Even worse.
Mar. 16th, 2009 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This makes me cry.
I am now conflicted, because it’s for stuff like this that I believe in the death penalty, and yet the death penalty is problematic. (If you don't know why it's problematic you'll have to look it up because I can't right now.) Is it very problematic when it constitutes the removal of such individuals, whose crime cannot be disproved (except by a very long stretch of irrational, nonsensical, non-reality-aligned imagination)? Or is death too harsh a punishment for 24 years of imprisonment, rape, forced childbearing, and torture? CNN catalogues the charges and possible sentences. Have a read and tell me. I don’t know anymore.
I am now conflicted, because it’s for stuff like this that I believe in the death penalty, and yet the death penalty is problematic. (If you don't know why it's problematic you'll have to look it up because I can't right now.) Is it very problematic when it constitutes the removal of such individuals, whose crime cannot be disproved (except by a very long stretch of irrational, nonsensical, non-reality-aligned imagination)? Or is death too harsh a punishment for 24 years of imprisonment, rape, forced childbearing, and torture? CNN catalogues the charges and possible sentences. Have a read and tell me. I don’t know anymore.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-17 12:28 am (UTC)Do you realize there was a time when DNA testing was brand new that almost 10% of convicted rape cases were being overturned because of that testing?
Trial by peers in this country is a joke. It usually means "Trial by whoever is not smart enough to get out of jury duty, and who doesn't have enough education or connection with current events to understand the issues."
Wouldn't a system of professional, anonymous, educated jurists who understand the law and are familiar with the issues be a better system? Who are forbidden to speak to the press or use the experience of the trial for personal gain (like book deals) be better?
I don't have all the answers, but what we are doing now sucks.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-17 01:19 am (UTC)I'm generally not a fan of the idea that justice is merely punishment, I also don't hold to that across the board. I can't help but dispute the right of folks like Fritzl to exist, even before factoring the murder charge in to things. Of course, Austria doesn't have the death penalty at all, and there's some folks who would consider an effectively-permanent prison sentence in solitary (or an abbreviated one in general population) a harsher punishment than merely hitting someone's off switch.
(Also, "partially guity?" The hell?)