punishment (capital or otherwise)

[JMH]

Another poster resurected the capital punishment issue recently; a worthy topic.

The idea in and of itself is a solid one. Many responses cited issues of morality and some had issues with

the potential killing of innocents.

With modern inestigative science, in my oppinion, capital punishment should be reinstated. Capital crimes include multiple homicide, rape with torture resulting in death, child abduction/rape and death etc.

These are crimes that society deems irreprehensible.

It is the process involved that has killed the viability of putting these criminals to death. Simple changes in legislation would be nessesary to facilitate the process.

Defendants would have to be found guilty BEYOND DOUBT. Multiple forensic labs would have to concur on the scientific evidence. Coroborative evidence would have to be solid in the eyes of a jury, and circumstantial evidence would carry less weight. Given the above circunstances, a defendant has no right to the appealat process. He/She is guilty as charged, and put to death immediatly.

The death process has been further complicated by silly methods to expire a criminal: Electrocution, being hanged, gas and lethal injection. These are ridiculous, expensive and in-humane solutions.

Therefore, a large calibre bullit to the head is instantanious, humane and efficient.

If your one of those people out there, that believes that this isn't a deterrant........I ask you one thing...................

What exactly, prevents society from comitting crimes in the first place? Why have laws? Why have order?

Because punishment, is the cornerstone of maintaining a lawfull society.

[Michael Hardner]

If your one of those people out there, that believes that this isn't a deterrant........I ask you one thing...................

What exactly, prevents society from comitting crimes in the first place?

Reason, and compassion for one.

Are you saying that you would murder people if you thought you could get away with it ?

I would say that there are probably some murderers that give the crime a second thought based on the punishment, though.

[Argus]

Another poster resurected the capital punishment issue recently; a worthy topic.

The idea in and of itself is a solid one. Many responses cited issues of morality and some had issues with

the potential killing of innocents.

With modern inestigative science, in my oppinion, capital punishment should be reinstated. Capital crimes include multiple homicide, rape with torture resulting in death, child abduction/rape and death etc.

These are crimes that society deems irreprehensible.

It is the process involved that has killed the viability of putting these criminals to death. Simple changes in legislation would be nessesary to facilitate the process.

Defendants would have to be found guilty BEYOND DOUBT. Multiple forensic labs would have to concur on the scientific evidence. Coroborative evidence would have to be solid in the eyes of a jury, and circumstantial evidence would carry less weight. Given the above circunstances, a defendant has no right to the appealat process. He/She is guilty as charged, and put to death immediatly.

In the real world, no democracy is going to allow an execution without multiple avenues of appeal which, given our justice system, will take years. Hell, it can take years just to deport an obvious criminal illegal alien. I'd be satisfied with a return to life - meaning LIFE - and for violent offenders, hard labour. I like the notion of hard labour, as opposed to criminals sitting around on their asses watching tv, playing video games, and playing on their computers.

In addition, as to 'sentence vs time served' I think we need to start more honest sentencing. If someone is sentenced to five years he or she should serve five years. Automatic parole and mandatory supervision should be eliminated. Parole should only be available to prisoners who have made a very obvious and convincing attempt to reform themselves.

[Hicksey]

Another poster resurected the capital punishment issue recently; a worthy topic.

The idea in and of itself is a solid one. Many responses cited issues of morality and some had issues with

the potential killing of innocents.

With modern inestigative science, in my oppinion, capital punishment should be reinstated. Capital crimes include multiple homicide, rape with torture resulting in death, child abduction/rape and death etc.

These are crimes that society deems irreprehensible.

It is the process involved that has killed the viability of putting these criminals to death. Simple changes in legislation would be nessesary to facilitate the process.

Defendants would have to be found guilty BEYOND DOUBT. Multiple forensic labs would have to concur on the scientific evidence. Coroborative evidence would have to be solid in the eyes of a jury, and circumstantial evidence would carry less weight. Given the above circunstances, a defendant has no right to the appealat process. He/She is guilty as charged, and put to death immediatly.

In the real world, no democracy is going to allow an execution without multiple avenues of appeal which, given our justice system, will take years. Hell, it can take years just to deport an obvious criminal illegal alien. I'd be satisfied with a return to life - meaning LIFE - and for violent offenders, hard labour. I like the notion of hard labour, as opposed to criminals sitting around on their asses watching tv, playing video games, and playing on their computers.

In addition, as to 'sentence vs time served' I think we need to start more honest sentencing. If someone is sentenced to five years he or she should serve five years. Automatic parole and mandatory supervision should be eliminated. Parole should only be available to prisoners who have made a very obvious and convincing attempt to reform themselves.

I tend to agree that appeals cannot be taken out of the process. It is an important part of a system of checks and balances needed if you're going to include capital punishment as a consequence for criminal behavior. The original poster noted that the investigative process needed to be checked and re-checked, but neglected to include the judicial process as it should be equally scrutinized before a person is put to death.

