i don't think people have the money to keep these sickos locked up for life especially right now and believe me it is more barbaric letting these evil s.o.b's live after what they have done to people and all the countless people's lives they have destroyed.i really hope that you never lose anyone to these sick s.o.b's because believe me you wouldn't think it was so barbaric executing these scum i for one cant live in a world that gives more rights to the murderer than the victim.i really hope and im not being bitchy or sarcastic when i write this that you never have someone you love taken away from you in such an awful way as i have because it does destroy your life and the last thing you need is the murderer smirking and making jokes about what they did to your loved one.
The death penalty as legally justified retribution in the criminal justice system
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Good points but sadly the modern world is all about giving rights to people that deserve none. Prisoners here in England recently complained because they felt they weren't getting to watch enough pay per view sports channels!! While decent people on the outside can't afford to see any sports on pay per view.Our hands are tied as the court of human rights rules in the favour of criminals 90% of the time. It's a sick world and things like this just add weight to me not wanting to be part of it.
You need to bear in mind that people in the UK can get locked up in prison for non payment of council tax, non payment of TV licence and my favourite one vagrancy, (essentially being homeless), so do all those people also deserve to have all their rights forfeit just because they broke some sort of stupid law? Also bear in mind that this human rights act that you mention also allow you to express yourself in a free manner on sites such as this, it also ensures that every be treated the same regardless of race, religion, disability and with dignity. Fortunately that does not end just because someone is incarcerated because this is a civil society.
As for the sensational story with prisoners asking for sky sports, well seeing as they are still banned from voting then i wouldnt worry about this ever happening. We are being governed in the UK by the most punitive party we have ever known after all.
As for the sensational story with prisoners asking for sky sports, well seeing as they are still banned from voting then i wouldnt worry about this ever happening. We are being governed in the UK by the most punitive party we have ever known after all.
Oh i have read all the previous comments and you sound exactly like every other person in the UK who believes everything the Daily Mail tells you. Ive been to prison 14 times, and i know full well its no walk in the park. I have never once come across a playstation in prison or any of the other crap that gets reported.
What does killing a child molester and a murderer achieve? Its nowhere near a deterrent, look at the US to see that. How does one appeal a death sentence when they are dead? Miscarriages of justice, especially in the UK happen all the time.
What does killing a child molester and a murderer achieve? Its nowhere near a deterrent, look at the US to see that. How does one appeal a death sentence when they are dead? Miscarriages of justice, especially in the UK happen all the time.
your right its screwed up that good law abiding people who do nothing wrong cant even afford for feed themselves and their families yet some murdering s.o.b's get to complaine about not having enough tv channels to watch. i personally hate my country with a passion and would love to move but i know full well that every single country is the same.prison is no punishment for the failed abortions we call criminals believe me every one i grew up with is either in prison or they are out commiting criminal acts and no one does a damn thing about them.prison is no real punishment!!!!
I dont know where your from but the UK prison population who commited murder is made up of 2%.
Before anymore misinformed anger ensues please think very very hard about this. Going by what i have seen so far in this thread the majority of people agree with the death penalty. So that also means that people who kill their loved ones due to assisted suicide also deserve the death penalty because i am afraid that is still murder.
Before anymore misinformed anger ensues please think very very hard about this. Going by what i have seen so far in this thread the majority of people agree with the death penalty. So that also means that people who kill their loved ones due to assisted suicide also deserve the death penalty because i am afraid that is still murder.
"Misinformed anger" so your saying your right then? Lol
I'm not talking about execution for someone who helps a loved one with a terminal illness to die. Nor the person who stabs a low life burglar to death whilst breaking into their home. I'm talking about the Fred west,Peter sutcliffes and men who think it's ok to have sex with a baby or any child for that matter coz they're beyond help.So don't think you can keep dragging up a scenario to catch me out.There is clearly a massive monumental difference between somebody helping somebody they love to die and Fred west! If you can't see that your not all there.
