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On September 22 2011 11:36 wesbare wrote:
I believe anti-death penalty arguments do not place a high enough value on human life. I would only advocate the death penalty for someone who is clearly, beyond a shadow of doubt, guilty of murder.
I am a Christian. I believe God created man in His image, making human life unique from the rest of creation. Human life is sacred, and both Biblical and Western values speak to this (i.e. Locke's "life, liberty, and property"). There are good Bible-based arguments for circumstances which call for the death penalty. There are also Bible-based arguments against the death penalty; I believe those latter arguments poorly formed.
I believe anything less than the death penalty for unmistakable cases of murder does not uphold the value of the life that was unjustly taken by the murderous act. Proper government via a social contract with the people is designed to uphold the rights of the people. Using Locke again, the government must dutifully protect the natural rights (i.e. life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness) of its people, and the people must act reasonably toward their government, obeying its laws and paying their taxes.
Protecting the rights of the people means treating their rights, namely their right to life, with the rightful worth and value those rights deserve.
Put more succinctly, here is my mostly secular argument for the likely agnostic audience of this forum: A man's life is valuable/precious. If you murder a man, that is to intentionally take a man's life without just cause (e.g. not out of self-defense), then you forfeit your right to your own life.
As for the problem of convicting an innocent man of murder... I agree. It's a very troublesome problem. I am thankful it happens in very small percentage of cases, but I am, like the rest of you, bothered that it happens at all. No justice system is perfect in its judgements, and I can't imagine a solution to the inevitable fallibility of the Court in some instances.
wouldn't you say it's hypocritical to state that people don't value life enough yet someone should forfeit the right to live?
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On the plus side, this means all the death penalty advocates on this side of my state will shut up for the next year or so.
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Death penaltys a trick question. Not to start a debate, I agree with only in extreme, certain cases.
If someone rapes and murders 8 people etc etc, then sure we can talk about it. But if one guy kills someone in a drunken brawl, then no its stupid.
Anyways
Is this case certain? No
Should he be killed then? No
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As a supporter of the death penalty, I find this atrocious that our legal system has again failed us, and most importantly failed this man. With near zero physical evidence and 9 testimonies against him he was convicted and found guilty. Years later, 7 of those 9 testimonials were either changed or recanted. He does not deserve death because there is no way to be 100% certain that he murdered that poor officer. Today is a sad day in the American judicial process.
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On September 22 2011 11:38 shawster wrote:
wouldn't you say it's hypocritical to state that people don't value life enough yet someone should forfeit the right to live?
What? No. The murderer is the hypocrite. Think about it. It was his choice to murder. He didn't have to do it. He didn't have to forfeit his life as a consequence for his evil decision. But he did. So he pays the penalty for stealing the life of another.
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Our current system doesn't work. A system based on reform and rehabilitaion instead of consequences such as death has been proven overtime to have a higher success rate, along with being more economical.
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On September 22 2011 11:46 wesbare wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 11:38 shawster wrote:
wouldn't you say it's hypocritical to state that people don't value life enough yet someone should forfeit the right to live?
What? No. The murderer is the hypocrite. Think about it. It was his choice to murder. He didn't have to do it. He didn't have to forfeit his life as a consequence for his evil decision. But he did. So he pays the penalty for stealing the life of another.
why does he have to forfeit his/her life? by making life a material object and being able to "forfeit it" doesn't seem to honour it very much. there should be a penalty but death isn't the correct one. maybe i'm more optimistic than you, but i'm one for change and i believe people can change their lives through rehabilitation.
i'd love to argue with you but i don't think we will ever see eye to eye.(lol so much for optimistic)
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I just heard the Supreme Court rejected his request.. This really sucks to see. I don't know the details of the entire case but it seems to lean towards innocent over guilty. The main reason I don't know all of it is because there doesn't seem to be incriminating evidence out there.
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The justice system in this country is SUCCHHHHHH a joke 
Seems pretty clear there is a doubt at a minimum on his guilt. I just get very sad thinking how I would be if I was sitting here on TL living my life normally and all of a sudden was labeled a murderer and sent to death for something I did not do.
