Firestarter

I believe it; Democrats are delusional. And I'm going to remind you of this on November 3rd.

"Some?" In several countries, it's a clear majority. Here you go. Just for added irony, the link I chose is on the website of the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States.

In that limited case, yes, possibly; assuming also that the victim is in full possession of her senses and absolutely certain there was one and only one assailant, and also that the evidence samples are taken within a short period of time so that the semen is fresh. Just don't generalise it to cover all cases of rape, because it can't. The eyewitness testimony is still key to determining that the aggressor acted alone and that the accused was not a confederate of whoever left the blood on the scene. Without such testimony, the DNA evidence could not establish innocence. Only one now, and that marginally.

Flat-out wrong. In the case of a gang rape DNA evidence would be all but useless. Victims can be drugged, stunned, knocked out, or blindfolded. Rapists can use condoms. Absence of evidence is not evidence of innocence. Wrong again. The eyewitness evidence is what would establish innocence; that only one aggressor was involved would be the key fact. The DNA evidence would be secondary to the analysis. Your argument is incorrect.

Nope. It would only establish that the criminal might have had a confederate and that that DNA evidence against the criminal in question was not found at the scene. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and guilt can be (and often still is) established through circumstantial evidence alone.

Nope, according to the article, and his website, he has ALS and Motor Neurone Disease It's the same thing. Only 10% usually survive more than a decade.

My uncle has had the same disease for a year longer and corresponds with Dr Hawking regularly. The story sucks if it's true.

DNA testing is fine for proving guilt. It cannot prove innocence, especially years after the crimes, which is when most of these "exonerations" took place - of course innocence is assumed, but when you suddenly have investigations that were conducted over a decade ago being asked to provide evidence that there was no way of assessing back then, we err on the side of the criminals. Often unwisely so - witness the so-called "exoneration" of the Central Park rapists (after their uncoerced confessions, which were suddenly recanted) by "DNA evidence," or more properly lack of DNA evidence. This is absurdly stupid and in no way means that we have been putting innocent people on death row for years. Samples deteriorate, evidence is overlooked, forensic methods change. Say in fifty years we can determine if a particular person has been in a particular place within a certain amount of time by measuring some kind of subatomic change in the environment. Do we throw out all prior convictions and demand that investigators reassess the evidence in light of our new capabilities? Do we set hundreds of murderers free because we now have a new method, more accurate (or at least more flexible) than DNA testing? Sounds silly, doesn't it? Well, that's pretty much what we did when we started using DNA tests. As a result, murderers and rapists walked free when they should have been executed. That's not justice. That's evil. There is a HUGE difference between proving procedural error and the innocence of an executed criminal. Huge. Not even in the same ballpark, as Tom would say. Not even close.

I'm sure there would be an immediate public outcry, some sort of lawsuit (naturally), a possible temporary moratorium on executions, and probably a wholesale overhaul of the entire system, as that would prove conclusively that something went wrong somewhere. More checks would be instituted and more reviews and avenues for appeal opened. I also don't think this is likely to happen as we prove guilt pretty damn conclusively right now before sending ANYONE to death row.

The vast majority of those people were freed, as I said before, on the basis of legal technicalities - their release from death row says nothing at all about their guilt or innocence. Since the moral argument for the death penalty is punishment, not deterrence, that's irrelevant. Gobbledygook. If you can't say how many were innocent, you can't say any were. What's your basis for judgement? A presumption that we must have made a mistake, somewhere, somewhen? Not good enough. Do the research and point to specific cases - there have been fewer than 1000 executions under the current statutes. Not even the most bullheaded opponents of the death penalty can point to a single man and say "He didn't do it, and we killed him." Why not?

Oh. That's pretty circumstantial at this point, although it's clear that there are entrenched interests in a power struggle of some sort. Still, right now, I wouldn't be willing to say Putin is personally responsible for the disappearances.

