Eyewitness testimony is staggeringly unreliable. It's actually quite scary. And it's easy to demonstrate just how bad it is. Go to YouTube. Watch a random video on the front page (one that has a person in, anyway). Close the video. Now try and describe the person. Write it down. Open the video again and see how close you came.

Now imagine trying to do the same thing days, weeks, months later, without being forewarned you were going to have to do it. Eyewitness testimony sucks.

People confess for all sorts of reasons, too.

About the only circumstance in which you can be *entirely* sure about guilt is if somebody brutally and obviously stabs someone with multiple CCTV cameras and a horde of eyewitnesses looking on, calls the police themselves, and hands over the bloody knife while saying "I killed him." And even then there are questions about whether they're sound enough of mind to be criminally culpable to the degree required for the death penalty.


This aside, of course, David's other point is absolutely right - "Also, by executing someone, you're pretty much becoming the same as them (assuming it's a murderer getting executed)"
To quote Gandalf, here, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

They could still be framed. Or multiple personalities that disappear without a trace. One can never have complete certainty.

Sentynel wrote:Eyewitness testimony is staggeringly unreliable. It's actually quite scary. And it's easy to demonstrate just how bad it is. Go to YouTube. Watch a random video on the front page (one that has a person in, anyway). Close the video. Now try and describe the person. Write it down. Open the video again and see how close you came.

Now imagine trying to do the same thing days, weeks, months later, without being forewarned you were going to have to do it. Eyewitness testimony sucks.

People confess for all sorts of reasons, too.

About the only circumstance in which you can be *entirely* sure about guilt is if somebody brutally and obviously stabs someone with multiple CCTV cameras and a horde of eyewitnesses looking on, calls the police themselves, and hands over the bloody knife while saying "I killed him." And even then there are questions about whether they're sound enough of mind to be criminally culpable to the degree required for the death penalty.


This aside, of course, David's other point is absolutely right - "Also, by executing someone, you're pretty much becoming the same as them (assuming it's a murderer getting executed)"
To quote Gandalf, here, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

Yeah, I agree eyewitness testimonies aren't very reliable. You can no way justify convicting a person by just going on the words of eyewitnesses. Like you said:

"About the only circumstance in which you can be *entirely* sure about guilt is if somebody brutally and obviously stabs someone with multiple CCTV cameras and a horde of eyewitnesses looking on, calls the police themselves, and hands over the bloody knife while saying "I killed him." "
Yeah, I was precisely talking about cases like that (well, tbh, the only reason I asked this question was because I was thinking about the terrorist caught in the 26/11 attacks and how you describe the above paragraph is pretty much exactly how it happened. Though with a *lot* more evidence). Like you said, only then can one be entirely convinced of someone's role. If there is, in anyway, a doubt in the person's involvement in a crime, he/she should definitely be given the benefit of doubt.
As to a person's frame of mind, you can easily find it out.

And yeah, I agree that it is quite unbecoming of a state to take the life of a person and I morally do object to it. But, sometimes, it is better to take someone's life than to risk keeping them alive. And yeah, once again, I'm going back to the example I've just spoken about. It costs a hell *lot* of a money to keep some terrorists safe and secure in jail. Plus, there will undoubtedly be attempts to rescue them. Like in the case of this.

I again reiterate that I only mean death sentences for those whose guilt have been proven without doubt (like in the case you mentioned above; plus, like I said, only in cases of mass murder) and whose existence could cause major problems to many others.

In America at least, execution is famously more expensive than lifetime imprisonment.

David Cat wrote:

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Hehe. Has that ever happened to you Da? With you being denied computer access?

No tbh, last time I was without computer access for any substantial length of time, I just read books and watched TV and stuff.

Re: Death penalty: No, I don't think it's ever okay to practise it. There's always the chance that innocents could be executed by mistake, and that's just not acceptable. Also, by executing someone, you're pretty much becoming the same as them (assuming it's a murderer getting executed)

*waits for Sent's wall of text to crush me like an insect*

Dude, what the hell happened to your extreme beliefs? I thought you were totally for the death penalty? What has Sam done to you? Have you finally realized that Inheritance is total crap?


