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Thread: Neil Gorsuch's first vote on Supreme Court is deciding vote to allow AR execution

  1. #31
    Based on numerous reversals, new trials, new evidence, details of cop and prosecutor corruption and plain old stupid bureaucratic inefficiency that have come to light over the years, it is safe to say roughly 10-15 percent of all death row inmates are, either technically or factually innocent.

    To capital punishment supporters: is this an acceptable level of collateral killing?

    If not, why not?



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  3. #32
    To capital punishment supporters: is this an acceptable level of collateral killing?
    No, but I understand people wanting the death penalty for a guy like Jeffery Dahmer.



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  5. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptUSA View Post
    Whoa! That's rich coming from you!

    I know, right?
    Chris

    "Government ... does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms." Wolf DeVoon

    "...Make America Great Again. I'm interested in making American FREE again. Then the greatness will come automatically."Ron Paul

  6. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post

    No you don't.

    Anything you might lose when you violate the rights of others cannot ipso facto properly have been said to be a right to begin with.

    Of course you do. You have basic human rights to be free from coercion but if you don't respect other's rights to be free from coercion, your right to be free from coercion is taken away. Here is Nathaniel Branden's take "If it were possible to by fully and irrevocably certain, beyond any possibility of error, that a man were guilty, then capital punishment for murder would be appropriate and just. "

    You could set the standard for the death penalty at a higher level than guilt. You could set it where there is no possible scenario where the person is innocent. If you have an admission of guilt, the murder on videotape, a minimum number of eye witnesses that would ensure zero innocent people are executed. That would settle the issue. I would expand it further to give judges some discretion subject to personal liability if they turned out to be wrong.

  7. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post

    No you don't.

    Anything you might lose when you violate the rights of others cannot ipso facto properly have been said to be a right to begin with.
    ////

  8. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Some people are overwhelmingly guilty where there is no possible doubt as to their guilt. That actually might not apply to this case and I might have voted with the liberal judges. But in some cases like with Jeffrey Dahmer or the Unabomber or OJ Simpson where there is no doubt as to their guilt, I don't see a reason why they should be breathing. I think executing someone who takes the life of another person where there is a 0% chance of their innocence is a very fair punishment. You lose rights when you violate the rights of others.
    I don't see how you can ever be 100% sure. Just lock them up for life in a small cell.

  9. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by ProBlue33 View Post
    No, but I understand people wanting the death penalty for a guy like Jeffery Dahmer.
    I understand it, too. (I shed not a single tear when Dahmer got shanked.) But it doesn't signify.

    Which is the greater moral outrage: to execute a wrongly-convicted innocent, or to fail to indulge the desires of people who want the death penalty for a guy like Jeffrey Dahmer?

  10. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Of course you do. You have basic human rights to be free from coercion but if you don't respect other's rights to be free from coercion, your right to be free from coercion is taken away.
    If it can be "taken away," then it is not a right - it is a (revocable) privilege. (Which is precisely what I meant when I said, "Anything you might lose when you violate the rights of others cannot ipso facto properly have been said to be a right to begin with.")

    And the notion of a right "to be free from coercion" is nonsensical. The application of coercion/force is sometimes necessary in order to enforce rights. You cannot reasonably speak about rights at all without involving the possibility of coercion.

    You have the right to be free from aggressive or initiatory coercion/force, but you do not have the "right" to be free from defensive or retaliatory coercion/force.

    IOW: It makes no sense to speak of "taking away" someone's rights "because [reasons]." It is a contradiction to do so.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Here is Nathaniel Branden's take "If it were possible to by fully and irrevocably certain, beyond any possibility of error, that a man were guilty, then capital punishment for murder would be appropriate and just."
    I submit that it is not possible. For just one of many problems: how is it to be determined, without any possibility of error, whether one is, in fact, "beyond any possibility of error?" (Snake, meet tail. Tail, meet snake ...)

    And in any case, I am sure that most of the judges and jurors who have sent to death row all those innocents who were later exonerated would have honestly told you that they were "fully and irrevocably certain, beyond any possibility of error, that [those men] were guilty."

