If you could guarantee the verdict, would you pull the rope?

If you could guarantee the verdict, would you pull the rope?

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wack

2,103 posts

205 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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Ginetta G15 Girl said:
If you are going to have a death penalty it can't be based upon 'beyond reasonable doubt' it must be based upon 'beyond all doubt'.

How often is that likely to be the case?
More often than in 1950, There's that much CCTV about these days given enough time and money most peoples steps can be retraced, mobile phones give a lot more information to the police since GPS was incorporated, DNA and other forensic sciences have improved.

We source most of our goods from china india and the far east these days because it's cheaper, who says our prisons have to be in the UK , even if they had to be in Europe Eastern Europe would be cheaper.

I know the argument about human rights and visitors etc arises but fk em, very few people go to prison for a first arrestable offence so they've had their chance.

It might bring down re-offending if 6 months in a Latvian prison is on the cards

Bill

52,484 posts

254 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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anonymous said:
[redacted]
In the grand scheme of things, yes. BTW Broadmoor is a secure psychiatric hospital.

Ginetta G15 Girl

3,220 posts

183 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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wack said:
DNA and other forensic sciences have improved.
Sadly DNA is not the panacea many believe it to be.

PCR is in no way 100% error free (as was previously believed).

Ergo DNA evidence is a probability not a certainty, so we are back to my point about 'beyond all doubt'.

Ayahuasca

27,427 posts

278 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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I don't think that the state should have the right to judicially kill its citizens.

However, if someone has 'opted out' of society and committed a crime of sufficient severity he should forfeit his rights be be looked after by that society.

The answer is tranportation. We should build a large prison complex somewhere hot and poor and far away - say South Sudan, and pay that country to house our prisoners. When sentence is served, they stay in that country.

Everyone wins:

criminal gets harsh punishment
we have lower prison costs
the African country generates income
the African country gets cheap labour to work on its infrastructure




Nezquick

1,453 posts

125 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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Einion Yrth said:
Life without parole, if the verdict is absolutely certain. However euthenasia could perhaps be an option, at the discretion of the convicted.
I'm with you on the life without chance of release, but convicted murderers etc should have all rights to any choices taken away from them.

Skyrat

1,185 posts

189 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
quotequote all
wack said:
Ginetta G15 Girl said:
If you are going to have a death penalty it can't be based upon 'beyond reasonable doubt' it must be based upon 'beyond all doubt'.

How often is that likely to be the case?
More often than in 1950, There's that much CCTV about these days given enough time and money most peoples steps can be retraced, mobile phones give a lot more information to the police since GPS was incorporated, DNA and other forensic sciences have improved.
We've already killed an innocent man, so as far as I'm concerned it's off the table.

DNA and other forensic science evidence can be overstated. In many cases, DNA can tell you nothing other than the suspect was there.

If anyone is of the opinion that it's acceptable for a few innocents to be murdered by the state, so that the real scumbags can be executed, I'd suggest the following, which was posted on a widely read blog.


Supporters of the death penalty argue – either directly and openly or by unavoidable implication – that a few mistaken executions are a price worth paying, either for the (alleged) deterrent effect or the principle of judicial vengeance. So the only reasonable thing to do is to make them embrace the reality of that situation.

Put it to a referendum. The names of everyone who votes “Yes” to the retention or restoration of capital punishment must be recorded and entered into a lottery. Every time a criminal is put to death, a name will be drawn at random from the list and executed alongside them, with no exceptions or appeals.

After all, if you’re willing to accept the state killing of innocents, you have to accept that one day it might be you (or your son or your daughter or father or mother or brother or sister) who is the innocent in question. Because everyone who’s ever been wrongfully executed was someone’s son or someone’s daughter, and why should you be magically exempt? If the random sacrifice of the innocent is a price worth paying to kill murderers, you must be prepared to pay it yourself.


dragging ass

30 posts

105 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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Ginetta G15 Girl said:
In 1950 Timothy Evans was tried and convicted for the murder of his wife and infant daughter, despite the fact that he had protested his innocence and accused his downstairs neighbour John Christie. He was hanged at Pentonville on 9 March.

Three years later Christie was found to be a serial killer who had murdered 6 other women (including his own wife) and hid their bodies behind the walls and under the floorboards at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill.

So, an innocent man was convicted in a British Court, based upon the burden of evidence, and put to death wrongly by the State.

The State only has to get it wrong a single time for such a sentence to be totally untenable.

If you are going to have a death penalty it can't be based upon 'beyond reasonable doubt' it must be based upon 'beyond all doubt'.