(Btw, I am against the death penalty, for reasons that David and Sam mentioned, and other reasons too)

---

Sentynel wrote:In America at least, execution is famously more expensive than lifetime imprisonment.

Yep. Please see the Green Mile.

Nero wrote:Dude, what the hell happened to your extreme beliefs?

They were sarcasm or just plain pissing people off.

And Inheritance is not total crap, your face is total crap :P

Sentynel wrote:In America at least, execution is famously more expensive than lifetime imprisonment.

It depends on who. Like, over here, we are spending loads of money over the terrorist who was caught int he 26/11 attacks. To keep him safe and sound. In one year, we spent $70 million. The monorail plan had to be tweaked because there would be a security risk if it passed near his bomb-proof jail. Cost of tweaking the plan? $100 million. And, the people who live in the road where the jail is face loads of problem. They are forced to undergo checks or show id cards every time. All the people who had shops in that road lost business because the road is barricaded. I think it is too much for a terrorist [who was caught pretty much like you described (you might have read the reports back then); so there is no doubt of his involvement]. If you plan to just hand him the life sentence, you got to be ready to dole out millions of more dollars, and cause even more inconvenience to people living near the area. And, like the link I put up, there is always a fear that a successful attempt might be made to rescue him.
And I repeat again, I do not really believe in handing out death sentence to people. Like Da said, the state would be no different than the murderer and that is a horrible message to give out. But I think very rare exceptions can be made in certain cases. To spend so much on a worthless person, who killed and injured hundreds, does not do justice.

Quick. Hide it before DC sees.

Speaking of which, I pretty much agree with him on the death penalty thing too. N&B, the major problem that you get with only giving the death penalty to people who definitely did commit their crime, is that it makes things unfair. The only criminals who are excuted are the ones who were not smart enough at covering their tracks, or committed crimes of passion? And who decides what is sufficient proof? Who's to stop standards slipping from, say, security camera footage to eyewitness testimony?

rubberchickenben wrote:Slightly related lol

That's an interesting piece. Doesn't surprise me at all. Personally I choose to cope by losing myself in big complicated video games rather than marinating my brain in alcohol, but I guess the escapism's the same end result.

FuzzyLobster wrote:Quick. Hide it before DC sees.

Speaking of which, I pretty much agree with him on the death penalty thing too. N&B, the major problem that you get with only giving the death penalty to people who definitely did commit their crime, is that it makes things unfair. The only criminals who are excuted are the ones who were not smart enough at covering their tracks, or committed crimes of passion? And who decides what is sufficient proof? Who's to stop standards slipping from, say, security camera footage to eyewitness testimony?

Haha. I've read articles too which say that people who drink alcohol in moderation are better off (health-wise) than people who don't drink it at all.

About the death penalty, yeah, I agree with you there. Ultimately, if you go down to it, only those who get "properly caught" are the ones who get punished. And this is true for not just the death penalty. Of course, death penalty takes away someone's life, so it is even worse. The thing is, I think I'm just being a bit partial towards this case because this guy attacked my city, people I know were affected, and it affected me mentally too. Plus I think it would be very unfair to spend so much taxpayer's money on keeping him safe. And yeah, I know one must not go by feelings and emotions, but there it is.

And when someone kills and takes away the life of many people or carries out a genocide or maims, physically abuses, and tortures many children, one can't feel justice is done by simply confining that person and taking away a few rights. Justice would be done like that in a Utopian world, but reality is far different. Prisons, though far from being like they *should* be (that is, with clean facitilies for the prisoners, a good rehabilitation and recreation centre for the prisoners, where everyone is treated like humans and not animals, where no one is physcially or mentally abused by others etc.), are still far better than the conditions of many poor people, who die of starvation and dreadful diseases because of no/zero healthcare. For absolutely no fault of theirs. At least those who did the above said crimes would deserve to be punished, but these people don't. And there is corruption, which in my view, is far worse than anything else. Corruption is very different in different countries. Usually in the West it involves getting kickbacks from companies. That is okay compared to corruption of some governments in Africa and Asia. The money these governments eat are not that of the rich companies but the money which should go towards helping the poor (indeed, in most cases, money which is earmarked for free healthcare, cheap foodgrains etc. goes directly into politicians' pockets. Unnecessarily large number of people die and suffer because a government is greedy. And the people in the government know their actions are responsible for it. And, what happens to them? If ever caught, they just get punished for just taking money which is not theirs and not for wrecking the lives of millions. The terrorists are far better. They at least do not go about in the guise of *helping* people and nobody entrusts them with a job of looking after millions. Yet, corruption is never considered the same as a murder, though the two pretty much lead to the same thing: death of innocent people.

