CIII

I consider you a friend, on this forum and elsewhere, but it seems to me that your arguments are tending towards a contention that the formalitiesof a trial are more important than the outcome.

Due process is certainly important in preventing injustice, but if a there is strong reason to believe that an injustice has been committed while all the forms of due process have been observed, then it is incumbent on those who have the power to do so – including the SCOTUS – to see that the matter is corrected.

Many of the people that the innocence project has exonerated on evidence that proved their innocence beyond reasonable doubt had already exhausted all the legal forms of appeal.

To insist that the formal process must rule would be to insist that these people must always bear the stigma of being deemed guilty of a crime, even if clemency or a pardon is granted.

is it not possible that they aren’t telling the truth now?

No?

What motivation would they have to admit perjury for the fun of it?

is it not possible that they aren’t telling the truth now?

No?

Sure, but then that raises the point…how do you tell? If you can’t then you can’t really call any trial fair…ever. Thus, the argument resting on a fair trial rests on a false premise.

So try again. Really, this isn’t that hard to figure out. A little bit of basic logic and a rudimentary understanding of probability should get you this far.

errr …. “cruel and unusual punishment”?

Is there anything vague about that?

I have been told that: at the time the Eighth Amendment was passed, the term “cruel and unusual punishment” referred to punishments dreamed up by judges that were in no way part of the law. The law specified prison or a fine, and the judge dreams up having the guy wear girl clothes and allow people to throw mud pies at him.

No?

Really? What was unfair about it, then?

Assuming you weren’t being sarcastic….

How about 7 people didn’t report the truth at the time of the trial?

I bow only in the direction of the known, the unknown, and the knowable. I concede that there are things that are unknowable to me now, and that there will be things unknowable to me until the day I die. I refuse to concede that I should allow an innocent person to die because his innocence is “unknowable”.

It is better to allow the guilty to go free than to punish the innocent. The guilty can be caught and punished at a later date, but the innocent cannot be unpunished.

“BTW, out of curiosity, suppose the following were established facts: (1) Mr. John Doe killed a woman who was identified as his wife Jane; (2) Mr. Doe was prosecuted for the murder of Mrs. Jane Doe, convicted, and sentenced to death; (3) it was subsequently established that Mrs. Jane Doe was in fact still alive, and the decedent (whom Mr. Doe murdered) was in fact Alice Smith. Should Mr. Doe be executed?”

Not for the murder of Jane Doe. He didn’t kill her, the facts above just established that. Should he be executed for the murder of Alice Smith? Maybe, If his new trial for this crime finds him guilty of it (as you imply that it will). Is he gaming the system by pointing out that while he is a murderer, he didn’t kill the person he is accused of killing? Yes, he is, and so what. It is the prosecution’s job to get it right, and he is innocent until proven guilty. In any event, what if he didn’t kill anyone? Should he then be executed because he was found legally guilty? What if facts one and two are correct, but there is no decedent? What if twelve people decide that he should be punished for a crime he quite provably didn’t commit? Jesus H. Christ in a chariot-driven sidecar, how many bullshit legalisms do the “good guys” get to hide behind in the name of defending the law while complaining that the “bad guys” are the ones “gaming the system”? Which ones are the “good guys” in this situation? If any judge knowingly allows an innocent person to be executed and hides behind the law while doing so, well, its been said before and I’ll say it again, that judge is a murderer, and a coward to boot.

Scalia is like the guy who believes he’s going to heaven because he goes to church every Sunday and follows all the rules. But maybe, just maybe you have to break a few rules to get to heaven, or at least ignore a few.

No, Scalia is like one of those churchgoers who supports the full plank of moral laws in the church while ignoring the 1st and 2nd laws: love the Lord and love your neighbor as yourself.

Of course, whether or not somebody is innocent is unknowable.

I was born in May of 1968. I would say it is knowable that I am innocent of perpetrating the Holocaust. :-P

Noting that I don’t care about the Constitution probably means little to most of you here. Your problem is that very few others–especially those in government–care about it, either. It’s useless.