Death Penalty Article

[bigjohnn]

Can people confirm that I'm not seeing things? Have a really just read an article about refinements to the death penalty in a POKER magazine.

I'm not objecting to this on the merits of David's argument, but that it just doesn't belong in such a magazine. Mason has indicated on a number of occasions that this magazine was going to be of far higher quality (in terms of advice and strategy) than other poker mags out there. Granted, the advice in other publications is often second-rate or poorly-explained, but not once have I seen them veer so off topic with an article as in this case.

Ed arguments in defense of Barron's article last month eventually had me on his side. In this case, I very much doubt this will happen.

I still think that the content of most articles is top-notch. It's just a shame to see something so irrelevant included in the issue.

What do others think about it?

John

[BluffTHIS!]

I have somewhat of a problem with the article because it starts out advocating a higher bar for imposing the death penalty on a convicted murderer, and then also advocates lowering the bar for standards of conviction in the first place. To my mind these are two separate issues.

Regarding the second and more important one as far as releasing possbile guilty perpertrators, we already have a jury system where all 12 jurors must agree that a conviction is justified beyond a reasonable doubt. A far higher standard than that used in civil suits. Plus there is the practical issue of the average intelligence and logical reasoning ability of jurors, which the OJ trial showed isn't very high (this of course cuts both ways).

So I probably am unwilling to change the conviction standard. However, I am more than willing to change the standard for imposing the death penalty so that it is seen to be used only in cases where there is virtual certainty that the conviction was correct. Such a standard might be either the testimony of 2 or more disinterested witnessess (or video evidence) or conclusive DNA evidence (micro-fibers now won't cut it).

Another approach is simply to narrow sharply the cases in which the penalty can be used, such as with those convicted of 2+ separate occasion murders, terroristic mass murder, espionage which leads to the death of government operatives, murder of witnesses, and posssibly for political reasons, the murder of law enforcement officers but which meets the above higher death penalty standards of DNA evidence or multiple witnesses/video evidence.

I think that it would well nigh impossible to convince our citizens to agree to a tougher conviction standard since the unanimous jury reasonable doubt standard has been followed to my knowledge for the entire history of the US, and is also partially enshrined in English common law from which our legal system derives a great deal.

On the subject of such initiatives originating here, I think that is a great idea, because the collective logical thinking of poker players here who have diverse backgrounds can be no worse than the position papers of supposedly elite think tanks of the left or right. And it would show that poker players do in fact contribute to society beyond simply making money and paying taxes.

[David Sklansky]

"and then also advocates lowering the bar for standards of conviction in the first place."

No it doesn't. What did you read to make you think that?

[BluffTHIS!]

It is implied when you talk about guilty murderers being set free as a result of a different standard, rather than it merely causing not as many convicted guilty murderers to be executed rather than incarcerated.

[David Sklansky]

No it's not. Read it again.

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
To meet the objection that too many murderers will be set free, I am going to do a little math. How horrible is it to send a murderer back on the street?

Now let's guess that in the next year, given the standards of proof we presently employ, 100 innocent dependents will be convicted of capital murder in this country. If we tightened those standards to avoid those convictions, how many guilty persons would also be acquitted? Many more than 1,000 I'd say. Let's use 1,200.

[/ QUOTE ]

[RJT]

[ QUOTE ]
No it's not. Read it again.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, some guilty murders will be set free, because the standard would have been raised. Got it.

[patrick dicaprio]

i am very curious to hear what other lawyers think about it. i havent practiced criminal law but i have litigated for ten years in NYC and can tell you for sure that there are so many corrupt judges on the take and know instances of the DA's office hiding exculpatory evidence in death penalty cases, which is required to be disclosed to teh defendant in NY law, that i completely changed my stance on teh death penalty. i used to be gung ho about it but now i have no confidence in it at all. not because of the theory behind it but in practice you can very rarely be sure that you are convicting a guilty man. my initial thought though is that perhaps there should be some evidentiary requirements, such as no one can get the death penalty where the primary identification evidence is the ID of the victim alone with no forensic evidence. perhaps other lawyers who have actually practiced criminal law can chime in.

I think that david's idea is an excellent one and would be happy to support it.

[jj_frap]

As for how I feel about the death penalty, I feel that humanity -- like everything that exists -- is too imperfect to ever make imposing irreversible sentences a just thing to do. (That being said, I'm disgusted that Maurice Duplessis' far-right, pro-Nazi Quebec government allowed French Nazi collaborators to flee to Quebec in order to escape De Gaulle's guillotine...And as somebody disgusted by the French interfering with the God-given sovereignty of the Vietnamese people, I don't even like De Gaulle much. :-P)

[Peter666]

"That being said, I'm disgusted that Maurice Duplessis' far-right, pro-Nazi Quebec government allowed French Nazi collaborators to flee to Quebec in order to escape De Gaulle's guillotine"

You are implying that all Nazi collaborators were evil people who did evil deeds, which is not the case. Duplesis was a very good statesman. With him gone along with those right wing principles and religion too, Quebec has truly degenerated into a province (and maybe a state in the future) of Nationalist Socialist Fascists intent on screwing anybody that is not a Francophone.

We use to hang people in Canada which is a good solution to this traitorous menace too.