So yeah, I don't know if anyone got my point out there, but the world is a very unfair place and a terribly unequal place and to have the same laws everywhere makes little sense.

I agree with what's been said about the death penalty so far. The law needs to be something people can see as a constant and while there will obviously be exceptions, it's important to at least have a rule which works for the majority of cases. You just can't utilitarianise something like the death penalty, especially because of so many of the variables mentioned (the credibility of eyewitness accounts, ulterior motives for confessing, improbability of ascertaining 100% innocence etc).

As DC said, the executors would become like the very people they are executing, and that if a person were given the death penalty mistakenly, it would simply not be acceptable. As we're unfortunately all too aware of, death isn't reversible, and the chances of convicting the wrong person are all too high.

As of now, I think the number of proven wrongful executions stands at around 8 or 10 (with several more suspected ones), but imagine if those exonerated had also been wrongfully executed before they were proven innocent? While giving someone a life sentence may not necessarily "measure up" to the crimes they've committed, surely it has to be better than killing?

This actually brings to mind an episode of Boston Legal I saw a while back. They had to defend a death-row inmate in Texas who couldn't even remember committing the murder he was charged for. He refused to plead not guilty only because he thought that he must have committed the murders if that's what he was being charged for. There was DNA evidence suggesting another possible suspect, only two eyewitnesses (who merely saw him at the scene of the crime a while before it happened) and also the fact that he was probably incapable of committing the crime he was charged with because he had an IQ of less than 80. When it came down to it, the courts sentenced him to death by lethal injection. His last words were "I don't know if I did it...but if I did, I'm sorry." With the amount of doubt there was surrounding his guilt, it was horrifying to watch that happen to a probably innocent person - heck, I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't be horrific to see someone who was actually guilty die like that. Even the possibility of a case ending up like this in reality is too much, in my opinion.

Oh, that is real bad. Yeah, I've read quite a few death penalty cases in the US could actually have resulted in innocents being executed. It is terrible. And there was also this case about a very "punctual" judge in the US; she refused to extend the time for a hearing and the person who was being tried then was hanged on the same day/the next (forgot which). In spite of his lawyers wanting to file a further appeal.
All said and done, law is far from perfect. Like I already mentioned in my previous post, it doesn't take into account other things which a person's action might have resulted in, and also sometimes judgments (like punishing people by circumstantial evidence) results in many innocents being handed jail terms to serve.

Yes, I do get all your points against the death sentence and I think they are very good ones too and I agree with them all. And, like I mentioned many times, I don't support death penalty in principle. But it depends from place to place, right? I mean, if a majority of people in a country lead very sorry lives it wouldn't make sense to spend millions on just one person who doesn't deserve it. If a majority did spend decent lives, it would be okay I suppose. Of course, like I already said, people who have committed heinous crimes are far better off in jail than millions who live outside and who have done no wrong and who suffer far more (and obviously the ones in jail deserve to live a life of full dignity and in a good environment; I'm just pointing out how weird it is) But I guess that is life.

Okay fine, he should at least be made to clean toilets all his life.

And all this talk about death sentence has resulted in this ad:
Support Death Penalty?
Do you support Capital Punishment? Answer this 3 second poll
capital-punishment.net/

N&B wrote:Haha. I've read articles too which say that people who drink alcohol in moderation are better off (health-wise) than people who don't drink it at all.

Which DC brings up at every possible opportunity. :P

N&B wrote:Okay fine, he should at least be made to clean toilets all his life.

Sounds fair. :D

At least with all the money being spent, his supporters can never say he wasn't treated unfairly. Not much of a consolation, but...