    Nevertheless, they were wrong ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    You could set the standard for the death penalty at a higher level than guilt. You could set it where there is no possible scenario where the person is innocent. If you have an admission of guilt, the murder on videotape, a minimum number of eye witnesses that would ensure zero innocent people are executed. That would settle the issue. I would expand it further to give judges some discretion subject to personal liability if they turned out to be wrong.
    First you say that "you could set it where there is no possible scenario where the person is innocent" (which is impossible, as I have pointed out previously - but I'll play along anyway). And then you turn right around and say that you "would ... give judges discretion subject to ... liability if they turned out to be wrong."

    So which is it? It can't be both.
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-23-2017 at 02:40 PM.

  11. #39
    If it can be "taken away," then it is not a right - it is a (revocable) privilege.
    There is no agreed definition of rights. I use Ayn Rand's concept of rights and she agrees with me on this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    I

    First you say that "you could set it where there is no possible scenario where the person is innocent" (which is impossible,
    Of course it is possible. I just gave 3 scenarios where it is the case. Human's have senses. There is an objective reality. If 50 people see Colin Ferguson shoot up a subway and a video camera shows him shooting, Colin Ferguson is the killer.

    I personally would expand the death penalty to use discretion where you go beyond just having confessions or eye witnesses. If you have a series of independent events that point to a person's guilt and the probability of each event being a false positive is very small, when you multiply those low probability events together, you get the odds that person couldn't be guilty approaching zero basically as an asymptote. That is close enough.

  12. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    There is no agreed definition of rights. I use Ayn Rand's concept of rights and she agrees with me on this.
    Definitional fiat is every discussant's prerogative. Thus, if you like, you (and Ayn Rand) are free to use the word "elephant" to denote "a small furry animal that purrs and uses a litter box" - but this will not turn cats into elephants or elephants into cats.

    If one is not unconditionally entitled to a thing (that is, if it can be "taken away because [reasons]"), then it is not a right; it is at best a revocable privilege (regardless of what particular labels you might prefer to use in place of any of those terms).

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Of course it is possible. I just gave 3 scenarios where it is the case.
    No, you did not give three scenarios where it is the case that "there is no possib[ility ...] the person is innocent." You gave three highly generalized examples of things that might provide some amount of evidence that a person may be guilty. The former and the latter are not even remotely the same things. There are far, far too many possibilities for (not to mention documented cases of) false confessions, doctored evidence (including video), and erroneous "eye" witness testimony to take seriously any claim that they are even commensurable, let alone the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Human's have senses. There is an objective reality. If 50 people see Colin Ferguson shoot up a subway and a video camera shows him shooting, Colin Ferguson is the killer.

    I personally would expand the death penalty to use discretion where you go beyond just having confessions or eye witnesses. If you have a series of independent events that point to a person's guilt and the probability of each event being a false positive is very small, when you multiply those low probability events together, you get the odds that person couldn't be guilty approaching zero basically as an asymptote. That is close enough.
    No, it is not "close enough" - as is clearly and amply demonstrated by the number of cases in which innocent people have erroneously been found guilty despite judges and jurors being sincerely and "objectively" certain that the "odds that person couldn't be guilty approach[ed] zero ..."

    As I said earlier, verdicts are either "guilty" or "not guilty" - and any given verdict is either correct or incorrect. That's it. That is all there is to it. That some verdicts of "guilty" will be correct (to whatever arbitrary degree of "probability" you please to leave to the discretion of whomever) does not in the slightest obviate that other verdicts of "guilty" will be incorrect. Thus, any talk of "zero percent chances" and "no possibility of doubts" is completely irrelevant and superfluous bafflegab. The problem inheres in the incorrect verdicts, not in the putatively correct ones.

    To the innocent man being strapped into the chair, what does it matter how certain anyone might be that Colin Ferguson really did do it (especially given that just the same sort of "certainty" is what put the innocent man there in the first place)?

    It bears repeating: Killing innocent people (as any system of capital punishment must inevitably do) in the name of punishing the killers of innocent people is the most grotesque and vicious species of hypocrisy. There is no way around this. Asymptotes do not avail.
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-23-2017 at 06:40 PM.



