America kills its 1,500th citizen

Grayson

TeaBagMania wrote: »

Wait, what?

so if someone kills another in the presence of 10 eye witnesses its not 100% guilt?

Eye witness testimony can be dodgy. What if the person had a twin or someone who just looked like them? What if the witnesses identified someone based on clothing?

Humans are extremely bad at identifying stuff.

And even then, assuming you could be certain, what standards would you put on certain? One person witnessing? No person witnessing but DNA present?

The fact is that juries are already asked to determine beyond a reasonable doubt and mistakes are still made. How much more certain can you be than reasonable doubt?

ohnonotgmail

grahambo wrote: »

I think it's more of a cost saving measure.
In America Life is Life. You die in prison.

In Ireland it costs around €60k per year to keep a person locked up.
In America it's a €31k per year (Automation, Modernisation and Private Prisons cutting costs)

You lock someone up for murder when they are 20 and they live til the are 78 which is the life expectancy in America.
That works out nearly $1.8 Million to keep a person locked up for life.

Bullet, Drugs, Electricity, Noose or whatever is far cheaper, and hence less of a burden on the Taxpayer.

It is cheaper to sentence someone for life in the states than it is sentence them to death.

TeaBagMania

Grayson wrote: »

Eye witness testimony can be dodgy. What if the person had a twin or someone who just looked like them? What if the witnesses identified someone based on clothing?

Humans are extremely bad at identifying stuff.

wow, you're really reaching

ten people ID the guy and its not good enough? im thinking even if it was a hundred eye witnesses it wouldn't be good enough for you

rossie1977

The Rapture wrote: »

I laugh at how much we focus on the US when it comes to the death penalty.
Meanwhile China execute multiples of the US all time amount in a single year & harvest those sweet sweet organs upon doing so.
Maybe because it's all the way over there & they speak funny that we don't feel as engaged to protest.

Anyway, I'm all for it, hang em high I say.

China is a communist dictatorship.

USA is supposedly the bastion of freedom and liberty on planet Earth.

Are we really comparing the two..has it come to that?

There is more black men per capita currently in US prisons than there were black men in South African prisons at the height of apartheid.

topper75

Yurt! wrote: »

Modern prison systems, as you know, trend towards rehabilitation rather than being punitive (although that is still an element of every prison system ever, and will remain so).

There is quite a moral, ethical and philosophical leap from denying an individual's liberty for transgressing society's rules (something almost everybody agrees with), to taking their life (something a minority in this country would probably agree with). So no, following my logic, no, I'm not opposed to prison.

Well I was specifically referencing your claim that the death penalty is invalid due to it not being a deterrent. It is a weak argument that would similarly invalidate any kind of punishment that doesn't result in a blanket removal of all crime.

joe40

I might have a false memory here but I think the time we finally removed the death penalty from our laws ( Late 90s I think) was the same day as the first federal execution in America in a long number of years.
I can't remember the details but I know I was proud to be Irish.

Capital punishment is grotesque and has no place in a civilised country regardless of the crime.
It just satisfies a base desire for revenge.

Pkiernan

Death penalty ensures no repeat offenders.

We need it here.

Your Face

Pkiernan wrote: »

Death penalty ensures no repeat offenders.

We need it here.

What we need is a justice system that results in us not needing the death penalty.

seamus

TeaBagMania wrote: »

Wait, what?

so if someone kills another in the presence of 10 eye witnesses its not 100% guilt?

You think it's impossible to find ten people to accuse a man of murder?

Classic naivety.

Look up George Stinney.

ohnonotgmail

joe40 wrote: »

I might have a false memory here but I think the time we finally removed the death penalty from our laws ( Late 90s I think) was the same day as the first federal execution in America in a long number of years.
I can't remember the details but I know I was proud to be Irish.

Capital punishment is grotesque and has no place in a civilised country regardless of the crime.
It just satisfies a base desire for revenge.

i'm not sure those two things match up. we abolished the death penalty in 1990. the first execution by the federal government in the us after the death penalty was reintroduced was Timothy McVeigh in 2001.

Sonny noggs

Berserker wrote: »

I never knew that. Christ, that's a daft thing to do.

Are you taking his word for it, or did you check for actual sources?

TeaBagMania

seamus wrote: »

You think it's impossible to find ten people to accuse a man of murder?

Classic naivety.

Look up George Stinney.

impossible, no
improbable, yes

referencing a case from almost a hundred year ago, please :rolleyes:

ohnonotgmail

Sonny noggs wrote: »

Are you taking his word for it, or did you check for actual sources?

will this do as a source? i'm sure more can be found.

https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

arybvtcw0eolkf

Danzy wrote: »

Don't have a problem with people being executed.

However I wouldn't be confident that the innocent would not get the rope or that people wouldn't be stitched up to ensure they got the rope.

I'm with you on this.

I think some people deserve to die, rapists & murderers are top of the list.

But a reminder to me that the death penalty flawed is the number of death sentence convictions in the US which are overturned when new evidence comes to light proving the condemned person's innocence.

I think the death of a single innocent person is enough for me to be against the death sentence.

As for having a belief in God, I have zero religious believes so I'm not coming at this from a religious pov.

But yea, rapists & murderers deserve death. If someone breaks into someone's home, they too deserve to have their heads blown clean off their shoulders too.

seamus

TeaBagMania wrote: »

impossible, no

So you admit then that ten eyewitnesses cannot prove guilt 100%.

