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Status:
"This too shall pass. But possibly, like a kidney stone."
(set 11 days ago)
35,988 posts, read 18,271,228 times
Reputation: 51049
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Roderic
Financial fines or imprisonment or the death penalty are punishments, no matter how politely worded the intent might be.
Right.
But it's the intent, the focus of the agency, that drives change in how "services" are provided through TDCJ.
If you look at the mission and really focus on it, that moves the direction away from punishment and toward rehabilitation.
Several years ago the TDCJ really cracked down on assaults and sexual assaults between offenders, and between staff and offenders, and it's made a difference.
The purpose of the penal system in Texas isn't to make an offender's life absolutely miserable by opening them up to assaults and other torments, but to pull them out of society for awhile and get them ready to participate positively on release.
Then they get put off by themselves or they attack the wrong person who ends them.
So yeah no... I do not believe the state has the right to end a citizens life.
They will always have contact with others in prisons. Courts have set limits on solitary confinement.
Besides, the killer did not have the right to end a life. What if they killed one of your kids or another family member of yours?
The reason we do not imprison speeders is because that crime really do not hurt anyone so we punish just to extract money out of the offenders.
So what happens if you don't pay that speeding ticket?
Speeding is actually a tort, which from the Latin means 'a wrong' which makes it a civil offense but not a criminal offense. So if you don't that ticket you go to debtor's prison.
I will just leave it at they can seize your unprotected assets for not paying that ticket.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,384 posts, read 54,639,224 times
Reputation: 40871
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnPBailey
There's always a risk of putting at least one innocent person to death in error by the state. There is no better reason than that to abolish the death penalty altogether in the United States of America. The number one deterrent against violent crime is a well-armed society and such a society trained in personal defense with arms.
There is NO reason to abolish it altogether, there are cases like Dylaan Roof's where there is absolutely NO doubt at all as to guilt. The death penalty is appropriate in such a case.
There is NO reason to abolish it altogether, there are cases like Dylaan Roof's where there is absolutely NO doubt at all as to guilt. The death penalty is appropriate in such a case.
And Bob Berdella (6 victims) , John Wayne Gacy (33 victims), etc.
So what happens if you don't pay that speeding ticket?
Speeding is actually a tort, which from the Latin means 'a wrong' which makes it a civil offense but not a criminal offense. So if you don't that ticket you go to debtor's prison.
I will just leave it at they can seize your unprotected assets for not paying that ticket.
The legal standard is 'beyond a reasonable doubt" not "absolutely no doubt'.
Thar doesn't help your argument seeing that the research show that the testimony of 'eye witnesses' is generally the least reliable form of evidence.
I wouldn't say that swearing to something which turns out to be false is an honest mistake.
Don't forget about the forensic experts who skew the facts in order to support a predetermined result in favor of the prosecutorial position.
I would be more concerned about a judicial system that can accuse a person with two different degrees of the same offense. When a prosecutor can charge a person with intentionally causing the death of a person and also charge him with causing the death without intent of the same person then how do u think the jury decided?
(Hint: "and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves ...."
Witnesses are only human and can sometimes see or hear things incorrectly even with the best of intentions. Some people's
faces look alike. Mistaken identity. Some witnesses have bad hearing or eyesight or a lousy memory.
The legal standard is 'beyond a reasonable doubt" not "absolutely no doubt'.
Thar doesn't help your argument seeing that the research show that the testimony of 'eye witnesses' is generally the least reliable form of evidence.
I wouldn't say that swearing to something which turns out to be false is an honest mistake.
Don't forget about the forensic experts who skew the facts in order to support a predetermined result in favor of the prosecutorial position.
I would be more concerned about a judicial system that can accuse a person with two different degrees of the same offense. When a prosecutor can charge a person with intentionally causing the death of a person and also charge him with causing the death without intent of the same person then how do u think the jury decided?
(Hint: "and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves ...."
How do you get into the mind of the accused to figure out "intent"?
Furthermore, the death penalty is a huge taxpayer burden with long, expensive automatic appeals proceses. Lifetime incarceration without the possibilty of parole is still much less expensive in the long run. Yes, in rare cases, the overturning of a conviction can set a prisoner free. Some terminal cancer patient confesses to the crime from his death bed, perhaps.
Last edited by JohnPBailey; 10-28-2021 at 02:56 AM..
I think that the experience in my home state of Pennsylvania has some relevance here:
The Quaker view of imprisonment as a period of solitude, silence and introspection was a major factor in Pennsylvania penology in the state's earliest days, and the state actually abolished the death penalty for a few years at the close of the Nineteenth Century, but an increasingly diverse population eventually led to its reinstatement. Still, the 1890s averaged less than ten hangings per year.
This trend began to reverse itself post-1900 with a further increase in diversity and, possibly, greater loss of life in grisly accidents as industrialization continued. This culminated in the replacement of hanging with electrocution as the legal means of death in 1915, with executions carried out in private at a central penetentiary rather than at the individual country jails. With the disruption, destruction, and impersonalty of World War I added to the mix, yearly executions rose past more than twenty until they peaked at 25 in 1922, then tapered back to about five in the Fifties, and ceased after 1962, with the exception of three prisoners who stopped their appeals in 1995.
My point being, that due to the morbid interests that lie in the reptilian portion of some people's psyches, and the sensationalism of a portion of the media, murder and capital punishment, as George Bernard Shaw once observed, feed upon each other rather than the death penalty's acting as a deterrent.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 10-28-2021 at 08:09 AM..
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