Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Problem of Innocence in the Death Penalty Debate. Legitimate or Pretextual?

Abolitionists use the rate of innocence on death row as a justification to suspend the death penalty. Governors have suspended the death penalty due to this problem of innocence.


Failure of Criminal Procedure

The idea of executing an innocent person is abhorrent. It represents the failure of the lawyer management of the criminal law. The lawyer is using 13th Century methods and Rules of Evidence. It is possible, no trial has any scientific validity. Daubert standards do apply to the criminal trial. Biggest myth? The adversarial process is a method to reach an answer to a problem. That is from Scholasticism and the 13th Century. There are no reliability statistics, let alone validation statistics for the criminal trial.

To compound the problem of the peole later found innocent, about a quarter had falsely confessed. For all we know, they may even have believed they were guilty after a working over by the police. Even confessions have no validity.

Inconsistency of Abolitionists

If the death penalty should stop because of the rate of innocence, then so should all other procedures with flaws. The abolitionists should not get on any train, plane, bicycle, car or bus. These kill 1000 times as many innocent people as the death penalty kills guilty people, and 5000 times as the death penalty kills innocent people. These cars kill innocent people without any due process. They do so by butchery methods of slicing and dicing bodies with sharp metal edges.

Hypocrisy and Economic Conflict of Interest

The abolitionists use the innocents on death row as a pretext to stop the death penalty for the guilty. Why would anyone advocate for gangbangers, mobsters, and serial killers? Most abolitionists are left wing ideologues. These criminals generate massive government make work for the constituency of the left, government dependent workers.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

No one deliberately straps someone down to the hood of a car or a train track with the intent of killing them.

Supremacy Claus said...

You are saying, transportation has utility, and the intent is to provide a benefit. The damage is a side effect.

If the death penalty is not a useful tool, and innocence is not a side effect, it should end. It should do so because it is worthless, and ineffective, not because of the rate of innocence.

The rate of innocence is appalling. It points to the incompetence and inherent invalidity of the Rules of Evidence and of Criminal Procedure, more than to the worthlessness of the death penalty.

The death penalty should not be deemed worthless until a proper number has been carried out. That number like has 4 figures in its yearly occurrence, rather than the 2 figures of today.

S said...

That is the single silliest argument I have ever read in the death penalty debate. And your comment meant to refute R's point is downright incomprehensible.

Supremacy Claus said...

The abolitionist innocence argument is a phony, an excuse. He stops no other activity due to an error rate. For the DP, which has utility, only perfection is permissible.