How interesting ....
First off, that looks more like elaboration than revision, with the intent of clarification, which was requested
Elaboration that results in different conditions. I consider it a revision of conditions.
The people should not be required to pay for the luxuries of murderers. A state does not have the right to demand that from its people.
A few considerations:
•
Prison guards: It's rough enough for prison guards in the United States, at least. A few of those luxuries help maintain what peace there is in a prison.
•
Prisoners' necessities: Is a library in a prison a luxury? Such facilities have proven in the past to be vital to prisoners' appeals of their convictions. And some of these prisoners have won their appeals on the grounds that
they are innocent.
•
Medical necessities: Hygiene and health are difficult enough issues in prisons. Should we put the guards at risk by allowing infections to run rampant among prisoners? Prisoners do receive medical care, and some have argued that this is excessive.
•
Communications: Prisoners, at present, are allowed to communicate with their families from time to time. There are even groups out there who remind us through
Dear Abby and other such media outlets to write to prisoners and so forth. Personally, I think there's something wrong with you if you need a prison pen-pal, but maybe there's something I'm missing.
•
Fundamental rights: One of the most macabre issues ever put before prisons in my time is freedom of religion--peyote and so forth. At present, if you're Christian, you're allowed to practice your religion in prison. The states even bring Christian preachers in to talk to the prisoners and to preach to them and convert them. The peyote cases, while seemingly laughable, raise an interesting question:
Why should public money go toward the promotion of one religion? I suppose we could remove all the Bibles and so forth from the prisons; well enough. But the presence of religion in prisons has proven to be useful, both in the rehabilitation of those who will get out, and in contributing to whatever sense of peace exists among prisoners. This is helpful to the guards, to say the least, and does help lower the amount of violence going on in prisons.
Just a few points on luxuries.
No, I don't recall where/when you "demand"ed someone explain something. It was about two weeks ago I think, if that helps.
In other words ...?
Three years old, fifteen, whatever. The point is that ignorance can not be a valid legal excuse unless absolutely proven. Otherwise all thsoe date-rapist college jocks would simply walk into court and say "Sorry dude, she looked 25", and that would be the end of it.
Date-rapist college jocks? How many of those date-rapist college jocks are raping high school girls? Date rape is a crime because intercourse takes place
without mutual consent. In case you'd forgotten, we're speaking of consent and deception about age.
What would I like? I would quite like a world in which people got to know their prospective sexual partners rather than shagging hither and thither on a whim. You may have noticed there are several terminal, contagious diseases roaming the globe, spread largely though sexual activity.
Has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Of course I would like to know my lovers better, but as long as we're being irrelevant, I might as well mention that it's six years later and my sexual partner is
still surprising me with character quirks.
As for the brains-scan thing, I'm not sure I like it. On the one hand it could prove innocence in court, which is great. Ont the other, its introduction and acceptance sets a very dangerous precedent. If it became common, how long would it be until the customs agents at airports install more developed devices which can, to some degree, determine a person's emotional state based on heat in the face and such? After that, maybe we'd see them somewhere else. Maybe anyone who is upset some day might be hauled in by the police and interrogated.
It's a clear danger. But, insofar as contributing to acquittals is concerned, who can afford it? Is this another case of the rich having advantages in court that the poor do not?
But seriously--she's in the bar, which means her ID has passed muster once. She's carded by the bartender in your presence, which means her ID has passed muster twice. Now, what would
you do,
Adam, to establish her age?
Hell, we all celebrated a friend's birthday last year--her eighteenth. We all knew she was seventeen when she met a friend of ours. We all knew that she was having sex with a 29 year-old. Her biggest relief was not having to hide her age anymore. But then again, I've seen her drink in my presence and she can toke most people I know under the table. The big joke was that "he's only 23". Apparently that made a difference to the girl's parents :bugeye:, but that conversation consistently led to jaws dropping when people asked why and, "(cough) ... She's only 17, dude." And, yes, if the parents so chose, even believing he was 23, they could have prosecuted him for having sex with a minor, despite the age of consent. They chose not to. And, when, after her 18th birthday, she spilled it to her folks, they
still chose not to prosecute. Strangely, they're the most stable couple I know.
The point of that is that most people I knew assumed her to be 20 or 21. With a fake ID, at 17, she could have passed as legal. A couple of restaurants I know of even served her alcohol
without asking for ID.