No, just backing up the original article Mike posted - saying pretty much the same things, basically. I didn't see anything about Putin's aides murdering anyone in that either. Where did you see that?

This is on CNN's website now. Pretty well-documented for a conspiracy theory.

No, because I don't know the cases and I don't know if what is reported in them is accurate. I'm not going to read up on EVERY DAMN CASE you can find on Google just to refute www.socialistworker.com. (Incidentally, isn't that a bit of a fucking oxymoron? socialistworker.COM?) I've got sixteen papers to read this morning and I've only made it through three so far, so don't waste my time with this garbage. Poorly and illogically. There is a possibility. I have never denied that possibility. I have said that it has not been PROVEN that we have ever done anything of the sort. And the possibility, given the checks and balances, as well as the research (valid and otherwise) of the countless anti-death penalty advocates, is EXTREMELY slim. Vanishingly so. Under our current statutes, since 1976. To suggest that we HAVE wrongfully put someone to death when all available evidence clearly says that we have NOT is a leap of lunacy.

Fantastic. Google, the first resort of the uneducated. I'm sure you can pull up a thousand other sites which will state that the death penalty in the United States is unfair, racist, or what have you, but I'm not going to respond to any of it. Make a substantive argument and back it up with reliable sources or stop yipping. When the hell did I ever say anything of the sort? A lot of the people on death row whom liberals claim were "proven to be innoncent [sic]" were "proven" so on legal technicalities. They were still factually guilty, but they couldn't be proven personally and directly guilty beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. That we observe such niceties even when the preponderant evidence for complicity and criminal responsibility (at the very least) is clear and undeniable is proof that our death penalty system is too lenient, not too harsh. Kill them all and let God sort them out.

Ignorant bullshit. In the United States, at least, any death sentence is far more extensively reviewed than any LWOP and has wholly separate sentencing appeals procedures. You actually have better chances of getting a substantially reduced sentence if you're eligible for the death penalty. As for Europe, spare me, okay? If you cretins ever decide to listen to your citizens (roughly two-thirds to three-fourths of whom want to reinstate the death penalty) - y'know, like you're supposed to, in democracies? - you can preach to us. As long as you continue to deny them the right to govern themselves and establish their own systems of justice, I don't really give a shit what you have to say.

Ditto. I'm not going to respond to Just So stories.

It's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of facts. There are thousands of anti-death penalty lawyers and researchers poring over case files at any given time on any given day. If there were even ONE case of a genuinely innocent man being executed by any state or the federal government I guarantee you they wouldn't be reticent about trumpeting it from the rooftops. That no one ever has should tell you something.

I don't have to; jury trials in our courts already did that. Try to keep up with the class here laddie. That's because there are none. Not one. Zero. 895 wastes of skin sent to hell, no innocents harmed. Pretty good batting average, I'd say.

Document the last recorded instance of that happening in the United States, please.

Ditto 2GOLD on a number of things, surprisingly enough. I'm more on the middle ground on this issue than my last post might have made it sound like - I was answering molestomp's simplistic and submoronic question rather than expressing my own views. I don't like abortion, I don't want it to happen, but I think that sometimes it's necessary for the mother's welfare and in those cases I want it to be (in one of President Clinton's best lines) "safe, legal, and rare." After the point of viability I'm less comfortable still, and after that I'd like to see the child delivered if possible - it's out of the woman's body that way too - with an abortion performed only under the most extraordinary circumstances.

Christ, another question like this. Figures it'd be molestomp... I'm just glad I've got a fresh pack of cigarettes and a full pot of coffee. Well anyway, like Powerplay said, the foetus hasn't committed a crime and the murderer has. The guilty deserve death and the innocent deserve life. Pretty fucking obvious now, isn't it?

Wow, that was fucking substantive, wasn't it? Well wait, no, it wasn't.

Tom knows lots of interesting people.

I did. I had been seconded to the office of Dr Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President on National Security Affairs. Just outdated. I'm now with the USAF. I know.