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Originally Posted by thaskalos
I started this thread by advocating the death penalty for cases such as the one chronicled in the link that I provided....where the defendant provides chilling testimony of the committed crimes with a smirk on his/her face.
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You are advocating an error free system, something which is impossible to achieve. The best we can achieve is due process. When that fails there is still the possibility that the error will be discovered and the error rectified even though someone may have spent much of their life in prison. But there is no reversing a death sentence once it has been carried out.
Anyone who "provides chilling testimony of the committed crimes with a smirk on his/her face" is obviously insane, i.e., "unable to comprehend the consequences of his/her actions." Unfortunately the law has been unable to come up with a method determining who is or is not insane. The two tests which have been devised are "unable to comprehend the consequences of his/her actions" or "irresistible impulse." Medical science is so far unable to make either determination. Both the prosecution and the defense will put psychiatrists on the stand, each giving conflicting "expert" testimony.
Recently a man was put to death in Missouri. This person had suffered a Phineas Gage type brain injury, i.e., he had lost past of his brain in an accident. Obviously the man was not operating at full capacity but the prosecution argued that he had managed to control himself for years prior to committing his crime.
In the eyes of the law whatever a jury says in true is true, period. No court can change that, only another jury. And another jury can only hear the case if the findings of the first jury is set aside. In other words, there is no peer review.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thaskalos
You don't scrap the entire death penalty system when you find that the prosecutors and the police are corrupt. You just place the corrupt prosecutors and cops on death row themselves...where they belong.
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But only those who "provide chilling testimony of the committed crimes with a smirk on his/her face."
Quote:
Originally Posted by thaskalos
Justice for all!
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The adversarial system of our courts guarantees that, regardless of evidence, the poor will be convicted more often than the wealthy.
