Flawed Forensics: Pseudoscience in the Witness Box

We know innocent people get executed.

So, fill in the variables: "I would be OK with the state executing x innocent people for every y guilty people that we execute."

I surely hope everyone agrees x = 0. Therefore...

 

Speaking of subjective testimony, check out this: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/

One hour but completely worth it...

 

That's a pretty flawed way of thinking. Are people better off if, in your mind, they just spend the rest of their lives in prison or the next 30 years in prison as opposed to being executed? Then why don't we ask the question "I would be okay with the state destroying the lives of X innocent people by putting them in jail for the rest or majority of their lives"......wouldn't that number still be the same as in your example? If you are a short sighted bleeding heart, I'm sure the number would be 0 for both so are you suggesting we do away with life sentences as well?

Then let's take this further, 20 years takes away the prime of life, so that's really destroying someone's life as well so we should ban 20 year sentences as well.

Also, if you imprison someone for a decade, you are very likely to ruin someone's life as well because it would be really hard transitioning back to life on the outside because in all likelihood everything they had been working for before incarceration would be gone and I wouldn't want that to happen to an innocent person.....so let's do away with 10 year sentences as well.



Or we could be adults about it and realize that no system is perfect and sometimes innocents get unfairly punished but that is no reason to scrap the system. You work to limit the incidence of innocents being punished as best as possible and let the system roll on. There is absolutely a need for a death penalty for the worst of crimes.

 

Why? What is the absolute necessity of it? What bad things happen if we don't have it?

 

Fair point, "need" is not accurate. I'd much rather pay to put the worst of criminals to death than to pay to house them for the rest of their natural lives. I'd gladly pay more for that even. I believe that the absolute worst of criminals ought to be simply put down.

 

95% bias is plenty reason to scrap elite FBI forensic unit and have a process for regular timely independent review of all forensic unit and criminal labs (Hou criminal lab still fairly fresh).

 

But, but forensic evidence says...!!!

 

whoa whoa whoa, I thought we weren't allowed to question #Science

 

So many errors in your argument:
Paragraph 1--yes. These people are still better off in jail on a life sentence, particularly if they are innocent of the crimes for which they've been convicted. People who oppose the death penalty generally have no qualms with life sentences.

Paragraph 2-you propose a nebulous "prime of life" definition and suggest that people who oppose the death penalty but into a stupid theory. People who oppose the death penalty to do not care about the "prime of life" being taken from criminals. They do worry that an innocent individual may be executed or that such an individual would be robbed of valuable freedom.

Paragraph 3-you are arguing with a monster you have created in your imagination. Would someone who opposes the death penalty oppose sentences which allow an innocent freedom as opposed to death?

Paragraph 4-really lame appeal to maturity. Also--because no system is perfect we should be more wary about executing people. One way of limiting the incidence of people being wrongly executed, which you are calling a punishment, is to not allow execution. Seems obvious. What "absolute need" is there for a death penalty for the "worst crimes." What benefit is there to executing someone?

The death penalty has no benefits. Individuals who defend it do so under the guise of justice. What they actually experience is a thirst for revenge and refined cruelty. The deterrence and cost arguments have failed. Your ironic position, that we would be better off executing these people as prison robs you of the prime of your life, is infantile.

My grandfather had a death sentence commuted the day before he was set to be executed. It is not a merely theoretical concern. I hope that someone you know is never put in such a situation. Your proposition that adults accept that things are not perfect and so we should accept them for being flawed is the paradigm of unthinking conservatism.