Bunching up the killing of innocents with even a thousand of other more defendable topics only blurs the issue.

As for forming an opinion, I’ll take my cues from other sources than the mob if you don’t mind.

J.

Conversely, nations that do not exercise capital punishment tend to have far lower murder rates than nations that do.

Of course we think they’re likely to do it again, or at least considerably more so than someone who has never done so before. I never said or suggested that they weren’t. I said:

However, there is no guarantee that they will murder again (although obviously no guarantee they won’t, and we’re better off assuming that they will.)

Better off assuming that they will – that’s why we lock them up. Don’t miss the point, though – we’ve _no guarantee_ that they will, and we cannot assume that we KNOW someone will do something, and therefore justify our actions based on that. Assuming that killing an innocent man is better than having a murderer kill again is nonsensical. In the first situation, a man is definitely dead and we’re responsible. In the second, a victim is potentially dead – only a possibility, not a certainty – And in any case, _killing the innocent man had no effect on the second situation’s likelihood at all._ Killing innocents never prevents further murders. The implication that often comes from the capital punishment camp is that is can and does, and to do so is better than to have more potential murder victims. Not only do they want a possibility to outweigh a certainty, the two are fundamentally unconnected.

“I’d rather have 10 innocent people executed than 1 murderer go free.” This will drop the murder rate to zero. When you are certain you will get caught, nobody will commit murder anymore. Interestingly, this also means we will not execute any innocent people.

Of course it doesn’t quite work out that way. Certain death tomorrow may not be sufficient to prevent some people committing a crime today, “I don’t care if I’m hanged tomorrow. I’m going to kill you now”. Or they may consider their cause worthy even if they themselves die. If 10 people conspired to kill one prominent politician, do we then pick up 100 suspects and execute them all because the guilty is somewhere in there? (Think Saddam’s trial).

The main problem is that the state loses all respect. When the community knows that most of those punished by the state is not guilty, they will not help the state in arrests and prosecution.

How about a change in the legal system? Instead of having 12 people voting yes/no on guilt or innocence, and all of them having veto power; how about everyone voting 0% – 100% on what they think is the probability that the accused is guilty or innocent? We add this up and average it out. Above 0.95, death (very few people will get the death penalty). Between 0.8 and 0.95, life in prison without parole. Between 0.5 and 0.8 various length of prison terms. Between 0.25 and 0.5, parole without any jail term. Below 0.25, you go home with appologies from the court (very few people will go free too). You can change the various cut off levels – depending on whether you want avoid executing innocents, or want to avoid letting the guilty go free. You could also put those you suspect of being guilty in jail.

Saying you are morally correct doesn’t make it so. Hopefully the people who make the laws put more thought into them than you do.

NYC has roughly 8,000,000 people with roughly 560 murders each year! Most murderers probably only commit one murder in their life, so every 10 yrs. there are another 5,000 murderers walking the streets in NYC alone. There were 17,000 or so murders in 2006. We can safely assume every year as many as 100,000 new murderers are walking the nations streets.

We arrest very few murderers and only convict about two-thirds of those. Murdering murderers is not only a senseless and misused power we have given the state over our lives, but it is ineffectual in preventing crime and is not cost effective.

If any one can add data on arrest and convictions to firm up the est. number of bad guys walking the streets, please do. I ain’t got the time.

Don’t know why BoingBoing always links to the UK Amnesty site for US stories.

Kahlil Gibran

J.

The justice system is never concerned with ‘potential innocence’, only potential guilt.

Briefly, this March the GA Supreme Court, in a 4/3 split decision, denied Troy the right for a new trial, (4 against, 3 for). On September 12, The GA Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy clemency – no one knows why. They do not have to give any reason, because it is somehow a state secret. They made the decision in 30 minutes, after they had said in July 2007, that they would not refuse clemency if there were any doubts.

Troy Davis has several facebook groups, info also at troyanthonydavis.org, and reports by Joe Windish are at themoderatevoice.com.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the value of human life. It’s rather that I believe in it so much that I think anything that dares act against it is so deplorable that we should not countenance its existence.

The board stated that it would not put him to death unless they had no doubt of his guilt. Yet they refuse to consider evidence that their own supreme court believes throws his conviction into question. How is this justice? Even if you do support the death penalty, is this how you want it to be applied?

“Well, they all.. you know… they all look.. sorta.. WELL HE JUST HAS ONE OF THOSE FACES.”

Seriously though, why the changes of heart?

Thursday, September 18, 6pm
Convene: Edgewood Ave. and Peachtree St.
Atlanta, GA

Good luck guys.

I’m sure they do. I’m not by any means sure I like what they’re thinking though. Are you?