I'm not talking about execution for someone who helps a loved one with a terminal illness to die. Nor the person who stabs a low life burglar to death whilst breaking into their home. I'm talking about the Fred west,Peter sutcliffes and men who think it's ok to have sex with a baby or any child for that matter coz they're beyond help.So don't think you can keep dragging up a scenario to catch me out.There is clearly a massive monumental difference between somebody helping somebody they love to die and Fred west! If you can't see that your not all there.
Im not saying im right at all. But murder is murder, you cant have the death penalty for people like fred west and peter sutcliffe and ignore the people who killed out of compassion. You either have the death penalty for ALL murder convictions or you dont. I also dont see why you feel the need to use sarcasm like 'if you cant see that then you are clearly not their' it makes neither your or my point any less valid.
Your post earlier about prisoners wanting sky TV and a earlier post about prisoners having access to playstations have originated from these newspapers that you claim is toilet paper, if you want i will even post the stories from the daily mail site.
Your post earlier about prisoners wanting sky TV and a earlier post about prisoners having access to playstations have originated from these newspapers that you claim is toilet paper, if you want i will even post the stories from the daily mail site.
" You either have the death penalty for ALL murder convictions or you dont" can you please explain why that would have to be the law when there is such a difference between some sicko who kills for kicks and somebody who does it out of compassion or self defence.
I'm not a liar,I don't buy a newspaper however I do watch the news and topical debates on tv. If you dont believe me,I'm fine with it.
I'm not a liar,I don't buy a newspaper however I do watch the news and topical debates on tv. If you dont believe me,I'm fine with it.
murder is still murder regardless of the amount of compassion or amount of remorse involved. Here, have the definition:
mur·der/ˈmərdər/
Noun:
The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.
Law and justice have no room for whatsoever for the emotion of the general public. The fact that you refer to criminals as sickos shows me that you are incapable of having a balanced view on this. So instead of slinging sarcasm left right and center that quite frankly is starting to piss me off im outta this thread before it descends into chaos and ends up getting locked.
mur·der/ˈmərdər/
Noun:
The unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.
Law and justice have no room for whatsoever for the emotion of the general public. The fact that you refer to criminals as sickos shows me that you are incapable of having a balanced view on this. So instead of slinging sarcasm left right and center that quite frankly is starting to piss me off im outta this thread before it descends into chaos and ends up getting locked.
From a Intelectual standpoint Justice Scalia has always dictated the debate in the Supreme Court and believes (wrongly I think) that the consitution doesn't gurantee that an innocent man can't be executed, only that they can be guaranteed a fair trial and let the consequences fall where they may. Here is a good article on Scalia's thinking (although a biasis one)
Twenty years ago Wednesday night, Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah, Georgia, police officer moonlighting as a security guard, was shot to death in a dark parking lot. MacPhail had tried to come to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped by a local thug named Sylvester Coles.
Two years later, after what Justice Antonin Scalia described this week as a “full and fair trial,” Troy Davis was convicted of murdering MacPhail and sentenced to death. The evidence at that trial consisted of nine eyewitnesses who claimed Davis shot MacPhail (Davis had been inside a nearby pool hall and was part of a crowd that came out of the hall in response to the commotion in the parking lot where Coles was beating the homeless man).
• Alan Dershowitz: Scalia's Catholic Betrayal The prosecution’s star witness was none other than Coles himself. No physical evidence tied Davis to the crime—the gun was never recovered—and in the years since Davis’ conviction, seven of the eight other eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Davis shoot MacPhail have signed sworn affidavits recanting their claims. Several now claim Coles was the killer and that they were coerced by police threats into testifying against Davis.
In retrospect, the case against Davis, which wasn’t strong to begin with, has almost completely fallen apart. But Davis has a big problem: As an exasperated Scalia explained in his dissent from Monday’s extraordinarily unusual Supreme Court order directing a federal court to hold an evidentiary hearing on Davis’ claims, there’s nothing illegal about what has happened, and continues to happen, to Troy Davis. (The order is unusual because the court almost never entertains direct appeals by defendants in Davis’ situation.)
Judges of this type like these sorts of cases because they demonstrate that law is a supposedly nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous practice, rather than a touchy-feely exercise in doing what strikes the judge as the right thing.