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  14. #41
    “I don’t think that there will be any curtailing of Donald Trump as president,” he said. "He controls the media, he controls the sentiment [and] he controls everybody. He’s the one who will resort to executive orders more so than [President] Obama ever used them." - Ron Paul

  15. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by CPUd View Post
    The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER
    Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)

    • "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
      -- The Law (p. 54)
    • "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
      -- Government (p. 99)
    • "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
      -- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)
    • "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
      -- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)

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  16. #43
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    The death penalty is far too expensive. On the open & shut cases (with indisputable foolproof evidence), there should not be appeals.
    Last edited by AuH20; 04-23-2017 at 09:23 PM.

  17. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    Definitional fiat is every discussant's prerogative. Thus, if you like, you (and Ayn Rand) are free to use the word "elephant" to denote "a small furry animal that purrs and uses a litter box" - but this will not turn cats into elephants or elephants into cats.


    .
    The very first sentence on Wikipedia is about how difficult rights are to define. "There is considerable disagreement about what is meant precisely by the term rights. It has been used by different groups and thinkers for different purposes, with different and sometimes opposing definitions, and the precise definition of this principle, beyond having something to do with normative rules of some sort or another, is controversial." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights#History

    I use Ayn Rand's concept because it makes the most sense to me.

    If one is not unconditionally entitled to a thing (that is, if it can be "taken away because [reasons]"), then it is not a right; it is at best a revocable privilege (regardless of what particular labels you might prefer to use in place of any of those terms).
    That makes the concept of rights either very narrow or it implies you can't punish people for anything. And it isn't the common definition of rights. Nobody says property privileges. The common usage is property rights.
    Last edited by Krugminator2; 04-23-2017 at 07:14 PM.

  18. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    The very first sentence on Wikipedia is about how difficult rights are to define. "There is considerable disagreement about what is meant precisely by the term rights. It has been used by different groups and thinkers for different purposes, with different and sometimes opposing definitions, and the precise definition of this principle, beyond having something to do with normative rules of some sort or another, is controversial." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights#History

    I use Ayn Rand's concept because it makes the most sense to me.
    I did not dispute that there are different definitions of rights. As I said, definitional fiat is every discussant's prerogative.

    I disputed the underlying concept denoted by your particular usage of the term "rights" in relation to the statement you were making (namely, that the rights of those who abrogate the rights of others may themselves be abrogated). I know that Rand asserts that one's "rights" necessarily derive from the nature of man qua man. Thus, if, as you claim, she also tells us that one's "rights" are contingent upon one's not violating the "rights" of others, then she is being contradictorily equivocal. Those things cannot both be correct, regardless of what definition of "rights" one chooses. This was the point is was trying to make (albeit perhaps poorly).

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    That makes the concept of rights either very narrow [...]
    If so, what's wrong with that?

    Many of today's biggest and most intractable socio-political problems arise because the concept of "rights" is being much too widely construed.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    [...] or it implies you can't punish people for anything.
    It does not imply any such thing. As I said earlier, "you do not have the 'right' to be free from defensive or retaliatory coercion/force."

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    And it isn't the common definition of rights.
    It is closer to whatever is more commonly understood and accepted around RPFs than Rand's is - especially if she really does engage in the contracticion noted above.

    Following Anthony de Jasay, I actually prefer a definition of "rights" as "positive claims against others." I think what we commonly refer to as "rights" - such as the "right" to free speech or to keep & bear arms or what-have-you - would be better referred to only as "liberties." Had such a usage prevailed, it might have been much harder if not impossible for things like the "liberty" of free speech or of keeping & bearing arms or what-have-you to have been rhetorically hijacked and perverted into a "liberty" to force other people provide you with an education or health care or what-have-you (which is what has happened with respect to so-called "negative" rights). But I recognize that such a usage is (unfortunately) idiosyncratic and would too frequently require ancillary disclaimers and explanations, so I just don't bother.

    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Nobody says property privileges. The common usage is property rights.
    And that's precisely because property "rights" are understood to concern something to which one is entitled - namely, one's property.

    If one is not entitled to it, then it is not one's property and one has no "rights" to it - and in that case, property "privilege" would indeed be the proper term for any revocable concessions one might have.
    Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-23-2017 at 09:25 PM.

  19. #46
    loveshiscountry
    Member

    Quote Originally Posted by ProBlue33 View Post
    Is it not the Constitutional/Libertarian stance to let the states decide these matters ?
    At least that's what I have heard Ron Paul say. If that is the law on the books of a State, a supreme court judge would respect that.
    A state should not be able to violate the rights of the individual. The only reason to take a life is protecting anothers life or protecting property.
    Last edited by loveshiscountry; 04-24-2017 at 06:34 AM.

