I just read that...

[varkam]

people who are wrongly convicted and sent to death row and are executed for a crime that they did not commit are "unfortunate accidents."

Right here. On DU.

Sorry, OT, I know...but for fuck's sake.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Not entirely off topic - the concept of 'proof' is important in scepticism

and one of the problems with the death penalty is that attitude of "they're probably guilty". You might say that just as extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so too do absolute sentences require absolute proof.

I mean, I didn't shed a tear for Saddam Hussein, because I really, really think he had people murdered. But the circumstances of people on US death rows (eg the tendency for them to be poor and black) indicate that it's not really much about 'proof beyond reasonable doubt', and more about the ability of the lawyer you can afford.

[varkam]

3. True.

Thankfully, the standard in criminal prosecutions is a high one and there is plenty of time for review. Even still, many people on death row are exonerated through DNA analysis (14 in 2005, IIRC).

It's not that I have great compassion for people who have done horrible things, but I think that they're still human beings regardless.

and personally, I think the DP has a lot to do with racism. IIRC, if you're black a kill a white victim, you're something like six times more likely to get the DP than if you're white and kill a black victim. Public defenders on major case squads are usually pretty experienced and generally good advocates - though I'm sure that there are some that just have no business being inside of a courtroom.

[Orrex]

9. Proof

An unfortunate tactic we've all seen, though, is the substituting of statutory proof for scientific proof, when of course the two aren't the same at all.

A current favorite woo rallying point is the case of Hannah Poling, whose parents contend that she developed autism subsequent to vaccination. Following a review, the government opted to award damages for her "regressive encephalopathy with features consistent with an autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development."
From http://skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia8.html


Woos have claimed that this case "proves" that vaccines cause autism, even though it's been stated that her case appears to be unique, and at any rate vaccines weren't proven to do any such thing. But even if vaccines had been proven (in court) to cause autism, that certainly wouldn't amount to scientific proof. But for woos, proof is proof when it supports their view.

They also point out that Poling's father, a neurologist, is convinced that vaccines caused her autism (though she isn't autistic). This clinches it, in the woo-view; emotional bias is irrelevant, as long as it likewise supports their view.

[varkam]

13. Of course.

Though the difference between civil a criminal proof is pretty vast. The standard in a civil court is a preponderance of the evidence, which I heard described somewhere as "50% and a feather."

[Orrex]

17. Yeah. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that, but there you have it

I'd like more than a "Bush Majority" when I'm the subject of litigation...

[varkam]

18. Well, but you'd want a Bush Majority if you're the plaintiff.

The reasoning is that it's a balancing of the rights of the plaintiff and the rights of the defendant. And that, typically, what you're looking at in a civil court is something like money damages or an injunction. Not as high as the stakes are in a criminal proceeding.

[TZ]

2. umm wow

a troll perhaps? There has been more than a few of late...

[varkam]

4. Maybe. A troll with 1000+ posts and that's been here for a minute.

:scared:

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Your quote comes from someone who's been here for years

unless there's someone else in the thread who's echoing it.

[varkam]

8. Yeah, I understand that. eom

[Orrex]

6. Duh. muriel's not a troll--she's a mod for god's sake!

:evilgrin:

[TZ]

10. "she's a mod"...umm nice post CreekDog!

Last I checked MV is a male...:rofl:

[LeftishBrit]

11. He is...

though there is someone in the UK forum who has a very hard time getting his head round that, and was asking whether it should be Ms, Miss or Mrs. Volestrangler!

[Dr. Strange]

15. She?

You shan't recover from this.

[Orrex]

16. Death to you all!

[Orrex]

7. Sounds like Scalia's been posting here again...

[trotsky]

12. My dad - granted, not a liberal - felt that way.

I pressed him on it once - what if it was YOU, Dad, that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time? "Eh, bad luck I guess!" Although you know damn well no one who feels that way who actually did end up in that situation would retain their opinion about it being "unfortunate."

