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Noah -> RE: To testify or not to testify!! (11/18/2006 7:09:56 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: missturbation
Well my estimation of you has gone right down the toilet. You'd rather see a murderer walk free to reoffend and they will time and time again to protect your family than protect innocent victims. It's disgusting.
So in this quite unspecified, hypothetical case involving no one in particular, you happen to know that the murderer will reoffend. Lovely. Since it is your hypothetical I guess you can decide that he will reoffend with a yellow dress on while singing "How Are Things In Gloccamora?"
There is a lot entailed in your criticism, though, missturbation, which just doesn't necessarily follow from what has been given.
Rather than perform that dissection, though, I'll ask you to please consider that those disagreeing with you may be something other than down-the-toilet types or whatever you might choose to call them.
There are lots of laws about the gathering and presentation of evidence.
In regard to the laws about evidence gathering, if authorities violate these laws then in some cases the "tainted" evidence cannot be brought in to consideration at trial. If evidence for a crime is gathered in an unwarranted search, perhaps. Now here again there may be evidence "available" which would secure the conviction of a wrong-doer. These laws in their execution make that evidence "unavailable" again. In an extreme case a murderer might indeed go free.
As a culture we offer up that potential injustice for the sake of something which is seen as greater, that being restraint on the state's ability to intrude at will into the lives of citizens, whether by going through your sock drawer while you're off to a munch or by beating the living shit out of you until they say what they want to hear.
Similarly, the sort of law you are busy bemoaning serves to recognize in a tangible way that matrimony is a considerable thing, not, for instance, merely a financial arrangement. In so doing it can be seen to recognize that promises, in general, are different sorts of things than, say, propositions or exhortations. I kind of like the idea that even in these post-post-post-modern times the value of a vow should be recognized in a way beyond the ceremonial or mercantile, in a way which really puts something of value on the table.
You, on the other hand, might rather live in a land which in all ways relents to the pressure to see a vow as nothing more or less than any handshake over the sale of a used car. I dunno.
Given the pitable level of esteem marriage is given by so many people in so many ways, we may be living in the time when the spousal option you are decrying will become obsolete and its establishing legal basis overturned. God knows that in the US we have recently been deprived of the right to speedy trial or any trial at all, the right to confront our accuser, the right to counsel, etc, etc; anyway that is how I as a non-lawyer understand recent developments; perhaps some of out pundits will chime in.
In any case the people whose morals you are swooning in response to, missturbation, don't strike me as toilet-worthy stuff. They strike me as people hewing closely to a set of values which happen to differ from yours. At the very least you must credit them for putting something far more valuable than money where their mouths are. When someone like Kalira says what she says it is clear to me that in return for the chance to live under the legal circumstances at issue she is indeed willing to confront and accept whatever ill consequences might befall her as a result of someone else exercising the right in question.
Well I suppose you can refuse to credit anyone for anything but I'm here crediting her and those who agree with her for standing up for a value they hold dear and being willing to face the consequences--and indeed stake matters of towering importance on their decision.
Does that really disgust you?
It seems that you believe that the state's interest in executing criminal law trumps all in dividual interests and indeed trumps all other potential interests of the state--such as an interest in affirming marriage as a special circumstance in life. If I've summarized your position poorly please correct me. I don't wish to speak for you.
You seem to speak only of murder cases, by the way. Does your umbrage stop there or would you have the state compel spousal testimony for every sort of crime, misdemeanor and infraction?
Either way, others have indicated that like you they feel that the value you hold paramount (enter in court all possible evidence against an accused murderer, let's say) is considerable, but for them not necessarily ultimate.
I'm encouraging you to back up for a bit from your condemnation of them as toilet stuff and try to explore their point of view at least long enough to gain some understanding of it.
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