  20. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by ghengis86 View Post
    I'm against the death penalty. Especially administered by the state. But this dude beat a woman to death with a tire iron. Sheesh. Maybe if the law was altered so that the victims next of kin was given the option to carry out the execution or grant clemency for life without parole...but even that's flawed.
    Just lock them up for life and let God sort out what happens in the afterlife.

    Did Gorsuch gain D.C. Street cred for condemning this guy to death like Trump got for bombing Syria?
    people against the death penalty should spend a few months guarding prisoners that have life sentences without parole. see how their views will change when seeing that their position requires some person to perform the worst work imaginable just so they can sleep with a clean conscious.

  21. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by ARealConservative View Post
    people against the death penalty should spend a few months guarding prisoners that have life sentences without parole. see how their views will change when seeing that their position requires some person to perform the worst work imaginable just so they can sleep with a clean conscious.
    Yeah, I can make ridiculous arguments like that, too - like so: "People in favor of the death penalty should be put on death row for crimes they did not commit. See how their views will change ..."

    Your point is even more ridiculous given that "prisoners that have life sentences without parole" compose only a small fraction of the prison population as a whole. Even if you executed every single one of them, it would make no significant difference to your allegedly "worst work imaginable." which I call bull$#@! on anyway - if the special snowflakes can't hack their jobs, then they should go into other lines of work (perhaps that of meter maids) instead of whining about how not enough people are being executed in order to make their jobs easier.

    And in any case, locking people up in rape cages has got to be one of the most counterproductive and goddam stupidest ways of dealing with criminals. All it does is make criminals out of the innocents who get sent up. and even harder criminals out of the criminals who do.



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  23. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana View Post
    Yeah, I can make ridiculous arguments
    you sure can

    so life without parole for crimes I didn't commit would make everything ok because the state didn't kill me,

    nice logic there.

    I want $#@!s like you to take on the job of guarding the guy that was told his good behavior has no positive impact on the reminder of his life.
    Last edited by ARealConservative; 04-24-2017 at 04:28 PM.

  24. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by ARealConservative View Post
    people against the death penalty should spend a few months guarding prisoners that have life sentences without parole. see how their views will change when seeing that their position requires some person to perform the worst work imaginable just so they can sleep with a clean conscious.
    Any person who has EVER "guarded prisoners" is an a affront to the liberty movement.

    Employees of the "Just-Us" department rank right down at the bottom, barely above the DA'a and AUSA's...On the scum of the earth scale..

  25. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    Any person who has EVER "guarded prisoners" is an a affront to the liberty movement.

    Employees of the "Just-Us" department rank right down at the bottom, barely above the DA'a and AUSA's...On the scum of the earth scale..
    what is your profession?

  26. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by ARealConservative View Post
    people against the death penalty should spend a few months guarding prisoners that have life sentences without parole. see how their views will change when seeing that their position requires some person to perform the worst work imaginable just so they can sleep with a clean conscious.
    With or without the governmental authorities, we would still be knee-deep in this scum. That's all but assured. Humans are a virus that we should all be wary of.

  27. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by ghengis86 View Post
    I'm against the death penalty. Especially administered by the state. But this dude beat a woman to death with a tire iron. Sheesh.

    Correction, he was convicted of murdering another person. But studies have shown that at least 1 in 25 convictions is actually an innocent person convicted of a crime they did not commit. In a country with millions of criminal convictions a year and more than 2 million people behind bars, even 1 percent amounts to tens of thousands of tragic errors. In the specific case of Lee, the Innocence Project had this to say:

    In a dissenting opinion denying Lee a stay issued today, Arkansas Supreme Court Judge Josephine Linker Hart made a powerful argument for why DNA testing was in the interest of justice. Justice Hart characterized Lee’s claim for DNA testing of hairs the state claimed linked Lee to the crime as a “modest request,” noting that the hair evidence had been used against him at trial and “tilted in the State’s favor a very weak case based entirely on circumstantial evidence.”

