On Jan. 25, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) plans to execute Kenneth Smith by forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen gas, an untested execution method with profound legal and ethical conseq...
I agree in principle because I think the universe is absurd and complex, but I disagree in practice because most humans form a consensus on the basics of reality far more than we might think.
It’s reasonable to doubt reality from a philosophical point of view. Even though you might be able to make a very well-reasoned case about how humans lack free will using quantum physics and the debate about determinism, we don’t see people escaping murder charges this way.
If you have a murderer who was caught on camera and arrested on the scene, one who left a manifesto and confesses to the crime, I think we could use “beyond any doubt” pretty safely here.
My bigger concern is that people would still abuse this though. They’d say they had no doubt about cases where there weren’t any witnesses, the accused is denying it, etc. They’d be giving the death penalty to innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time because they had absolutely no doubt the person did it.
So yeah, there are cases where beyond any doubt would make perfect sense but I’m still against capital punishment because I’ve seen what one crooked police officer or racist judge can do to a person’s whole life.
Person on camera was a black male, 5’2" to 6’6" wearing a dark hoodie. The suspect certainly fits the description. There was a written manifesto, but the suspect says he didn’t write it. He says he only signed the confession after being tortured by the police for hours.
Your proposal is exactly the system that exists now, and it’s unjust.
“Beyond any doubt” - Parkland high school shooting. Multiple people identified the shooter. Caught with weapons. Admits to crime.
When a person is apprehended in the act in front of multiple witnesses - that’s beyond any doubt. In any case, the standard of proof should be higher than “reasonable doubt” if the penalty is death. There are too many cases where that standard has failed and innocent people were convicted.
You’re describing “beyond reasonable doubt”. There still exist “unreasonable” doubts, such as, there’s a conspiracy against this suspect which the entire police force, the judge and the jury are part of. Or “aliens did it”, or anything.
You might think I’m being pedantic here, but being pedantic about language is a lawyer’s bread and butter.
The problem is that “reasonable” is open to interpretation, and that’s the actual reason innocent people have been put to death…
There’s no way, weird as it may sound, to definitively prove anything except mathematical expressions, it’s a fact of life. That’s why gravity is just a theory. It only takes one piece of evidence going the other way and it’s proved wrong, just like in cases where the judge, jury and everyone else were so certain of guilt that they convicted someone to death, only to find out later they should have acquitted. It’s not their fault, they were acting on the best information available to them. But it’s impossible to be sure.
That, for me, is enough to render the death penalty unworkable. It would be nice to be able to delete the worst people in society, but it’s a fantasy. It’s just not possible to do it without sacrificing innocent people on the way.
I agree in principle because I think the universe is absurd and complex, but I disagree in practice because most humans form a consensus on the basics of reality far more than we might think.
It’s reasonable to doubt reality from a philosophical point of view. Even though you might be able to make a very well-reasoned case about how humans lack free will using quantum physics and the debate about determinism, we don’t see people escaping murder charges this way.
If you have a murderer who was caught on camera and arrested on the scene, one who left a manifesto and confesses to the crime, I think we could use “beyond any doubt” pretty safely here.
My bigger concern is that people would still abuse this though. They’d say they had no doubt about cases where there weren’t any witnesses, the accused is denying it, etc. They’d be giving the death penalty to innocent people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time because they had absolutely no doubt the person did it.
So yeah, there are cases where beyond any doubt would make perfect sense but I’m still against capital punishment because I’ve seen what one crooked police officer or racist judge can do to a person’s whole life.
Person on camera was a black male, 5’2" to 6’6" wearing a dark hoodie. The suspect certainly fits the description. There was a written manifesto, but the suspect says he didn’t write it. He says he only signed the confession after being tortured by the police for hours.
Your proposal is exactly the system that exists now, and it’s unjust.
“Beyond any doubt” - Parkland high school shooting. Multiple people identified the shooter. Caught with weapons. Admits to crime.
When a person is apprehended in the act in front of multiple witnesses - that’s beyond any doubt. In any case, the standard of proof should be higher than “reasonable doubt” if the penalty is death. There are too many cases where that standard has failed and innocent people were convicted.
You’re describing “beyond reasonable doubt”. There still exist “unreasonable” doubts, such as, there’s a conspiracy against this suspect which the entire police force, the judge and the jury are part of. Or “aliens did it”, or anything.
You might think I’m being pedantic here, but being pedantic about language is a lawyer’s bread and butter. The problem is that “reasonable” is open to interpretation, and that’s the actual reason innocent people have been put to death…
There’s no way, weird as it may sound, to definitively prove anything except mathematical expressions, it’s a fact of life. That’s why gravity is just a theory. It only takes one piece of evidence going the other way and it’s proved wrong, just like in cases where the judge, jury and everyone else were so certain of guilt that they convicted someone to death, only to find out later they should have acquitted. It’s not their fault, they were acting on the best information available to them. But it’s impossible to be sure.
That, for me, is enough to render the death penalty unworkable. It would be nice to be able to delete the worst people in society, but it’s a fantasy. It’s just not possible to do it without sacrificing innocent people on the way.
Actually a really good point on the language of it.