Maybe I think of these things to deep, but things like this make me very sad.
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On September 22 2011 11:51 DeepBlu2 wrote:
I just heard the Supreme Court rejected his request.. This really sucks to see. I don't know the details of the entire case but it seems to lean towards innocent over guilty. The main reason I don't know all of it is because there doesn't seem to be incriminating evidence out there.
I'm not sure what grounds the appeal was made to SCOTUS but there is very little they can do in this type of situation absent a glaring procedural violation. The supreme court has yet to rule that eye witness testimony is suspect in a capital case (they may get to do that this term) but frankly there was no other option for them tonight.
SCOTUS is bound by its precendent, and the language of the constitution. The elected officials in the state of Georgia suffer no such constraints, and are the ones that should be ashamed of themsevles for carrying out this travesty.
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I am actually in favor of the death penalty, but only in extreme cases, and the evidence/case against said person better be damn solid. I don't think this case qualifies for either (from what I've seen).
Rehabilitation is a nice idea, but extremely hard to achieve. Does locking a person up for years with other violent/selfish/greedy/unstable (take your pick) seem like a likely way to "rehabilitate" someone? At what point does rehabilitation become too lenient? Crimes should be punished, for the sake of "justice," correct?
I would be more in favor of "rehabilitation" if someone has found a way to do it while still maintaining the feeling of punishment for doing something wrong. So far, I haven't seen it.
That said, I think state-sponsored execution should only be used on people who have repeatedly shown they are extremely harmful and unwilling to obey the rules of society (in some cases that might mean by murdering someone, in some cases not).
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On September 22 2011 11:46 ranshaked wrote:
As a supporter of the death penalty, I find this atrocious that our legal system has again failed us, and most importantly failed this man. With near zero physical evidence and 9 testimonies against him he was convicted and found guilty. Years later, 7 of those 9 testimonials were either changed or recanted. He does not deserve death because there is no way to be 100% certain that he murdered that poor officer. Today is a sad day in the American judicial process.
This isn't a failure of the judicial process whatsoever. Davis had his day in court and has been given numerous stays and appeals, and he's ultimately lost every single one of them. He was also convicted of shooting another man that same night, and the bullet casings matched the ones at the cop murder - that's a lot more than zero physical evidence. As for witness recanting, it happens often. My uncle is a criminal lawyer in Georgia and has had to deal with it before. Over the years, people's memories get fuzzy, they feel responsible for sentencing a man to death/prison, and they're pressured by the family of the convicted to change their stories. The fact that the witnesses didn't recant until right before his first execution date is very telling.
I don't like the death penalty, but that doesn't make Troy Davis innocent either.
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On September 22 2011 11:58 partisan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 11:51 DeepBlu2 wrote:
I just heard the Supreme Court rejected his request.. This really sucks to see. I don't know the details of the entire case but it seems to lean towards innocent over guilty. The main reason I don't know all of it is because there doesn't seem to be incriminating evidence out there. I'm not sure what grounds the appeal was made to SCOTUS but there is very little they can do in this type of situation absent a glaring procedural violation. The supreme court has yet to rule that eye witness testimony is suspect in a capital case (they may get to do that this term) but frankly there was no other option for them tonight. SCOTUS is bound by its precendent, and the language of the constitution. The elected officials in the state of Georgia suffer no such constraints, and are the ones that should be ashamed of themsevles for carrying out this travesty.
When they originally referred the case back to court, they could have asked for a review of "reasonable doubt" instead of proof of "actual innocence". This would have turned the parole board around, they voted 3:2 to execute him.
On September 22 2011 12:00 ShadowDrgn wrote:
This isn't a failure of the judicial process whatsoever. Davis had his day in court and has been given numerous stays and appeals, and he's ultimately lost every single one of them. He was also convicted of shooting another man that same night, and the bullet casings matched the ones at the cop murder - that's a lot more than zero physical evidence.