“This court,” Scalia pointed out, “has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”
Scalia takes the position that, from a legal perspective, it no longer makes the slightest difference whether Davis is innocent of the murder he was convicted of committing, and for which, in all likelihood, he will be executed. If a defendant got a fair trial in state court, there’s nothing the federal court can do, Scalia argues, to reverse that verdict—even if new evidence comes to light that convinces the court to a moral certainty that the defendant is innocent.
Scalia represents an extreme example of a certain kind of judge that positively revels in coming to conclusions that are morally revolting but “legally” sound. Judges of this type like these sorts of cases because they demonstrate that law is a supposedly nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous practice, rather than a touchy-feely exercise in doing what strikes the judge as the right thing.
What, after all, could be more nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous than executing an innocent man, simply because “the law” requires that result? In a perverse way, such bloody logic is a kind of advertisement for the supposed objectivity of the legal system, since we can assume that no sane decision maker would reach such a decision voluntarily. (The great legal historian Douglas Hay explained the 18th-century English practice of sometimes acquitting obviously guilty men on absurd procedural technicalities, such as incorrectly calling the defendant a “farmer” instead of a “yeoman,” in similar terms: “When the ruling class acquitted men on such technicalities they helped embody a belief in the disembodied justice of the law in the minds of all who watched. In short the law’s absurd formalism was part of its strength as ideology.”)
Indeed, I get a certain morbid amusement from the gasps of horror some of my fellow liberal legal colleagues emit when they read something like Scalia’s dissent in the Davis case. “Surely he can’t mean that it’s constitutional to execute an innocent man!” they exclaim.
Oh, but he does mean that. After all, Davis does appear to have gotten what counts as a “fair” trial in our legal system. That he was a 20-year-old poor black man in a state with a horribly underfunded public defender system, and therefore he received a vastly inferior defense to that which would have been available to a defendant with money, doesn’t add up to what lawyers call a “legally cognizable claim.” Nor does the (closely related) fact that he was convicted solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony, even though social science research has demonstrated how unreliable such testimony often is.
If I were to attempt a sympathetic translation of Scalia’s dissent into nonlegal terms, it would go like this: “The defense in this case is claiming that there’s something unusual about Troy Davis’ situation, requiring extraordinary action on the part of the Supreme Court. But there’s nothing unusual about his situation. The American legal system routinely sentences people to long prison terms and even to death on the basis of dubious evidence, in trials featuring overburdened, underfunded, and marginally competent defense lawyers. Obviously under such conditions (a lot of) mistakes are going to be made. If such mistakes make verdicts unconstitutional, then the whole system is unconstitutional.”
And that, just as “obviously,” is an unacceptable conclusion.
The reflexive response to this sort of argument is the same one you often hear to people who defend using torture on terrorist suspects. That response is: This is America—we’re better than that.
To which the obvious reply is: No, we’re not.
Xtra Insight: Plus: Alan M. Dershowitz on Scalia’s Catholic betrayal.
Twenty years ago Wednesday night, Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah, Georgia, police officer moonlighting as a security guard, was shot to death in a dark parking lot. MacPhail had tried to come to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped by a local thug named Sylvester Coles.
Two years later, after what Justice Antonin Scalia described this week as a “full and fair trial,” Troy Davis was convicted of murdering MacPhail and sentenced to death. The evidence at that trial consisted of nine eyewitnesses who claimed Davis shot MacPhail (Davis had been inside a nearby pool hall and was part of a crowd that came out of the hall in response to the commotion in the parking lot where Coles was beating the homeless man).
• Alan Dershowitz: Scalia's Catholic Betrayal The prosecution’s star witness was none other than Coles himself. No physical evidence tied Davis to the crime—the gun was never recovered—and in the years since Davis’ conviction, seven of the eight other eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Davis shoot MacPhail have signed sworn affidavits recanting their claims. Several now claim Coles was the killer and that they were coerced by police threats into testifying against Davis.