Point being that in the case of the guy who got sent up for it ... heck, what is he supposed to do? She's showing ID and passing right there in front of him.
What reason does he have to doubt her age?
We also have a Doctor Death in Australia, and I believe he went to prison after his first known assisted suicide. Not sure.
Actually, I'm not referring to Dr Kevorkian. This guy was a psychiatrist. If you're a prosecutor facing a tight insanity plea, you call him in. He was certified as a doctor in most states, and when you call him in, he would interview the defendant once, and then read what was pretty much a canned diagnosis to the jury stating that he found the defendant to be sane and cognizant. His
job was to help secure the death penalty at any cost. Even lying. I think he's fallen out of practice because he's too well-known for what he does. Thank CNN for that, I suppose. And USA Today.
That judge needs to be removed from office and possibly put in prison.
Actually, the one who needs to go to prison is a Wisconsin judge who, in 1985, acquitted a man of raping a child because the 3 year-old apparently "acted promiscuously". But, sitting and listening to the "someone would have heard it" ruling ... I'd say that day plays a vital role in my distrust of American justice.
As for the virginity thing,
The anthropology sounds reasonable, at least. In the modern day, though, I directly attribute the crazy religious standards. Catholic school, at least, demonstrated that clearly for me. I think it was in the Hate/Oppose/Dislike Christianity thread that I noted that Catholic school destroyed a number of my standards of human sanctity. Sexuality took a severe beating there.
I'm not sure if we have the "beyond any reasonable doubt" thing in Australian law.
On the one hand, I highly recommend it. To the other, a survey of the last twenty years of American judicial proceedings will show a decline in that standard. In the drug war, it's set aside entirely.
But, for instance, as furious as people were at the OJ Simpson ruling in this country, I agree with it. I had just dropped out of college and wasn't working while that was going on, so of course I spent a ridiculous amount of time watching the trial. And I would have acquitted too, based on a standard of "beyond any reasonable doubt". Merely three points: preservatives in the blood, poor evidence collection (both blood evidence and a possible murder weapon--the infamous envelope contained a knife that the police utterly overlooked), and a dish of ice cream that, by comparing the officers' notes to the crime scene itself indicated that the murder took place outside the necessary time-frame for Simpson's guilt. On the ice cream alone I would have acquitted; it created a reasonable doubt in my mind.
Permanent incarceration is abhorrent in the USA, is it? This coming from death-penalty land?
Depends on what it's for. Life sentences for drug possession? Come on.
The state can not ask her to keep such a man in comfort.
In our (American) case, "cruel and unusual punishment" is strictly forbidden by the Constitution. That degree of cruelty and unorthodoxy is constantly under review.
As for the money spent on the prison system and on criminals, I believe the figures they present here on the news and such are simply total money spent on prisons divided by number of prisoners.
But how is it spent? Let's say you spend a million dollars a year on a prison. How do you spend the money? Hire nine guards, pay them $100,000 each and spend the remaining portion on food for the prisoners? Hire five guards, pay them $50,000 each, spend a few hundred-thousand on bolstering the guards' security, and the remainder on the prisoners?
I'd say it's also the judgemental people trying to stop it. Again, WW2.
Well, everybody's judgemental. But, to borrow a Christian term, those who trespass against us are usually the more judgemental. I, for instance, am quite judgemental. But I'm also going to trust each human being I meet until they give me reason to enact judgement. This does, in fact, get me into trouble every now and then. But it also does some good, as well. I can think of two relatively recent occasions where my refusal to judge someone might actually have
prevented a crime. In one case, some french fries and an hour out of my day is all that was required--I can't describe it any better except to say at least the woman was safe while I was dealing with the situation. In the other, bus fare, a change of clothes, and a couple of tokes to calm down a crackhead who, thinking he was being chased by the police, jumped off a bridge to escape a passing ambulance. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. But such situations require delicacy. However, before I digress any further, I'll just note that it's the people I see daily who routinely push that level of trust and who routinely demand judgement of others.
Oh, I don't know... Maybe some measure of restraint and control? Isn't that better than letting himself get into the situation he's in? It is not up to the bar staff to police fake IDs. It's up to the police. Although here a bar does have th right to toss out someone they believe is using a fake ID. This right is protected under the idea that the business has the right to refuse service to anyone they choose (a right which has been crapped on in courts since the growth-spurt of political correctness).
