But HGC, the word is ‘regardless’, not ‘irregardless’. Tis a common error, no worries mate. Sorry to be pedantic.
And while I’m on it, Cold Front, the word is spelt J-U-D-G-M-E-N-T. There’s no ‘e’. It’s one of those mistakes I have to watch myself with. Blame it on Samuel Johnson.
I don’t know about Samuel Johnson, but both of my dictionaries have “J-U-D-G-E-M-E-N-T” and even Microsoft Word – hardly a flexible judge of such matters – does not correct this spelling.
I’m a hardliner on spelling, too, and I appreciate anyone who corrects me when I make a mistake, but English orthography is highly flexible. The person who corrects someone should be sure the spelling he or she is correcting is wrong rather than just not his or her preferred spelling. When I’ve been reading too many British authors, I sometimes unintentionally slip into spelling “flavor” as “flavour” and so on.
I don’t understand the argument that says we should worry about executing even one innocent person as if the entire balance of the death penalty hangs on a single man’s fate.
Why?
Most people – even most Europeans – support war at one time or another. Are there no innocent casualties in times of war? In other words, does the government not take the life of innocents – not purposely, but still as an inevitable byproduct of its decision – whenever it goes to war? Of course it does. But, it’s assumed, the benefits of those innocents dying --whether in Iraq, Bosnia, Kuwait, or elsewhere – outweighs the costs. Not for the innocents who died, of course, but for society as a whole.
One can apply the same argument to other areas. Any government policy – euthanasia for the old, for example, which many Europeans seem to embrace – involves the same risks. I’ve heard horror stories about some old fuck’s relatives pushing him through death’s door because they were just impatient for nature to finish him off, not because he was ready to die, but for their own personal reasons. If this happens even once, should the policy of euthanasia be scrapped?
It should be for someone who wants to argue that they can’t accept even a single innocent being put to death by the government; they better show some consistency by using the same argument for, say, euthanasia as they do for the death penalty. If you don’t agree, then why?
A lower standard of proof and a vigorous policy of retribution (which is a perfectly valid legal concept, by the way) that allows one innocent person to be put to death might be the same policy that keeps a hundred other murderers off the streets and awaiting their just desserts.
YES! And it’s so rabidly inconsistent that two spellings are allowed for this word in SOME dictionaries, while only ONE is allowed in others (where I looked it up today–McMillan). And ‘judgmental’ is never spelt with an ‘e’ anywhere I’ve seen, so to keep things clear, I just have to go with the ‘no E’ version…
[quote=“Cold Front”]
When I’ve been reading too many British authors, I sometimes unintentionally slip into spelling “flavor” as “flavour” and so on.[/quote]
I do that too, and as my professors are British, it especially occurs while reading and writing papers. But I do tend to like the ‘u’ better nowadays. It looks nicer, IMO.
As far as the death penalty goes, it’s a harsh sentence for a harsh crime in a harsh society. It just doesn’t get any harsher. Facts or no facts, whether it works or not, the decision if it’s right or wrong will always be a personal one for Americans since it occurs there, and in no other western developed countries. And I can’t say that I support it, but should I find myself in a situation where a loved one has been victimised, I could very well change my tune and then consider it ‘justice served’.
However, I could never quickly throw a blanket over the entire subject to reach a snap decision as you have done, CF. It seems a bit extreme to believe that everyone who reaches death row deserves this fate. Like how the courts ordered Nichols life imprisonment but McVeigh, death. And although you’ll debunk it as ‘theories schmeeries’, many people say it’s impossible that McVeigh and Nichols acted completely alone on it. So it’s not always so cut and dried, is it?
Oh, and the ‘s’ vs ‘z’ spelling thing gets a bit hard to decide on, too.
Samuel Johnson wrote the world’s first ‘real’ (some say) English dictionary (1755) which was known for its many spelling and definition inconsistencies.
[quote=“Alien”]As far as the death penalty goes, it’s a harsh sentence for a harsh crime in a harsh society. It just doesn’t get any harsher. Facts or no facts, whether it works or not, the decision if it’s right or wrong will always be a personal one for Americans since it occurs there, and in no other western developed countries. And I can’t say that I support it, but should I find myself in a situation where a loved one has been victimised, I could very well change my tune and then consider it ‘justice served’.
