The Case of Troy Davis

[--Pete]

Hi,

I'm absolutely against death penalty.

Noted. How do you feel about 'retroactive birth control', 'vermin extermination', 'crap to fertilizer conversion', etc.?

And no device, however elaborated, will wash off the blood from the executioner's hands, nor from the hands of those judging someone to death.

Love these rational arguments, free of hyperbole, divorced from blind emotion, and cognizant of their underlying prejudices.

Because a technical device will always need an interpretation of its results, and this interpretation will alwys be preoccupied.

I realize that you are operating under the handicap of not using your native language, but even allowing for that, I can't quite figure out what this means. Consider: I have a videotape from a security camera showing you shooting a clerk. The tape is clear, your features are well recorded. What interpretation does this require?

As for 'preoccupied', I don't think that it means what you think it means.

G.K.Chesterton published a short story of his Father Brown series, 'the Mistake of the Machine', about a hundred years ago describing a lie detector, and everything to say against lie detectors will also apply to every other technical device.

Bull#$%&. Read my earlier posts where I give a bit of the difference between lie detectors and other forensic evidence. If you deny your guilt, and a polygraph indicates that the response is true, is it because you are innocent or because you are a sociopath and have no concept of guilt? But if your DNA does not match, then its claim of your innocent is uncontroversial. Your failure to distinguish the capabilities and limitations of technologies reflects on your ignorance and not their failings.

Such a device is a camouflage similar to fake munition given out to shooting executioners, where only a few get the real ammo, and no-one knows who got which. This should put the gunners to ease, but the moral guilt still stays, just no-one wants to take the blame.

This is muddle headed bull. Evidence is not execution. If you wish to place blame all the way back, then blame the mother of the criminal for having had him, the mother of the victim for creating the occasion of the crime, the ancestors of all involved. Hell, go back to Lucy or Adam and Eve, and blame the whole human race. But why stop there? Curse god or bemoan the big bang.

Opinions are good. Discussion is good. Ignorance is not. Illogic is not. Learn the difference.

--Pete