Having said that, I do believe that the length of the appeals process should be substantially shorter. If I were bringing the law back I would propose a 5 year window between the date of conviction and the scheduled date of execution during which any and all appeals would be brought before the court. Appeals in a death penalty case should be fast-tracked as to avail sufficient time to exhaust a prisoner's appeals within the 5 year period.

I also agree that sentences need to mean something. If we say 10 years it ought to be ten years served. In addition, I think that we need a "three strikes and you're out" law to keep pathological criminals off the streets. In addition, time served should be hard time. No conjugal visits, no television, no free education. I talked to a truck driver that has spent time in jail this week and he calls it 'Club Fed'. He said the only difference between jail and his apartment was the bars and the restriction of movement. This is unacceptable. It's no wonder that jail time is no longer a deterrent.

[FTA Lawyer]

With modern inestigative science, in my oppinion, capital punishment should be reinstated.

It is the process involved that has killed the viability of putting these criminals to death. Simple changes in legislation would be nessesary to facilitate the process.

Defendants would have to be found guilty BEYOND DOUBT. Multiple forensic labs would have to concur on the scientific evidence. Coroborative evidence would have to be solid in the eyes of a jury, and circumstantial evidence would carry less weight. Given the above circunstances, a defendant has no right to the appealat process. He/She is guilty as charged, and put to death immediatly.

Your post, while somewhat provocative, demonstrates a relatively un-developed understanding of our justice system and its foundations.

To find someone guilty BEYOND DOUBT is an impossibility and would frankly result in an unimaginable increase in the number of criminals that would not be convicted. There are days that as a defence lawyer I remind myself aloud that all I need to do is raise a reasonable doubt and my client will be acquitted. If all I had to do was raise ANY doubt, no matter how unreasonable, I would win virtually every case, even where valid confessions had been obtained by the police.

In the current system, defences are not even allowed to be suggested to a jury unless the accused has demonstrated that there is an "air of reality" to the assertions. This concept fits well with the standard of reasonable doubt in that if all I am trying to do is raise some absurd and outlandish form of doubt in the minds of the jury, then the judge will simply prevent it.

Under your proposal, every conceivable effort to raise any possible doubt would have to be allowed, and once allowed, the likelihood that I can't convince at least 1 person out of 12 that they are not quite confident enough to sign someone's death warrant (knowing there is no chance for an appeal) becomes practically zero.

As far as your careless statements about evidence, there are literally tens of thousands of scholarly works spanning hundreds of years which have debated, examined and analysed the issues dealing with scientific, corroborative and circumstantial evidence...and you are proposing the well-reasoned requirement for there to be "solid" corroboration before sanctioning a government funded execution...astonishing.

And ask a Crown Prosecutor how would they secure a conviction when circumstantial evidence is given little to no weight. Our criminal law requires proof of both a criminal act (actus reus) and a criminal intention (mens rea). Except where an accused takes the stand and admits to having thought "I want to kill that guy" while doing so, the Crown relies almost 100% on circumstantial evidence to prove intent. Not to mention that without eyewitnesses (which is alot of cases) forensic evidence of an act can often only make sense when placed into a certain context by inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence.

Which brings me to a final point on the apprehension of infallibility of forensic evidence...recently legal authors have dubbed this phenomenon the "CSI Effect". The issue cuts both ways, and basically boils down to this...because of canned T.V. programs like CSI, jurors are developing very distorted perceptions of reality when it comes to real-life cases. When they see a well-presented set of charts outlining DNA profiles, they will tend to convict without truly considering the other evidence, simply because they believe in the infallibility of DNA science. On the other hand, in the absence of nice "scientific" charts and test results, a jury will tend to acquit without looking fully at the rest of the prosecutor's case because they have come to expect what they consider to be infallible forensic proof of guilt. Either situation can lead to injustice.

Having 2, 4, or 40 scientific labs confirm that your DNA is on the body of a deceased victim does nothing whatsoever to answer the REAL question, which is...how did the DNA get there? There is absolutely no forensic test that can answer this question for us, certainly not BEYOND DOUBT.

A system designed by humans, run by humans, which deals with human problems cannot be made error-free. Appellate courts exist to correct errors, and they do so routinely every day. Immediate death to a convicted person would certainly make such courts extinct, but I hardly believe that many people would agree with you that such a society would be more just than the one we have at present.

FTA

[theloniusfleabag]

I have to agree here with FTA Lawyer and Hicksey, though they say different things. Per Hicksey, I agree that our justice system, especially our 'punishment system', needs to take a different tack. Jail should be somewhere that no one wants to go (within reason, of course).

Per FTA Lawyer, our own falliability must be acknowledged and accounted for, but it must be tempered with reason, lest we lose the balance between timidity and tyranny. For example, a news article today on al-Jazeera:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DEF...166C6EB21FF.htm

In its annual report, released on Thursday, Amnesty said that China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US remained the world's leading executioners. Together the four countries accounted for 94% of last year's 2,148 documented executions

The 'right' to state executions has been abused in the past, and there needs to be more discourse as to whether or not there can be a difference between 'use and abuse'.

