nofunchee
Well-Known Member
yeah but the "three strikes" system doesn't just relate to violent crime but also to other felonies, which can also include petty theft. there's many things not to like about such systems. the most central irritating factor from a general point of view and paying no attention to individual cases of injustice and potential for corruption is the plain-faced simplicity of such policies. i mean it just stinks of election 'tough on crime' rhetoric. it ignores the causes of crime (whatever you interpret those to be) and, if a felony can be a relatively minor offence, then it also rejects that people can change and 'come good' if they can be sentenced to life for their third strike of robbing something no one gives a shit about or having some weed or something.
people are wrongly convicted of murder, as broken arm has pointed out. people are also fitted up for crimes, including murder - guilford 4 and birmingham 6 jump immediately to mind. then consider the lawrence inquiry in britain and numerous cops in the states caught on camera beating up black people. cops can be racist fucks and they're the people investigating crimes and providing evidence. no decent research into possible institutional racism in the gardai has ever been commissioned but various small studies, anecdotal evidence, and testimonies from victims and witnesses show that individual gardai are certainly not immune to racist thought and action.
now that's only racism. what about other prejudices, subtle and explicit, that produce unfair assumptions about/animosity towards an accused person? court judgements are riddled with examples of fucked up assumptions. courtroom conduct, police tactics, etc. aren't so verifiably documented so it's harder to tell unless detailed studys are conducted. but you can be pretty sure there's scope for individual forms of prejudice that lead to injustice and it's fair to say that it is at least possible that institutionalised prejudices may exist.
death versus 10 years in prison for murder: i would imagine that a person who kills another person would either think they won't get caught or doesn't even think in terms of getting caught/getting away with it.
if someone was to commit pre-meditated murder in cold blood then they would surely be thinking that they can get away with it. they won't want to be killed as a result, they won't want to spend 10 years in prison as a result. the former is a larger price to pay than the latter but if they think they're gonna get caught then they probably won't do it or come up with a better plan so they don't get caught. that's assuming a logical mind and the absence of total stupidity but both of these frames of mind suggests a lack of awareness of the consequences anyway, i reckon.
so ignoring mental illness, heat-of-the-moment actions (where the consequences are not thought about), and self-defence (where the consequences are considered secondary to the preservation of one's own life) we are left with psychopathic behaviour.
psychopathic behaviour that leads to murder must occur fairly infrequently in the scheme of things and therefore is hardly worthy of capital punishment (which applies to the possible actions of everyone in society) because deciding who's the psychopath is fallable. assuming of course that you could ethically condone the killing of someone who you know is definately a psychopath, which falls into the sancitity of life/playing god/etc. ballpark.
the point is that before you even come to this ethical conundrum there are so many weak-points and uncertainties in the legal process which would seem to be impossible to overcome and guarantee that you were killing the 'right' person, whoever that may be.