    Judge Hart also emphasized the unfairness and arbitrariness of the Arkansas court’s grant of a stay to Stacey Johnson for DNA testing while denying one to Lee, adding, “I am at a loss to explain this Court’s dissimilar treatment of similarly situated litigants.” Judge Hart concluded by stating, “The court’s error in denying the motion for stay will not be capable of correction.”

    https://www.innocenceproject.org/inn...on-ledell-lee/
    Last edited by PierzStyx; 04-24-2017 at 05:19 PM.

  28. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by ARealConservative View Post
    people against the death penalty should spend a few months guarding prisoners that have life sentences without parole. see how their views will change when seeing that their position requires some person to perform the worst work imaginable just so they can sleep with a clean conscious.
    Imagine that, people act like animals when they spend everyday of their lives locked in a cage, beaten, and treated like animals.

    Get out of here with your police state bootlicker bull$#@!.

  29. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by ProBlue33 View Post
    Is it not the Constitutional/Libertarian stance to let the states decide these matters ?
    At least that's what I have heard Ron Paul say. If that is the law on the books of a State, a supreme court judge would respect that.
    Jawohl!



















  30. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    With or without the governmental authorities, we would still be knee-deep in this scum. That's all but assured. Humans are a virus that we should all be wary of.
    that is a healthy acknowledgement, IMO. negative for many, but not unrealistic.



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  32. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by PierzStyx View Post
    Imagine that, people act like animals when they spend everyday of their lives locked in a cage, beaten, and treated like animals.

    Get out of here with your police state bootlicker bull$#@!.
    oustide of drug war prisoners, almost every single person locked in a cage acted like an animal to get like that

    Get out of here with your police state bootlicker bull$#@!.
    $#@! you you little intolerant bigot pussy

  33. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Krugminator2 View Post
    Of course you do. You have basic human rights to be free from coercion but if you don't respect other's rights to be free from coercion, your right to be free from coercion is taken away. Here is Nathaniel Branden's take "If it were possible to by fully and irrevocably certain, beyond any possibility of error, that a man were guilty, then capital punishment for murder would be appropriate and just. "

    You could set the standard for the death penalty at a higher level than guilt. You could set it where there is no possible scenario where the person is innocent. If you have an admission of guilt, the murder on videotape, a minimum number of eye witnesses that would ensure zero innocent people are executed. That would settle the issue. I would expand it further to give judges some discretion subject to personal liability if they turned out to be wrong.
    Wrong. You still do not own that person's life. And you never can own another person. To plan out the taking of that life and then to carry through with the premeditated, detailed, killing of another person, that is murder. You don't have that right and power and, as the government can only have powers delegated to it by the people, neither does the government. Killing in the heat of the moment self-defense is one thing. "Capital punishment" is just Orwellian doublespeak for state sponsored murder.

  34. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by PierzStyx View Post
    Wrong. You still do not own that person's life. And you never can own another person. To plan out the taking of that life and then to carry through with the premeditated, detailed, killing of another person, that is murder. You don't have that right and power and, as the government can only have powers delegated to it by the people, neither does the government. Killing in the heat of the moment self-defense is one thing. "Capital punishment" is just Orwellian doublespeak for state sponsored murder.
    hey retard, do I have the power to lock a person up for life?

    your arguments are that of a child.

  35. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by ARealConservative View Post
    oustide of drug war prisoners, almost every single person locked in a cage acted like an animal to get like that
    Facts say otherwise, Jimbo.

    First of all, you get rid of people involve din the drug war then you cut your prison population in half, right off the bat.

    Of the half that is left, somewhere between 10-20,000 people a year are innocent and convicted of crimes they didn't commit. That means that, in fact, the minority of people in prison are people locked up "who deserve it."

    Of those, you begin to look at why they are there and you realize that 10,000 number begins to look too small. Do yourself a favor, go read "You Have The Right To Remain Innocent" by James Duane. Or watch the video below. It is all about how the police lie, manipulate, and coerce legal but incorrect confessions out of people and then convict them of crimes they did not commit.



    So, quite factually, you are wrong.

    $#@! you you little intolerant bigot pussy

    Imagine that, the guy/girl who has no facts and is apologizing for the police state is calling me a "pussy." You'r ethe one living on your knees and loving it. Also, calling someone "intolerant" and a "******" in the same sentence? That is some meta-level idiocy and contradiction right there.

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