Just Another Political Post.

[Occhidiangela]

First, I was not suggesting what the numbers are or could be.  I was simply asking what you deem an acceptable rate of innocent people executed.  How many innocent lives is it worth to execute one murderer?

Second, if you accept that innocent people are executed under the current system, how can you claim a zero percent chance of your family being falsely accused or convicted?  By your own admission, the system executes innoncent people; and yet, somehow you and your family are magically immune?

I ask because everyone who I have ever heard use the line of reasoning you are defending here is always talking about someone's else's lives that they're just not that worried about.  If you want to say you're willing to sacrifice innocent lives in order to keep executing murderers, I say it's not up to you to be selective about who gets sacrificed.  That innocent person executed may not have been a family member of yours, but he/she was someone's son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister...

gekko
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Don't try to put words in my mouth, gekko. I admit nothing. The zero percent chance is due to how we conduct our lives, where we live, and how we live. I leave to you to attempt to grasp how that works. Your theoretical "it could happen to anyone" is horrid logic. It doesn't happen to "anyone." You have to have a risk exposure profile to even have a chance of being tied to a First Degree Murder case. Myth busting 101: it does not happen to "just anyone" and if you know as many cops as I do, you can learn an awful lot about "false arrests" and how one winnows a suspect list.

As to this abstraction:

I was simply asking what you deem an acceptable rate of innocent people executed. How many innocent lives is it worth to execute one murderer?

The question is based on a false premise that there is a number threshold that triggers a go no go decision. This is not a math exercise, where one looks for limits and thresholds. The process is the key, and the process keeps the number low. This is a problem in industrial engineering, not math, and in process control, as well as process improvement.

By my own understanding, it appears that some have been executed, an extremely small percentage, well below 1% of convicted First Degree Murderers, who may not have done the killing they were convicted for. (As to other crimes that did not end up on the charge sheet, that's is a whole different can of worms.)

Per my earlier comments: in summary, I don't care. I am not foolish enough to expect zero defects from anything human. The incidence is so rare, contrary to the picture the media and pundits who oppose the death penalty wish to paint, that it meets, as I said previously, the good enough standard.

Why do I have to repeat myself, I wonder? I am not asking you to take my position. Do you understand that? So, how about you stop trying to get me to take your position. The points you raise have never moved me before, and they continue not to move me. They are irrelevant.

I am not doing any sacrificing, gekko, our detailed due process of law does. Plus, please don't confuse me with the mythical "everyone else" who supports the death penalty. I am not everyone else. I am me, and this is my position.

That innocent person executed may not have been a family member of yours, but he/she was someone's son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister...

So what? I'll ignore your presumption of innocence, rat hole not worth wasting time over. Every one is born, everyone has a family, functional or otherwise. That fact does not influence the process. It is an appeal to emotion, a zero defects appeal. I repeat, I am not fool enough to buy into the zero defects myth.

If my cousin somehow got framed and executed (after a dozen year's time of death row) for a murder he didn't commit, well

Sucks to be him, and sucks to be me to lose my cousin, likewise his family. What do I do? I help take care of his family, and we get on with our lives. (Though I might pull an OJ and go hunting for whoever framed him . . .)

Occhi