The decision affirms a lower court’s ruling nullifying Jimmie “Chris” Duncan’s 1998 first-degree murder conviction. Duncan was convicted based in part on forensic evidence that is now widely regarded as junk science.
Until the state can 100% guarantee a correct verdict every time, the state should not be delivering any punishments that cannot be undone in case of a miscarriage of justice. As long as there is any chance of an innocent person facing the punishment, no permanent and irreversible punishments should ever be used.
(And even then, there’s a discussion to be had about whether the state should be in the business of killing people, even in an idealized world where you can be 100% sure they’ve got the right guy. But that’s secondary to the unavoidable risk of doing it to an innocent person.)
My argument has always been practical, even if you accept that the state killing people is “ok”: it’s so expensive to litigate death row cases and keep inmates on death row that the extra “justice” isn’t worth it. Being in prison for life is a far greater deterrent anyway, so why fight this battle?
My republicans parents would just argue we shouldn’t let them litigate it after the verdict… in their mind can’t make appeals means less cost so everything is back to being perfectly ok
It’s amazing that so many people I speak to don’t understand this. Too many Americans just think that if you’re on death row, you did some pretty serious shit that it shortwires their brain into not being even remotely skeptical of the US justice system
Many of us have been programmed since we were children to see arrested = horrible criminal. My parents will watch local news and spout horrible words at people who are announced detained for X or Y crime, despite them not even being convicted of anything yet. The law here is “Guilty unless proven innocent, and even then maybe still guilty if they feel like it”.
Absolutely.
Until the state can 100% guarantee a correct verdict every time, the state should not be delivering any punishments that cannot be undone in case of a miscarriage of justice. As long as there is any chance of an innocent person facing the punishment, no permanent and irreversible punishments should ever be used.
(And even then, there’s a discussion to be had about whether the state should be in the business of killing people, even in an idealized world where you can be 100% sure they’ve got the right guy. But that’s secondary to the unavoidable risk of doing it to an innocent person.)
My argument has always been practical, even if you accept that the state killing people is “ok”: it’s so expensive to litigate death row cases and keep inmates on death row that the extra “justice” isn’t worth it. Being in prison for life is a far greater deterrent anyway, so why fight this battle?
My republicans parents would just argue we shouldn’t let them litigate it after the verdict… in their mind can’t make appeals means less cost so everything is back to being perfectly ok
It’s amazing that so many people I speak to don’t understand this. Too many Americans just think that if you’re on death row, you did some pretty serious shit that it shortwires their brain into not being even remotely skeptical of the US justice system
Many of us have been programmed since we were children to see arrested = horrible criminal. My parents will watch local news and spout horrible words at people who are announced detained for X or Y crime, despite them not even being convicted of anything yet. The law here is “Guilty unless proven innocent, and even then maybe still guilty if they feel like it”.