Anything would be be better than a voluntary survey of the cooperative members of such an obviously biased and unrepresentative group. Flipping a coin would be better. Your survey is a joke.
LOL, the answer is no. You have nothing to support your beliefs and claims. Unfortunately for you Iceaura, fact and reason do matter. There is nothing wrong with surveys and if you knew anything about math and science you would know that. What do you think so much is invested in the political polling conducted weekly and reported weekly by news agencies? Because polling (i.e. surveys) is valid. You do realize the government has an entire agency devoted to polling. It's called the Census Bureau. The government surveys the nation monthly on a number of issues. So just because reality isn't consistent with your ideological beliefs it doesn't follow that reality is somehow not real. Yeah, unfortunately for you Iceaura, facts do matter.
And yes, I did - and posted it for you. The Illinois DNA results from the innocence project. The DNA evidence you keep talking about as if it solves all your problems with State malfeasance, the physical evidence, remember?
Ah, no. You are making stuff up again. I never said DNA solves all problems. I did say that with the advent and use of DNA testing it has significantly improved the ability of police and courts to determine guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt.
You pretending you can restrict your State to only killing people that DNA evidence has actually and honestly proved are guilty is Hogwarts all the way.
Who is pretending? Are you telling me overwhelming evidence doesn't exist for anything or any crime? Is that your position? Are you telling me the evidence against Bundy, Kaczynski, et al isn't overwhelming?
As has been repeatedly expressed to you, DNA is science. It has nothing o do with Hogwarts or the magical thinking you so love. It's hard science. It's one of the many facts you like to ignore. The fact is DNA science has made it much easier to determine guilt. It's really difficult for criminals to explain away how their DNA is where it isn't suppose to be.
But you weren't paying attention to what you were saying, as this shows: From your criterion of DNA evidence.
Oh, and how is that so? You were asked a very specific question. I'll repeat it once again for your edification, "Where do you get the notion the Unabomber, McVeigh and the Freeway Sniper (which one) would not qualify for capital punishment?".
I think the emotional furor and political pressures and obvious State agendas surrounding typical capital cases is what has made them so likely to go wrong - in all States, throughout history, btw.
So coerced confessions to crimes otherwise unsolved are in your view an unquestioned benefit of the State power to kill. Interesting.
Well here, as with almost all of your assertions, you have no evidence to back up your assertions. Where is your evidence that capital cases are "so likely to go wrong"? We have already established you don't have any such evidence. But, hey, you were never one to let little things like lack of evidence get in the way of your ideological beliefs. As you should well know, coerced confessions are illegal under the 5th and 14th Amendments and grounds for prosecutorial misconduct and for dismissal of the case.
You have seen three contrasting examples of that threat in action: Unabomber, where the promise to not carry that threat out led to his capture and the saving of many lives; the "wilding" New York scandal, where the absence of that threat and its coerced confessions etc was a key factor in the exoneration of five innocent young men and the solving of a major crime; the Oklahoma City bombing, where the presence of that threat allowed the main actor in the crime to escape coercion as well as remorse and deny us information permanently.
Well if you had read my last post you would know your assertion. your "examples" here are untrue. I suggest you go back and read my last post or do some research on your own.
And you believe that very dubious claim, take the word of that very biased and rigged presentation of the issue, despite the analyses, evidence, better studies, and visible problems with it I (and others) linked for you and pointed out to you, because you want to.
Well there is nothing dubious or biased about science and scientific research. Your problem here is you are on the wrong end of fact and reason. Your beliefs are not supported by scientific research.
You want to believe in the benefits of the death penalty so badly you are not only willing to take as "fact" the most dubious of statistically shaky study conclusions without even considering their deficiencies, but bent on ignoring all the actual arguments against the death penalty in favor of that single dubiously claimed benefit.
LOL, well here is the thing, you haven't been able to prove any of your assertions including your assertion that the studies I cited are somehow "statistically shaky" and you haven't been able to offer ANY scientific research in support of your beliefs...NONE, NADA.
I think you are doing a lot of projection here. I am not wedded to any position here but fact and reason. If you can demonstrate some error in my fact and reason or provide some scientific evidence to back up your beliefs, I would be happy to change my position. But as repeatedly pointed out, you haven't done that. All you have, is pretty much all ever have, little if any fact and reason melded to a passionate ideological belief.
You do realize that the deterrence effect of killing people, if any, works just as well regardless of the guilt or innocence of the person killed - right?
And you think that makes sense? Two, as previously pointed out, deterrence is just one benefit of capital punishment. There are others and they have been discussed. I suggest you go back and read them.
That deterrence is claimed to work better (by the same people who claim it works) if the killing is public and ritualized and as inhumane as the State can get away with? You realize what you are arguing for?
Earth to Iceaura.....
It's a matter of what works and what doesn't work, and it's more than deterrence as has been endlessly explained to you and repeatedly ignored by you. It really is that simple. It's a matter of science and reason.
It's even common (to the point of being normal) for governments to kill people that everyone knows are innocent - as a deterrence. It's common for governments to torture people they are permitted to kill, in the safety of knowing that the witness is not going to testify against them. And so forth. These are among the risks you favor taking.
Why? Why do people want to find justification for capital punishment?
Well, unfortunately for you Iceaura, facts do matter. And you have NO evidence to support your beliefs.