However, I could never quickly throw a blanket over the entire subject to reach a snap decision as you have done, CF. It seems a bit extreme to believe that everyone who reaches death row deserves this fate.[/quote]
I never said that. I carefully wrote that no one executed after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. had been proven innocent after the execution was performed. I’ve read there were a couple of clear-cut cases dating back to the 1930s and 40s of innocent men who were put to death and subsequently cleared, but I’ve forgotten the details. (No, it’s not Sacco and Vanzetti or the Rosenbergs.) But since Gregg vs Georgia reinstated the use of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, there has been no unequivocal case of someone innocent being put to death. Some cases of alleged innocence have been taken up and promoted by some advocacy groups, but nothing has caught on and held with the general public. That’s quite a feat considering the scientific advances made in DNA over the last couple of decades that have taken many prisoners off of death row and the fact that more than six hundred prisoners have been executed between 1977 and 2000.
I’m not sure what any of this proves. Did I claim the death penalty was cut and dried? I simply said I supported it, and in some cases look fondly upon its implementation.
Do you seriously doubt McVeigh was guilty of the murders he was convicted of? If your answer is no, then what does his case prove? What difference does it make that he might have had multiple accomplices? If we find them and have the evidence to convict them, we can put them to death, too. Who cares if the one proven accomplice McVeigh did have – Nichols – earned life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. The proof against Nichols wasn’t as solid as it was against McVeigh and the jury deadlocked on the issue of sentencing. I can live with these kinds of complexities and still support the death penalty. Why can’t you?
What’s your view on sceptical versus skeptical? I prefer the former. There’s something unattractive about that standout k.
I never said that. I carefully wrote that no one executed after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. had been proven innocent after the execution was performed. [/quote]
Your first posting on this issue was: [quote]I fully support the death penalty and I await with fond hope the expected and well-deserved capital punishment coming for the Washington sniper.
[/quote] So I assumed you ‘fully supported’ it, especially when you followed up with a euthanasia parallel, which I cannot fathom as having that much connection. Might as well toss abortion into it too, then…
[quote=“Cold Front”]
Who cares if the one proven accomplice McVeigh did have – Nichols – earned life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. The proof against Nichols wasn’t as solid as it was against McVeigh and the jury deadlocked on the issue of sentencing. I can live with these kinds of complexities and still support the death penalty. Why can’t you?[/quote] Because I can’t believe he was the mastermind of the operation and wonder what ‘evidence’ may have come out should he still alive. Isn’t that more of a plea for justice than letting him go to his death and never getting the chance to learn the complete truth?
[quote]
What’s your view on sceptical versus skeptical? I prefer the former. There’s something unattractive about that standout k.[/quote]
The ‘k’ is odd, and then we have words like ‘school’ and ‘scheme’, so it’s all mucked up.
One of the problems with the death penalty is that it’s so arbitrary and political. Kill someone in one state and get the chair; kill someone in another and get 20 years in prison. Kill someone in a county with an aggresive DA and get lethal injection; kill someone in another county and get life. Kill someone in a county where the DA has recently suffered embarassing losses in the courtroom and prepare for the gas chamber; kill someone where the DA has less need to impress the voters (most DAs are elected) and pack your toothbrush for prison. Kill someone if you’re poor, black and uneducated, and it’s all over; kill someone if you’re rich and white, hire a good lawyer and go home.
There are many reasons to be opposed to the death penalty and the arbitrariness is certainly one of them.
As for CF’s claim that one can’t prove that an innocent person has ever been executed in the US, that’s a lame argument. While such proof may not exist, when so many people have been released from prison many years after they were locked up, based on DNA evidence or other proof of their innocence, it is logical to conclude that innocent people have probably been executed.
[quote=“Coldfront”]I did read the details of the Derek Bentley case, and I found it smashingly unconvincing. As for your other details, it appears you edited your original post by adding two other cases (Evans and Kelly) after I had already began writing my response. I did catch your large addition of the three hundred servicemen from World War 1 that you had at the bottom of the post, but I did not see your small additions on Evans and Kelly in the middle of it.
That is your problem, not mine. Be careful how you edit your post. If you are going to add important details to a post, you should draw attention to them by giving me a heads up. Furthermore, you should provide links to your original cites so that a person can independently evaluate their quality. Simply quoting someone or something in a post without providing a link or even giving the name for the source is inexcusable.[/quote]
I never said that. I carefully wrote that no one executed after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U.S. had been proven innocent after the execution was performed. [/quote]So I assumed you ‘fully supported’ it, especially when you followed up with a euthanasia parallel, which I cannot fathom as having that much connection. Might as well toss abortion into it too, then…[/quote]
“[F]ully support” simply means I have no principled objections over the use of the death penalty in the U.S. It doesn’t mean I support the death penalty for every crime nor am I sure how anyone could infer that from my remarks. Every sentence that I write on the death penalty does not stand as an independent treatise on the subject; the reader must look at the whole of my remarks.