The prosecution dropped the bullet casing crap a decade ago because they mishandled the evidence and the procedure they used was a joke. He was convicted of the other murder based on the listed eyewitnesses and said bullet casing. They don't even have the gun so they can do casing comparison tests with a larger sample size.
Don't make shit up.
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On September 22 2011 11:50 Syben wrote:
Our current system doesn't work. A system based on reform and rehabilitaion instead of consequences such as death has been proven overtime to have a higher success rate, along with being more economical.
No one is going to disagree with reform and rehabilitation in non-murder cases. People can change with proper help. Community service is good for people. The question is whether governments are doing their job when they let people clearly guilty of murder continue to live.
Your assertion that the death penalty is less "economical" is highly questionable. See the link below:
http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001000
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On September 22 2011 12:00 ShadowDrgn wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 11:46 ranshaked wrote:
As a supporter of the death penalty, I find this atrocious that our legal system has again failed us, and most importantly failed this man. With near zero physical evidence and 9 testimonies against him he was convicted and found guilty. Years later, 7 of those 9 testimonials were either changed or recanted. He does not deserve death because there is no way to be 100% certain that he murdered that poor officer. Today is a sad day in the American judicial process. This isn't a failure of the judicial process whatsoever. Davis had his day in court and has been given numerous stays and appeals, and he's ultimately lost every single one of them. He was also convicted of shooting another man that same night, and the bullet casings matched the ones at the cop murder - that's a lot more than zero physical evidence. As for witness recanting, it happens often. My uncle is a criminal lawyer in Georgia and has had to deal with it before. Over the years, people's memories get fuzzy, they feel responsible for sentencing a man to death/prison, and they're pressured by the family of the convicted to change their stories. The fact that the witnesses didn't recant until right before his first execution date is very telling. I don't like the death penalty, but that doesn't make Troy Davis innocent either.
Can you explain why multiple witnesses have come out and said the cops pressured them into signing statements that they knew were lies for fear of being arrested themselves? I say this because clearly this case was not handled appropriately by the police, or judges.
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The issue with life in jail is that not only is our jail system so rediculously broken (and nobody wants to take the time to fix it) that it just breeds harder criminals. I would actually rather die than live in fear in a hard core jail for attempted murder where the other inmates are hardcore criminals and i'm some random guy wrongly convicted. Its like going back to the salem witch trials, except less witches more shivs. Also another issue with life in prison is that it takes up space in our jails that are already way too crowded for any kind of rehabilitation, if they still even attempt that. The thing about the death penalty is that even though very rarely someone will be innocent that is put to death, the death penalty is rarely used and has killed less people than any war has. IF you are against the death penalty you should probably hate war which seemingly among some groups of people isn't the case, but just like everyone else that is a can of worms i don't want to open.
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As to the overall debate on if the death penalty actually serves a punitive or moral purpose in a modern society, I think Justice Steven's concurrence from Baze v. Rees is one of the better opionions I've seen from the bench in a long time.
http://supreme.justia.com/us/553/07-5439/concur2.html
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Read the case.
On Troy Davis: By any reasonable standard you'd have to conclude he's guilty.
On Death Penalty: After having read and considered many arguments both in favor and against it, I'm mildly in favor of it.
Overall, I don't think that this is such a terrible outcome as many others here do.
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On September 22 2011 11:15 Yuriegh wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 11:11 Orcasgt24 wrote:
I think the death penalty is good. Some sick fuckers do not deserve to live.
The penalty should be reserved for societies worst criminals. The kind of people who kill with-out remorse and abduct, rape and terrorize humans.
The person from the article is one of the people I do not think should be facing the death penalty. Plus the fact that without the Death penalty that means they have life in prison so they get to have a free meal and shelter all at taxpayers expense. Yay! I want to help a killer live by paying for his food! edit: however on this guy I don't know if he did it or not
Death penalty costs more than life in prison..
just FYI 
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If the verdict of this case was determined to be "beyond a reasonable doubt", then what constitutes reasonable doubt? Seven of nine witness recantations isn't enough? /clap US "justice" system.
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EPT
