This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Live
PTR
10.2.7
PTR
10.2.6
Beta
Thoughts on the Troy Davis case?
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
gamerunknown
What about the famous Graham Greene short story where one witnesses someone kill a person, then learn they have an identical twin? No DNA evidence to go on.
As for abortion: I don't think, even in cases of rape, that the argument stands up. If one thinks they're a human from the moment of conception and that is one's basis over whether they should live or not, then what difference does it make whether its first trimester or sixth? (Yes, I know what "tri" means, but eh). In terms of incest, I think the chance of complications is significantly lower than one might expect - about 5% last I heard. It's just that one is susceptible to recessive traits that may be less common in the general population - the effect is multiplicative and more complicated as generations go on. However, as Sam Harris points out, given everything we have observed, more suffering is entered onto the world when one swats a fly than when one aborts before the 8th week of gestation.
The death penalty also runs contra to the concept of redemption and human fallibility. We can never be certain that everyone that is put to death is guilty. Nor can we say that they'd be unrepentant or that the world would be better off without them (possible exception psychopaths, whose brains prevent them from ever reaching the necessary levels of empathy). i have an anecdote from "The Moral Landscape" where a psychopath would regularly abuse a boy by molesting him while strangling him, then when the boy would pass out and turn blue, the psychopath would masturbate and jump on his chest. I wouldn't have any real qualms about having these people spend the rest of their lives heavily sedated in a cell, occasionally let out so their brains could be scanned.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I personally wouldn't choose abortion in the case of rape, as I do think it's killing a child. But, I think it's harder for me to make an argument about accountability about someone who had no choice in the conception. I do think the right decision would be to have the child, and give it up for adoption if you were unable to face raising it.
In terms of human fallability, I agree that there are a lot of holes in the legal system. That's why I said that although I support the concept of the death penalty, I don't know that our legal system functions well enough for it to be implemented as often as it is. If there is a video of you raping a child, however, and you don't have an identical twin somewhere, then I think you should die. If they find your semen inside of a child who was abused, it's pretty hard to dispute. If there are recordings of you agreeing to kill someone for money, and they find knives in you home with your bloody fingerprints (in the victim's blood) all over them, and can trace the money their ex sent you to do it...then you're going to have a hard time disputing that you had anything to do with it. I think that there are instances where the evidence is overwhelming enough to be sure.
In terms of human redemption- I don't agree that the only people incapable of it are psychopaths. I think that a conscience is something that develops earlier in life, and that once you reach adulthood, if you don't already have an internal moral comass that says raping children or killing people for money is wrong, it's not going to change. They may convince you to change your actions, if they were motivated by money or other personal gain, because it's more beneficial to you to not do it again in case you get caught, but there is no way to grow a conscience as an adult.
I believe that people who have behaved selfishly or recklessly, without fully comprehending what their actions would do to other people, can be truly remorseful and want to make it right, and can turn over a new leaf because they don't want to hurt other people again. I think that people who act based on desperation, and commit non-violent crimes because they don't know another way to live, can be taught that there's another way, and that they don't have to be a criminal to make ends meet. I think that people who are addicted to drugs or aclohol have the chance to get clean, and stop adding the chemicals to their brain that are hindering their ability to control their actions, or think about the consequences fully. I think that people with anger issues, who will lash out in anger then truly regret it, can get counseling to control their tempers.
But I think that people who have it in them to inflict torture on another person and enjoy it, and the sense of power it gives them, are beyond redemption. Things like severe child abuse, serial thrill killing and rape require a person to be face to face with the suffering their actions cause, and either enjoy it or care so little for other human beings that it doesn't bother them at all. Someone who kills in a moment of anger or under the influence, without thinking, has the capacity to regret it. Someone who plans out how to kill someone in advance, because it will leave them with a better inheritance, or earn them a $20,000 contract fee, or because they will enjoy getting revenge on that person for dating their ex-wife, has had all of the time they needed to consider the results their actions, and still decided to commit the murder. They won't then suddenly realize killing is wrong, because in order to have done it in the first place they have weighed the value of human life against a set monetary value, and decided the money was worth more, or they have decided that their right to murder someone is justified by that person being an annoyance to them. You can't teach someone like that why life is more valuable than that, because if you don't already understand it by that point, you never will.
Post by
134377
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
706709
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
204878
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
706709
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Supremacy
The things that I have heard in the media leave me uneasy about this case and how it was resolved, but I have often seen the same set of facts presented by people with two different opinions, and the differences in what you'd conclude based on hearing one side or the other are night and day. So I don't know.
I think that's kind of the overall consensus. Rather, the point of contention. A lot of people don't know. And the possibility of executing someone for a crime they may not have committed weighs heavily on the minds on pretty much anyone with a conscience.
One of the main things about this case is that it's not a matter of whether or not someone is for or against the death penalty. It's more about them not really being absolutely certain that this is the right guy.
I mean, it's one thing when you have Amnesty International against the death penalty. That's not, you know surprising. But when you get people who are in favor of the death penalty objecting? When you get death row wardens who have put people to death objecting? That's incredibly unsettling on something so final.
One of the things that worries me, whenever these trials are made public, is that very often the jury will make a decision that seems to have no basis in the law. A defendant will ADMIT that they did something wrong, and the jury will decide not to punish them for it.
I'm not 100% sure this statement is correct. It sounds like - and I could be misreading this - you're suggesting that if someone comes out on the witness stand and says something like "That's right. I killed John Doe", the jury will disregard that. I don't think that kind of thing happens.
I imagine if it did, the judge might have a few words about that .
