|
Caius -> RE: A case the death penalty was created for (10/9/2010 1:44:32 AM)
|
I think sam makes a pretty good argument here. Though it's surely hard to keep the blood from boiling when you hear the details of this case, he is right in that one has to think carefully about the consequences of giving the state power over life and death. An astounding number of people on death row have had their convictions overturned since the advent of DNA evidence. At the same time, the CSI culture has primed jurors (and jurists) virtually everywhere it reaches to regard forensic analysts as virtually infallible when in fact many times there has been no kind of empirical review of their methods, which range a wide gambit from poorly understood because they are leading edge thinking to poorly understood because they are absolute bullshit manufactured in the mind of a psuedo-scientist. From forensic bacteriology to blood-splatter patterns to forensic typography and too many others to even begin to list here, evidence is all-to-often debunked, and unfortunately frequently after an innocent party has had their life irreversibly altered (or even taken). As sam also points out, even more credible processes such as DNA analysis occasionally lead to false convictions. If you have inclination towards the principle that, as William Blackstone said centuries ago, "better that ten guilty persons should go free than that one innocent should suffer unduly.", then you have to take this alarming trend into account.
However, that rational argument being done, I also have other qualms about the death penalty, but I don't think they would speak too loudly to me in this case. If I were witness to such inhuman acts and guilt was not in question, its hard to imagine not drawing the conclusion that this is a diseased animal and the time has come to put them down. Though such acts are exceedingly rare, in my opinion, the argument can be made that sometimes a human being does move beyond any reasonable argument for redemption. That such men physically lack the mechanisms that would allow them to be full human beings and that if you commit such acts as the ones in question, you've forever reduced your status to that of a meat-machine, one whose continued existence is hardly preferable. Personally, though, I have to think that someone amongst the loved ones of the victims in such extreme cases must always be praying that the guilty get off and are released into a world where they can be sought out.
But short of that form of extra-legal justice, there is another likely fate already suggested by someone earlier in this thread; if these men were denied protective custody and released into the general populace they would surely end in a way that would be most consistent with anyone looking to impose eye-for-an-eye style retribution. They would spend their remaining days in the grip of terror, punctuated by occasional pain until a violent end. And I wouldn't be surprised if that involved fire, even in such a scenario. Many hardened criminals, even convicts who are otherwise outright sociopaths, have daughters and sisters they love. Not that I'm arguing for this, or any other method of punishment specifically and certainly not saying it is consistent with the rule of law and our supposed commitment to avoiding cruel and unusual punishment. It's just that if I read about it happening, I can't imagine my first instinct would be to do anything but give an approving nod.
|
|
|
|
