BS: An argument against the death penalty.

Subject: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Peace
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 12:55 AM

Manitoba man still waiting to see whether he will face new trial in 1990 killing

August 12, 2009 - 19:16

THE CANADIAN PRESS

WINNIPEG - It will be at least another month before Kyle Unger learns whether he will be acquitted or tried again in the murder of a Manitoba teenager.

Unger spent 14 years in prison for the 1990 death of Brigitte Grenier at a music festival south of Winnipeg.
Continued Below

His conviction was set aside in March by the federal justice minister, who said it was likely a miscarriage of justice.
The Crown has yet to decide whether to launch a new trial or drop the charge.

The case was put over in court Wednesday for another month.
Unger was freed after DNA tests showed a hair on the victim's clothing was not his, contrary to what his trial had been told."

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Peace
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 01:01 AM

"In this country, we have the famous three M's David Milgaard, Donald Marshall and Guy Paul Morin. In Alberta, Willie Nepoose. All of them were charged and convicted not just of any crime, but of murder. Every murder case attracts great scrutiny, evidence is weighed meticulously, the trials are long, the accused always has counsel, and appeals are the rule, not the exception.

And yet, though innocent, they were convicted. Why? Well, for starters, Donald Marshall and Willie Nepoose were aboriginal, and poor. David Milgaard was young and poor and worst, a "hippie." Guy Paul Morin lived "alone with his mother" and was a French Canadian tried by a jury of his peers who were not."

From the www.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Peace
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 01:14 AM

Found this article and because it's very important I have posted it here in its totality.

"Why Plead Guilty to a Crime You Did Not Commit?

Geoff Mousseau October 06, 2008

Why do people plead guilty to crimes then profess their innocence? Or, to put it another way, why would someone plead guilty to a crime they did not commit? This curious phenomenon has recently risen to the attention of the American public.

This year several bankers from England plead guilty to a Federal indictment rather than go to trial. All of them received prison sentences. As part of their plea agreement they were permitted to serve their prison sentences in England. Why does this case matter?

Those bankers now claim that they did not commit a crime. According to them, the only reason they plead guilty was to avoid the risk of going to trial and facing a prison sentence in the US. The press in England is paying attention to this case and so should we.

This summer an executive tried to plead guilty to a federal crime that he did not think he committed. He must have been aware that he had very little chance of being acquitted in today's environment. And he surely did not want to risk getting a prison sentence that would have ruined his life. So, he marched into court to plead guilty so he could get a deal from the prosecutors. The judge rejected his plea deal when he admitted that he did not think he committed a crime.

So this man is now going to have to go to trial under circumstances where his chances of prevailing are small, in a system that most fear gives longer sentences to those who go to trial.

The statistics for the percentage of people charged with a federal crime who end up spending time in prison are overwhelming. Over 90% of all people charged with a federal crime end up convicted. Virtually everyone who goes to trial loses. And over 80% of everyone convicted of a federal crime spend time in prison. Those numbers are staggering.

Even more staggering is the risk of lengthy federal prison terms. Whether true or not, the belief is that courts issue higher sentences to those who go to trial rather than accept a plea deal.

Under the federal system, one of the most important factors in determining the length of a prison term is the amount of money involved. In drug cases there are mandatory minimum sentences, usually over 10 years. In cases involving money -- business cases, investment cases, anything involving property -- it doesn't take much money to send sentence lengths soaring. And the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not apply when determining the amount of money involved in a crime.

For these reasons, reasonable people will agree to plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. The risks of going to trial, the risk that a court can find that your supposed crime involved substantial amounts of money, are too great.

The bottom line is, if you are charged with a federal crime, you are probably going to go to prison. If you have been charged with a federal crime your first thought should not be whether you are going to go to trial to prove your innocence. And if you are guilty you certainly should not risk going to trial. Your first thought should be how to keep your prison sentence to the absolute minimum. Leave the question of guilt or innocence to the academics. Make sure your sentence is short enough so you can pick up the pieces when you are released. "

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Peace
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 01:16 AM

The third post refers to the USA.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: theleveller
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 04:30 AM

I can see no arguments FOR the death penalty. One of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in the UK was the hanging of Timothy Evans for the murders that Christie committed.

In the papers today is news of the exhumation of the body of a man who DNA evidence suggests may have been the killer of Teresa de Simone, a crime for which Sean Hodgson spent 27 years in jail before the conviction was overturned. Had the UK had the death penalty at the time, Hodgson would have been executed.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 05:55 AM

Precisely. One can release the wrongly imprisoned, but resurrection of the wrongly executed is beyond our ability.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: kendall
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 06:35 AM

It's no more right for the state to take a life than for one person to do it. I believe that the worst punishment a person can endure is to have his/her liberty taken away for life.
There is a big difference between justice and revenge.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 06:46 AM

The single effective argument against the death penalty is that you cannot rectify any mistakes.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 07:18 AM

That's not the 'single effective argument', even though it is a very powerful one and one I agree with.

But there are four cases to consider

* found guilty but actually innocent.
* found innocent but actually guilty.
* found guity and actually guilty.
* found innocent and actually innocent.

Leaving the last two aside: the first is the Evans/Christie example. The second case raises the question whether incorrectly releasing the guilty is more or less likely when the penalty is death as opposed to imprisonment and for all sorts of reasons that's almost impossible to determine with any accurately. But it depends on the psychology of the jury and that is a very complex and subtle area.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 07:39 AM

Better for one guilty man be set free, than one innocent man be hanged.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 08:10 AM

Better for one guilty man be set free, than one innocent man be hanged
Yes, I quite agree. But consider also the case where the person released is in actuality a serial killer. Then what is happening is you are enabling more innocents to die as a result of his being released.

It is that sentiment (Better for one guilty man be set free, than one innocent man be hanged) that leads me to suspect, though I don't have the evidence for it, that more of the guilty would be released if we have a death penalty than imprisonment.

As a thought experiment, let's take that sentiment - which again I stress I agree with - and downgrade it to 'wrongful imprisonment'

So it now becomes: Better for one guilty man be set free, than one innocent man be wrongfully imprisoned.

Not quite so clear, but I think I'd still go along with it, assuming we are talking about significant periods of imprisonment, not just a day or two.

Then let's make it mathematical:

Better for X guilty man to be set free, than for Y innocent men to be wrongfully imprisoned, but that is better than Z guilty men being set free.

or
X_guilty < Y_innocent < Z_guilty

When we are thinking about terrorist suspects, we seem to concentrate on the Y/Z part and accept that significant numbers of innocents can be detained to catch a very small number of actual terrorists.

Playing around with X/Y/Z is, I think, a worthwhile exercise because we all recognise the system is fallible and will wrongly release/confict sometimes. Deciding what proportions of each we accept says quite a bit about our own attitudes.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 08:17 AM

we seem to concentrate on the Y/Z part and accept
'We' in this context mainly means governments - there are plenty of people on this forum and elsewhere who don't toe their government line on this one.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 08:42 AM

Guilt/innocence is only part of the equation...

Capital punishment is barbaric
Capital punishment has not shown to deter crime
Capiatl punishment clogs up our courts with appeals
Capital punishment, for the Christain right, is unChristain
Capital punishemnt sets the wrong example for acting civilly

Just MO, of course...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Lox
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 09:12 AM

Reposting after accidentally forgetting to log in ...


DMcG

""Better for one guilty man be set free, than one innocent man be hanged"
Yes, I quite agree. But consider also the case where the person released is in actuality a serial killer. Then what is happening is you are enabling more innocents to die as a result of his being released."

This isn't relevant to the issue of capital punishment.

If a guilty man is set free it would make no difference if there were a death penalty of not.

He would still be free to murder etc

This is about a failure to convict him in the first place.

The question of the death penalty is about how to sentence/punish people who have been found guilty.


And a dead man has no chance to appeal a wrongful conviction.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: olddude
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 09:39 AM

I want no state to kill using my tax money or for the so called good of society. Study after study shows it does nothing to deter crime. It is an act of revenge and hate nothing more. We have met the enemy and it is us. The poorest of people are the only ones who ever receive it.   Kendall is absolutely right far worse, a life behind bars to think about what they did. The US is the only developed nation that still does such an act of hate and it is a true evil I think. You think we would have learned from history. How many times did they get it wrong and killed the wrong man or woman.   Murder is murder no matter if it is a drug dealing killer or the State of Texas with a piece of paper saying "oh this one is ok cause it is legal" it is all murder.

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: DMcG
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 09:44 AM

Sorry if what I said before is not strictly relevant to the death penalty. As I hope I made clear before and am happy to do so again, I am strongly against the death penalty. I could theoretically accept it in cases where there is absolutely no doubt, but the number of such occasions is minute: witnesses can be mistaken, DNA can be contaminated, CCTV can be misinterpreted, and so on. And that is to say nothing to the skills or otherwise of the lawyers involved. So in practice, we are probably down to the Stalins, Hitlers and Pol Pots of this world not ordinary crimes.

However, I don't think what I said is completely beside the point either. I believe that without the death penalty the number of people wrongfully imprisoned is somewhat greater than it otherwise would be. That is to me something we have to face up to and say "If that is the price we must pay for a more civilised society, so be it (while doing all we can to minimise it, naturally)"

Subject: RE: BS: An argument against the death penalty.
From: Lox
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 09:59 AM

DMcG,

Sorry if I gave the impression that I was belittling your point or somehow reprimanding you. In fact I found your point interesting and thought provoking, hence my enthusiastic angagement with it.

And the thought that it provoked was not to confuse conviction and sentence.



It is my conviction that I could have constructed a better sentence ...