Case closed.

joe40

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

i'm not sure those two things match up. we abolished the death penalty in 1990. the first execution by the federal government in the us after the death penalty was reintroduced was Timothy McVeigh in 2001.

Timothy McVeigh, that's the one I'm thinking about and 2001 sounds right. Did we not do something in relation to the death penalty here at the same time? maybe not I thought there was something.

Thanks for the info though

ohnonotgmail

joe40 wrote: »

Timothy McVeigh, that's the one I'm thinking about and 2001 sounds right. Did we not do something in relation to the death penalty here at the same time? maybe not I thought there was something.

Thanks for the info though

I know what you are thinking of. We amended the constitution in 2001 to prohibit the reintroduction of the death penalty.

rossie1977

rossie1977 wrote: »

There is more black men per capita currently in US prisons than there were black men in South African prisons at the height of apartheid.

theres a bit to unpack here.

firstly, im not sure what 'per capita' means in one and not the other

secondly, you seem to be equating men held in one system for crimes they stand accused of or convicted of under an american system vs a historical system of apartheid widely condemned as requiring little-to-no requirements for justice.

are you equating the two or just throwing out random statements

Dravokivich

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

I know what you are thinking of. We amended the constitution in 2001 to prohibit the reintroduction of the death penalty.

I thought we still had it up to then, but only possible when one is up for killing a garda?

ohnonotgmail

Dravokivich wrote: »

I thought we still had it up to then, but only possible when one is up for killing a garda?

we abolished the death penalty for good in 1990.

blanch152

China kills more than 1,500 every year.

Yet you won't see a thread about that.


Edit: And the Iranians kill more per capita than the Americans, should we invade Iran to stop them?

blanch152

blanch152 wrote: »

China kills more than 1,500 every year.

Yet you won't see a thread about that.


Edit: And the Iranians kill more per capita than the Americans, should we invade Iran to stop them?

there is, tbf, an actual thread about that right at the top of new threads right now

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

grahambo wrote: »

I think it's more of a cost saving measure.
In America Life is Life. You die in prison.

In Ireland it costs around €60k per year to keep a person locked up.
In America it's a €31k per year (Automation, Modernisation and Private Prisons cutting costs)

You lock someone up for murder when they are 20 and they live til the are 78 which is the life expectancy in America.
That works out nearly $1.8 Million to keep a person locked up for life.

Bullet, Drugs, Electricity, Noose or whatever is far cheaper, and hence less of a burden on the Taxpayer.

What? Having a prisoner on death row works out far more expensive for the taxpayer, when everything is added up: legal costs, incarceration (which is more expensive if a person is on death row), appeals etc. I thought everyone knew that by now.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/01/considering-the-death-penalty-your-tax-dollars-at-work/amp/

Some stuff about it in this article too:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/sunday/death-penalty.amp.html

TeaBagMania

seamus wrote: »

So you admit then that ten eyewitnesses cannot prove guilt 100%.

Case closed.

Wrong again, so yes ten eye witnesses from a rival gang (for example) could point their finger at someone they don't like
Is it possible? yes, but does that stuff actually happen in reality, no

Grayson

TeaBagMania wrote: »

wow, you're really reaching

ten people ID the guy and its not good enough? im thinking even if it was a hundred eye witnesses it wouldn't be good enough for you

I gave you a hypothetical example. There have been plenty of studies done to show how bad eyewitness identifications are.

And there have been occasions of mass delusion where tens if not hundreds of people have said they saw something that wasn't there.

I'm not saying that eye witness testimony should be ignored, but it's not reliable enough to kill someone.

And seriously though, what level of certainty can we have more than reasonable doubt?


BTW, here's an article about eye witness testimony.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/10/30/eyewitness-testimony-is-unreliable-or-is-it

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

You can never be 100% sure if a person is guilty or not. Ireland, specifically the Gardai, has blood on it's hand too. They murdered Henry Gleeson. He was accused of murder and executed in 1941 but pardoned in 2015. A joke of a trial.

Over 20 people in the states have been pardoned from death row as new DNA evidence has proven them to be innocent.

How many more innocent people have been murdered?

The death penalty is a tool used by the weak. It should not exist.

Also, what's with the whataboutery in this thread?

seamus

TeaBagMania wrote: »

Wrong again, so yes ten eye witnesses from a rival gang (for example) could point their finger at someone they don't like
Is it possible? yes, but does that stuff actually happen in reality, no

You just keep admitting that it's impossible to prove guilt absolutely.

There is always a possibility that a mistake can be made. End of story.

TeaBagMania

seamus wrote: »

You just keep admitting that it's impossible to prove guilt absolutely.

There is always a possibility that a mistake can be made. End of story.

what im speaking of isn't a mistake, its intentional

Time

seamus wrote: »

You just keep admitting that it's impossible to prove guilt absolutely.

There is always a possibility that a mistake can be made. End of story.

Hypothetically, let’s say the suspect is caught on HD CCTV committing a murder, their mobile phone places them at the scene as does their DNA, a car registered to them is seen leaving the scene, and finally, the suspects phone is tapped (legally) and a recording of them admitting to the murder and revealing non published details that would only be known by the killer.

Here we have CCTV for indemnification, DNA, phone and car at the crime scene and a confession. I’d say that combines to absolute proof of guilt.

TeaBagMania

Time wrote: »

I’d say that combines to absolute proof of guilt.

not thru the eyes of seamus, because im sure someone tampered with the video evidence and cloned his cell phone to be in that exact location