Casey Anthony may or may not have killed her child, and may or may not have left the child to die, but she said in court that she left the child alone and unsupervised in a pool for a period of time and that led to her death. And THAT is why people are outraged- it doesn't help that she's a liar, that she desecrated her child's body, that she partied like a teenager once her child was dead- but the real reason it's disgusting is that SHE said she didn't watch her child and it lead to the child's death. And she didn't get charged with anything resembling endangering the welfare of a minor, or negligent manslaughter. She didn't get punished for what she SAID she did.
To be fair?
I think there are a lot of reasons people have for not liking that woman.
So- in this case, I'm not going to weigh in, other than as a concept, I do support the death penalty for first degree murderers, rapists and child molestors. I believe that your right to live ends when you intentionally destroy other people's lives for fun, for money or for convenience. I believe that people like that are predators, and poison society, and that it's better to cut them out entirely. I don't care that, given the right incentives and environment, they might be persueded to never do that again. It's enough that they did it the first time.
The problem I have with this is that where do you draw the line? There are people who think killing someone who supports another sports team is okay.
On a more relevant note, what exactly would the criteria be for deciding that a crime was predatory, and that someone would never ever repent or express remorse? What if someone went ahead and committed cold blooded, gruesome premeditated murder? Does that qualify? Does it matter if the person he killed had been molesting his six year old son?
Does it matter if the father had been mistaken, and the guy he killed had just been, you know, Joe from the Shoe Hut?
It's just...at what point do you say "No, it's not enough to lock this person in a cage for the next 50, 60, 70 years where they can never get out. No, we need them dead."
There's a story on CNN about a man who raped an 11-month-old baby, filmed it, and sold the film. I think with that kind of video evidence, he should be taken out and shot after his trial. However, with our current legal system, I'm not sure that the way in which the burden of proof is presented, or judged, makes the death penalty a viable option in many of the cases where the crime calls for it.
It's that last part. When the crime calls for it. That's just kind of subjective. Shooting another man in the heart is shooting another man in the heart. Killing one person for the crime of doing that and not killing someone else is a little...disconcerting.
_____
Oh! And as an aside? Bleach actually does kill the HIV virus. It's just, you know, the same mechanics that cause it to kill the HIV virus don't suddenly disappear when they're applied to humans. I'm sure a hot enough fire would kill that virus, too.
Stop trying to swallow torches, Johnny, is what I'm getting at.
Post by
Supremacy
My "lie detector" was theroretical. As I mentioned, the current technology is full of flaws. My retorical observation was that with all the technology that we have, especially about the human body and mind, It is actually surprising that we dont have a 100% accurate way to detect a lie. And if we did, that that technology could be provide the final bit of evidence in a case. Consider it to be "quality control", so to speak.
This is woefully ignorant. We know virtually
nothing
about the brain. We have only been able to study it properly since MRI came around in the 1970s. We can't even cure Alzheimer's yet -- we use a bunch of holistic remedies to try to slow it down, but we have no idea what causes it.
You might as well argue that we should have hoverbikes "by now", given our knowledge with magnetic levitation on trains.
www.hover-bike.com
Yeah, I know, its not mag-lev, but then again, I don't think my "idea" was exactly "woefully ignorant" either.
If we can do this
, I would argue that is a little more than "virtually nothing" about the brain.
My analogy was to illustrate that MagLev may have everything or nothing to do with a hover bike. The technology could be adapted from the one to the other, but alternatively could have no relevance whatsoever. Just as being able to put retina data into a digital format has no bearing on our ability to detect lying. They are different parts of the brain and entirely different sections of study. (Unless a correlation and causation can be drawn from changes in image patterns when telling a lie, or something.)
There is a measurement that can be taken - I will try to get the specifics if I can find my old cognition notes - to determine whether or not you have seen an image before. I'm trying to remember if it's something with an fMRI or an EEG. In short, there's a certain amount of time your brain takes to recognize whether an image is familiar versus whether it's unknown.
I hate saying this kind of thing without the actual name of the measurements (for the life of me, I can't remember offhand if it's the p300, s500 or s700 or some such), but I will look for those notes and try to find the actual information.
Having said that, I still maintain my stance that you'll never really be able to detect a "lie", because that's more of a psychological construct than anything else. You might be able to predict with a high degree of validity if someone is saying a falsehood, but...a real "lie detector" is pretty much magic.
Post by
gamerunknown
Leading on from what supremacy was saying, the capital punishment also causes the State to reserve more power than I think it deserves. It effectively says "we can determine who gets to live and die, no citizen is powerful enough to say so... unless they happen to be on a jury". If someone went on a vengeance fuelled rampage, they could perhaps even be put to death, when the motivators of them being put to death and their basis for killing were the same. Then of course, there's the chance that history will judge the era particularly harshly. Say a drug is administered to those predisposed to aggression that hinders violent behaviour and the rates of murder and violent crime go down, future citizens will look back at the electric chair as we now view public stoning or hanging in the public square.
Post by
gamerunknown
I'm going to bump this since I don't want to derail the other thread about the court, but to reply to something magician said:
when the criminal is PROVEN guilty, they should face the ultimate punishment.
I can't see how this is justifiable from a Christian standpoint. Perhaps slightly from an atheistic one, where one is just consigning an individual to eternal oblivion for their actions, based on the assumption that they don't even deserve the simple luxury of sleep and food for what would be the natural course of life (though life becomes a bit more meaningful when it is limited in my opinion). From a Christian standpoint though, humans are interfering in God's assigned time for an individual to live (unless one takes the Calvinist view of predetermination, where the murderer would always murder and the governor of Texas would always sign the death warrant). Not only that, but Christian theology focuses quite extensively on redemption. If an individual isn't given their assigned time to be redeemed, one could say the actions of the State caused their eternal damnation, since some only accept Christ after several years on death row (and an increase in speed of executions would prevent some of those). Not to mention
these quotes
, which I hope are not taken too far out of context.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.