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Post by MaybeNever on Sept 23, 2011 20:39:14 GMT -5
Nice quote from the article:
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Post by brandonl337 on Sept 23, 2011 20:41:28 GMT -5
Although, I will say that regardless of whether Davis was guilty or not, the southern states' attitude to capital punishment is severely broken. A white man can literally admit to killing a police officer in cold blood and they'll walk free, but a black person gets executed on much less evidence, and any evidence that he didn't do it is actively prevented from being used, by government mandate. Yeah, I think that Texas and Georgia are equally disgusting. Not to defend how the DP is used in southern states, but the same night that Davis was executed, Texas executed a white man for the murder of a black man.And I'm against that as well, again the death penalty is awful, period. Even for that scumbag, he should only get life in prison. Hell, the death penalty costs more anyway so that isn't even a reason to off him.
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Post by ltfred on Sept 23, 2011 20:48:26 GMT -5
The Death penalty is despicable and is far from any form of justice. I think you can justify execution of deserters in wartime. To give an example, in WW1, Australia had a very high rate of desertion because we didn't shoot deserters. People who were unwilling to die would simply bugger off, be caught, imprisoned and remain alive. If they were afraid of a firing squad, fewer soldiers would have deserted and the army would have been more effective. Yes, this is the accusation. It's a fairly common practice. Several of those twelve have since said that they would have judged him innocent if all the evidence had been available. This is the wrong way around. Perhaps Davis was guilty, but there was not enough evidence to be sure. We must therefore assume that the state murdered an innocent man. The remaining one witness. The other 'witness' was clearly not testifying in good faith. Basically, the case rests on a single witness and the (recanted) testimony of seven who now argue their evidence was effectively tampered with by police. The seven argue that the police successfully tried to make them identify him in a line-up.
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Post by brandonl337 on Sept 23, 2011 20:54:47 GMT -5
The death penalty has been proven time and again to not work as a deterrent I doubt that would be any different with the military.
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Post by ltfred on Sept 23, 2011 21:01:02 GMT -5
The death penalty has been proven time and again to not work as a deterrent I doubt that would be any different with the military. Completely untrue. The death penalty does work as a deterrant- only it works no better than a prison sentence. Everyone who would be deterred from killing someone by the death penalty are equally deterred by life imprisonment. Deterrence works on a rational basis. You could get something out of doing this, but you'll lose more because you'll go to jail. But that rationality doesn't work in wartime. People who want to avoid probably death are not deterred merely by imprisonment. Even if it's life behind bars, they still live. The punishment is less than the probable result of obeying the law. The only way to deter someone from deserting is to shoot most of those that do. That way the punishment exceeds the threat of war. A fraction of people who would commit crimes will do so even if they suffer consequences. These people are not thinking of the consequences of their actions. But the purpose of law is not to end crime, just greatly reduce it.
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Post by Kit Walker on Sept 23, 2011 21:01:40 GMT -5
The death penalty has been proven time and again to not work as a deterrent I doubt that would be any different with the military. Totally different circumstances. No murderer ever plans to get caught, and a lot of them don't even plan to commit murder until they do. Those who go AWOL from the military, however, are deciding to do so to avoid the possibility of death. There's almost no way to avoid getting caught while still having a life worth living (IE, returning to the one you wish to hold onto), so changing it from "very possible death versus some time in jail' to "very possible honorable death versus very possible dishonorable death" might have an impact. Still, I don't see another World War happening and unless Australia has a peacetime draft, I don't see this being much of an issue ever again.
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Post by ltfred on Sept 23, 2011 21:08:42 GMT -5
so changing it from "very possible death versus some time in jail' to "very possible honorable death versus very possible dishonorable death" might have an impact. I see it more like this: say 30% of your army is likely to be killed (that's a huge casualty rate, BTW). Say you catch 80% of deserters and shoot them. Not good odds.
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Post by erictheblue on Sept 23, 2011 21:11:26 GMT -5
Yes, this is the accusation. It's a fairly common practice. You are making an assumption. A reasonable one, true, but one based only on what you believe could have happened. None of the witnesses (as far as I can tell) have said what the "pressure" was. As I said before, what they considered pressure could have been LEO asking them to confirm their story. The jurors are saying that based on what they are hearing now, not what they heard then. (When it was their duty to listen to the witnesses - under cross-examination - and judge the truthfulness of the witnesses. Unless you want to argue the jurors shirked their duty..? And you want to assume 7 people committed perjury.) I'm going to go back to what I said above - memory changes in more than one direction. The witnesses who have since recanted have had 21 years to think about it - and 21 years for their memories to fade and shift. We don't know what happened back then; all we are hearing is what they now think happened. Perhaps what happened and what they now say happened are the same - it is possible. It is also possible that they have spent 21 years convincing themselves of something that never happened. All the jurors can says is if they heard today what the witnesses are saying, they would not have convicted. But we have no way to know if what the witnesses are saying today is the truth. (Not to say they are now lying. Only that they may no longer remember what really happened.) There was enough evidence 21 years ago to convince 12 people. We do not know what they heard. We do not know what criteria they used to convict. We cannot know if the evidence they heard was or was not truthful. (Again, see above comments about time and memory.) The court of public opinion has deemed Davis innocent (and perhaps he was). But legal decisions are not made by the court of public opinion; they are made by juries who hear, see, and weigh the evidence and make a decision. As an aside, the state cannot "murder" someone. Murder is defined as unlawful killing. Execution is lawful, so cannot be murder.