[skepticscott]

19. What I ask anyone

who says that people getting death penalty after being wrongly convicted is unfortunate, but a necessary consequence of being sure no guilty people go free, is whether THEY would be willing to be one of the people wrongly executed, in order to be sure that the rest of society is safe. Of course, inherent in that position is the notion that anyone wrongly convicted is probably a lowlife who did something, sometime, that they deserve some kind of punishment for...it's a handy rationalization, but as I tell them, innocent of a crime is innocent.

[LeftishBrit]

14. Wow...

I think this is to some extent (for me at least) where cultural differences show up. In the UK, we have not had capital punishment for over 40 years, and it would be virtually impossible to get support on a left/liberal forum. It's not even something that distinguishes left from right. Rather, it is one of the issues that distinguishes *far-right* Tories from *moderate* Tories.

It's not even as though the DP were a deterrent. One thing that startles me on the forum is when people post approvingly of death sentences for corruption in China and imply that there'd be less corruption in America if high-level crooks were similarly punished there. But the point is: it DOESN'T deter corruption in China. There continues to be plenty of it! There is plenty of evidence that the likelihood of being caught tends to be more of a deterrent than harsh punishment when you are caught - which would certainly fit the situation in China, where corrupt officials have a very good chance of not getting caught.

And 'unfortunate accidents' - give me a break! It was a few such 'unfortunate accidents' that led to the final abolition of the DP in the UK. And it is such a final and irrevocable punishment. You can remit a fine; you can let someone out of prison; but you can't restore someone to life after they've been killed. And isn't it interesting that such 'unfortunate accidents' - and wrongful convictions in general - tend to involve people who are poor, members of minority groups, of low IQ, socially odd or isolated, and/or don't have access to a good lawyer?

[onager]

21. But back in your good old days...

"The London Hanged" by Peter Linebaugh (Amazon review):

In 18th-century Britain, most victims of capital punishment were hanged for property crimes--some as petty as the pilfering of spoons.

A brutal and benighted age, we like to think, but to the author of this epic social history...the gallows were an indispensable tool in inculcating the primary lesson-"Respect Private Property"-of a modern capitalist economy.

Historian Linebaugh...explores how the disruption of a traditional economy of regulated guilds and agricultural commons by a capitalism built on cash wages and competitive markets worked itself out as crime and punishment.

Customary forms of payment-in-kind, in which workers took part of the wood they sawed, the silk they wove, or the cargo their ship ferried as wages, were criminalized as theft of the owner's property; capitalists developed new methods of workplace control to circumvent workers' attempts to appropriate the fruits of their labor; and romantic criminal figures like the highwayman expressed working-class resentment at the economic transformations that forced them to steal to live.

Linebaugh draws on diverse sources, including judicial archives, family budgets, dietary customs and the writings of Locke and Milton to paint both micro-historical character studies of condemned souls and a panorama of class struggle in proto-industrial Britain. The results are as teeming-and sometimes as confusing-as the London street itself, and the broad Marxian abstractions Linebaugh invokes do not always clarify things. Still, this is a rich and thought-provoking portrait of a time when "class warfare" was an all-too-violent reality.

Fascinating book, but as the review notes, sometimes Linebaugh does rattle on with his "broad Marxian abstractions."

(Sorry, this just popped in my head from some other book: during the 1917 Russian Revolution, a Bolshevik newspaper ran an article on "how to identify a counter-revolutionary." Evidence included a bourgeouis background, a college education, and "soft" jobs as opposed to real factory or farm work. Another newspaper immediately pointed out that, using those criteria, the first person who should be put against a wall and shot was one Mr. V.I. Lenin.)

Tourist Tip: Linebaugh mostly analyzes the victims of "Tyburn Tree," the triangular gallows that could handle 36 executions at a time (12 victims on each leg). It was in use from 1388 until 1793, located where the Marble Arch is today.

[LeftishBrit]

23. Interesting account - I might try and read the book when I'm feeling particularly un-squeamish.

You might be interested in this poem by Victorian poet Coventry Patmore, written in 1853 - public hanging was only abolished in England in 1868!