[Hicksey]

A system designed by humans, run by humans, which deals with human problems cannot be made error-free. Appellate courts exist to correct errors, and they do so routinely every day. Immediate death to a convicted person would certainly make such courts extinct, but I hardly believe that many people would agree with you that such a society would be more just than the one we have at present.

FTA

This is what I was trying to say, but put more eloquently. Any system designed to take away one's rights, freedoms and possibly their life has to have built into it a system of checks and balances to minimize the possibility of human error. I think in letting people use some really lame excuses to mitigate their criminal behavior we take it too far now, but I still think a system with the flaws ours has is better than a system of absolute justice.

[mcqueen625]

Another poster resurected the capital punishment issue recently; a worthy topic.

The idea in and of itself is a solid one. Many responses cited issues of morality and some had issues with

the potential killing of innocents.

With modern inestigative science, in my oppinion, capital punishment should be reinstated. Capital crimes include multiple homicide, rape with torture resulting in death, child abduction/rape and death etc.

These are crimes that society deems irreprehensible.

It is the process involved that has killed the viability of putting these criminals to death. Simple changes in legislation would be nessesary to facilitate the process.

Defendants would have to be found guilty BEYOND DOUBT. Multiple forensic labs would have to concur on the scientific evidence. Coroborative evidence would have to be solid in the eyes of a jury, and circumstantial evidence would carry less weight. Given the above circunstances, a defendant has no right to the appealat process. He/She is guilty as charged, and put to death immediatly.

The death process has been further complicated by silly methods to expire a criminal: Electrocution, being hanged, gas and lethal injection. These are ridiculous, expensive and in-humane solutions.

Therefore, a large calibre bullit to the head is instantanious, humane and efficient.

If your one of those people out there, that believes that this isn't a deterrant........I ask you one thing...................

What exactly, prevents society from comitting crimes in the first place? Why have laws? Why have order?

Because punishment, is the cornerstone of maintaining a lawfull society.

Never happen in Canada because of the bleeding-heart liberal-minded lawyers appointed to our courts, and especially those Liberal lawyers appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada. Myself, I really don't believe in capital punishment, but when our government chose to abolish capital punishment the only option to replace it should have been the sentencing of convicted murderers to serve the REST OF THEIR NATURAL LIVES in prison. 25 years with a faint-hope of parole after 15 years is not life in prison, especially in the case of dangerous offenders like Paul Bernardo and Karla Holmolka (Karla Teale), Clifford Olsen, and many others too numerous to mention, many of whom are already back on the streets. These predators should have never been given the opportunity to see the light of day again.

To me pedophiles, rapists, diddlers all belong in the same category and should never get out of prison. Our justice system should be such that anyone who still possibly poses a threat to society should remain in prison regardless of whether or not they have completed their sentence. It seems to me that our justice system far too often errs on the side of the criminals, instead of society, and to me that is totally wrong and should be changed. Thankfully Harper is talking about introducing legislation that will take away some of the disgression in sentencing presently enjoyed by those bleeding-heart justices, especially those nutcases that have sentenced sex offenders to house arrest, because the poor devils might lose their jobs if they were sent to prison. We need to have some common sense put back into our justice system, although I'm quite sure that those same justices are not going to be too happy being told by our elected officials what to do.

[Michael Hardner]

mcqueen:

The Homolka case happened because she got a deal and was given a lesser charge. I think it would be more correct to lay the blame on politics for that one. Harper's reforms are really just more politics getting into the system, albeit politics of a different flavour.

[PocketRocket]

I gotta go with ARGUS on this one, in two respects.

First, eye-for-an-eye justice, while satisfying to the more bloodthirsty side of our nature, has not proven to significantly reduce capital crimes in the areas where capital punishment is practised.

Combined with the fact that a wrongful conviction becomes ultimately irreversible, this, to me, casts the death sentence in a negative light.

Second, our prisons are turning into holiday camps, cable or sattelite tv, pool tables, video games, etc etc etc.

Prison is suppose to have 2 purpposes; punish, and (if possible) rehabilitate.

Convicted criminals in prison should have to work a full 8-hr (or more) day.

This work should be geared towards some sort of profitable production which would help to subsidize the prison system. If run properly, it could even cover the costs of the prison, and possibly even turn a profit.

Violent offenders who have been sentenced to life should be given the crappiest and most diffucult jobs.

Those "lesser" offenders who have been incarcerated for non-violent crimes such as theft, fraud, etc, could actually attain marketable trade skills whic would put them in a better position to make a decent living outside of jail.

Along with education, such training could serve to increase the self-respect of previously uneducated or untrained criminals, and ultimately turn them into productive members of society.

Along with giving these people marketable skills, a reward system for excellence of work and behaviour could be instituted, thus teaching these people that good behaviour fosters favorable consequences, and a matching system of penalties for bad behaviour would likewise discourage unfavorable actions.

Hell, Pavlov proved that even a dog can learn behavioural consequences.

But prison as it stands currently is barely a deterrent to those who have already served time.