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Post by brandonl337 on Sept 23, 2011 21:32:39 GMT -5
21 years ago it was enough evidence to convict a black man who killed a white cop, the past ain't so rosy as you seem to think it was, just because they convicted him doesn't mean they convicted him because of the evidence.
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Post by syaoranvee on Sept 23, 2011 21:43:50 GMT -5
This Wednesday at 11:08 P.M. Troy Davis was executed. He was an almost certainly innocent man, 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses had recanted their testimony, what's more, of the 2 that did not, one is believes to be the actual murdered and may confessed to such while intoxicated. Also, there has been no physical evidence to tie Troy Davis to the murder. The Supreme Court had an emergency session to decide whether to stay the execution, they ultimately did not, and what's more, there were no published dissenting votes calling for saving Troy Davis' life. Here's how I see it.... This Wednesday at 11:08 P.M. Troy Davis was executed. 21 years prior, he was convicted of his crimes by a 12 person jury, over half of which was black. The convicted copkiller had an entire rehearing of his case in 2010 of all quoted evidence flaunted by the media. 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses out of a total of 34 witnesses to the case had recanted their testimony, only 2 of them materially, Davis’s attorneys refused to present those two in federal court to be examined in the evidentiary rehearing even though they sat outside the courtroom door. Besides witnesses, two pieces of evidence are of interest to the crime scene. One, is the bullet shells linked to a prior robbery, and the other, the bloody piece of the clothing found in Davis's home being washed as he fled police the night of the crime. However, the clothing was thrown out due to testing issues. Troy Davis exhausted his appeals and could not get an actual legitmate defense for himself in his rehearing. And so was put to death as by Georgia law, this was not a travesty of justice as the justice system worked as exactly as it should have. He will continue to be a puppet for the Anti-Deathers to promote their cause until the next big execution comes along.
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Sept 23, 2011 21:59:17 GMT -5
"Legal" doesn't always mean "working as it should".
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Post by davedan on Sept 23, 2011 23:06:56 GMT -5
I don't know I agree with Syaoranvee that it probably shows the system working exactly as it is intended. However it seems to me that this being the result of the system working as intended is a good reason to change the system.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Sept 23, 2011 23:31:57 GMT -5
This Wednesday at 11:08 P.M. Troy Davis was executed. He was an almost certainly innocent man, 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses had recanted their testimony, what's more, of the 2 that did not, one is believes to be the actual murdered and may confessed to such while intoxicated. Also, there has been no physical evidence to tie Troy Davis to the murder. The Supreme Court had an emergency session to decide whether to stay the execution, they ultimately did not, and what's more, there were no published dissenting votes calling for saving Troy Davis' life. Here's how I see it.... This Wednesday at 11:08 P.M. Troy Davis was executed. 21 years prior, he was convicted of his crimes by a 12 person jury, over half of which was black. The convicted copkiller had an entire rehearing of his case in 2010 of all quoted evidence flaunted by the media. 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses out of a total of 34 witnesses to the case had recanted their testimony, only 2 of them materially, Davis’s attorneys refused to present those two in federal court to be examined in the evidentiary rehearing even though they sat outside the courtroom door. Besides witnesses, two pieces of evidence are of interest to the crime scene. One, is the bullet shells linked to a prior robbery, and the other, the bloody piece of the clothing found in Davis's home being washed as he fled police the night of the crime. However, the clothing was thrown out due to testing issues. Troy Davis exhausted his appeals and could not get an actual legitmate defense for himself in his rehearing. And so was put to death as by Georgia law, this was not a travesty of justice as the justice system worked as exactly as it should have. He will continue to be a puppet for the Anti-Deathers to promote their cause until the next big execution comes along. HAHAHA! Excellent joke. Perfect imitation of the bloodthirsty crowd. Man... you almost had me thinking that you truly believed that just because a system followed procedure means that it did the right thing. Hoo.
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Post by syaoranvee on Sept 23, 2011 23:39:41 GMT -5
Here's how I see it.... This Wednesday at 11:08 P.M. Troy Davis was executed. 21 years prior, he was convicted of his crimes by a 12 person jury, over half of which was black. The convicted copkiller had an entire rehearing of his case in 2010 of all quoted evidence flaunted by the media. 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses out of a total of 34 witnesses to the case had recanted their testimony, only 2 of them materially, Davis’s attorneys refused to present those two in federal court to be examined in the evidentiary rehearing even though they sat outside the courtroom door. Besides witnesses, two pieces of evidence are of interest to the crime scene. One, is the bullet shells linked to a prior robbery, and the other, the bloody piece of the clothing found in Davis's home being washed as he fled police the night of the crime. However, the clothing was thrown out due to testing issues. Troy Davis exhausted his appeals and could not get an actual legitmate defense for himself in his rehearing. And so was put to death as by Georgia law, this was not a travesty of justice as the justice system worked as exactly as it should have. He will continue to be a puppet for the Anti-Deathers to promote their cause until the next big execution comes along. HAHAHA! Excellent joke. Perfect imitation of the bloodthirsty crowd. Man... you almost had me thinking that you truly believed that just because a system followed procedure means that it did the right thing. Hoo. Everything I've said here is true.
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Post by Dragon Zachski on Sept 23, 2011 23:50:49 GMT -5
HAHAHA! Excellent joke. Perfect imitation of the bloodthirsty crowd. Man... you almost had me thinking that you truly believed that just because a system followed procedure means that it did the right thing. Hoo. Everything I've said here is true. And funnily enough, that doesn't mean shit when everything you described can still result in an innocent man getting convicted. The evidence you described is shaky at best. You are also operating under the assumption that it's impossible for a black person to discriminate against a black person. That is so laughably wrong that it hurts.
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