How often is that likely to be the case?
Sums it up perfectly (and better than I cold type it tonight!)

While there is any chance whatsoever of a miscarriage of justice or mistake then no chance.


Rehabilitation if possible with or without custodial sentences please. Just look at Holland's criminal justice/prison system. A large and steady drop in he prison pupulation for the last ten years or so (possibly more)

Ayahuasca

27,427 posts

278 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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Just watch Netflix' 'making a murderer'. The murder convictions were obtained by DNA evidence and confession . Confession is about as watertight as you can get, right? Scientific DNA proof and a confession!


Wisconsin abolished the death penalty, and if you watch the show you might be inclined to believe it was the right thing to do.

Ginetta G15 Girl

3,220 posts

183 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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So tell me how the Birmingham 6 got found guilty?

Or the Guildford 4?

To name but a few.

If we'd had the Death Penalty in existence then those people found guilty 'beyond reasonable doubt' would be dead. Despite the fact they were later exonerated.

Is that 'reasonable'?

Maybe, but not in my world. I would suggest that 'reasonable doubt' is not a good enough test because it does not mean 'certain' or 'sure' (despite your assertion) but 'on the basis of probability'.

Indeed, if 'beyond reasonable doubt' meant 'sure' then there would be no miscarriages of justice, which patently has never been the case.



Edited by Ginetta G15 Girl on Friday 2nd December 21:51

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 2nd December 2016
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it is always more than the sum of the capital punishment. in a fair and just world killing someone for a crime sounds reliable to some, an eye for an eye etc.

The problem is life is not as straight forward, evidence can be corrupted, people can lie etc and maybe you can never be 100% sure.

Lets say for example the Grindr murderer killed people and the police didn't batter an eyelid over it, so even in the modern would the police can never be truly relied on as absolute enforcement.

History has shown capital punishment can be used nefariously, and we would never want the courts to end up as someone's Star Chamber.

dragging ass

30 posts

105 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
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The Spruce goose said:
it is always more than the sum of the capital punishment. in a fair and just world killing someone for a crime sounds reliable to some, an eye for an eye etc.
The problem with that is eventually everyone ends up blind.



227bhp

10,203 posts

127 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
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It costs approx £40k PA to keep someone in prison (After the £65K to put them there).

The Rotherham kiddie fiddlers are said to be locked up for a total of 103 yrs, that will cost us £4120000 to keep them locked up after the huge initial imprisoning court and investigation fees.

Yes i'd pull the rope, trigger, even kick the chair away if you paid me just a fraction of that.

I think the incidences of people being incorrectly found guilty these days are comparatively very low.

Best wishes,
Albert Pierrepoint.

Kermit power

28,635 posts

212 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
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227bhp said:
It costs approx £40k PA to keep someone in prison (After the £65K to put them there).

The Rotherham kiddie fiddlers are said to be locked up for a total of 103 yrs, that will cost us £4120000 to keep them locked up after the huge initial imprisoning court and investigation fees.

Yes i'd pull the rope, trigger, even kick the chair away if you paid me just a fraction of that.
Firstly, you'd still have costs of investigation and prosecution regardless of the eventual outcome, and if you had the death penalty, those costs would arguably be higher to meet the even more absolute need to be correct in the verdict, so they're irrelevant, especially as the death penalty has been proven time and again to be no deterrent to actually committing crime in the first place.

Secondly, whilst you may well be able to divide the total budget of the prison service by the number of prisoners to get to a sum of £40k per annum, a large proportion of that is on mass costs such as maintaining the prisons and paying the staff, and removing the tiny number of prisoners who might've been given the death penalty will have very little impact on those numbers.


227bhp said:
I think the incidences of people being incorrectly found guilty these days are comparatively very low.

Best wishes,
Albert Pierrepoint.
That's what people have always thought though, and you can look back through even recent history and still keep finding cases of wrongful convictions where new evidence or different investigatory techniques have proven that to be the case.

If you convict someone and kill them, how are you going to make things right in the unlikely case they're later shown to be innocent?


anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
I am a fan of using lifers in medical experiments. Proper ones, where the treatment has already shown promising signs of efficacy in the earliest stage trials.

It would be a sort of fast track for the trials process. The pharma companies would pay a few bob too.

Kermit power

28,635 posts

212 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
That's a meaningless figure in the context of the death penalty though.