The death penalty’s parallel with euthanasia is clear and you need to address it. If you support policies that allow euthanasia, you support the government killing human beings.
You can argue that these men and women want to die, but that’s only true for the majority of cases and a few of those are quite questionable. As the State of Alaska argued before its state supreme court “…the terminally ill are a class of persons who need protection from family, social, and economic pressures, and who are often particularly vulnerable to such pressures because of chronic pain, depression, and the effects of medication.”
Others who are put to death are not even cognizant enough to ask for it and have left no instructions about what should be done if they are turned into a vegetable for some unfortunate reason. For some cases, relatives – following the recommendations of doctors – make the life and death decision for them. For other cases, courts make the decision for the patient, sometimes against the wishes of some of the relatives.
So the power of this life and death decision ultimately lies with the courts – the same courts that, according to you, could potentially screw up a capital punishment case. Yet you express no concern about potential mistakes being made for these state-supported killings. Perhaps you think that killings done in the spirit of mercy are much more likely to be balanced than killings performed in the spirit of retribution. If so, you have no basis for believing that. Or perhaps you have a utilitarian view of the matter. Perhaps you think that anyone who is killed in this way who didn’t want to die – who didn’t have to die – has served the greater good because of the far larger number of those who were put out of their misery for just cause.
[quote=“Alien”][quote=“Cold Front”]
Who cares if the one proven accomplice McVeigh did have – Nichols – earned life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. The proof against Nichols wasn’t as solid as it was against McVeigh and the jury deadlocked on the issue of sentencing. I can live with these kinds of complexities and still support the death penalty. Why can’t you?[/quote] Because I can’t believe he was the mastermind of the operation and wonder what ‘evidence’ may have come out should he still alive. Isn’t that more of a plea for justice than letting him go to his death and never getting the chance to learn the complete truth?[/quote]
He wasn’t going to share the truth with us. He was pretty adamant about that. If he had been willing to share any information, there are provisions in the legal code that could have kept him from being put to death and I’m sure they woud have been used.
[quote=“Closet Queen”][quote=“Coldfront”]I did read the details of the Derek Bentley case, and I found it smashingly unconvincing. As for your other details, it appears you edited your original post by adding two other cases (Evans and Kelly) after I had already began writing my response. I did catch your large addition of the three hundred servicemen from World War 1 that you had at the bottom of the post, but I did not see your small additions on Evans and Kelly in the middle of it.
That is your problem, not mine. Be careful how you edit your post. If you are going to add important details to a post, you should draw attention to them by giving me a heads up. Furthermore, you should provide links to your original cites so that a person can independently evaluate their quality. Simply quoting someone or something in a post without providing a link or even giving the name for the source is inexcusable.[/quote]
Here is the original e-mail concerning Closet Queen’s post that was sent to my account:
Posted text:
[quote:0dfb23c8ed=\"Cold Front\"]I doubt it. How would any Brit know? You haven''t put anyone to death in that country since the 1960s.[/quote:0dfb23c8ed]
Well, I can’‘t converse with extreme arrogance., but perhaps you’'ll condescend to read up on the Derk Bentley case at least.
[quote:0dfb23c8ed]Derek Bentley was hanged on the 28th of January 1953, at the age of 19 and the above words appear on his grave stone.
On the 30th of July 1998 the Appeal Court finally ruled (after 45 years of campaigning by his father, sister Iris and since Iris’’ death the previous year, by her daughter, Maria Bentley Dingwall, that his conviction was unsafe.
Derek Bentley was illiterate and is alleged to have had a mental age of 11. He also suffered from epilepsy as a result of head injury received during the war.[/quote:0dfb23c8ed]
That was it. The only reason I even saw anything about the WW1 soldiers was because it was a large piece of text at the bottom of Closet Queen’s post that I caught only after I began writing my response. I saw nothing about Evans or Kelly at all, nor is there anything in my remarks afterwards to indicate that I did.
“[F]ully support” simply means I have no principled objections over the use of the death penalty in the U.S. It doesn’t mean I support the death penalty for every crime nor am I sure how anyone could infer that from my remarks. [/quote]
Fine. But with your first comment, I couldn’t help but flinch, and assumed thereafter you took a purely rigid stance on the matter. But you’re a tricky one, CF. I do wonder what you do for a living.
