[263] in libertarians
Re: Death Penalty
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Tue Sep 27 09:43:30 1994
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 09:42:26 -0400
In-Reply-To: Vernon Imrich's message [Death Penalty] as of Sep 27, 0:25
To: vimrich@flying-cloud.mit.edu (Vernon Imrich), libertarians@MIT.EDU
| I have no other objection to the death penalty. The ineptitude of
| government, and the criminal justice system is enough. I still remember
| reading about a month or so ago about a forensic chemist in NY state
| who'd been "fudging" results for something like 15 years on lab tests
| to make the prosecutions go ahead. He claimed to be a bio major, chem
| minor in college with good marks. Turned out he'd been a C student
| in biology and only taken a few classes in chemistry ever. Add to that
| altered evidence, gung ho cops, and public pressure on DA's and you've
| got a recipe for disaster. Anyone see "The Oxbow Incident?"
I read it in the 8th grade.
I object to the death penalty for the same reason -- that a mistake is
impossible to correct. There are cases where everyone knows the guy is
guilty, and I'd love to see him hang, but it's impossible to distinguish
between those cases and the more common cases where there is some doubt,
since, in theory, *all* cases are supposed to be "beyond a shadow of a
doubt."
Last night, I heard a news story about a Canadian who was convicted of
murder and sent to jail. Now, years later, the Crown's main witness has
recanted, saying she was pressured by cops into lying on the stand. Nine
months later, he is still in jail.
Then there is the Dawson rape case; a "rape victim" recanted her story years
after sending some guy to jail. The governor, if I recall correctly, gave
him an early release, but not a pardon (meaning the conviction was still on
his record), because he didn't want to admit the state could make a mistake.
Feminists also openly disputed her recantation, doing so for their own
ideological reasons (they didn't want to admit that their "no woman would
ever ever lie about rape" theory was wrong). A few years later, DNA
testing conclusively proved his innocence.
Kevin