By all means, use it when talking about the petty criminal scrotes who make up the vast majority of the prison population - ideally in comparison to the cost to society they cause on the outside as a way of justifying the fact that prison is actually pretty good value to the taxpayer, and serial offenders should therefore be locked up for longer - but there are so few prisoners who might be subject to the death penalty that removing them would have bugger all difference on the costs to the prison service.

Bill

52,484 posts

254 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Taking that figure and assuming each prisoner would live, say, 30 years gives us £1.2m per prisoner. China has a far bigger population and a questionable approach to justice and executes about 2000 a year. If we adjust for population that's about one per 500,000 people. So 140 a year here.

£168m a year. A drop in the ocean.

And it doesn't work as a deterrent.

227bhp

10,203 posts

127 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
227bhp said:
It costs approx £40k PA to keep someone in prison (After the £65K to put them there).

The Rotherham kiddie fiddlers are said to be locked up for a total of 103 yrs, that will cost us £4120000 to keep them locked up after the huge initial imprisoning court and investigation fees.

Yes i'd pull the rope, trigger, even kick the chair away if you paid me just a fraction of that.
Firstly, you'd still have costs of investigation and prosecution regardless of the eventual outcome, and if you had the death penalty, those costs would arguably be higher to meet the even more absolute need to be correct in the verdict, so they're irrelevant, especially as the death penalty has been proven time and again to be no deterrent to actually committing crime in the first place.

Secondly, whilst you may well be able to divide the total budget of the prison service by the number of prisoners to get to a sum of £40k per annum, a large proportion of that is on mass costs such as maintaining the prisons and paying the staff, and removing the tiny number of prisoners who might've been given the death penalty will have very little impact on those numbers.


227bhp said:
I think the incidences of people being incorrectly found guilty these days are comparatively very low.

Best wishes,
Albert Pierrepoint.
That's what people have always thought though, and you can look back through even recent history and still keep finding cases of wrongful convictions where new evidence or different investigatory techniques have proven that to be the case.

If you convict someone and kill them, how are you going to make things right in the unlikely case they're later shown to be innocent?
I've answered the question as per title, you haven't.

Kermit power

28,635 posts

212 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
227bhp said:
Kermit power said:
227bhp said:
It costs approx £40k PA to keep someone in prison (After the £65K to put them there).

The Rotherham kiddie fiddlers are said to be locked up for a total of 103 yrs, that will cost us £4120000 to keep them locked up after the huge initial imprisoning court and investigation fees.

Yes i'd pull the rope, trigger, even kick the chair away if you paid me just a fraction of that.
Firstly, you'd still have costs of investigation and prosecution regardless of the eventual outcome, and if you had the death penalty, those costs would arguably be higher to meet the even more absolute need to be correct in the verdict, so they're irrelevant, especially as the death penalty has been proven time and again to be no deterrent to actually committing crime in the first place.

Secondly, whilst you may well be able to divide the total budget of the prison service by the number of prisoners to get to a sum of £40k per annum, a large proportion of that is on mass costs such as maintaining the prisons and paying the staff, and removing the tiny number of prisoners who might've been given the death penalty will have very little impact on those numbers.


227bhp said:
I think the incidences of people being incorrectly found guilty these days are comparatively very low.

Best wishes,
Albert Pierrepoint.
That's what people have always thought though, and you can look back through even recent history and still keep finding cases of wrongful convictions where new evidence or different investigatory techniques have proven that to be the case.

If you convict someone and kill them, how are you going to make things right in the unlikely case they're later shown to be innocent?
I've answered the question as per title, you haven't.
Sorry, I had assumed you would be able to deduce my answer without my having to state the bleeding obvious, but if you really need me to answer it then no, I would not pull the rope, and your completely flawed logic isn't going to do anything to induce me to change that view.

The Mad Monk

10,474 posts

116 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
Kermit power said:
If you convict someone and kill them, how are you going to make things right in the unlikely case they're later shown to be innocent?
No system is perfect.

Win a few, lose a few.

ruggedscotty

5,606 posts

208 months

Saturday 3rd December 2016
quotequote all
Its not like that at all...

its the type of person that has done such a crime, do you really want them to be included in the general population ?

As for deterrent ? really. If its a deterrent then thats a good thing, but reality is id rather we got rid. Doing something like that is indicative of the type of person you are and that you dont operate within the same set of
values as the average person.

The killer that killed Jo ? And he is still alive as we dont understand him he needs help, no he doesnt he is beyond help, he is beyond the state giving consideration to his needs.

move on accept that there are times when the state has to say nope, that line has been crossed and he needs to be put down.