[quote=“Cold Front”]
The death penalty’s parallel with euthanasia is clear and you need to address it. If you support policies that allow euthanasia, you support the government killing human beings. [/quote]
I’m as iffy (case by case) on euthanasia as the death penalty. I stand firm on abortion rights, however. But I don’t care to go into that here, if you don’t mind.
However, my mother has stipulated in her living will that should she be subject to life support, she would prefer her family take steps to help end her life. I feel we have no choice but to honour her wishes in this matter. I’m a bit wary of how my born-again Baptist brother and sister might react to this should we ever find ourselves in this position, though.
[quote=“Cold Front”]
Others who are put to death are not even cognizant enough to ask for it and have left no instructions about what should be done if they are turned into a vegetable for some unfortunate reason. [/quote]
Yes, and who’s to argue the quality of life of a vegetable?
But I still think that euthanasia (and how it’s administered) is considered a more humane way to die than frying alive.
[quote=“Cold Front”]
He wasn’t going to share the truth with us. He was pretty adamant about that. If he had been willing to share any information, there are provisions in the legal code that could have kept him from being put to death and I’m sure they woud have been used.[/quote]
But how can you know this? How can anyone? How can you judge this idea as any more valid than whether someone’s vegetable relative has the brainpower to desire life? He may have come out eventually, got over the whole ‘loyalty’ thing and repented and divulged. You never know. I don’t think that man should have died because we truly lost out on this. He’s someone’s martyr, for crissakes.
So, it’s insane how much the issue was skirted by the rage that people felt toward the “perpetrators.”
That’s another issue about the death penalty: It’s difficult to be impassionate unless you’re a brick wall.
But isn’t the conviction the measure of someones guilt? So if a murderer is set free because the case doesn’t stick then that’s in accordance with the law system and does not directly relate to the fact that innocent people are wrongly convicted and executed, too.
Of course you can argue it is wrong if a murderer gets away, but it doesn’t help those wrongfully convicted at all; even you do not allow the (suspected) murderes - or anyone else for that matter - ‘presumption of innocence’, i.e. you can lock up all the “murderers” you want, but it won’t protect against wrongfull conviction but rather increase them. IMHO.
Sure Rascal, murderers do go free in the US. Look at OJ.
But as Thomas Jefferson said,
“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law, than that he should escape.” --Thomas Jefferson to W. Carmichael, 1788.
That is particularly true when the punishment consists of death.
Sorry, not sure if I understood your post, i.e. how it relates to what I said?
But isn’t it that OJ could only go free in accordance with the law / justice system? If so (and his guilt is proven beyond doubt) than there is a flaw in the system which should be looked at. Of course I do agree that OJ should be convicted (but not necessarily executed) if proven guilty.
Yet convicting OJ and putting him on death row or not convicting him (guilty or not) won’t protect innocent people from being wrongfully convicted & executed.
You’re right Rascal, OJ did go free after a fair trial in accordance with the law. The jury may have chosen to disregard the evidence or the jury instructions, but other than that the decision was made based on the proper legal process for the most part. His guilt was apparently not proven beyond doubt according to the jury.
And you’re right, even if OJ is a killer and was set free, that’s a completely separate issue from the state killing people for crimes that they didn’t commit.
“[F]ully support” simply means I have no principled objections over the use of the death penalty in the U.S. It doesn’t mean I support the death penalty for every crime nor am I sure how anyone could infer that from my remarks. [/quote]
Fine. But with your first comment, I couldn’t help but flinch, and assumed thereafter you took a purely rigid stance on the matter. But you’re a tricky one, CF. I do wonder what you do for a living.[/quote]
Hahahaha!
I’ve been up-front and honest with you. Did I not admit that leftist groups who opposed the death penalty played a useful function overseeing the criminal justice system?
Have I not admitted that it’s possible an innocent person could be executed?
I put out a couple of challenges: the one which was relevant for you and other Americans who disagree with me was to come up with the case of an American executed after 1976 – which was when the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. – who had subsequently been proven innocent.
But that challenge is not the same thing as arguing that it’s impossible for someone who is innocent of the charges against him to be executed. I haven’t made such a claim. Of course, it’s possible. I’m just trying to show that under the current system, it’s seems highly unlikely, and that, to the best of any fair-minded observer’s knowledge, it has never happened in the last twenty-five years during which the death penalty has been used over six hundred times.
