The Tea Party Says - "Let Them Die"

dteowner said:

As has happened several times, we end up with a very similar evaluation of the situation, but come to a different answer. It's a little frustrating that you stubbornly cling to the wrong answer all the time ( ) but I find it strangely encouraging that at least some small portion of "the opposition" is seeing and considering the same gameboard as me.

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I know it's frustrating. It infuriates me, sometimes. Is there any doubt in our minds of Casey Anthony's guilt/innocence? But the verdict rendered in that case wasn't the Law's fault, it was the hubris of the prosecution. The Law should be perfect, but there's no way that we can be. If the improper application of the law sometimes allows the guilty to go free, then it should work just as hard (if not harder) to free the wrongly convicted.

In spite of our rather cavalier approach around here, these are some pretty complex issues we bat around. It's a very complex chess board in front of us, and most of the time it seems like y'all are playing Chutes and Ladders. On Neptune. Exceptions are quite pleasant.

OK, enough of the lovefest.

There's a certain irony that I, generally painted as the jackbooted police stater (with some validity), would be the one wanting a little more "give" in the enforcement of the law. Similarly, you've got all these hari krishna liberals wanting convicted killers to walk to ensure we follow the strictest letter of the law. That's pretty tasty, even if it shows some inconsistency on my part.

dteowner said:

There's a certain irony that I, generally painted as the jackbooted police stater (with some validity), would be the one wanting a little more "give" in the enforcement of the law. Similarly, you've got all these hari krishna liberals wanting convicted killers to walk to ensure we follow the strictest letter of the law. That's pretty tasty, even if it shows some inconsistency on my part.

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I question your wording and the understanding of what us "hare krishna liberals" are all about. I, personally, don't want convicted killers to go free; I want them rehabilitated, if possible. I also freely admit that it's possible to make mistakes in the application of the law, which means that sometimes people are wrongly convicted. I feel that some people are under the impression that a verdict of guilty couldn't possibly be the result of judicial incompetence or malfeasance, or the increasingly obvious fact that eyewitness accounts aren't always particularly reliable. It seems like some people are more concerned with sating their thirst for vengeance rather than justice.

Captain Buzzkill said:

I question your wording and the understanding of what us "hare krishna liberals" are all about. I, personally, don't want convicted killers to go free; I want them rehabilitated, if possible. I also freely admit that it's possible to make mistakes in the application of the law, which means that sometimes people are wrongly convicted. I feel that some people are under the impression that a verdict of guilty couldn't possibly be the result of judicial incompetence or malfeasance, or the increasingly obvious fact that eyewitness accounts aren't always particularly reliable. It seems like some people are more concerned with sating their thirst for vengeance rather than justice.

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I wouldn't consider you personally as part of the sub-group, so perhaps that's some of the confusion. The "verbal shorthand" was overly vague. Don't really have time here at work to properly clean up the my mess on that particular angle, so I'll beg forgiveness and move on.

Do you see some friction in your stance, though? You stated earlier that you expect The Law to be 100% and support stacking the deck in favor of the defendant in every manner possible. Now you're saying that "guilty" isn't reliable. If you still don't trust the system after tipping the scale at every turn, how can you buy into the system at all? Is it a loaded specification? We demand that the system be infallible and we further resolve that, even given every advantage, we're certain the system is wholly unreliable? I don't quite get that. If you're going to be realists, it doesn't make sense to demand perfection; if you're going to be idealists, there's no reason to doubt your results.

dteowner said:

Similarly, you've got all these hari krishna liberals wanting convicted killers to walk to ensure we follow the strictest letter of the law.

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And that's how, with one sentence, you make your posts meaningless.

dteowner said:

I wouldn't consider you personally as part of the sub-group, so perhaps that's some of the confusion. The "verbal shorthand" was overly vague. Don't really have time here at work to properly clean up the my mess on that particular angle, so I'll beg forgiveness and move on.

Do you see some friction in your stance, though? You stated earlier that you expect The Law to be 100% and support stacking the deck in favor of the defendant in every manner possible. Now you're saying that "guilty" isn't reliable. If you still don't trust the system after tipping the scale at every turn, how can you buy into the system at all? Is it a loaded specification? We demand that the system be infallible and we further resolve that, even given every advantage, we're certain the system is wholly unreliable? I don't quite get that. If you're going to be realists, it doesn't make sense to demand perfection; if you're going to be idealists, there's no reason to doubt your results.

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It's not the system, though. It's us. The appeals process is built in to mitigate OUR errors, not errors in the Law. If the Law was implemented and utilized perfectly, there wouldn't be all this argument. Cutting corners and allowing for "flexibility" totally undermines the Law. How much flexibility do you want? Does the Law allow for different degrees of flexibility? What if it's not flexible enough? Do we flex it a little more, simply because we feel like it?

I understand that my ideal is unattainable. My ideal is an institution of reform and reconciliation, in which a person is incarcerated only so long as it takes to identify and correct the deficiencies in his psychosocial profile. This may include anger management, job skills training, cognitive/behavioral therapy, addiction cessation, the list goes on and on. Those that are shown to have made the changes necessary to function as a positive and productive member of society are afforded the chance to prove it in a tightly controlled parole, and those who don't make the changes go back to work. My ideal also includes a society that endeavors to apply the Law impartially and without emotion or prejudice; a society that is also capable of respecting the Law enough to accept the sentencing imposed by the Law, and accept people who have served their time as full citizens again. There still wouldn't be a death penalty because we would be doing our utmost to salvage as many lives as possible. You may argue that this shows a lack of compassion for the victims and their families, but the state didn't kill the victim, and executing the perpetrator wouldn't bring the victim back, and so it can only be based on the emotional desire for vengeance, which has no place in the application of the Law. It also sends mixed signals to the rest of society when you hire a killer to kill a killer to show that killing is wrong.

That last bit probably got rambling. I was pressed for time and it got more stream of consciousness as I went on. Point I was trying to make: You're wrong.

zahratustra said:

And that's how, with one sentence, you make your posts meaningless.

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*sniff* And I so wanted the approval of someone whose choice of contribution was one sentence calling someone an "ignorant little fuck". I have been judged and found wanting. I might just curl up and die.

In case you haven't noticed dte, I don't make a habit of calling people names. In fact I have never done it before. But, with certain level of ignorance, there comes a time when spade needs to be called a spade.