03-10-2009, 05:18 PM
Hi,
If the law permits a punishment that one disagrees with, then it is the ballot box and not the jury room that should be used to change the law. Or so I feel, but perhaps I have quaint definitions of 'legislative', 'executive', and 'judicial'. Perhaps the ingredients in government stew have boiled in the same pot so long now that they've blended into one homogeneous mess.
--Pete
Quote:Another problem with our system is that death penalty jurors are screened to only allow those that are willing to sentence someone to death. This skews the jury in favor of higher conviction rate and harsher sentencing than would a true random selection of 12 "peers".I've heard this before, but don't understand the logic. If a person is willing to sentence someone to death, does that imply that he is less likely to be impartial in his determination of guilt? Does it imply that he is more likely to impose a harsher sentence (execution aside)? What about people like me (until recently); I am a 'child of the sixties', I do not trust the government and would hold the police, the prosecution, the judiciary, to a very high standard. Unless a good, fair case was made, I would vote 'innocent'. If substantive mitigating factors existed, I'd take them in consideration in sentencing. Was I so unusual, or was I a typical supporter of capital punishment?
If the law permits a punishment that one disagrees with, then it is the ballot box and not the jury room that should be used to change the law. Or so I feel, but perhaps I have quaint definitions of 'legislative', 'executive', and 'judicial'. Perhaps the ingredients in government stew have boiled in the same pot so long now that they've blended into one homogeneous mess.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?