On the Death Penalty

[Skeletor]

For 22 years, Ledell Lee maintained that he had been wrongly convicted of murder.

“My dying words will always be, as it has been, ‘I am an innocent man,’” he told the BBC in an interview published on April 19, 2017 — the day before officials in Arkansas administered the lethal injection.

Four years later, lawyers affiliated with the Innocence Project and the American Civil Liberties Union say DNA testing has revealed that genetic material on the murder weapon — which was never previously tested — in fact belongs to another man...

...Along with providing new DNA results, Ms. Young’s petition pushed the city of Jacksonville to compare fingerprints from the crime scene to a state and national fingerprint database for the first time. It has long been established that Mr. Lee’s fingerprints did not match any of those at the scene.

Happen to him it can happen to anyone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/u...-arkansas.html

[~Rocktar~]

Happen to him it can happen to anyone.

While often quoted, this is flatly false. Police didn't randomly go out and locate this guy and decide to falsely prosecute him. A jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. That takes a pretty good bit of evidence and a lot of work on the part of the prosecution along with a piss poor defense attorney. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal and not reason to make or change law or policy.

[Bhaalizmo]

While often quoted, this is flatly false. Police didn't randomly go out and locate this guy and decide to falsely prosecute him. A jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. That takes a pretty good bit of evidence and a lot of work on the part of the prosecution along with a piss poor defense attorney. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal and not reason to make or change law or policy.

Saying that something as broad as what you just disagreed with is "flatly false" is just as dumb as making a claim that all people from a country are ____, or all people of a certain color are _____.

You're close-minded, and the evidence is in how you speak.

Convictions and sentencings like this are commonplace and are often the result of willful and intentional race soldiering within our policing and judicial systems. IE: Systemic racism. It happens, often. It doesn't mean that all cops are bad, or race soldiers, and it doesn't mean that our judicial system doesn't work as intended sometimes. But these flaws in both are real, and pervasive.

[Skeletor]

While often quoted, this is flatly false. Police didn't randomly go out and locate this guy and decide to falsely prosecute him. A jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. That takes a pretty good bit of evidence and a lot of work on the part of the prosecution along with a piss poor defense attorney. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal and not reason to make or change law or policy.

How the heck is DNA evidence "anecdotal". There wasn't a single fingerprint on the murder weapon (at least not his). What did he do use The Force to levitate the murder weapon?

[Bhaalizmo]

How the heck is DNA evidence "anecdotal". There wasn't a single fingerprint on the murder weapon (at least not his). What did he do use The Force to levitate the murder weapon?

[Menos]

I respectfully disagree. If anything our current polarized political environment and what you could either call populous or mob rule, depending on how charitable you are feeling, makes it easy to imagine a set of circumstances where a person would be wrongly convicted of a capital crime.

In the last year I have seen people involved in protests, counter protest or defending themselves from rioters (depending on your perspective) accused of murder, attempted murder, and insurrection, both in washington state and washington d.c.

Just as in past examples of racially motivated unjust prosecution, it remains only possible to make amends for such an injustice so long as the person is still alive. I see no reason our fallible justice system or government needs the final sanction of execution. The work of groups like the innocence project make it clear just how often the system gets things wrong.

Moreover, I think this is a position that people on both sides of the current political spectrum should see as reasonable.

[Tgo01]

Convictions and sentencings like this are commonplace

It's really not. Hundreds of thousands of people are convicted of crimes each year and sent to prison, how many are actually innocent?

IE: Systemic racism.

Oh right, the ever present yet never identified "systemic racism." I don't suppose RATM gave you any actual examples of "systemic racism" happening today that you can point to?

[~Rocktar~]

Saying that something as broad as what you just disagreed with is "flatly false" is just as dumb as making a claim that all people from a country are ____, or all people of a certain color are _____.

You're close-minded, and the evidence is in how you speak.

Convictions and sentencings like this are commonplace and are often the result of willful and intentional race soldiering within our policing and judicial systems. IE: Systemic racism. It happens, often. It doesn't mean that all cops are bad, or race soldiers, and it doesn't mean that our judicial system doesn't work as intended sometimes. But these flaws in both are real, and pervasive.

You are so full of shit. They aren't that common at all which is why they are such big news when you do see them. Systemic racism is a myth that you racist assholes perpetuate to maintain power by telling a whole race of people that they are so pathetic that they need the white Leftist/Progressive/Liberal's help to live much less succeed. The percentages of cases like this, even if we take a very generous view, are greatly less than 1% of all murder convictions and the conviction rate for murder is very low based on number of prosecutions. So yeah, shit happens, again, the "it can happen to anyone" is a flat out lie and anecdotal evidence is anecdotal and no reason to change law or policy.

Now fuck off.

[~Rocktar~]

How the heck is DNA evidence "anecdotal". There wasn't a single fingerprint on the murder weapon (at least not his). What did he do use The Force to levitate the murder weapon?

One example out of a large pool of convictions is anecdotal. That is why, while it's a bad thing, it is no basis for changing policy or law.

[~Rocktar~]

I respectfully disagree. If anything our current polarized political environment and what you could either call populous or mob rule, depending on how charitable you are feeling, makes it easy to imagine a set of circumstances where a person would be wrongly convicted of a capital crime.

In the last year I have seen people involved in protests, counter protest or defending themselves from rioters (depending on your perspective) accused of murder, attempted murder, and insurrection, both in washington state and washington d.c.

Just as in past examples of racially motivated unjust prosecution, it remains only possible to make amends for such an injustice so long as the person is still alive. I see no reason our fallible justice system or government needs the final sanction of execution. The work of groups like the innocence project make it clear just how often the system gets things wrong.

Moreover, I think this is a position that people on both sides of the current political spectrum should see as reasonable.

It is unreasonable to support criminal shitbags who have been convicted of heinous crimes at the expense of people for longer than necessary to put them to death. That is a double crime to society.