One related to the joke thread controversy

[jockeys]

capital punishment goes beyond morality or revenge. it is simply the fulfillment of the social contract; it is the final deterrent.

in china there is a saying, sha yi jing bai... roughly translated it means "kill one to warn one hundred" socrates understood this as well when he said, "society must fear the desperate man" e.g. someone with nothing to lose can't be controlled because the social contract cannot take anything from him.

[goshawk]

Theodore Bundy

Jimmy

Are you familiar with the expression " Hard cases make bad law " ?
Ted Bundy is the worst precident you could cite as justification for the death penalty; many people who have commited murder haven't behaved anything like as heinously as Bundy did, and don't deserve to be lumped in with him.
God help us if we make him the standard for punishing homicide.

In any case simply saying the name Ted Bundy goes no distance to addressing the very real concern of executing the wrong person.

goshawk

[JimmyHAD]

Jimmy

Are you familiar with the expression " Hard cases make bad law " ?
Ted Bundy is the worst precident you could cite as justification for the death penalty; many people who have commited murder haven't behaved as heinously as Bundy did, and don't deseerve to be lumped in with him.
God help us if we make him the standard for punishing homicide.

In any case simply saying the name Ted Bundy goes no distance to addressing the very real concern of executing the wrong person.

goshawk

No one wants to see the wrong person executed or imprisoned for a crime that they didn't commit. Throwing the baby out with the bath water isn't an ideal answer either. I think that if it is proven that police and or prosecutors knowingly withhold exculpatory evidence or in any other way aid a wrongful conviction that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

[goshawk]

I think that if it is proven that police and or prosecutors knowingly withhold exculpatory evidence or in any other way aid a wrongful conviction that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

You've made my point. Punish them as hard as you like, put them to death even, and it wont bring back the person who was executed wrongly. And we still haven't addressed the problem of simple human error.

Best Regards

goshawk