In retrospect, the case against Davis, which wasn’t strong to begin with, has almost completely fallen apart. But Davis has a big problem: As an exasperated Scalia explained in his dissent from Monday’s extraordinarily unusual Supreme Court order directing a federal court to hold an evidentiary hearing on Davis’ claims, there’s nothing illegal about what has happened, and continues to happen, to Troy Davis. (The order is unusual because the court almost never entertains direct appeals by defendants in Davis’ situation.)
Judges of this type like these sorts of cases because they demonstrate that law is a supposedly nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous practice, rather than a touchy-feely exercise in doing what strikes the judge as the right thing.
“This court,” Scalia pointed out, “has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”
Scalia takes the position that, from a legal perspective, it no longer makes the slightest difference whether Davis is innocent of the murder he was convicted of committing, and for which, in all likelihood, he will be executed. If a defendant got a fair trial in state court, there’s nothing the federal court can do, Scalia argues, to reverse that verdict—even if new evidence comes to light that convinces the court to a moral certainty that the defendant is innocent.
Scalia represents an extreme example of a certain kind of judge that positively revels in coming to conclusions that are morally revolting but “legally” sound. Judges of this type like these sorts of cases because they demonstrate that law is a supposedly nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous practice, rather than a touchy-feely exercise in doing what strikes the judge as the right thing.
What, after all, could be more nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous than executing an innocent man, simply because “the law” requires that result? In a perverse way, such bloody logic is a kind of advertisement for the supposed objectivity of the legal system, since we can assume that no sane decision maker would reach such a decision voluntarily. (The great legal historian Douglas Hay explained the 18th-century English practice of sometimes acquitting obviously guilty men on absurd procedural technicalities, such as incorrectly calling the defendant a “farmer” instead of a “yeoman,” in similar terms: “When the ruling class acquitted men on such technicalities they helped embody a belief in the disembodied justice of the law in the minds of all who watched. In short the law’s absurd formalism was part of its strength as ideology.”)
Indeed, I get a certain morbid amusement from the gasps of horror some of my fellow liberal legal colleagues emit when they read something like Scalia’s dissent in the Davis case. “Surely he can’t mean that it’s constitutional to execute an innocent man!” they exclaim.
Oh, but he does mean that. After all, Davis does appear to have gotten what counts as a “fair” trial in our legal system. That he was a 20-year-old poor black man in a state with a horribly underfunded public defender system, and therefore he received a vastly inferior defense to that which would have been available to a defendant with money, doesn’t add up to what lawyers call a “legally cognizable claim.” Nor does the (closely related) fact that he was convicted solely on the basis of eyewitness testimony, even though social science research has demonstrated how unreliable such testimony often is.
If I were to attempt a sympathetic translation of Scalia’s dissent into nonlegal terms, it would go like this: “The defense in this case is claiming that there’s something unusual about Troy Davis’ situation, requiring extraordinary action on the part of the Supreme Court. But there’s nothing unusual about his situation. The American legal system routinely sentences people to long prison terms and even to death on the basis of dubious evidence, in trials featuring overburdened, underfunded, and marginally competent defense lawyers. Obviously under such conditions (a lot of) mistakes are going to be made. If such mistakes make verdicts unconstitutional, then the whole system is unconstitutional.”
And that, just as “obviously,” is an unacceptable conclusion.
The reflexive response to this sort of argument is the same one you often hear to people who defend using torture on terrorist suspects. That response is: This is America—we’re better than that.
To which the obvious reply is: No, we’re not.
Xtra Insight: Plus: Alan M. Dershowitz on Scalia’s Catholic betrayal.
I don't think skin colour has a thing to do with it,I'm White and poor and I wouldnt have got any better lawyers or a fairer trial. Money helps big time tho without a doubt,if I was caught doing 120mph I'd be banned from driving without a doubt. However the rich and famous hire this lawyer whose name escapes me but his nickname is mr fixit and he gets them all off with no ban. This world has always had and always will have one set of laws and rules for the rich and another set for everybody else. Also referring to that case where you had eight eye witnesses who later all withdrew their stories! Well they should be ashamed coz people like that could cost someone their life. No matter what the police did to me I wouldn't tell lies and get someone sentenced to death so they need to search their conscience for what they've done. Without them the guy wouldn't have been on death row in the first place.
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