Can you show me any complex human system which is perfect? Just one?
Again, I am baffled at why my opponents on this wish to use such hyperbolic commentary. No, actually the systems which would be in place would not be "perfect" in the sense that you just used it. As you suggest, nothing is perfect.
A perfect system which included a death penalty would not only not execute any innocent people, it would always convict the absolutely guilty. In devising rules to protect innocents from ever possibly being executed, one will naturally increase the probability that some absolutely guilty people may not be eligible for the death penalty.
This is really a spectrum. At one end we can have a system where absolutely no one is executed and so no innocents could be, yet people that ought to be are not. At the other end is where executions are routine and we kill all those that ought to be, but also all those who are innocent.
We can move to a point on that spectrum, building necessary criteria for imposition of the death penalty using types/levels of evidence, such that while we are still likely to not kill all those that ought to be killed, we are wholly unable to kill anyone that is innocent.
we don't have a system in place designed explicitly to give embarrassing celebrity themed left butt-cheek tattoos to criminals. We DO have a complex system in place explicitly for electrocuting or lethally injecting criminals in place, based on the ultimately subjective and fallible judgments of human beings.
There, you've just started defining criteria for elimination of a possible death sentence. Subjectivity is a problem as well as fallibility. Thus any case which hinges on circumstantial evidence, eye witness testimony (without other physical means of corroboration and/or challenged by the accused), and lines of physical evidence which are not conclusive (such as simple blood type match), would not be available for application of the death penalty.
Which must be decided within a judicial system, which itself cannot be perfect, and will inevitably put "not certainly guilty" people into the "certainly guilty" category.
This is simply self-serving assertion at best, ad hominem at worst. We can certainly create a system that can figure out in certain cases if a person is in no way innocent. That will not be true in all cases, for which the death penalty cannot apply. But there can be stringent rules based on types/level of evidence such that absolute guilt of the party is assured.
As to Dahmer's guilt, I'm not sure he should be executed because I think he was mentally ill, but I'm sure we could find a case that we agree the person "deserves to die". But that's irrelevant. I don't care that a system could be devised which sometimes appropriately executes someone. I DO care that the same system would inevitably also kill an innocent.
I'm not sure if you know, but he has already been killed. In fact it is pretty much believed that some members of the governing authority fixed it so that he would be killed inside prison. I'm not going to get into a huge debate on whether that is true, just pointing out it is a possibility with some evidence.
I also care about a system that would possibly put an innocent person to death. That is why it is a continued insult to hear people tell me I must be for innocent people dying as they
assert an adequate system cannot be achieved. That is simply the argument from ignorance, and in this case quite willful ignorance.
Point out the system to me that is 100% guaranteed to never, ever, with 100.00000% certainty, to classify an innocent person as certainly guilty.
A person opens fire in a crowd killing scores of people. His actions are caught on video tape and backed up by several survivors of the incident. The person was eventually caught at, or near, the scene of the crime with the murder weapon on his person as well as evidence from the crime scene (blood from the victims). And on top of that the person willingly confesses to the crime.
Can we be 100% sure of this persons guilt or not? Honestly.
If we had a system that demanded at least three non related witnesses (thus no friends or family), corroborating physical evidence of an unquestionably untampered nature and clear identification (video plus weapons and video match), and having caught the suspect in the act or fleeing from the act, plus a confession... would that be good enough to remove any possibility of innocents being killed?
Indeed, necessitating confession alone (one which is not disputed by the defendant), would tend to remove all but "innocent" suicides.
Actually, it's not 100% certain. I'd call it 99.9999999999% certain. And yes, that IS meaningful, because it means that there is not a categorical distinction between "certainly guilty people who are eligible for the death penalty" and "very certainly guilty people who are almost certainly guilty enough for the death penalty, but not quite".
Heheheh... in a way I was using the 100% certainty as a trap, thankfully handed to me by someone else. Life is not able to be calculated like that.
In the case of Dahmer, there is only metaphysical possibilities it is not true (we are brains in vats being fed fallacious info), or everyone on the case including Dahmer wanted us to believe he was guilty and manufactured all this evidence including somehow obtaining the dead bodies of missing people.
There is a time to confess that you actually can say something within this world that is positive, except for cases so extreme and remote they are practical impossibilities (and even if true would then negate themselves as a counterargument).
You have created a very self-serving argument here. You are pretending a measure of uncertainty, based on highly illogical/extremely improbable scenarios which Dahmer himself did not argue, in order to somehow say that a less than 100% certainty means an innocent person could be executed.
You say it's not "plausible" that Dahmer was innocent, perhaps? Well, tell me how the awfully vague concept of "plausibility" is going to get perfectly implemented in a real life legal system.
For a person as hard on creos regarding plausibility versus possibility as I am, you sure are dipping your hand into the bottom of their barrel as freely and as often as they do. No, it really isn't "plausible" that Dahmer was innocent. How could it be?
The only physically possible scenario is if he and the police and the media and some of the victims (including the one who escaped to alert police) were all in on a plot (and remember which Dahmer wanted) to frame him for the murders of all those missing people.
Does that honestly, and I mean come on honestly, make any sense to you at all?
You are making the bold claim of an infallible legal system run by humans. It's your job to prove this is possible.
That's funny. I thought it was your bold claim that humans cannot make anything that is capable of doing what it is designed to do, with failsafes designed to trade off absolute functionality for absolute security.
Other than an argument from ignorance, equivocation, ad hominem, and guilt by association, I have yet to see any argument at all, least of all a logically sound argument why use of the death penalty inherently means innocent people will be executed.
But don't worry, I'll slowly help everyone figure out some plausible systems. After all I don't want to be greedy and hog the Nobel Prize all to myself.
I am opening a new thread so we can stop clogging up Troy's.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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