fate

Specifically, what law or laws would have prevented the shooting in Oregon? In Roanoke? In Newtown? I'll wait.

I do know that the presence of the death penalty didn't deter the crimes either ....

Outside of banning weapons and collecting them, with 100% effectiveness, there is no 100% certainty.
But you don't need to achieve 100% certainty to reduce gun deaths.
Here's an interesting summary of the evidence that gun laws reduce gun deaths, including homicides, police shootings and shootings of police .. And that's the aim. Just because perfect prevention cannot be achieved, doesn't mean better prevention can't be attempted.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gu ... statistics

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/states- ... th-penalty

rickyp wrote:fate

Specifically, what law or laws would have prevented the shooting in Oregon? In Roanoke? In Newtown? I'll wait.

I do know that the presence of the death penalty didn't deter the crimes either ....

Outside of banning weapons and collecting them, with 100% effectiveness, there is no 100% certainty.
But you don't need to achieve 100% certainty to reduce gun deaths.
Here's an interesting summary of the evidence that gun laws reduce gun deaths, including homicides, police shootings and shootings of police .. And that's the aim. Just because perfect prevention cannot be achieved, doesn't mean better prevention can't be attempted.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gu ... statistics

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/states- ... th-penalty

Death penalty is irrelevant to gun control.

I'm not reading links to find out what YOU would SPECIFICALLY suggest that would eradicate shootings like yesterday's.

That's one strike.

Can we keep this to the death penalty, please?

Ray Jay wrote:I'm certainly against the death penalty in error, and I do agree with the point that human institutions are very good at committing errors.

And the problem is that often the errors are not found until later (or of course the state or others seek to cover their errors).

danivon wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I'm certainly against the death penalty in error, and I do agree with the point that human institutions are very good at committing errors.

And the problem is that often the errors are not found until later (or of course the state or others seek to cover their errors).

Is there ever a case in which there is no doubt of guilt? And, yes, I mean "zero."

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I'm certainly against the death penalty in error, and I do agree with the point that human institutions are very good at committing errors.

And the problem is that often the errors are not found until later (or of course the state or others seek to cover their errors).

Is there ever a case in which there is no doubt of guilt? And, yes, I mean "zero."

No. And that is not the legal test a jury bases their verdict on

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I'm certainly against the death penalty in error, and I do agree with the point that human institutions are very good at committing errors.

And the problem is that often the errors are not found until later (or of course the state or others seek to cover their errors).

Is there ever a case in which there is no doubt of guilt? And, yes, I mean "zero."

No. And that is not the legal test a jury bases their verdict on

Understood regarding the legal test. I simply wanted to see if there was any common ground between us. Apparently, there isn't.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

danivon wrote:

Ray Jay wrote:I'm certainly against the death penalty in error, and I do agree with the point that human institutions are very good at committing errors.

And the problem is that often the errors are not found until later (or of course the state or others seek to cover their errors).

Is there ever a case in which there is no doubt of guilt? And, yes, I mean "zero."

No. And that is not the legal test a jury bases their verdict on

What is the doubt on the guilt of the CT murderers? I thought it was slam dunk.

Doctor Fate wrote:Understood regarding the legal test. I simply wanted to see if there was any common ground between us. Apparently, there isn't.

I believe humans are imperfect. This means we can never have perfect knowledge, or be able to make perfect judgements.

On that basis we can never be 100% certain. When it becomes a question of life or death, that is an issue for me.

bbauska wrote:What is the doubt on the guilt of the CT murderers? I thought it was slam dunk.

Ok, do I have specific doubts?

A few. The jurors were, after the trial, given post-traumatic stress counselling. This was because of the gruesome nature of the crimes and the evidence they had to see and hear. But could that stress have affected their decision-making?

One juror in the first case was ejected from the jury because they objected to the way that the prosecution evidence was being presented. Could that have led to subconscious pressure on the rest of the jury to conform and not question things?

Perhaps the perpetrators were not sane at the time?

Perhaps one of the perpetrators also manipulated the other and either forces them to act or got them to share the blame?

But as the great modern philosopher Donald Rumsfeld said,

"we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones"

None of us were at the scene of the crime as it happened. None of us have actually seen all of the evidence that was presented to the juries. Even if we were, being human we can be tricked by our own senses and our own brains. But this means we cannot possibly "know".

What we have is what we are told. Media reports, and the statements therein primarily. These come through filters. Both those who talk to the media, and the media themselves, have conscious and subconscious biases, and we have no way to know what they all are or what effect they had.

We don't know what evidence was not found, or found but kept from others. We don't know if the suspects were encouraged to "own up" in the hope of leniency (this is a common cause of miscarriages of justice).

As far as I can tell, they probably are guilty. And so I have no problem with them being jailed for life. But the possibility still exists - in that gap between "reasonable doubt" and "absolute certainty" that they are not as guilty. For that reason, and to be consistent with the way I think we should treat all cases, death should not be the punishment. Because it cannot be reversed, or compensated for.

Fair enough for you. It is a slam dunk for me.

There are always some cases where there can never be any possibility of doubt. The most obvious recent example would be that guy who interrupted a live tv broadcast to murder the presenters in front of thousands of viewers and however many eye witnesses at the scene, right after posting messages on social media about why he was about to do it. My point really is that while these cases do exist, you can't really devise a watertight judicial system which will only ever hand down the death penalty to people who are 100% guilty without any possibility of error.

Even in such cases, we may be able to say that the killing happened for absolute certainty, but "murder" also entails pre-meditation and intent. These depend on the state of mind of the perpetrator, and if they are not legally sane at the time of the killings it could be argued that they are not guilty of murder, but of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

And I would also always argue that someone who is criminally insane should be held for treatment and study, not killed off. It may well be that they are incurable or untrustable even if they appear cured, but even so we can learn from them more about their conditions and what may cause them.

But essentially I agree with Sass that it is a very different question to look at a single case in hindsight, to looking at how you devise a consistent and foolproof legal system that will never put an innocent suspect to death.