It is, in fact, the bar's responsibility, both in the state I'm in now and the state I lived in when I knew this guy. It used to be a simple question:
Do they look 21? As it became more and more problematic, that number went up. 26, 28, 30 ... nowadays, they check
every ID through the door. If ignorance is not bliss, then the bartender and the doorman at least should have suffered legal consequences. They did not.
When I was 19, I had quite a good time in the pubs and clubs around Los Angeles, and the only ID I carried was my legitimate Victorian driving permit.
There's been a long debate about liquor regulation in this country. In California, it was common to allow minors into clubs for concerts. If you were of age, you received an asymmetrical, special stamp on your hand that indicated you were cleared for drinking. You were also obliged to show ID when asked, even if you already had the stamp. They do it in Oregon, too. Up here in Washington, well ... we treat minors poorly and it shows.
Maybe nothing. Maybe that's why he should have spent some time gettign to know her first, rather than trusting his future to his base urges.
Yes, and that's a great reason to throw someone in prison ...?
Absolutely. Our courts are supposedly based on this very idea. I know this is not strictly the case. But what would you base a court system on? What happened? Or what didn't happen?
There was a shooting once outside my workplace. At the time, all anyone knew is that a cabbie shot a fare for some reason. He was black. He was Middle-Eastern. He was white. He was a redhead. He was Hispanic. He was tall. He was short. He had a beard. He was clean-shaven. What happened?
Or a shooting at a boatyard in Seattle. For hours the police described their suspect variously. While asking the public to be cautious of a black man wearing these clothes and matching this physical description, the cops on the street were shaking down
everybody.
I got in a fight once at school. A girl slapped me for no reason, pushed me back into a bunsen burner, and then threw a right hook. I fell back over a stool, whereupon she tried to kick me. Two people who
weren't in the room told the principal of the school that I had hit her.
Not unless you have it on videotape do you get to see what really happened. Somewhere around here, someone linked out to a police-beating of an Hispanic man in Texas. I remember when the story broke and he was described initially as being violent and resisting. I watched four minutes of the video today. Yeah, violent. He tried to walk away. I haven't watched the other 20 minutes of it, but by the time 3 cops were holding him down and causing him pain, I would cheer any violence he could possibly visit upon them. Really, how incompetent were these cops that they couldn't cuff him in under four minutes?
The police in Seattle have taken a good deal of heat lately. The WTO debacle (Nov. 1999) should be enough to explain that. They clamped down in response to violence in the protests. Um ... okay, they clamped down on the peaceful protesters after standing aside while masked vandals did thousands of dollars worth of damage and other protesters were left trying to stop them. The vandals disappeared, the protest returned to its focus, and then the police let the remaining protesters have it. Beyond that is the shooting of a black motorist. Yes, we understand that he was fleeing the cops. The officers' justification for shooting the guy was that he was assaulting another cop, who was "being dragged helplessly alongside the car". Okay ... as the guy decided to flee, that officer
grabbed onto the car and chose not to let go. In another case, police shot a shoplifter with a kitchen knife. The psychiatrically-disabled man apparently lunged at the officer who shot him, apparently placing the officer in immediate danger. The videotape shows it differently. The guy with the knife turned around suddenly, and took a step. It is unclear whether that step was a matter of balance or otherwise. However, what is clear is that, had the man charged the officer, the officer would have had between three and four seconds before impact, and he was well-covered by other officers who did not interpret his actions dangerously enough to shoot.
What we hear in court is a reconstruction of what happened. It's pretty close, but some vital details are always missing or distorted. I'm not pointing out a guilt/innocence problem. But, to revisit Betty Lou Beets from a different aspect--she was tried for a capital crime because she apparently killed her husband for insurance money. This cold-blooded act allowed the state to escalate the charge to a captial crime. It was
on the written advice of her lawyer that she filed the insurance claim. A minor detail, no? All I'm after here is that her crime may not have fit the state standard for a capital crime. What actually happened may not have been what the jury convicted her of. Thus, to revisit your paragraph, and a part not yet cited--
I know it's not perfect, but there are many checks and balances in place, and evidence is still an important requirement in most cases.
