Capital Punishment -- Proof it should be eliminated

[Crabtownboy]

Tell you what. I'll stay on subject if you do. Quit straying from the subject to make absurd claims, and I'll quit straying to call you out on it.

What do you feel the subject is considering the OP?

You did state:

Compared to the good it has done (which is verifiable with a simple google search), those few innocents that have died are justified. Sad? Yes. But justified

As you can see you did say the killing of the "few" innocents was justifiable.

 

[church mouse guy]

What do you feel the subject is considering the OP?

You did state:



As you can see you did say the killing of the "few" innocents was justifiable.

I am still waiting for you to show the Bible verse to back up your belief.

 

[Sapper Woody]

What do you feel the subject is considering the OP?

For that, let's go back to the OP. It's titled "Captial Punishment -- Proof it should be eliminated". Then the body is about a man who was on death row but found innocent.

So, the subject of the OP is the innocence of people on death row, and the impact it should have on whether or not we keep the death penalty.

Now, let's look at your posts.

So the death of a few innocent folk is just hunky wonderful with you, right? Collateral damage, right?

Wonder how you would feel if you had been framed and was sitting on death row even though you are innocent.

Can you show me where it is Biblical to execute innocent people?

First absurd claim. Also, off topic.

So you do not care that innocent people are on death row and that some will die even thought innocent.

Second absurd claim and also off topic.

Your other posts contained some on topic material, so I didn't mention them. Then we come to your last post directed towards me:

What percentage of innocent people being executed is acceptable to you? After all the OP is about an innocent person on death row being freed witn DNA evidence.

So, again, what percentage of innocent people being executed is acceptable to you?

Stay on the subject, Sapper, which is innocent people on death row.

So in this single post, you stray from your own admitted topic. You say the topic is "an innocent person on death row being freed witn[sic] DNA evidence", yet ask me "What percentage of innocent people being executed is acceptable to you?". So, you state the topic, and then ask me stray from it, and then tell me to stay on topic? Wow.

I have already clearly, and with no doubt left, stated where I stand. Surely you have enough intellect to take part in a discussion, even debate? Surely you can see that it's not about a hard line. Surely you can see that I believe that the current rate is acceptable, especially as it's getting better. On the other hand, surely you wouldn't denigrate yourself by accusing people of not being concerned about innocents instead of addressing what they said.

(Off topic - I know there are people out there who want to post "Don't call me Shirley". beat you to it!)

 

[Crabtownboy]

I have already clearly, and with no doubt left, stated where I stand. Surely you have enough intellect to take part in a discussion, even debate? Surely you can see that it's not about a hard line. Surely you can see that I believe that the current rate is acceptable, especially as it's getting better. On the other hand, surely you wouldn't denigrate yourself by accusing people of not being concerned about innocents instead of addressing what they said.

Thanks for this part of your reply.

To me the current possible rate is totally unacceptable and that is why I say capital punishment should be eliminated. No innocent person should ever, IMHO, be put to death even though a court found them guilty.

The Guardian and the LA times cited a study saying that determined that just over 4% of the prisoners on death row are actually innocent. [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-defendants-innocent ]

http://www.latimes.com/science/scie...-convictions-are-in-error-20140428-story.html

There are reportedly over 3000 prisoners on death row. Let's round it down to 3000. That means there are at least 120 innocent people on death row, in danger of loosing their life for a crime they did not commit.

To me that number is completely unacceptable and can never be justified as a small, acceptable number. To me that is evidence enough to eliminate capital punishment. I do find life without parole acceptable.

I guess we differ here.

 

[Bro. Curtis]

Just in case anyone wants to know what's in the REAL report, not some lefty blog about it…..

Abstract
The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. There is no systematic method to determine the accuracy of a criminal conviction; if there were, these errors would not occur in the first place. As a result, very few false convictions are ever discovered, and those that are discovered are not representative of the group as a whole. In the United States, however, a high proportion of false convictions that do come to light and produce exonerations are concentrated among the tiny minority of cases in which defendants are sentenced to death. This makes it possible to use data on death row exonerations to estimate the overall rate of false conviction among death sentences. The high rate of exoneration among death-sentenced defendants appears to be driven by the threat of execution, but most death-sentenced defendants are removed from death row and resentenced to life imprisonment, after which the likelihood of exoneration drops sharply. We use survival analysis to model this effect, and estimate that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely, at least 4.1% would be exonerated. We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7230

 

[carpro]

So you do not care that innocent people are on death row and that some will die even thought innocent.

Actually there are far too many criminals serving life sentences who should have received the death penalty.

 

[matt wade]

As usual, we have two extremes.

The fact: There is some small percentage of wrongly convicted that have been executed or are awaiting execution

Group A says that we shouldn't execute anyone in order to save that small percentage.

Group B says that we should continue executing, and do it even more quickly, and the small percentage can be sacrificed.

Unfortunately, we don't have people that can reasonable enough to admit that the answer is somewhere in the middle. We do have a small percentage of innocent people in the mix, and they shouldn't be sacrificed. We also have people have that committed heinous crimes and they should be punished accordingly for that.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but we should strive to save the innocent from being punished unjustly.