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Woman strangled during overnight visit with her husband at a California prison
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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If you believe the legal system to be 100% effective then a death penalty makes sense
However since in reality no legal system is 100% effective, by allowing death penalty, you are allowing a certain percentage of people to be murdered legally that have not commited the crimes they were convicted of
What about a case like this, where it's incontrovertible?
You can have incontrovertable (facts) in a case
Laws and rulings by themselves are objective, and by definition are contentious
Now you're just arguing the definition of the word I used and ignoring the actual facts.
You have a person who we are completely certain committed the crime.
We may feel certain of things, but we weren't there to witness anything. We didn't see anything happen, and are only learning of the details after they've been filtered through several people. We don't know anything about motive, potential external threats, anything really. All we know is that this woman was strangled, and it is likely he did it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Long_Island_Rail_Road_shooting
Famous case where there were survivors who witnessed what happened.
I'm just pointing out that there are cases where it's beyond doubt
Now you are doing a what if scenario, we can do "what ifs" all day....
There is no case that exists right now where it is 100% without a doubt certain that a crime has been commited by an individual Again, no legal system is 100% irrefutable
This one seems to be 100% certain.
The issue is laws must be written to cover more than just a single case. I may agree it would be fine for this case, but the law must be written to cover other future cases. Then it's up to the discretion of judges to rule on future cases and apply the law as they see fit.
The issue is that we can't write perfect laws that will never produce bad outcomes. We can't trust all judges to be perfectly moral and upstanding and also perfectly accurate in their judgment. In a world with perfections, I could maybe agree with it. That's not the world we live in.
If every case were so cut and dry, it would work.
But invariably there will come a case where it seems so certain but not be true. To accept the death penalty in any case, we must be okay with it being applied at least once to kill an innocent person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
That's an idea from 1760. Long before the invention of camera, DNA testing etc etc etc.
It's premise is that the courts can never be 100% correct. There is no level of burden of proof which is infallible.
No amount of modern technology guarantees that an innocent man won't inadvertently be convicted and sentenced to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates
He was in a cell with his wife and she was killed.
You're already jumping to conclusions, specifically that he was definitely in the cell with his wife when she died and that she was killed.
There's still some doubts that can be cast, especially given the few details we have.
He didn't have control over who could enter or leave the cell, it's possible someone else did the murdering.
Heck with the evidence we have access to, it's possible she never entered the cell alive.
It could have been accidental as the result of something consensual.
It could be coincidental that something consensual happened and after which see died of an unrelated cause.
It could have been suicide, where she wanted to be with him at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Long_Island_Rail_Road_shooting
Numerous witnesses saw him get on the train and start shooting.
Say it happened today and there were several independent videos showing the person doing the shooting.
What then?