[Tristan Lall]

Ken's got a good point about Williams; despite his conviction, he continually maintained his innocence. Maybe he really was innocent; more likely, he was not sufficiently rehabilitated to acknowledge his crimes and their effects. But that in itself shouldn't enter into the rationale for putting him to death, unless we're really talking about a 20 year sentence, followed by death, if he hasn't proven his innocence or rehabilitated himself.

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

If the death penalty were abolished, a criminal would have little or no reason not to kill potential witnesses during the commission of a robbery (assuming that robbery would earn the criminal a life sentence or a very lengthy prison sentence).

One might argue that since they don't expect to be caught and sentenced to 20 years, they shouldn't particularly care what happens if they shoot the place up, too. (I'm oversimplifying, but I wonder how many violent criminals really consider all the possibilities, before going on a rampage.)

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

By waiving the threat of a death penalty, individuals can be encouraged to plead guilty, accomplices can be encouraged to testify against their co-conspirators, and criminals can be encouraged to lead investigators to the bodies of victims. The threat of the death penalty can be a powerful mechanism for greasing the wheels of justice.

There's probably been a Law and Order episode where an innocent person was set up for a crime, and was forced to plead to the charge, to avoid one of those "special circumstances" murder charges which require execution. In fact, it's not an impossible scenario to contemplate.

More broadly, it exemplifies the problems with plea bargaining in general. We've become so accustomed to it, that we don't question its efficacy, or even its morality. But consider Sweden, where they have a so-called absolute duty of prosecution (absolut åtalsplikt), wherein pleas bargains are not binding, and therefore, any information provided to the government may or may not be used as a mitigating factor in sentence. (Yes, this probably leads to many unsolved crimes, but other factors, like their differing standards of evidence and testimony must also be considered.) Can we say that it is ethical for our justice system to essentially offer people the opportunity to bring their penalty down from an (arguably) unreasonable one (which they were liable to face), to the (again, arguably) correct one, provided they supply the evidence that will inevitably convict them? I'd have to say that it's acting in bad faith to charge them with a greater offence, if the lesser offence is sufficient (as evidenced by the acceptance of the plea bargain)—something about the punishment fitting the crime.

And what of too much grease on the wheels? Our system allows someone to make false accusations in a plea-bargaining session, in order to secure more lenient sentence. There are cases where this has led to prosecution of innocent individuals, because someone decided to place their own well-being (namely, preferential sentencing) above the well-being of the one that they wrongfully accused.

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

People who have committed the most heinous crimes (typically murder) have no right to life.

That's open to debate. After all, how do we define murder? Karen quoted a dictionary earlier; but in law, the definition is far less clear-cut. In American (and Commonwealth) law, all sorts of case law must be considered, in addition to constitutional and statutory requirements. Then, the judge's own bias will inevitably influence the interpretation. Ultimately, every case will use a slightly different "official" definition of murder. This makes it difficult (and probably, essentially impossible) to legislate that every murder should be punishable by death, even if that is the general belief that you might hold.

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

The death penalty shows the greatest respect for the ordinary man's, and especially the victim's, inviolable value.

I'm not sure how the value of the ordinary man, or the victim, enters into the eventual fate of the criminal. Objectively, shouldn't they be separate issues? If we recognize the value of human life, a priori, do we still have to reaffirm it when someone is murdered?


Back to the diversion....

Originally Posted by MikeDubreuil

I do have a problem with this line...

I am vehemently opposed to seeking common ground with idiots. Their defintion of normal and acceptable behavior is far different from ours. The United State's idealog is that they want peace for not only of every United States citizen, but every citizen of Earth. That means we simply can't meet minds with terrorists or countries who routinely torture their citizens. For instance the president of Iran wishes for Israel to be wiped off the face of the Earth and thinks the Holocaust is a myth. How can you meet idealogs with people like this? The United States was formed with the pricipal idea that there should be a seperation of church and state. Terrorist countries see another country's religion as a pretense for war. We will never meet idealogically because we do not consider one's religion a reason for violence.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, is exactly what I'm talking about: an ideologue that refuses to discuss the reasoning behind these beliefs, and refuses to provide evidence to support his point. (In fairness, there's a very real possibility that the translation of "myth" would be more appropriately rendered as "legend" or "legendary"—meaning not that it was a falsehood, but that it had acquired mythical proportions. I don't speak Farsi, so I couldn't tell you what he really meant. His other statements on this issue certainly paint him as far from the mainstream on this issue.) It's people like him that will drag the process of reconcilliation on for decades—because until someone willing to listen and discuss their views is in power, progress will be suspended.

The principles that America stands for in theory, are not necessarily the same as those principles for which some Americans stand; I don't dispute the fact that America, in general, is a reasonably good place to be. But when the ideal of "equality for all", becomes, for all practical purposes, "equality for Americans (and who cares about the rest)", then, you've got less than your founders bargained for. The trouble is that many people believe the latter, explicitly or implicitly. It's an attitude like this, much more so than a hatred of freedom and the American way, that causes people worldwide to express their displeasure with America.

In fact, the mentality that all of America's founding principles are unimpeachably correct is also unhelpful. Unfortunately, it's just like the question of relative morality; when do you change an important principle? Upon which authority or evidence have you based this change? America has all sorts of constitutional principles that have been kept well past their shelf life. Look at the 2^nd amendment. It's a grammatical nightmare which fails to clearly distinguish or link its two clauses, and as a result, all sorts of idiocy has been perpetuated in its name. (Since it was ratified in 1791, the grammar is not surprising—but look at the trouble that would have been saved, if it had simply been written with two articles, rather than a sentence who's second portion does not necessarily follow logically from the first.)