politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
"Beyond any doubt" would mean abolishing it. It is an impossible standard
Any case held to the standard of "beyond any doubt" would be trivially defended. It is theoretically possible we're all in the matrix and the whole case was just faked by our all-powerful machine overlords. Is the doubt reasonable? No. Is it a doubt? Yes
I'm in favor of abolishing the death penalty. We shouldn't do it with roundabout semantics and sham trials though
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.