automobile manufacturer operated with similar failure rates, it
would be run out of business.

Our capital punishment system is unreliable. A recent study by Columbia
University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials
contained serious errors. When the cases were retried, over 80% of the
defendants were not sentenced to death and 7% were completely
acquitted.

Many of the releases of innocent defendants from death row came about
as a result of factors outside of the justice system. Recently,
journalism students in Illinois were assigned to investigate the case
of a man who was scheduled to be executed, after the system of appeals
had rejected his legal claims. The students discovered that one witness
had lied at the original trial, and they were able to find the true
killer, who confessed to the crime on videotape. The innocent man who
was released was very fortunate, but he was spared because of the
informal efforts of concerned citizens, not because of the justice
system.

In other cases, DNA testing has exonerated death row inmates. Here,
too, the justice system had concluded that these defendants were guilty
and deserving of the death penalty. DNA testing became available only
in the early 1990s, due to advancements in science. If this testing had
not been discovered until ten years later, many of these inmates would
have been executed. And if DNA testing had been applied to earlier
cases where inmates were executed in the 1970s and 80s, the odds are
high that it would have proven that some of them were innocent as well.

Society takes many risks in which innocent lives can be lost. We build
bridges, knowing that statistically some workers will be killed during
construction; we take great precautions to reduce the number of
unintended fatalities. But wrongful executions are a preventable risk.
By substituting a sentence of life without parole, we meet society's
needs of punishment and protection without running the risk of an
erroneous and irrevocable punishment."

Someone please define "irrefutable" in a court for me.... I'm havin'
trouble with that one.
Namaste'
Robert

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: A Bowl in Honor of Governor Arnie
    ... >> Executing someone is much cheaper han life imprisonment. ... > Ohio tested one of their states largest Death Row Prisons Inmates ... executed that were innocent. ... it is evidence that the system worked right. ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)
  • Re: OT: A Bowl in Honor of Governor Arnie
    ... Executing someone is much cheaper han life imprisonment. ... Ohio tested one of their states largest Death Row Prisons Inmates ... statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent. ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)
  • Re: OT -- Texas to World Court, "Fuck You"
    ... Wrong - if he's innocent, then he should not be executed. ... Executing anyone is a bad thing. ... barbarism as death penalty ... "A life for a life" - comes from the same book where you got "you shall not kill" ...
    (rec.scuba)
  • Re: Need a reliable way to determine the line of code being executed
    ... Mark Wege wrote: ... I can't really do this because I don't know what the name of the variable is, which is the reason for my question in the first place. ... the code will be executing and an error will be thrown. ... At that point, depending on the error, I want to be able to refresh the variable that contains information needed by the procedure and then re-execute the procedure. ...
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  • Re: When faith in humanity strikes a new low
    ... associations for some people. ... Executing people because they're 'innocent but black' is as bad as executing ... William Black ...
    (rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic)