The death penalty isn't the problem here. We arguably still have an innocent person wasting away in prison, which is hardly much better than death.
The problem is a judicial review system that's extremely hesitant to consider exculpatory evidence following a conviction... and here we have an edge case where the conviction was gained by discredited scientific means. Science adapts quickly to new evidence and new methods, and quickly discards old ones; the courts don't work that way.
The core of the issue is somewhere else - it's the jury system. It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them. At the end it's a matter of which side can build a more passionate argument to sway the juries, rather than what evidence is actually presented and its rational meaning. So yeah of course the American judicial system is not willing to review past convictions based on scientific discoveries, because the convictions were rarely made on that basis anyway.
Statistically speaking, isn't it still better to have a jury of multiple people requiring unanimous consent, as opposed to a single equally fallible judge?
I'm unfamiliar with the laws and jurisprudence on bench trials in the US, but the impression I have is that judges are either required to simply follow the law, or are at least bound by custom to do so.
Most of the time a judge doesn't need to provide justification of any kind when issuing a verdict. The assumption (and it's a big one) is that they follow the law when issuing verdicts - like you said it's more like a custom. I suppose the difference is that a judge cannot stand up and say "I found you have broken the law but I disagree with the law so I won't find you guilty" while a jury can - but judges have an almost absolute discretion at deciding what the verdict is, if they internally disagree with a law they can just find you not guilty if they so wish.
Even if they could, and they probably can, they are inherently cogs in the machine of the law and shaped by it. A jury of twelve layman will always be more fair and I’m glad America has a system that understands this fact. People arguing against juries must be so ignorant to why they’re even a thing to even begin debating why they are a bad thing.
In my country you can usually appeal a decision and a new judge takes that case. Mind you a judge is probably smarter and less "fallible" than the average guy/gal on the street.
We don't drag someone off the street at random for most jobs now do we?
A judge is (hopefully) trained and experienced with questioning both sides of the argument and weighing the arguments. While jurors just have their natural intuition.
Here in Germany we have a system were "volunteer" judges are elected from the general public. On lower levels there then are two volunteer and one regular judge*, where the regular judge is leading the trial, but volunteers got same right to ask question and votes are equal, thus the two volunteers could overrule the regular judge, (both for deciding whether guilty or not and the punishment) while in most cases they probably follow the suggestion of the regular judge.
If the verdict is challenged upper courts only have regular judges.
Goal is to have, both the legal expertise, but also the "common sense" in the ruling.
* in some cases the numbers may be different, there are sometimes 3 regular and two volunteer or something in between
Same(or very similar) in the UK - you have lower level "magistrates court" where the judges are volunteers who are given legal training and are given access to actual paid career judges if they need clarification on something. I'm not sure if the magistrates can overrule regular judges in any way, but yeah, you can always appeal to a higher court if needed.
I've worked with judges. I could give you a mapping of charges to local judges where I'd prefer the judgement of 12 random people off the street.
This isn't a normal job. We don't hire 6 to 23 people for a single job, and jurors aren't random. Yes, jury summons are sent randomly, but they'll have hundreds summoned and then jury selection starts. It's not unlike a job interview. If someone is on the jury who's going to be biased or unreasonable, that's a failure of their legal counsel.
Because such a conviction would be so much easier to appeal. If you presented the judge with solid evidence and they ignored it anyway, you'd have a solid case on appeal. So yes, judges wouldn't be forced to accept your evidence, but their verdicts would be less likely to stand.
With juries they are completely free to ignore any and all evidence but because it's a jury, you get 12 people agreeing on something together, it's so much harder to get an appeal because "you were judged fairly by your peers" and all of that nonsense.
And of course, lastly - there are many countries with no jury systems or where juries are only used in the worst of crimes, and I have never seen any stat suggesting that these countries are less just than US is.
The judges are evidently the problem here. They control the evidence the jury sees, and can give the jury instructions -- and, moreover, are now the ones blocking judicial review.
Judges are no better than juries of one. Worse, for consider what type of person becomes a judge.
...You must become a lawyer. But note the fact that judges earn 10-20x less than top-decile lawyers at an equal stage in their careers. The best lawyers can actually make 100x. (About $20M/year.)
...So you're either a failed lawyer who absolutely can't cut it in private practice, or the type of twisted personality who values status and power over your fellow man FAR more than you value money. Most of the time, the latter; in some cases you are a "covert politician" who wants to legislate from the bench.
Given the financial and status incentives, it's an extremely strange person who becomes a judge. I'd trust a jury, whatever its composition, before I trust an American judge to fairly determine my fate.
.....you really can't think of any? Being in a position to help people by seeing that justice is done fairly isn't a motivation to you?
Let me ask it this way - why are nurses doing what they do, even though it's a grueling job that pays very little? Is it fair to conclude that they must all be psychopaths because only a psychopath would agree to these conditions?
I have to hazard a guess: You don't have first-hand experience with the Federal court system.
Trust me on this, "justice" is somewhere down its list of priorities; it cares more for tradition, ritual, and form. In civil court, just causes very frequently (indeed, almost as a rule,) lose -- and often because one side doesn't have deep enough pockets to engage proper representation and survive the expensive process of discovery in Federal court.
A noble-minded judge, as you describe, wouldn't last a year. He'd quickly end up looking like the stereotype of the beleaguered public defender: Harried, exhausted, and unable to do a good job as he sees it.
The people who do survive as judges are a very, very strange breed.
> noble-minded judge, as you describe, wouldn't last a year
I know a few judges, albeit not federal ones. They’re generally the philosophical type. The ambitious ones are keenly aware that their decisions will be re-hashed for the rest of their career. Also, judges being bound by “tradition, ritual and form” is an important part of the rule of law. Respecting that is a major component of justice.
Ehh, I went to law school and spent some time in biglaw, and interned for a state court judge in CA, did internships, etc--I want to agree with much of what you say, but you're being too cynical I think.
> Trust me on this, "justice" is somewhere down its list of priorities; it cares more for tradition, ritual, and form.
I think is somewhat true, and is a generally applicable criticism of law and lawyers. I don't think values like justice are far down their list of priorities, but I think tradition etc. are just given too much weight. Lawyers constitute a tribe and collective which takes itself too seriously, at the end of the day, and don't value self-correction and improvement enough.
There are plenty of noble-minded judges. The reason why litigation becomes expensive, and thus poses fairness issues, is a multi-faceted problem that boils down to a lot of boring things. Most people in law haven't had what I would consider a real job, and the culture of law is too obsequious and deferential for people to understand that the way lawyers have been doing things is usually stupid. They don't have a culture of thinking about how they work, and their personality types are very geared towards external validation, which means they will do things very stupidly if they get accolades and very meager financial bonuses for it, and they mistake such things as markers of actual progress and productivity.
I could go on, and I reckon you have more experience in law than I do (I have been a software engineer for longer than I worked at law firm), but I think at the end of the day, I would remind you and others reading of the adage that one should not jump too quickly to ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Same reason why IT Specialists work for national security agencies even though they could earn 10x the money in private sector - there are other motivations than money.
Isn't there anything in between? And, the lawyers who make $20 million a year might only be able to do so by serving a lot of slimy clients, so not necessary a category to admire.
What is a typical path to becoming a judge? I thought it's normally prosecutor -> judge rather than lawyer -> judge. Like they are almost set up to be opposing from the start of career.
> It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them.
That's a feature of the system. If we had perfect information and judgement we wouldn't even need courts in the first place. It's also the case that the law itself can be unjust, should it be blindly applied, or is it good that the jury can declare someone not guilty anyways?
> At the end it's a matter of which side can build a more passionate argument to sway the juries
Right. So it's interesting that the prosecution gets a regular plus a "rebuttal" closing argument that the defense never gets. It's interesting the way courtrooms are laid out. It's interesting that the state in many circumstances cannot supply exculpatory testimony on your behalf, even if they have it.
My point being, there are so many more worthy things to consider before presuming juries themselves are the problem. Those who have made these arrangements are happy that you see it this way, though.
> rather than what evidence is actually presented and its rational meaning.
Do you have some evidence that this occurred in this case? We are examining it more than 20 years after the fact. At the time the jury thought it had the best explanation, and it might have even been "common knowledge." I certainly remember the "shaken baby" period in the zeitgeist of the time.
> So yeah of course the American judicial system is not willing to review past convictions based on scientific discoveries
Quite the contrary. His first execution was halted and he was granted review under a Texas law commonly called the "junk science law." He quite literally got this exact review.
All that being said capital punishment is amoral and especially irreconcilable with all the above facts. In no sense am I defending it, just our system of jury trials.
>>Quite the contrary. His first execution was halted and he was granted review under a Texas law commonly called the "junk science law." He quite literally got this exact review.
Ok, I didn't know that - should have read up more on this case before I commented.
>>or is it good that the jury can declare someone not guilty anyways?
Maybe. I find it much more troublesome that the jury can be presented with literally undeniable evidence that someone is innocent and still vote guilty anyway. Not that a judge couldn't do that of course - but like I said in my other comment, such a conviction would be a lot easier to appeal against, compared to a conviction made by a jury.
> I find it much more troublesome that the jury can be presented with literally undeniable evidence that someone is innocent and still vote guilty anyway.
Usually that's not really what happens. It's often woefully inadequate defence (either due to incompetence or because the public defender is juggling 19 other cases), misconstrued evidence, bad evidence (which is more or less what happened here), and things like that.
I believe that in many cases judges have discretion to reverse a guilty verdict returned by a jury if there are problems with evidence. They can't do this later though - once the verdict is handed down they can't revise their verdict and sentence, as far as I understand. They also cannot do the reverse and unilaterally find the accused guilty over a jury that has voted to acquit.
My understanding is that, on paper, to be prosecuted, a few things need to happen:
- Law enforcement needs to raise the issue to a prosecutor
- A prosecutor needs to pick up the case
- A grand jury needs to indite you
- A petite jury needs to find you guilty
- A judge needs to sentence you with a penalty (as opposed to stern talking to)
Each of those is intended as a check-and-balance in the system. All of those have been steamrolled with misaligned incentives, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc., but that's how it's supposed to work.
Many states no longer use grand juries, and maybe some never did (I’m unsure on this detail). That particular federal constitutional protection has never been held by the courts to bind the states. But yes, Texas does have grand juries for felonies and a few misdemeanors (not most).
Tangent: it’s spelled indict, not indite (but it is pronounced as if it were indite)
While nearly all states do have some form of grand jury, only about half make a grand jury indictment a requirement for a criminal prosecution, and some of those requirements only apply to felonies.
Kinda the opposite, there are lots of cases where juries were swayed by apparently scientific or technical evidence that later turned out to be bunk. "Computer says so" is an incredibly powerful legal attack, second only to "expert says so". These routinely override passion and emotion, leading to innocent people pleading for their lives before a dispassionate jury sends them away on the strength of expert witness testimony alone.
See the Post Office scandal in the UK for a terrible example of justice gone badly wrong, due entirely to juries allowing technical "evidence" (which turned out to be fraudulent) to overrule common sense everyday right-feelings.
legally this has come to mean that "machines do not make mistakes" ie if a mechanical device has done the same thing hundreds or thousands of times in exactly the same way, it is not a defence to say it must have started doing something differently. This idea was conceived well before anyone started programming computer software, and was meant to represent basic mechanical devices (say, a cash register), rather than the interlinked electronic eco-systems we depend on nowadays.
Thirdly, there is a widespread public perception that electronic evidence is infallible, hence the readiness of juries to convict on computer records alone.
> The core of the issue is somewhere else - it's the jury system. It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them.
Every time this common opinion gets posted, it seems as though the people making this point are largely unaware the defendant always has the choice of a bench trial, which is decided only by a judge. In fact, the judicial system would much rather defendants choose a bench trial rather than a jury trial, because it's quicker and much cheaper, and the system is overloaded.
Defendants and their defense lawyers are choosing jury trials because they think they have better odds than with a bench trial. That is, you're proposing taking away what defendants like this choosing jury trials perceive to be the better route.
So the commenters are non- expert regular folks just saying what feels right to them, just what they accuse juries of. I'm not sure if this helps or hurts their point!
I remember reading many years ago about studies where they went back and asked jurors who were involved in cases where it turned out the person convicted was innocent about what they were thinking.
And it seemed pretty clear that juries aren't really operating at 12 independent people with critical reasoning skills. Overwhelmingly there are always a few people with real reservations who vote to convict anyway. Those people always justify it to themselves with various reasons. And the reasoning they uncovered were things like "if he is innocent this will get overturned on appeal" or "everyone else on this jury is convinced of the evidence they cant all be wrong" or lots of other internal justifications people use to live with themselves.
In theory this is why unanimous verdicts are required.
I was on a jury once for a murder case and we had the opposite problem. One juror kept repeatedly arguing that she thought the guy was guilty of one of the charges, but she couldn't explain why. Everyone else voted not guilty, because the evidence just wasn't there. We had to repeatedly explain to her that she was the textbook example of reasonable doubt. Eventually she decided to vote not guilty but it cost us several hours because it had to be unanimous in either direction.
> It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them.
Actually this is great news, those juries can stand against big companies.
It’s terrifying watching Europeans attack the jury system. I’ve no idea why anyone would trust government officials to have your best interest at heart. They already are backed by the monopoly on violence, such a system is just putting you at their mercy.
A jury of twelve is democratic and those people can put themselves in your shoes.
Is it? One obstinate person can upend the whole process.
> and those people can put themselves in your shoes
Unless you happen to not be of the same demographic as the majority of pool the jury is drawing from.
I know, I know, "Well, what do you suggest?". I'm not sure, but I don't think that the jury system is democratic, nor do I think it guarantees that you're going to have people who are empathetic.
> democracy has absolutely nothing to do with the value of innocence, otherwise angry mobs would be effective systems for justice
Juries are democratic in that they devolve power to a body of citizens, not the government. The unanimity requirement is a check on the mob, alongside various court procedures and the appeals process.
I suppose, in the same way that picking a random citizen to create every new law would be democratic, but what does democracy have to do with the value of innocence, as you initially argued? In a jury it's the non-guilty voting minority that rules, and I'm fairly certain that the tyranny of the minority is largely considered undemocratic.
> what does democracy have to do with the value of innocence
The jury is the democratic organ. The value of innocence is what motivates the undemocratic check of a unanimity requirement. You complained about one person upending the system. That’s the cost of valuing innocence.
> the tyranny of the minority is largely considered undemocratic
Yes, supermajority requirements are not perfectly democratic. Nobody argued juries are perfect democracies. Just that they’re more democratic than systems in which a judge decides everything.
The value of innocence is technically orthogonal; you could instruct a judge to bias one way or another. But that’s structurally guaranteed by a jury in a way it cannot with bureaucrats, even a panel of them.
In France, criminal trials typically involve juries. Many judges tend to be overly and blindly reliant on expert testimony (often biased and unscientific in specific cases such as suspicions of child abuse) whereas juries can be more open minded in general. Acquittals in criminal cases where the evidence was very weak have been mostly obtained with juries.
However, the French government is now increasingly pushing for the replacement of juries by judges ("cours criminelles"), in some criminal cases, particularly child abuse ones. Acquittals are becoming harder to obtain in these cases.
The death penalty isn’t THE problem here, but it definitely is A problem here.
The problem with the death penalty is masked slightly because of the US’s lengthy appeals process and the Innocence project which delays a lot of these death penalties from being carried out which has meant that in many instances they have succeeded in delaying the death penalty long enough for the science that could acquit the innocent to be established.
And in states which care about justice, as opposed to bloodlust, it’s saved innocent lives (and equally importantly, in some cases, helped nab the actual guilty party).
But these stories are becoming increasingly rare because the states that care about justice as opposed to bloodlust have increasingly joined the first world by abandoning the death penalty altogether. Imprisonment for life still allows for innocence to be proven. The death penalty eliminates that option and it’s impossible to know at the time of sentencing whether new evidence would turn up.
> The problem is a judicial review system that's extremely hesitant to consider exculpatory evidence following a conviction... and here we have an edge case where the conviction was gained by discredited scientific means. Science adapts quickly to new evidence and new methods, and quickly discards old ones; the courts don't work that way.
To expand on that, appeals are not intended to re-litigate the facts. They are there to fix procedural mistakes during trial, or wrong argumentation of how the law should be applied.
The question of 'what happened' is generally not up for debate during appeal, and is generally not grounds for lodging an appeal. Instead, appeals are meant for when the law was applied wrong. Or when a trial was unfair due to a judge's mistake. Effectively, it is meant to protect you against judge's mistakes and unscrupulous prosecutors. There is much less protection against experts that happen to be wrong.
It seems to me that a system like that is fundamentally incompatible with a death-penalty, since it leaves a decent amount of space for mistakes that go uncorrected.
What type of appeal would one need to file in order to re-litigate facts? There exists charities involved in, say, DNA-based exoneration. Is there less room for non-DNA based appeals?
These types of ‘appeals’ are usually not appeals. They often come in the form of clemency requests and, in some jurisdictions, Post Conviction Relief. Several State’s have legislation in place allowing for a proceeding in the court of conviction to be opened (within some specified period of time) when ‘factual innocence’ is being alleged. The burden for the relief is pretty high to get the proceeding going however.
> Or when a trial was unfair due to a judge's mistake. Effectively, it is meant to protect you against judge's mistakes and unscrupulous prosecutors. There is much less protection against experts that happen to be wrong.
IANAL, but I understand certain kind of "evidence" are inadmissible in court due to unreliability/being junk science (e.g. lie detector results). I think it should be possible to classify the admission of unreliable evidence as the judge's mistake, even if that evidence (or type of evidence) was found to be unreliable after conviction.
Basically, the standard should be that judges are supposed to be perfectly reliable when evaluating evidence, and should have been expected to catch any issue that was later discovered, so a later standard of inadmissibility is retroactive.
If it isn't the, the rules ought to be changed (and this change seems narrow enough to me that it shouldn't cause any problems).
It seems to me that a system like that is fundamentally incompatible with justice, regardless of what punishments are applied.
There is no way to correct a mistake that deprives a human being of years of liberty, either. If anything I find it more horrifying that we're willing to say, "Eh, at least you're alive", at apparently leave it at that.
I'm not calling for infinite appeals and suchlike denial-of-service attacks on the courts. But it seems that we've simply written off the notion of being just entirely, and the highest court in the land seems comfortable with that.
In my opinion one of the biggest but under appreciated problems is that at every trial there is a prosecutor whose job is try to get you convicted whether they think you did it or not, and who will try their hardest to do so with every tool available, which is largely not even factual claims but emotional rhetoric to make you seem evil.
Don’t forget they have essentially unlimited budget and you’re spending personal resources. Which they can of course confiscate and imprison you for a year before trial unless you’re wealthy and can afford bail.
I think this is a central issue. The justice system should work as follows:
Any money that either side spends on legal resources, 50% goes to your lawyer and 50% to opposing counsel. You can spend $1,000,000, or go pro se, but the other side gets the same resources.
Another way to make this work is to cap expenses for both sides (I believe Germany does this for many types of cases).
The deeper issue is that there have been no serious efforts at reform. The system basically needs to be re-invented from the ground up. A lot of disputes which should not be adversarial (such as family law) are made into such, and there are misaligned incentives all over the place.
>at every trial there is a prosecutor whose job is try to get you convicted whether they think you did it or not
That must vary a lot by jurisdiction. In San Francisco and neighboring Alameda County (Oakland, Berkeley), prosecutors are facing criticism for their insistence that they will not bring charges unless they believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, even when there appears to be a lot of evidence in that direction. Essentially, they are pre-empting the jury's job. It's so bad that Alameda D.A. is facing a possible recall just a year after being elected, for not bringing charges that in the past would have been routine.
> In my opinion one of the biggest but under appreciated problems is that at every trial there is a prosecutor whose job is try to get you convicted whether they think you did it or not.
Once a case is under trial, that’s their job, isn’t it, just as it’s the job of the defense to get an acquittal, even if they think or even know you did it?
I think the problem is pre trial, with trials getting started even though there’s no good evidence.
Yes it is their job. That’s stupid. You’re an absolute stain on society if you sit around thinking “this guy seems innocent but I bet I can send him to jail if I convince everyone he’s a scary person”
We are confusing diligence and factual reporting with incentivized persuasion.
The death penalty is very much the problem when the entire justice system is corrupt.
Statistically, minorities are much more likely to be sent to death once convicted. The state has unlimited resources to convict someone and the defendant usually only has an overworked underpaid public defender.
Since this article is about specifically the Supreme Court not taking the case, it bears mentioning that the SC usually only takes cases where there is an important or controversial legal principle at stake, particularly when multiple appellate courts have interpreted the law differently. It might be an entirely meritorious case but they get over 7,000 petitions each year and only have time to accept about 2% of them. By necessity they have to take cases where the facts and the judicial process are such that a ruling from the SC will have an impact on the entire justice system and how lower courts interpret the law.
I wish I only had to work on 70 things in an entire year! Even better if I got to pick and choose which things I'd be working on. Now imagine if a whole chain of other people had already worked on all of those things before they even got to me, leaving me with all their notes and conclusions.
I'd have all the time in the world to accept bribes from billionaires and take fancy trips on their private jets and yachts too!
By contrast, someone innocent where DNA evidence was available but untested for 21 years and was left to languish in prison. If the death penalty had been applied, there's no "undo" button.
"LOS ANGELES — A man who spent more than 38 years behind bars for a 1983 murder he did not commit was declared innocent by a judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday."
"“I am not standing up here a bitter man, but I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it,” Hastings said."
As an American citizen, who has spent time in prison (abroad) and just came out recently, I tell you I have no idea how this guy survived this. He seems to be an incredibly strong person and his smile shows kindness.
> The DNA profile was put into a state database and matched to a person who was convicted of an armed kidnapping and forced copulation of a female victim who was placed in a vehicle’s trunk. The suspect, Kenneth Packnett, died in prison in 2020, prosecutors said.
I wonder if Kenneth Packnett knew someone else was serving time for his crime, and if so, why he didn't fess up. If he did and it was to avoid a few extra years tacked onto his sentence, truly scumbag behavior.
It should come as no surprise that someone who doesn't value others, someone who value power over others, would relish in the idea that an other is being incarcerated because of their actions and all it takes is their silence.
> He seems to be an incredibly strong person and his smile shows kindness.
People often seem to say this about exonerees. Perhaps there's a selection bias at work here?
Something like, those unjustly convicted who are not strong and determined never get exonerated. And nor do black men who don't present as calm and full of forgiveness?
There's no undo button for 21 of your best years in prison either. You can compensate -- $20m for example, which is a "partial" undo, but it doesn't undo the harm caused.
You're right, there is no undo button for unnecessary prison time. However, given the choice, I'm sure the innocent people that were essentially murdered by the state would have preferred the option or time and compensation.
The death penalty is barbaric. There is no acceptable argument for it's existence.
I personally agree that the death penalty shouldn't be a thing, but if a court only sentenced definitely guilty people who committed very heinous crimes to death, why is the death penalty barbaric in that case? (Not leading you on, just wondering what your take on this is.)
I don't see how Heisenberg comes into this. I'm intentionally excluding anyone who definitely wouldn't deserve the dealth penalty as a premise. I mean someone who is determined guilty by an oracle, or if that doesn't satisfy you, a person who had intent and premeditation, and is acting alone.
>If the death penalty had been applied, there's no "undo" button.
There's no "undo" button for wasting away for 40 years in prison either
To me it looks like a glitch of the human cognition to think that losing almost/everyone you love, being dropped into a vastly different world than you knew, having your financial and social prospects thrown in the trash, living in shitty conditions for decades, is oh so much better and moral than killing them
Kinda makes one think that maybe a carceral justice system might not be the most humane and effective way of keeping our society safe and (relatively) orderly...
Well, while I agree that such people exist, their frequency is vastly exaggerated by popular media.
Many if not most of them can be prevented from ever becoming like that in the first place by eliminating poverty, which is a massive and omnipresent source of stress and trauma for people the world over.
There are sadists, psychopaths, and even pedophiles (defined as "those who are sexually attracted to prepubescent bodies", not "those who commit actual acts of child sexual abuse") who live mostly-normal lives and if they ever desire to hurt others, do not act on those desires. This is a pretty clear signal that the existence of these types of people does not inherently lead to them becoming violent, dangerous, or otherwise causing harm.
Is this a short-term project? Hell no. If a majority of the people in all the countries on Earth decided today to commit to a project to abolish the carceral state, I'd be surprised if we'd see it reach a stage where it's fully abolished within our lifetimes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't set it as an aspirational goal, and start taking steps toward a world that doesn't have to worry about making a decision between executing innocent people and allowing people to walk free who are genuinely likely to harm others.
That sucks. There is mandatory restitution in some states now. It should be required to come from the budgets of prosecution DA offices in order to prevent the gamification of over-conviction for reelection stats. States in the South, especially Louisiana, are notorious for their punitive criminal justice systems.
You're taking a worst case. Also, you are calling something out without providing what -you- would do in the situation? Maybe we could let them choose death if a lifetime sentence is the decision. What you're implying is just letting criminals out as the only alternative and that's never going to fly. If you're going to criticize something, it's good to propose your solution.
The problem is where do you draw the line? Because I am for the death penalty in extreme cases, like when that neo-nazi in Norway murdered dozens of children and there was no doubt he did it.
But when something happens in a home, with just one surviving witness being the suspect, I don't think they should be so quick to sentence someone to the death penalty.
It should exist as a deterrent, but only in extreme and very clear cut cases.
The death penalty does not deter people from committing crimes -- that neo-Nazi would have killed those kids regardless. Murdering him doesn't bring the kids back. The death penalty was enacted initially because there were no long term prisons -- the way to keep someone from committing more crimes was to kill them. Now we have other options.
When Breivik was aged 4, and living in Oslo's Frogner borough, two reports were filed expressing concern about his mental health.[47] A psychologist in one report made a note of the boy's peculiar smile, suggesting it was not anchored in his emotions but was rather a deliberate response to his environment.[48] In another report from Norway's National Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (SSBU), concerns were raised about how Breivik was treated by his mother: "[s]he 'sexualised' the young Breivik, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished that he were dead."
Whatever he did, I have doubts that he was sane. But the question is, which problem does the death penalty really solve? Deterrence? Most death penalty countries have very high crime rates. Prevent another crime from the same individual? Life without parole has the same effect.
PS: Reading about Breivik, he was probably insane or at least on the border of insanity during his crimes. Judging by his actions in prison, he is at least insane by now. I doubt that he well get released after 21 years served and will get preventive detention. So basically, since he is mentally sick now he can't get released from prison, a place where he likely should not have been held in the first place.
You a right here, this may allow the case to be called extreme. But I am not sure he deserves the death penalty.
Extreme outliers are often used to justify extreme measures. The question is, should they? In an EU country we had just a murder case, a teen was murders by two girls, aged 13 and 12. Since this is below of the age of criminal responsibility for the country, where they were committed, people argued the age for criminal responsibility should be lowered to 12 or even below. Are extreme outliers a good basis for this? And if age of criminal responsibility is lowered to 12 or 10, should not the "age of consent" be lowered to 12 or 10 too?
Kindly, I think your logic here is too untethered from empathy to lead to positive questions. I think it's not an unusual state for someone to pass thru while they're still developing empathy.
In this case the well-being of the minors is being allowed to slip below the quality of legal machinations.
That said, I feel downvotes without explanations are unhelpful here.
So you're trying to say that because he's clearly insane from an abusive childhood that putting him to death would not be a deterrent?
I disagree.
Keeping him alive sends a message to every right wing nut out there that it doesn't matter how many children you massacre beause you'll be kept alive in a humane norwegian prison for the rest of your life as a symbol to all your followers.
> So you're trying to say that because he's clearly insane from an abusive childhood that putting him to death would not be a deterrent?
That is not what they're saying. The claimed deterrence from the death penalty is to give pause to would-be murderers such that they don't actually commit murder. Putting Breivik to death obviously does not serve as a deterrent to Breivik's past crimes and, while it can ensure that future crimes also do not occur, so can putting him in prison.
Well to me, and to many others, death is final. Putting him away immediately would put him out of people's minds and send a signal to anyone who wants to achieve notoriety that there is nothing there but finality and obscurity.
Instead he keeps re-appearing in media whenever he complains or tries to get a case going. And even if he didn't, his followers till know he's there and can continue praising him for his sick ideas.
I see this sentiment often and I understand the idea, but how can you implement this "no doubt he did it, very clear cut case" level of guilt? We already have Guilty which is supposed to mean that guilt has been proven beyond reasonable doubt (or however it's phrased in each justice system).
Of course in the real world that's not always the case, but are you going to take two Guilty verdicts and say "A is kind of Guilty but not enough for the death penalty, however B is extremely Guilty and should be put to death"?
Or add a new verdict? Not Guilty, Guilty and Definitely Guilty?
ohnono, the death penalty would be much too good for him. No he will waste the rest of his life playing the worst ps2 games and attempting to write his memories with a rubber pencil that hurts his hand. All while getting invasive naked body searches multiple times a day. Had they put him down he would not experience any consequences from his actions.
Can't say I'm opposed to police acting with more agency when confronting the Breviks and Tarrants of the world. But a bureaucratic procedure enacted by the state isn't going to deter an individual operating on passion or religious adherence to a faulty belief system.
The issue is not the death penalty itself, but the application and the system around it in the US.
For an alternative approach, in Islam we have a rule that Ḥadd punishments are to be averted by rejecting doubtful evidence. The point is to deter people from crime, and have a stable society, not to apply the punishment for the sake of the punishment as some seem to think. As such, practically all cases that are brought up in these discussions would not have had the penalty applied.
Same here. It's overly expensive, and if even 1 innocent dies to satisfy a society's barbarity that proves that it's cruel and unusual punishment and a completely flawed premise. While there are cases where the felon is caught on camera doing it with no doubt possible, however most are convicted under "reasonable doubt" as a guideline, thus there is leeway in the vast majority of cases that something was missed, and we should leave the possibility that an incorrect conviction was given. Maybe we could add a new level of "absolute certainty" where the perp was caught on camera, seen by 10 eyewitnesses with zero doubt, etc, in order to satisfy the most bloodthirsty of society for execution.
Sadly, this is entirely unsurprising - justice is blind, generally in the worst possible way, and states do not like to admit that they are capable of making mistakes. Millions, if not billions, of people have suffered and died over the years purely because states wanted to dogmatically and cruelly demonstrate their ownership and power over the individual.
> The country’s highest court issued its denial on Monday morning giving no explanation
> he has already exhausted appeals through Texas state courts and must now rely on the mercy of the Republican governor Greg Abbott
This is not what a justice system looks like. This is a step up from "justice" under feudal systems, but the gaping holes like this make it a small step. Even though it "works" sometimes (often?), the "worst case scenario" is so bad that the entire system must be measured by it.
None of us are in this man's shoes through absolutely no action taken on our part (beyond not having kids for those of us that don't).
As his lawyer says, this is a nightmare situation, but that's the reality of the USA "justice" system.
I agree that this is an example of State violence exercised arbitrarily over the individual but I don't attribute agency to the State here, I think it's more mundane in this case. This to me is more a symptom of the overall degradation humans in the USA and reflective of decreasing respect for human life in that country, and in general the modern world.
IMO it's worth considering why this kind of blatant injustice, and similar ones, hasn't led to more outcry. To me that's an alarm bell that the majority of people have successfully been cowed, and more dramatic restrictions on our human rights are to come (we can see various governments and bureaucracies fighting an unending war against our technological freedoms).
Maybe they consider that after destroying so thoroughly and completely a probably innocent man's life, it's just better to get the job done once and forever.
Well I'm against death penalty, and surely some things seem to have gone wrong in this court case, but the case is not as clear as the Guardian makes it look.
When you read a bit more about the case, you find for instance this:
> At trial, witnesses also testified that Roberson had a bad temper and would shake and spank Nikki when she wouldn’t stop crying.
The Guardian's original article before the appeal was denied covered this I think
>Its argument cites testimony from Teddie, Roberson’s estranged girlfriend, who said he had a bad temper and would yell at Nikki and hit her. Roberson’s legal team counter that Teddie was not a credible witness. Her own sister testified for Roberson, insisting she had never seen him mistreat Nikki and telling the jury Teddie had a problem with telling the truth.
Even if he was an abusive father that doesn’t mean he murdered the kid. Let alone that the evidence used to convict him of doing so was sound. Whilst I think that sort of physical abuse of children is repugnant it alone isn’t reason for the guy to be facing the death penalty. Which is a really long winded way of saying that this sort of muddying of the waters isn’t a great argument.
When it comes to babies, doing ANYTHING irresponsible with them is a huge risk because if the baby were to die, you would immediatedy be under suspicion and have difficulty proving your innocence even if the death was just by chance.
It is exactly as clear as it makes it look. He was convicted virtually entirely on junk science, because that testimony from his ex, if you even believe it, only slightly modifies the prior probability that he is capable of committing the crime it doesn't much change the fact that the child pretty clearly died of illness. It certainly doesn't without the fallacious forensic fantasy establish that he or anyone abused the child to death.
If you don't have evidence a crime exists its pretty meaningless to speak to someone's motivation to commit it.
Do you know more about this case than was written in the article? Because as far as I know, shaking remains a possible explanation for our observations -- what was "junk" about the science was that it jumped to conclusions too hastily.
>If you don't have evidence a crime exists its pretty meaningless to speak to someone's motivation to commit it.
This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't know if a crime exists, because there are multiple possible explanations for our observations, but that certainly doesn't imply that a crime did not occur. Motivation is important here. (Based on other comments, the defence claimed the partner is unreliable, which is also important here, if true. But the point remains that if a credible witness made such a claim about him, that would be important in determining the likelihood that a crime took place.)
> shaking remains a possible explanation for our observations
This means the standard to investigate and gather evidence. The standard for conviction is beyond a shadow of a doubt. The question was never ever can we reverse the burden of proof and prove that he is innocent. The point is we never proved his guilt because we initially met that standard based on pseudoscience.
> This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't know if a crime exists, because there are multiple possible explanations for our observations, but that certainly doesn't imply that a crime did not occur.
Again this is the standard to investigate a crime and you are affirming my claim that we don't know that a crime occured.
>if a credible witness made such a claim about him, that would be important in determining the likelihood that a crime took place.
Again no this is completely backwards. It WOULD be relevant if and only if the child has a cause of death wherein we had to decide if he could have done it. If the question was did the child fell or did he push her it would be extremely relevant but if we can't convince ourselves that something happened it is meaningless to ask why something happened.
They are properly independent questions. Lets make it simpler if we weren't sure he was actually in Texas would you say a witness to his character was relevant to the question of his location like his motivation could go back in time and teleport him in space to another locale?
I'm not asking for your fuzzy judgement where we just stack positives and negatives on either side and user our gut to figure out which side is heavier I'm asking for you to exercise logical reasoning. Logical reasoning is that we never met our burden of proof in the first place and covered over that lack with prejudice and pseudoscience.
Second degree murder implies at minimum extreme indifference to human life if not intent to harm whereas he took her to the doctor then the hospital and gave her medicine then deemed medically appropriate and only now known to be harmful.
Where are you seeing the extreme indifference to human life?
> I don't believe child killing would require prior convictions in order to get the death penalty in Texas.
Noting here that using 'child killing' in this context loads the term. It unhelpfully stirs intended and unintended deaths together and conflates murder with awful mistakes made by poorly equipped, poorly informed or overpressured parents.
Parents who've lost infants after rolling onto them while sleeping - they ought not be lumped together with people who've killed a child thru a planned, horrific act.
Correct but do bear in mind that he isn't being accused of rolling over while sleeping he is being accused of shaking her to death by battering her little brain a cause of death we now have no reason to believe is accurate.
If the US didn't have the death penalty he'd just be sentenced to life in prison and nobody would care.
Another argument against corporal punishment I suppose.
Not to be too argumentative, but wouldn't that be an reason for the death penalty? That is, if the stakes are higher (life and death), people naturally care far more than they otherwise would. Were there no death penalty, then people would more naturally fall into that bureaucratic mental trap of "there's still time", when the time they're thinking of is the time of a human's life.
Personally, I find the concept of life in prison to be one of the greatest injustices made by man, and would vastly prefer people to be killed under false premise, or by outright mistake, rather than wasting away for decades under harsh conditions, surrounded by misery, despair, and hopelessness. This modernist quirk of "'life' behind bars" comes off with some strange stink of clinically accepted torture, under the understanding of the ineptitude of a system of justice run by human beings.
Just my two cents though, I know some would strongly disagree for various reasons.
The dissuasive value of death penalty have already been discussed a lot, but the discussion that immediately come to mind is the eloquent speech given by the French ministrer of justice (Robert Badinter) when they abolished death penalty in 1981 (if you speak French, have a listen; it's one of the great speeches).
The arguments were:
- There's no correlation between death penalty abolition and a reduction or increase in criminality curve
- The most death penalty-able crimes are crimes of passion or folly. People are not rational actors in these case, and have a death penalty
- "Cold-blooded" criminal (trafficker, pimp, maffiosi and such) would never put themselves in a situation where they could get death penalty
- "Criminal passion are no less stopped by the fear of death than other more noble passion. If the fear of death would dissuade people to act, then we would have neither great soldiers nor great sportmen. We admire them, but they do not hesitate in face of death. Nor will other people, taken by other passions. It's only for death penalty that we think that death will prevent people in their most extreme passions. This is not true."
> Not to be too argumentative, but wouldn't that be an reason for the death penalty? That is, if the stakes are higher (life and death), people naturally care far more than they otherwise would.
Not really. Locking an innocent person up for the rest of their life is high stakes enough, and plenty of people care about it. That's why we don't only ever overturn the sentences of people who are on death row. There's no requirement that we take a lax attitude towards innocent people being caged for any length of time.
While life behind bars might sound like torture, it doesn't have to be. It's unfortunate but there will always be some people who need to be kept apart from the rest of us for our safety. There's zero reason for those people to be kept in "harsh conditions, surrounded by misery, despair, and hopelessness". We can treat all prisoners humanely and allow them to live a decent (if heavily restricted) life locked away from the rest of us.
If we did that, any innocent person we mistakenly locked up would have zero reason to choose to die rather than stay locked up while fighting to get their sentence overturned. We'd still have every incentive to make sure we don't screw up.
Plenty of people sentenced to life in prison care, and some of them do get their sentence overturned because people actually do care about not locking innocent people up forever.
Ah, America. Where (comic book character) Superman's endless fight "for Truth and Justice" became "for Truth, Justice, and the American Way" - because the writers of the series soon noticed that truth and justice were definitely not the American way. And had a pretty good feel for just how far they could go, in editorializing that sad fact.
That motto was only ever used for radio dramas in the 1940s and the tv series in the 1950s. Over the long history of the Superman franchise, there have been plenty of variations[0], most without the "American way."
If we look at the system as it functions without applying a pernicious humanist bias, we see that property rights are protected with great success for those who can afford property.
1) You might want to search on "civil asset forfeiture" and compare that to the history of the Bill of Rights.
2) Also talk to a few residential landlords, about the innumerable rights of deadbeat and destructive tenants, the various COVID evictions moritoriums, etc.
A little marxism goes a long way here. If you read property as "stuff you own, anything at all" we're very inconsistent. If you read it as "capital" we're pretty solid. The covid eviction moratoriums still don't line up but frankly those were a tiny blip in our long and reliable history of protecting landowners.
Huh. It's just occurred to me that Superman was an illegal alien... I'm not all that well versed in comic book lore though; did he ever actually get naturalized?
The Nationality Act of 1940 basically says if someone presumably under 5 is found in the US, theyre a citizen unless theyre proven to be from another country. In a couple stories he's granted honorary citizenship.
The Nationality Act of 1940 is apparently a thing[1].
Of course it depends on the storyline. In one, Superman renounces his American citizenship while Clark Kent kept it.
For a very similar case see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham, He was executed in Texas despite there being real concern that he was innocent (which he claimed from day one) and the majority of the evidence used to convict him was arson patterns that have been widely considered to be junk science for decades now too.
And after listening to Josh Dubin on Joe Rogan a few years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROU7G0d4iyE) its pretty clear the US has a fairly high error rate for death row.
(Also I'm not a big fan of joe rogan, but this might be one of his better podcasts)
Yes, there are similar forensic unreliability issues between arson and shaken baby syndrome. Look up "negative corpus" [1]: it's not because you could not find any explanation for a fire or a death that it's necessarily a crime.
No, no one thinks it's just for death row, only that executions are final and there's no undoing them, and so the expectations among the general public are that we're much more careful in those cases. We can release a falsely jailed person and even pay restitution or the time lost, but we can't do the same for an executed person so the stakes are higher and one would expect a lower false positive rate as a result.
Unfortunately, Texas is far and away the most corrupt state in the union. This isn't even a particular exaggeration, we know that the state has executed innocent people multiple times and their response is to double down on it.
I don't see a way for this man to have the case properly reevaluated. So he's trapped in the worst possible situation.
I know it's something that is very frowned upon publicly give the emotional response, but I honestly put infanticide at one step below murder, and I'm sorry that high emotions make any discussion futile.
It's still atrocious, but given how easy negligence could lead to death and how an infant is not really a person in my eyes, I'd consider a special category for it.
In your opinion, when does a person become a person, then?
Surely if it's a matter of mental aptitude, you've considered the ramifications of mental retardation, etc. Is it just a size thing, or something else? Genuinely curious.
Note: I'd probably still expect some emotional responses if this receives a lot of interest.
I'm from Romania actually, this isn't something tied to my upbringing.
Infanticide has been a cruel part of human life almost for our entire existence. You'd be surprised to find out how common it was before the universal religions pacified us.
I honestly can't quantify myself what makes "a person", only list instances when it's a clear yes/no for me personally. Note that I'm not advocating anything, I'm just giving my view.
At 6 months a child feels mostly like an instinct-driven animal, but at 2-3 years for instance they clearly have awareness of themselves and the world. Somewhere a switch happens, and in this gray area I don't know.
Adults with mental retardation still have a consciousness, but if you're a braindead vegetable you don't, so the line is somewhere there.
Thanks for the response. Honestly, I do see a few things there that sound deeply concerning to me, but I appreciate the fact that you're willing to say that you don't know.
Just for my own edification, are you religious at all? I'm asking, not as "an opportunity to preach" or finger wag or whatever, but just because I've found this kind of position to generally be followed by unbelievers more frequently than not. I try not to assume to know too much about complete strangers though, so I try to challenge various assumptions I form about others.
I'm not at all religious, even though I was brought up in religious environment, you hinted correctly. I don't believe in the existence of the human soul.
I do find a deep alignment to the core Christian values of forgiveness and love of others. I would risk my life for my family members, including my spouse and love them dearly.
Is there room for that? To what degree is that admitting to perjury?
It seems to me like it is really hard to make room to recant in a justice system. Mostly because if allows already convicted people to pressure experts to recant. But also because it lets people get out of intentional perjury (not that these doctors were intentionally wrong).
Besides that, I imagine they really don't want the publicity. Or perhaps they feel like they are morally covered by their original testimony being phrased like "according to the state of the art", or "to the best of my current knowledge", so that new insights don't make the statements false.
Autistic parent is going to get killed for being Autistic. This is just another reason why I don't want children and don't get near children. I don't want the trouble of other people's prejudice.
Another case on how the judicial system is flawed, so many cases where innocent people were convicted while the real crooks are having dinner on private jets.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadThe problem is a judicial review system that's extremely hesitant to consider exculpatory evidence following a conviction... and here we have an edge case where the conviction was gained by discredited scientific means. Science adapts quickly to new evidence and new methods, and quickly discards old ones; the courts don't work that way.
And we also need to get rid of elected judges.
The developed world do just fine wuthout a jury system.
I'm unfamiliar with the laws and jurisprudence on bench trials in the US, but the impression I have is that judges are either required to simply follow the law, or are at least bound by custom to do so.
You can have multiple judges decide over a case, which will work even better if you don't allow fake science into the courts.
We don't drag someone off the street at random for most jobs now do we?
Here in Germany we have a system were "volunteer" judges are elected from the general public. On lower levels there then are two volunteer and one regular judge*, where the regular judge is leading the trial, but volunteers got same right to ask question and votes are equal, thus the two volunteers could overrule the regular judge, (both for deciding whether guilty or not and the punishment) while in most cases they probably follow the suggestion of the regular judge.
If the verdict is challenged upper courts only have regular judges.
Goal is to have, both the legal expertise, but also the "common sense" in the ruling.
* in some cases the numbers may be different, there are sometimes 3 regular and two volunteer or something in between
This isn't a normal job. We don't hire 6 to 23 people for a single job, and jurors aren't random. Yes, jury summons are sent randomly, but they'll have hundreds summoned and then jury selection starts. It's not unlike a job interview. If someone is on the jury who's going to be biased or unreasonable, that's a failure of their legal counsel.
But such a trial has nothing to do with justice. It relies on the dark arts of psychiatry.
As far as I know, they get a lot of money, funny hair and get to do whatever they want with no checks.
It's a mystery why it would work even part of the time.
With juries they are completely free to ignore any and all evidence but because it's a jury, you get 12 people agreeing on something together, it's so much harder to get an appeal because "you were judged fairly by your peers" and all of that nonsense.
And of course, lastly - there are many countries with no jury systems or where juries are only used in the worst of crimes, and I have never seen any stat suggesting that these countries are less just than US is.
Judges are no better than juries of one. Worse, for consider what type of person becomes a judge.
...You must become a lawyer. But note the fact that judges earn 10-20x less than top-decile lawyers at an equal stage in their careers. The best lawyers can actually make 100x. (About $20M/year.)
...So you're either a failed lawyer who absolutely can't cut it in private practice, or the type of twisted personality who values status and power over your fellow man FAR more than you value money. Most of the time, the latter; in some cases you are a "covert politician" who wants to legislate from the bench.
Given the financial and status incentives, it's an extremely strange person who becomes a judge. I'd trust a jury, whatever its composition, before I trust an American judge to fairly determine my fate.
Let me ask it this way - why are nurses doing what they do, even though it's a grueling job that pays very little? Is it fair to conclude that they must all be psychopaths because only a psychopath would agree to these conditions?
Trust me on this, "justice" is somewhere down its list of priorities; it cares more for tradition, ritual, and form. In civil court, just causes very frequently (indeed, almost as a rule,) lose -- and often because one side doesn't have deep enough pockets to engage proper representation and survive the expensive process of discovery in Federal court.
A noble-minded judge, as you describe, wouldn't last a year. He'd quickly end up looking like the stereotype of the beleaguered public defender: Harried, exhausted, and unable to do a good job as he sees it.
The people who do survive as judges are a very, very strange breed.
I know a few judges, albeit not federal ones. They’re generally the philosophical type. The ambitious ones are keenly aware that their decisions will be re-hashed for the rest of their career. Also, judges being bound by “tradition, ritual and form” is an important part of the rule of law. Respecting that is a major component of justice.
> Trust me on this, "justice" is somewhere down its list of priorities; it cares more for tradition, ritual, and form.
I think is somewhat true, and is a generally applicable criticism of law and lawyers. I don't think values like justice are far down their list of priorities, but I think tradition etc. are just given too much weight. Lawyers constitute a tribe and collective which takes itself too seriously, at the end of the day, and don't value self-correction and improvement enough.
There are plenty of noble-minded judges. The reason why litigation becomes expensive, and thus poses fairness issues, is a multi-faceted problem that boils down to a lot of boring things. Most people in law haven't had what I would consider a real job, and the culture of law is too obsequious and deferential for people to understand that the way lawyers have been doing things is usually stupid. They don't have a culture of thinking about how they work, and their personality types are very geared towards external validation, which means they will do things very stupidly if they get accolades and very meager financial bonuses for it, and they mistake such things as markers of actual progress and productivity.
I could go on, and I reckon you have more experience in law than I do (I have been a software engineer for longer than I worked at law firm), but I think at the end of the day, I would remind you and others reading of the adage that one should not jump too quickly to ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
> a failed lawyer
Isn't there anything in between? And, the lawyers who make $20 million a year might only be able to do so by serving a lot of slimy clients, so not necessary a category to admire.
That's a feature of the system. If we had perfect information and judgement we wouldn't even need courts in the first place. It's also the case that the law itself can be unjust, should it be blindly applied, or is it good that the jury can declare someone not guilty anyways?
> At the end it's a matter of which side can build a more passionate argument to sway the juries
Right. So it's interesting that the prosecution gets a regular plus a "rebuttal" closing argument that the defense never gets. It's interesting the way courtrooms are laid out. It's interesting that the state in many circumstances cannot supply exculpatory testimony on your behalf, even if they have it.
My point being, there are so many more worthy things to consider before presuming juries themselves are the problem. Those who have made these arrangements are happy that you see it this way, though.
> rather than what evidence is actually presented and its rational meaning.
Do you have some evidence that this occurred in this case? We are examining it more than 20 years after the fact. At the time the jury thought it had the best explanation, and it might have even been "common knowledge." I certainly remember the "shaken baby" period in the zeitgeist of the time.
> So yeah of course the American judicial system is not willing to review past convictions based on scientific discoveries
Quite the contrary. His first execution was halted and he was granted review under a Texas law commonly called the "junk science law." He quite literally got this exact review.
All that being said capital punishment is amoral and especially irreconcilable with all the above facts. In no sense am I defending it, just our system of jury trials.
Ok, I didn't know that - should have read up more on this case before I commented.
>>or is it good that the jury can declare someone not guilty anyways?
Maybe. I find it much more troublesome that the jury can be presented with literally undeniable evidence that someone is innocent and still vote guilty anyway. Not that a judge couldn't do that of course - but like I said in my other comment, such a conviction would be a lot easier to appeal against, compared to a conviction made by a jury.
Usually that's not really what happens. It's often woefully inadequate defence (either due to incompetence or because the public defender is juggling 19 other cases), misconstrued evidence, bad evidence (which is more or less what happened here), and things like that.
- Law enforcement needs to raise the issue to a prosecutor
- A prosecutor needs to pick up the case
- A grand jury needs to indite you
- A petite jury needs to find you guilty
- A judge needs to sentence you with a penalty (as opposed to stern talking to)
Each of those is intended as a check-and-balance in the system. All of those have been steamrolled with misaligned incentives, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc., but that's how it's supposed to work.
Tangent: it’s spelled indict, not indite (but it is pronounced as if it were indite)
Really? How do you mean?
See the Post Office scandal in the UK for a terrible example of justice gone badly wrong, due entirely to juries allowing technical "evidence" (which turned out to be fraudulent) to overrule common sense everyday right-feelings.
https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/...
legally this has come to mean that "machines do not make mistakes" ie if a mechanical device has done the same thing hundreds or thousands of times in exactly the same way, it is not a defence to say it must have started doing something differently. This idea was conceived well before anyone started programming computer software, and was meant to represent basic mechanical devices (say, a cash register), rather than the interlinked electronic eco-systems we depend on nowadays.
Thirdly, there is a widespread public perception that electronic evidence is infallible, hence the readiness of juries to convict on computer records alone.
Every time this common opinion gets posted, it seems as though the people making this point are largely unaware the defendant always has the choice of a bench trial, which is decided only by a judge. In fact, the judicial system would much rather defendants choose a bench trial rather than a jury trial, because it's quicker and much cheaper, and the system is overloaded.
Defendants and their defense lawyers are choosing jury trials because they think they have better odds than with a bench trial. That is, you're proposing taking away what defendants like this choosing jury trials perceive to be the better route.
And it seemed pretty clear that juries aren't really operating at 12 independent people with critical reasoning skills. Overwhelmingly there are always a few people with real reservations who vote to convict anyway. Those people always justify it to themselves with various reasons. And the reasoning they uncovered were things like "if he is innocent this will get overturned on appeal" or "everyone else on this jury is convinced of the evidence they cant all be wrong" or lots of other internal justifications people use to live with themselves.
I was on a jury once for a murder case and we had the opposite problem. One juror kept repeatedly arguing that she thought the guy was guilty of one of the charges, but she couldn't explain why. Everyone else voted not guilty, because the evidence just wasn't there. We had to repeatedly explain to her that she was the textbook example of reasonable doubt. Eventually she decided to vote not guilty but it cost us several hours because it had to be unanimous in either direction.
Actually this is great news, those juries can stand against big companies.
A jury of twelve is democratic and those people can put themselves in your shoes.
Is it? One obstinate person can upend the whole process.
> and those people can put themselves in your shoes
Unless you happen to not be of the same demographic as the majority of pool the jury is drawing from.
I know, I know, "Well, what do you suggest?". I'm not sure, but I don't think that the jury system is democratic, nor do I think it guarantees that you're going to have people who are empathetic.
Sure. We’re dealing with life and fundamental freedoms. This fundamentally comes down to the value of innocence.
Juries are democratic in that they devolve power to a body of citizens, not the government. The unanimity requirement is a check on the mob, alongside various court procedures and the appeals process.
The jury is the democratic organ. The value of innocence is what motivates the undemocratic check of a unanimity requirement. You complained about one person upending the system. That’s the cost of valuing innocence.
> the tyranny of the minority is largely considered undemocratic
Yes, supermajority requirements are not perfectly democratic. Nobody argued juries are perfect democracies. Just that they’re more democratic than systems in which a judge decides everything.
The value of innocence is technically orthogonal; you could instruct a judge to bias one way or another. But that’s structurally guaranteed by a jury in a way it cannot with bureaucrats, even a panel of them.
However, the French government is now increasingly pushing for the replacement of juries by judges ("cours criminelles"), in some criminal cases, particularly child abuse ones. Acquittals are becoming harder to obtain in these cases.
Juries can declare you guilty, but it's the judge that sentences someone to death
The problem with the death penalty is masked slightly because of the US’s lengthy appeals process and the Innocence project which delays a lot of these death penalties from being carried out which has meant that in many instances they have succeeded in delaying the death penalty long enough for the science that could acquit the innocent to be established.
And in states which care about justice, as opposed to bloodlust, it’s saved innocent lives (and equally importantly, in some cases, helped nab the actual guilty party).
But these stories are becoming increasingly rare because the states that care about justice as opposed to bloodlust have increasingly joined the first world by abandoning the death penalty altogether. Imprisonment for life still allows for innocence to be proven. The death penalty eliminates that option and it’s impossible to know at the time of sentencing whether new evidence would turn up.
There are a number of recourses to rectify wrongful imprisonment - none for death.
For example, there's elections every two(?) years - a new president or governor could commute the remaining sentence?
Given the choice between death and two years in prison - I know what I would prefer...
To expand on that, appeals are not intended to re-litigate the facts. They are there to fix procedural mistakes during trial, or wrong argumentation of how the law should be applied.
The question of 'what happened' is generally not up for debate during appeal, and is generally not grounds for lodging an appeal. Instead, appeals are meant for when the law was applied wrong. Or when a trial was unfair due to a judge's mistake. Effectively, it is meant to protect you against judge's mistakes and unscrupulous prosecutors. There is much less protection against experts that happen to be wrong.
It seems to me that a system like that is fundamentally incompatible with a death-penalty, since it leaves a decent amount of space for mistakes that go uncorrected.
IANAL, but I understand certain kind of "evidence" are inadmissible in court due to unreliability/being junk science (e.g. lie detector results). I think it should be possible to classify the admission of unreliable evidence as the judge's mistake, even if that evidence (or type of evidence) was found to be unreliable after conviction.
Basically, the standard should be that judges are supposed to be perfectly reliable when evaluating evidence, and should have been expected to catch any issue that was later discovered, so a later standard of inadmissibility is retroactive.
If it isn't the, the rules ought to be changed (and this change seems narrow enough to me that it shouldn't cause any problems).
There is no way to correct a mistake that deprives a human being of years of liberty, either. If anything I find it more horrifying that we're willing to say, "Eh, at least you're alive", at apparently leave it at that.
I'm not calling for infinite appeals and suchlike denial-of-service attacks on the courts. But it seems that we've simply written off the notion of being just entirely, and the highest court in the land seems comfortable with that.
Any money that either side spends on legal resources, 50% goes to your lawyer and 50% to opposing counsel. You can spend $1,000,000, or go pro se, but the other side gets the same resources.
Another way to make this work is to cap expenses for both sides (I believe Germany does this for many types of cases).
The deeper issue is that there have been no serious efforts at reform. The system basically needs to be re-invented from the ground up. A lot of disputes which should not be adversarial (such as family law) are made into such, and there are misaligned incentives all over the place.
That must vary a lot by jurisdiction. In San Francisco and neighboring Alameda County (Oakland, Berkeley), prosecutors are facing criticism for their insistence that they will not bring charges unless they believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty, even when there appears to be a lot of evidence in that direction. Essentially, they are pre-empting the jury's job. It's so bad that Alameda D.A. is facing a possible recall just a year after being elected, for not bringing charges that in the past would have been routine.
Once a case is under trial, that’s their job, isn’t it, just as it’s the job of the defense to get an acquittal, even if they think or even know you did it?
I think the problem is pre trial, with trials getting started even though there’s no good evidence.
We are confusing diligence and factual reporting with incentivized persuasion.
Statistically, minorities are much more likely to be sent to death once convicted. The state has unlimited resources to convict someone and the defendant usually only has an overworked underpaid public defender.
Only? That’s 140 cases a year, or one every two working days. Sounds like an extremely high number to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_U.S._Supreme_Court_c... says it’s ≈70 per year. That’s less, but IMO still very high.
I'd have all the time in the world to accept bribes from billionaires and take fancy trips on their private jets and yachts too!
Innocent people can be freed once errors are discovered. Dead people can't.
Arkansas executed an innocent person. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/ledell-lee-dna-testing...
By contrast, someone innocent where DNA evidence was available but untested for 21 years and was left to languish in prison. If the death penalty had been applied, there's no "undo" button.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/l-man-wrongly-imprisone...
"“I am not standing up here a bitter man, but I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it,” Hastings said."
As an American citizen, who has spent time in prison (abroad) and just came out recently, I tell you I have no idea how this guy survived this. He seems to be an incredibly strong person and his smile shows kindness.
I wonder if Kenneth Packnett knew someone else was serving time for his crime, and if so, why he didn't fess up. If he did and it was to avoid a few extra years tacked onto his sentence, truly scumbag behavior.
People often seem to say this about exonerees. Perhaps there's a selection bias at work here?
Something like, those unjustly convicted who are not strong and determined never get exonerated. And nor do black men who don't present as calm and full of forgiveness?
The death penalty is barbaric. There is no acceptable argument for it's existence.
A full confession that is never retracted?
What about cases where an innocent person is coerced into thinking they are guilty?
In a world where we accept the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, where does this certainty of guilt arise?
There's no "undo" button for wasting away for 40 years in prison either
To me it looks like a glitch of the human cognition to think that losing almost/everyone you love, being dropped into a vastly different world than you knew, having your financial and social prospects thrown in the trash, living in shitty conditions for decades, is oh so much better and moral than killing them
There are people who kill for fun, kill for money, people who rape, people who torture for fun.
Many if not most of them can be prevented from ever becoming like that in the first place by eliminating poverty, which is a massive and omnipresent source of stress and trauma for people the world over.
There are sadists, psychopaths, and even pedophiles (defined as "those who are sexually attracted to prepubescent bodies", not "those who commit actual acts of child sexual abuse") who live mostly-normal lives and if they ever desire to hurt others, do not act on those desires. This is a pretty clear signal that the existence of these types of people does not inherently lead to them becoming violent, dangerous, or otherwise causing harm.
Is this a short-term project? Hell no. If a majority of the people in all the countries on Earth decided today to commit to a project to abolish the carceral state, I'd be surprised if we'd see it reach a stage where it's fully abolished within our lifetimes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't set it as an aspirational goal, and start taking steps toward a world that doesn't have to worry about making a decision between executing innocent people and allowing people to walk free who are genuinely likely to harm others.
There's payouts, at least. And it doesn't have to take 40 years.
The conclusion would be that those people are "suicidal", rather than admit death might be preferable for rational reasons.
If someone uses 1+1=3 as an argument you don't need to figure out an actual answer to point out their argument is bollocks
>What you're implying is just letting criminals out as the only alternative
I'm implying no such thing. I'm saying that specific moral argument is bullshit if they find the current punishment ceiling acceptable
But when something happens in a home, with just one surviving witness being the suspect, I don't think they should be so quick to sentence someone to the death penalty.
It should exist as a deterrent, but only in extreme and very clear cut cases.
When Breivik was aged 4, and living in Oslo's Frogner borough, two reports were filed expressing concern about his mental health.[47] A psychologist in one report made a note of the boy's peculiar smile, suggesting it was not anchored in his emotions but was rather a deliberate response to his environment.[48] In another report from Norway's National Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (SSBU), concerns were raised about how Breivik was treated by his mother: "[s]he 'sexualised' the young Breivik, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished that he were dead."
See also https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/959...
See also his Psychiatric evaluation under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
Whatever he did, I have doubts that he was sane. But the question is, which problem does the death penalty really solve? Deterrence? Most death penalty countries have very high crime rates. Prevent another crime from the same individual? Life without parole has the same effect.
PS: Reading about Breivik, he was probably insane or at least on the border of insanity during his crimes. Judging by his actions in prison, he is at least insane by now. I doubt that he well get released after 21 years served and will get preventive detention. So basically, since he is mentally sick now he can't get released from prison, a place where he likely should not have been held in the first place.
A rate of occurrence so low it is best described in terms like 'extreme outlier', 'vanishingly rare' or 'unprecedented'.
Extreme outliers are often used to justify extreme measures. The question is, should they? In an EU country we had just a murder case, a teen was murders by two girls, aged 13 and 12. Since this is below of the age of criminal responsibility for the country, where they were committed, people argued the age for criminal responsibility should be lowered to 12 or even below. Are extreme outliers a good basis for this? And if age of criminal responsibility is lowered to 12 or 10, should not the "age of consent" be lowered to 12 or 10 too?
In this case the well-being of the minors is being allowed to slip below the quality of legal machinations.
That said, I feel downvotes without explanations are unhelpful here.
I disagree.
Keeping him alive sends a message to every right wing nut out there that it doesn't matter how many children you massacre beause you'll be kept alive in a humane norwegian prison for the rest of your life as a symbol to all your followers.
That is not what they're saying. The claimed deterrence from the death penalty is to give pause to would-be murderers such that they don't actually commit murder. Putting Breivik to death obviously does not serve as a deterrent to Breivik's past crimes and, while it can ensure that future crimes also do not occur, so can putting him in prison.
Instead he keeps re-appearing in media whenever he complains or tries to get a case going. And even if he didn't, his followers till know he's there and can continue praising him for his sick ideas.
Of course in the real world that's not always the case, but are you going to take two Guilty verdicts and say "A is kind of Guilty but not enough for the death penalty, however B is extremely Guilty and should be put to death"?
Or add a new verdict? Not Guilty, Guilty and Definitely Guilty?
For an alternative approach, in Islam we have a rule that Ḥadd punishments are to be averted by rejecting doubtful evidence. The point is to deter people from crime, and have a stable society, not to apply the punishment for the sake of the punishment as some seem to think. As such, practically all cases that are brought up in these discussions would not have had the penalty applied.
> he has already exhausted appeals through Texas state courts and must now rely on the mercy of the Republican governor Greg Abbott
This is not what a justice system looks like. This is a step up from "justice" under feudal systems, but the gaping holes like this make it a small step. Even though it "works" sometimes (often?), the "worst case scenario" is so bad that the entire system must be measured by it.
None of us are in this man's shoes through absolutely no action taken on our part (beyond not having kids for those of us that don't).
As his lawyer says, this is a nightmare situation, but that's the reality of the USA "justice" system.
I agree that this is an example of State violence exercised arbitrarily over the individual but I don't attribute agency to the State here, I think it's more mundane in this case. This to me is more a symptom of the overall degradation humans in the USA and reflective of decreasing respect for human life in that country, and in general the modern world.
IMO it's worth considering why this kind of blatant injustice, and similar ones, hasn't led to more outcry. To me that's an alarm bell that the majority of people have successfully been cowed, and more dramatic restrictions on our human rights are to come (we can see various governments and bureaucracies fighting an unending war against our technological freedoms).
A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 September 2023 (1012 points)
> At trial, witnesses also testified that Roberson had a bad temper and would shake and spank Nikki when she wouldn’t stop crying.
>Its argument cites testimony from Teddie, Roberson’s estranged girlfriend, who said he had a bad temper and would yell at Nikki and hit her. Roberson’s legal team counter that Teddie was not a credible witness. Her own sister testified for Roberson, insisting she had never seen him mistreat Nikki and telling the jury Teddie had a problem with telling the truth.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/24/texas-death-ro...
If you don't have evidence a crime exists its pretty meaningless to speak to someone's motivation to commit it.
Do you know more about this case than was written in the article? Because as far as I know, shaking remains a possible explanation for our observations -- what was "junk" about the science was that it jumped to conclusions too hastily.
>If you don't have evidence a crime exists its pretty meaningless to speak to someone's motivation to commit it.
This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't know if a crime exists, because there are multiple possible explanations for our observations, but that certainly doesn't imply that a crime did not occur. Motivation is important here. (Based on other comments, the defence claimed the partner is unreliable, which is also important here, if true. But the point remains that if a credible witness made such a claim about him, that would be important in determining the likelihood that a crime took place.)
This means the standard to investigate and gather evidence. The standard for conviction is beyond a shadow of a doubt. The question was never ever can we reverse the burden of proof and prove that he is innocent. The point is we never proved his guilt because we initially met that standard based on pseudoscience.
> This claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We don't know if a crime exists, because there are multiple possible explanations for our observations, but that certainly doesn't imply that a crime did not occur.
Again this is the standard to investigate a crime and you are affirming my claim that we don't know that a crime occured.
>if a credible witness made such a claim about him, that would be important in determining the likelihood that a crime took place.
Again no this is completely backwards. It WOULD be relevant if and only if the child has a cause of death wherein we had to decide if he could have done it. If the question was did the child fell or did he push her it would be extremely relevant but if we can't convince ourselves that something happened it is meaningless to ask why something happened.
They are properly independent questions. Lets make it simpler if we weren't sure he was actually in Texas would you say a witness to his character was relevant to the question of his location like his motivation could go back in time and teleport him in space to another locale?
I'm not asking for your fuzzy judgement where we just stack positives and negatives on either side and user our gut to figure out which side is heavier I'm asking for you to exercise logical reasoning. Logical reasoning is that we never met our burden of proof in the first place and covered over that lack with prejudice and pseudoscience.
https://manshoorylaw.com/blog/difference-between-1st-2nd-and...
It seems they have portrayed him as a cold, calculating murderer.
Second degree murder implies at minimum extreme indifference to human life if not intent to harm whereas he took her to the doctor then the hospital and gave her medicine then deemed medically appropriate and only now known to be harmful.
Where are you seeing the extreme indifference to human life?
Noting here that using 'child killing' in this context loads the term. It unhelpfully stirs intended and unintended deaths together and conflates murder with awful mistakes made by poorly equipped, poorly informed or overpressured parents.
Parents who've lost infants after rolling onto them while sleeping - they ought not be lumped together with people who've killed a child thru a planned, horrific act.
Personally, I find the concept of life in prison to be one of the greatest injustices made by man, and would vastly prefer people to be killed under false premise, or by outright mistake, rather than wasting away for decades under harsh conditions, surrounded by misery, despair, and hopelessness. This modernist quirk of "'life' behind bars" comes off with some strange stink of clinically accepted torture, under the understanding of the ineptitude of a system of justice run by human beings.
Just my two cents though, I know some would strongly disagree for various reasons.
The arguments were:
- There's no correlation between death penalty abolition and a reduction or increase in criminality curve
- The most death penalty-able crimes are crimes of passion or folly. People are not rational actors in these case, and have a death penalty
- "Cold-blooded" criminal (trafficker, pimp, maffiosi and such) would never put themselves in a situation where they could get death penalty
- "Criminal passion are no less stopped by the fear of death than other more noble passion. If the fear of death would dissuade people to act, then we would have neither great soldiers nor great sportmen. We admire them, but they do not hesitate in face of death. Nor will other people, taken by other passions. It's only for death penalty that we think that death will prevent people in their most extreme passions. This is not true."
Not really. Locking an innocent person up for the rest of their life is high stakes enough, and plenty of people care about it. That's why we don't only ever overturn the sentences of people who are on death row. There's no requirement that we take a lax attitude towards innocent people being caged for any length of time.
While life behind bars might sound like torture, it doesn't have to be. It's unfortunate but there will always be some people who need to be kept apart from the rest of us for our safety. There's zero reason for those people to be kept in "harsh conditions, surrounded by misery, despair, and hopelessness". We can treat all prisoners humanely and allow them to live a decent (if heavily restricted) life locked away from the rest of us.
If we did that, any innocent person we mistakenly locked up would have zero reason to choose to die rather than stay locked up while fighting to get their sentence overturned. We'd still have every incentive to make sure we don't screw up.
Corporal punishment is physical pain, capital punishment is death - corpus meaning body, capitalis meaning head (as in, losing your head).
[0]https://www.supermanhomepage.com/the-history-of-supermans-tr...
1) You might want to search on "civil asset forfeiture" and compare that to the history of the Bill of Rights.
2) Also talk to a few residential landlords, about the innumerable rights of deadbeat and destructive tenants, the various COVID evictions moritoriums, etc.
I’d guess quite a lot of babies were born outside of hospitals back then. Getting a birth certificate for a baby probably wasn’t terribly hard.
Of course it depends on the storyline. In one, Superman renounces his American citizenship while Clark Kent kept it.
[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/comments/6kgr6r/d...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality_Act_of_1940
The flying and susceptibility to kryptonite is a dead giveaway.
https://whynotcomicbooks.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/action-...
And after listening to Josh Dubin on Joe Rogan a few years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROU7G0d4iyE) its pretty clear the US has a fairly high error rate for death row.
(Also I'm not a big fan of joe rogan, but this might be one of his better podcasts)
[1] https://www.nafi.org/blog/negative-corpus/
I don't see a way for this man to have the case properly reevaluated. So he's trapped in the worst possible situation.
It's still atrocious, but given how easy negligence could lead to death and how an infant is not really a person in my eyes, I'd consider a special category for it.
Surely if it's a matter of mental aptitude, you've considered the ramifications of mental retardation, etc. Is it just a size thing, or something else? Genuinely curious.
Note: I'd probably still expect some emotional responses if this receives a lot of interest.
Infanticide has been a cruel part of human life almost for our entire existence. You'd be surprised to find out how common it was before the universal religions pacified us.
At 6 months a child feels mostly like an instinct-driven animal, but at 2-3 years for instance they clearly have awareness of themselves and the world. Somewhere a switch happens, and in this gray area I don't know.
Adults with mental retardation still have a consciousness, but if you're a braindead vegetable you don't, so the line is somewhere there.
Just for my own edification, are you religious at all? I'm asking, not as "an opportunity to preach" or finger wag or whatever, but just because I've found this kind of position to generally be followed by unbelievers more frequently than not. I try not to assume to know too much about complete strangers though, so I try to challenge various assumptions I form about others.
I do find a deep alignment to the core Christian values of forgiveness and love of others. I would risk my life for my family members, including my spouse and love them dearly.
It seems to me like it is really hard to make room to recant in a justice system. Mostly because if allows already convicted people to pressure experts to recant. But also because it lets people get out of intentional perjury (not that these doctors were intentionally wrong).
Besides that, I imagine they really don't want the publicity. Or perhaps they feel like they are morally covered by their original testimony being phrased like "according to the state of the art", or "to the best of my current knowledge", so that new insights don't make the statements false.