To me that makes all the difference in the world. Take a friend of mine as an example. He was arrested for reckless driving. It should be pointed out that he's black, and nobody ever asks, "Do you know why I stopped you, sir?" In fact, they don't ask for his license and registration. The first words he heard that night were, "Please step out of the car, you're under arrest." Well, when all was sorted out and the situation explained, an offense warranting prison time was reduced to a $90 ticket. The officer's notes, which would have been presented at the trial, would have inaccurately described the situation.
We must necessarily know what we're sentencing people for. And that is not always clear.
No, it's not perfect. But if we're going to put someone away for life, we better be damn sure of everything we're sentencing that person for.
Absolutely. A state can not ask its people to pay more for those who have hurt them more.
And I have to disagree. Do the Class Two criminals get out or stay in for life? I invite you to examine the criteria pertaining to the crimes themselves in your classification scheme. I'm going to venture that a guy who steals his money through embezzlement or credit-card fraud needs
less education in prison than the guy who steals his money from a liquor store with a gun. It's just a sneaking suspicion here. I can't imagine what makes me think that
To me, the only motive which might mitigate murder is self-defence, or defence of someone in imminent danger. If not defence, the person goes in the clink. Of course this does not cover entirely accidental deaths such as road accidents. But... You attack someone and it's not defence, and it results in injury, it's into the Class Two. If it results in death or permanent injury, it's into the Class Three. Defence is the only issue to be resolved. Why so strong and hard a standard? I don't like violence. Maybe such a law would, sooner or later, have people being civil to each other.
For instance, the difference between Murder 1 and Murder 2 is generally the nature of the crime. If you come home and find your wife sleeping with your best friend and shoot him, we call that a crime of passion, and the court understands to a certain degree that you're not a bad person per se, but that you need some help with how you react to things, and recognizes your right to do at least
something in defense of the sanctity of your marriage. The problem is that you did too much. If you find your best friend in bed with your wife, and in the course of ejecting him from the house, he falls down the stairs, hits his head, and dies, the court might be inclined to look at it even less severely. You didn't intend to kill him, you just weren't careful enough in your rage. You might avoid a murder charge altogether, and face manslaughter instead. But if you
suspect your wife is having an affair with your best friend, and plot to kill one or both of them, and carry out the crime while not in the heat of passion--e.g. immediate and confusing rage; if you've had time to cool off--to kill one of them would result in Murder 1.
Thus you might actually commit Murder 1, what might happen is that the state can prove you killed someone, and prove it definitively, but be unable to demonstrate that you plotted coldly to cause another person's death. Thus you might possibly be able to get away with Murder 2, serve 25 to life, and be paroled after 12 to 17. Thus, your Class Three criminal will be convicted of a lesser crime because the alternative is losing the prosecution and watching the suspect go free. In fact, if your lawyer is good enough, he might be able to plead you down to manslaughter and get you out 8-10 years, and you'd be out in 5 to 7. (I don't get how that particular part of serving time works. But yeah, to keep Shepherd's killer from being paroled at some point required a special agreement whereby the court sentenced McKinney to
two life sentences, and still had to include a specific "no parole" clause.)
It's an internet message board. I'm hardly likely to be so up-in-arms about anything that I'd consider sacrificing part of myself. So I see no reason to say I would.
Yeah, I'm just hounding you on that point because it was there, and because I was so amused at the appearance of your missing that specific point. The propriety and impropriety in question, to which you responded, was a response to your own standard. That's the only reason I dare rib you on that one.
Something interesting though that I'm noticing. Perhaps it's the difference between having Her Majesty at the top of the chain and having Dubya (or any president) at the top of the chain. By theory, at least, We, the People,
are the government. I know it doesn't look like that these days, but technically, the state asks nothing of us. We ask of it. At least, in theory. And if we ever throw that idea out entirely, the US is over.
What is really interesting about the Constitution itself and the Bill of Rights is how much of that foundation is directly in reaction to His Majesty, King George III of England--that is, the same office as the proper (and recently reaffirmed, if I recall) head of your state. Ironic, to say the least. But yes, the "trilateral commission" of Congress, Executive, Judiciary is a direct strike at the authority of the Crown; relations between the states are a reaction to colonialism; the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights are in response to the Crown's usurpations of the people.
It might be that our regard for the state is part of what we're disagreeing on. When I see words about what the state asks of the people ... it doesn't quite ring right to me.
thanx,
Tiassa