[quote=“Alien”][quote=“Cold Front”]
The death penalty’s parallel with euthanasia is clear and you need to address it. If you support policies that allow euthanasia, you support the government killing human beings. [/quote]
I’m as iffy (case by case) on euthanasia as the death penalty. I stand firm on abortion rights, however. But I don’t care to go into that here, if you don’t mind.[/quote]
I’m pro-choice. I support euthanasia. I support the death penalty. I sometimes support wars. In other words, I support a government’s occasional need or right – however you want to put it – to kill people in certain carefully proscribed circumstances. And let’s not kid around. At the barest level, that is what all of those policies entail: killing people. Whether they do so for mercy or for retribution, whether they do so to liberate a country or to save the life of a mother from her eight-and-a-half month old fetus that could continue to live even if the mother died, governments make life and death decisions for many people. They do this every day, and they do so even in the heart of Europe, where some Europeans (Jacque Chirac, for example) claim they are against the death penalty because they don’t believe a government has the right to take life. This comes from a man who had no problem with his government taking the lives of some innocent Serbs so that NATO could defeat Serbia’s aims in the Kosovo.
It’s a difficult personal choice and I dont envy you the potential problems that might arise over it because of philosophical differences within your family about assisted suicide.
[quote=“Alien”][quote=“Cold Front”]
Others who are put to death are not even cognizant enough to ask for it and have left no instructions about what should be done if they are turned into a vegetable for some unfortunate reason. [/quote]
Yes, and who’s to argue the quality of life of a vegetable?
But I still think that euthanasia (and how it’s administered) is considered a more humane way to die than frying alive.[/quote]
Doctors decide who is in what is called a permanent or persistent vegetative state (PVS). And doctors make mistakes. There are cases of doctors recommending that a so-called PVS patient be unplugged, the family declining to follow that recommendation, and the patient later recovering.
And the death of some PVS patients is not a humane way to die; in fact, it’s downright horrifying – something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Some of the patients are just unplugged and allowed to slowly desiccate to death. With no food and no water, they just dry up. Doctors say no pain is felt, but I find that hard to believe and how would anyone know? A gunshot to the head would probably be more humane.
Now you should understand why there is a clear relationship between the death penalty and euthanasia. In both cases, mistakes can be made. In both cases, there’s the possibility for an awful death. In both cases, the government decides who lives and who dies.
[quote=“Alien”][quote=“Cold Front”]
He wasn’t going to share the truth with us. He was pretty adamant about that. If he had been willing to share any information, there are provisions in the legal code that could have kept him from being put to death and I’m sure they woud have been used.[/quote]
But how can you know this? How can anyone? How can you judge this idea as any more valid than whether someone’s vegetable relative has the brainpower to desire life? He may have come out eventually, got over the whole ‘loyalty’ thing and repented and divulged. You never know. I don’t think that man should have died because we truly lost out on this. He’s someone’s martyr, for crissakes.[/quote]
McVeigh was in custody for several years, Alien. The media played up the fact he refused to cooperate with authorities. He showed no remorse for what he had done. He went to his death a good soldier.
Yes, it’s possible that when he became a senior citizen, he may have had a change of heart about discussing who were his accomplices – assuming he had any we don’t know about. We’ll never know. But we do know that he steadfastly refused to cooperate on the matter for several years until his death.
But isn’t the conviction the measure of someones guilt? So if a murderer is set free because the case doesn’t stick then that’s in accordance with the law system and does not directly relate to the fact that innocent people are wrongly convicted and executed, too.[/quote]
Legally, I think your argument is sound. That one man may get away with murder in one case should have no bearing on any other capital case. Looking at it from other perspectives, however, it may not be.
One can and indeed must look at this question legally, but one should also look at it philosophically. How is the law good or bad for society? How much weight should be given to the needs of the victims?
If you are going to look at this as strictly a legal question, then you must admit that most of the anti-death penalty arguments also have no legal basis. Trials are based on convicting someone beyond a reasonable doubt, not convicting them on the basis of perfect information. The death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment. Etc.
[quote=“Cold Front”]I have the e-mail sent to my account that can prove you added all of the cases to your post with the exception of the original case of Derek Bentley.
Shall I send it to the moderators for their perusal? It backs up my story, not yours.[/quote]
Yes, please do, because that is clearly the only way to stop your lying. Furthermore, I request that a moderator doublecheck the authenticity of all your e-mails containing my messages and the time they were sent. I maintain that I did not go back and insert information to my original post after you responded to it. If, as you say, I added information to my post, you will have a before and after e-mail showing a sizeable difference in time and content.
Your e-mail does not contain the extract detailing the soldiers, yet above you claim in the same breath it was at the bottom of the post. If so, why isn
