Discussion for article #227222
Same mind-set as the “JUST BOMB SOMETHING!” crowd. A child was murdered so SOMEONE must pay. Who cares if it’s the wrong guy, we feel better about ourselves, because blah person.
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DNA… pfftt!! You think Scalia gives a shit? Obviously McCollum faked his DNA.
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It seems each day brings fresh evidence of Scalia’s judicial shortcomings and intellectual dishonesty.
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When questioned about it, Scalia sniffed “Get over it.”
He had the same response to Bush v Gore when he saddled us with the Drunken Frat Boy.
The only justification for the death penalty is our need for vengeance. So, there is no defensible justification.
Pro:
- Deterrent effect? No evidence to support that idea (and I think I know why).
- Efficiency? Life in prison is cheaper.
- Protects us? Prison accomplishes that.
Con:
- You can’t correct a mistake, and our system of justice makes mistakes all the time.
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Kill them all. Let God decide.
[quote=“MisterNeutron, post:6, topic:9607”]
Con:
You can’t correct a mistake.
[/quote] That’s only a problem when it’s YOU that is getting executed.
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Sahil, what gives? This revelation is like 3 days old already.
NYT, Slate, Salon and others have been all over this.
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I almost never get onto the roof of any building, but on the few occasions that I do, I look around hoping to see Scalia walking around below so that I have the opportunity to scream “Cameron Todd Willingham” from the rooftop.
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Scalia is guilty of attempted murder and abuse of power. He oughta take McCollum’s slot on death row. For the greater good.
I’m very much against capital punishment, but it’s not really accurate or fair to say there is “no defensible justification” for it. Retribution is a well-recognized and justifiable argument for any penalty in the criminal justice system. In my mind, the retributive value is substantially outweighed by the risk that you get it wrong and kill the wrong person (that’s before even getting to my qualms about the government being used as a vehicle for killing its own people). But that’s not to say retribution is illegitimate entirely. It just needs to be weighted properly.
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Shouldn’t that be “…in 1983 despite the lack of physical evidence…”?
Scalia has always been pretty much of the school that argues that someone must pay for a heinous crime, but that it doesn’t really matter who. Think of it as the judicial equivalent of sacrificing some random victim to appease the volcano god.
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He’s an intellectual and cultural dinosaur with a thuggish aspect in his persona.
One or two incidents may be a fluke, but Scalia is at about 3,543 moments of complete, irredeemable douchebaggery. That’s a bit of a trend. Let’s hope he retires soon, for any reason. And hopefully that RBG clone is ready.
To be fair to Scalia, he has been consistent and vocal in his view that there is no constitutional obstacle to executing an innocent person, as long as a trial court made no procedural errors in reaching a guilty verdict. In fact, he’s gone on record as saying that the whole notion of “new evidence” is just so… un-Framer-y. In Scalia’s perfect world, McCollum had his chance to invent DNA testing at his trial in 1983, and it’s his own fault that he didn’t.
I mean, never mind what kind of deviated prevert you’d need to be to have that thought in the first place, it takes some brass to admit it.
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I don’t mind waiting three days for news if it means I don’t have to read Slate or Salon in the meantime. Due respect to Dahlia Lithwick, who deserves a better platform.
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It has never been the role of the Supreme Court to weigh the facts and the evidence in any case. That has happened before in the lower courts; many times and at several levels. The Supreme Court takes the facts as settled and concerns itself with the constitutional aspect of any case.
Having said that, I doubt that Justice Scalia would have felt any differently if he had to consider the facts of the case. This is a prime example to demonstrate why EVERY civilized country except the United States and Japan have abolished the death penalty. Welcome in the company of China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
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I’m not entirely convinced about that. Someone (I forget who) said (with regard to prison overcrowding) that we need to start reserving prison for those who represent an actual danger to the rest of us, and not for those who just piss us off. A glib formulation, but worth thinking about.
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I wonder will the blowhard (Scalia) comment on the person(s) he accused of being a savage murderer? I don’t it. He and Clarence “Uncle” Thomas both believe it not unconstitutional for the government(s) to execute a wrongly convicted and condemned person.