Re: Another Death Row inmate freed : Fri Mar 21, 2014 5:14 pm
JerryChicken wrote:
... DNA evidence would not have helped one jot in either of those cases.
I think that this is a really crucial point.
Because you'd still have to rely on complete honestly in the system simply to ensure that any DNA evidence was correct. And we have enough evidence that the police cannot always be relied on to be completely impartial and honest to know that this could not be guaranteed to be the case – let alone other elements of the judicial system.
BobbyD wrote:
The state shouldn't overtly kill it's citizens, even the blokes who killed Lee Rigby ...
One of things I rather liked (if you can call it that) about that case was that they wanted to die – they wanted 'martyrdom'. They didn't get what they wanted. Instead, they arguably got the system working at its most transparent and best, which in its own way was a victory for the culture that they would almost certainly want to change.
On a slightly different note, I suspect that most people would baulk at the idea, for instance, of stoning someone to death, whatever their crime. Yet there is something so utterly perverse, then, in people spending time to work out what becomes a morally acceptable way to carry out an execution in a western society.
But if you remove the semantics of the method of execution, what philosophical difference is there between a non-Islamic state that executes prisoners (for whatever crime) and an Islamic one (Saudi Arabia, for instance) that executes people on the basis of its ideas of religious laws?