A London Fete, by Coventry Patmore

All night fell hammers, shock on shock;
With echoes Newgate's granite clang'd:
The scaffold built, at eight o'clock
They brought the man out to be hang'd.
Then came from all the people there
A single cry, that shook the air;
Mothers held up their babes to see,
Who spread their hands, and crow'd for glee;
Here a girl from her vesture tore
A rag to wave with, and join'd the roar;
There a man, with yelling tired,
Stopp'd, and the culprit's crime inquired;
A sot, below the doom'd man dumb,
Bawl'd his health in the world to come;
These blasphemed and fought for places;
Those, half-crush'd, cast frantic faces,
To windows, where, in freedom sweet,
Others enjoy'd the wicked treat.
At last, the show's black crisis pended;
Struggles for better standings ended;
The rabble's lips no longer curst,
But stood agape with horrid thirst;
Thousands of breasts beat horrid hope;
Thousands of eyeballs, lit with hell,
Burnt one way all, to see the rope
Unslacken as the platform fell.
The rope flew tight; and then the roar
Burst forth afresh; less loud, but more
Confused and affrighting than before.
A few harsh tongues for ever led
The common din, the chaos of noises,
But ear could not catch what they said.
As when the realm of the damn'd rejoices
At winning a soul to its will,
That clatter and clangour of hateful voices
Sicken'd and stunn'd the air, until
The dangling corpse hung straight and still.
The show complete, the pleasure past,
The solid masses loosen'd fast:
A thief slunk off, with ample spoil,
To ply elsewhere his daily toil;
A baby strung its doll to a stick;
A mother praised the pretty trick;
Two children caught and hang'd a cat;
Two friends walk'd on, in lively chat;
And two, who had disputed places,
Went forth to fight, with murderous faces.

[onager]

26. I always enjoy your poetic responses!

:hi:

A thief slunk off, with ample spoil,
To ply elsewhere his daily toil;

Yep. As many troublemakers like to note--every time a pickpocket was hanged, other pickpockets were happily working the mob.

Being in a non-squeamish mood right now, I'll pass along some of the history I learned at the Tower of London, which I've been lucky enough to visit several times. I love the Yeoman Warders. IIRC, they are all retired Warrant Officers from the British military with a generally SKEPTICAL!!! bent.

One told us: "Some people say London is the most haunted city in the world. But I say that's only because Londoners are the biggest liars in the world."

On another visit, our Yeoman Warder pointed out that, despite its fearsome reputation, only 6 people were actually executed inside the Tower, all by beheading. They included two wives of Henry VIII and the last Plantagenet princess, a completely innocent elderly woman who was a pawn of Regime Change.

He summed all this up by saying: "You had to be well-connected to get disconnected in the Tower."

:rofl:

[Deep13]

20. So how do we know their wrongly convicted?

The reason I ask is because it is hard to think of an example where DNA really would prove innocence. I've done one case where the defendant, a burglar, really was caught because of DNA left at a burglary scene. I've had a few others where it was corroboration. I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where DNA evidence can exclude someone. Most people do not leave usable DNA samples doing most things. And finding someone else's DNA only proves that person was present at some time. I does not exclude the defendant.

[WoodrowFan]

22. what if it doesn't match

what if the guilty party left DNA and it doens't match the person convicted? Then the DNA proves they wer enot the guilty party.

[Deep13]

24. I can see how that would work in a rape situation...

...where a specific kind of DNA sample is left and the victim testifies that apart from the criminal, there was no one else. I don't see how in any other situation one can use DNA to exclude someone. I had a one guy convicted of an ATM robbery. After hitting all those ATM keys, we did not get one single usable fingerprint or DNA sample. And if we did and it did not match, all it would prove is that someone else also used that ATM. Frankly, that case turned in large part on a cross-racial identification which is legally sufficient (and a few corroborating circumstances). Nevertheless, some scientific evidence would have been welcomed.

I guess my concern is that DNA evidence seems to be credited with having a conclusive nature that it really doesn't deserve.

[varkam]

25. There are numerous possibilities aside from DNA...

witness recantations, prosecutorial misconduct (like failing to turn over evidence favorable to the defendant), shoddy police work, et cetera. DNA is certainly one high-profile tool for getting people exonerated, but it's not the only possibility.

As for when DNA could exclude someone...well, it would be a situation when the DNA had to have been left by the perpetrator. I'm guessing the bulk of those cases would be sex crimes, but I can think of other situations, too.