***Hope for Troy Davis? You can help.***
Profile Sent in by Georgia:
I spend a lot of time thinking about:
I want to grow myself to a larger size. I am serious the idea came to me in a dream. Goldfish can grow larger depending on where they are kept and we are better than goldfish so why can we not grow larger? Some nordic peoples grow up to seven or eight feet tall! Then there are the tiny pigmies of the forests.
My goal is to become 2x bigger to start. I have friends who are biologists and they say that they can do this. When I am taller I will have more fun! Join me and see where this road leads us.
This is not a comment about the profile, but rather about the "Hope for Troy Davis?" link. Troy Davis is guilty. Every court that has reviewed his "new" evidence has said so. See the decision of District Court on remand from the Supreme Court ( in two parts) here:
ReplyDeletehttp://cjlf.org/files/TroyDavisHabDen2010part1.pdf
http://cjlf.org/files/TroyDavisHabDen2010part2.pdf
Or for the tl;dr crowd, a summary can be found here:
http://www.cjlf.org/files/DavisExcerpt.html
Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, it is simply irresponsible to continue trotting out the "actual innocence" card in cases like this. It insults the prosecutors who brought the charges, the jurors who sat on the trial, and the judges who have reviewed the case. The fact is that Davis' creviewed been reviewed by every Court of competent jurisdiction (often more than once) over the past 20 years. Please read the decision yourself, rather than just taking AI's word for it.
Thanks for the comment and information.
ReplyDeleteWe at ABCotD had already read the decision you cite, and considerable literature on both sides. We believe that putting a guilty person behind bars for life is far better than putting a potentially innocent person to death, especially given that one of those jurors you mentioned went on record before the Board of Pardons and Paroles to say that she regretted recommending the death penalty.
True, as the document you cite says, "The vast majority of the evidence at trial remains intact, and the new evidence is largely not credible or lacking in probative value," and "largely smoke and mirrors," the same document also reads, "Mr. Davis's new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction."
"Vast majority," and "largely" are not certainties. Any doubt is good enough to take pause when a life is on the line.
As for this profile, wtf?
^ That.
ReplyDeleteRe: Napoleon - it seems like advertising smallness in your profile would not be the best marketing ploy for a guy. Assuming this is a guy.
ReplyDeleteAnd, re: Troy Davis -
But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. -Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)
I don't know anything about Troy Davis so don't take the following statement as a comment on his situation in any way.
ReplyDeleteI support the death penalty. The recidivism rates in the United States and other countries are way too high to support the idea that trying to rehabilitate criminals works.
Rehabilitating criminals seems to work -- when we actually do it. Unfortunately, our prison system just warehouses people and gives them little support for reintegrating into society. No wonder the recidivism rate is so high!
DeleteI still love you Mediator. The criminal justice system is definitely broken and recidivism is rampant but there is no evidence that the death penalty in anyway prevents crime. Life in prison would could address the recidivism issue. An eye for eye leaves us all blind.
ReplyDeleteOh well.
ReplyDelete@Bluejae
ReplyDeleteBut life in prison only costs the taxpayers more money. Why should we/they be responsible for providing an inmate with three meals a day for the next 50 years?
And it may not be a deterrent to other criminals, but we know at least one person won't be committing crimes again.
Well, looks like Troy Davis was executed after all.
ReplyDeleteHuh, did some more research. Apparently the death penalty (in it's current configuration) costs more than life in prison. Jesus.
ReplyDeleteApparently the average is $3 million because of the legal defense that the inmate is allowed to put up and the government (taxpayers) have to foot the bill for. Since when is a convicted murderer/rapist allowed to appeal the shit out of his case just because he got the maximum sentence?
Unbelievable.
Since when should you not be able to appeal your sentence?
DeleteOkay,
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see some support for the idea that the criminal justice system is "broken." Violent crime levels are at near all-time lows:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/09/19/national/w064956D14.DTL
Recidivism rates are high because, um, criminals are criminals. Rare is the person who would otherwise be a law abiding citizen but elects to become a criminal as a rational choice - "Breaking Bad" is fiction. People become criminals because it is: a) easy; b) all they know; and c) occasionally fun and or lucrative. And don't respond with "they have no other opportunity." Many states spend more money per pupil in poor school districts than in wealthier ones. Ie,
NJ taxpayers spent over $13K per student in the city of Camden. Compare that to just over $12K in Moorestown, NJ - 20 miles away from Camden and named Money Magazine's #1 place to live in 2005. Opportunity exists, it just isn't being taken advantage of.
^Last line of your article:
ReplyDelete"The FBI report captures only crimes reported to law enforcement, while excluding sexual assaults and simple assaults."
The FBI report states that there were an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes in the US in 2010. This is in direct contradiction the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report estimating 3.8 million.
As I see it, the FBI can report whatever the hell they want to soothe the populace, but that doesn't make it true. And why the hell would I try to justify criminal acts by saying "they have no other opportunity", I don't care about opportunity, I care about their actions.
Recidivism rates are high because there is no incentive not to recommit crimes.
Based on the most recent data available (2002 From the Bureau of Justice Statistics http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1699) the expected amount of time to be served in jail for violent crimes is only 14 months and sexual assault is only 26 months. Steal a car? You're looking at 7 months. Assault? 8.
Maybe I should move to New York and take up a life of crime.
I'd have a 4/10 chance of getting away with murder, an 8/10 change of getting away with burglary, and a 9/10 chance of stealing a car and not getting caught. (2009)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/this_job_is_murder_Io0fUMUyvKjq8r9zSH1a6L
The criminal justice system is without a doubt, in a sorry state, overcrowded and overbudget prisons being forced to shuffle low-level offenders out to facilities not designed to handle them. California alone has to find somewhere to place 33,000 prisoners in the next two years and the only plan they have will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/24/local/la-me-court-prisons-20110524
So don't give me that crap that "everything is fine the way it is" because it isn't.