Death Penalty

[Syn7ax 3rror]

I think that it should go like this:

What ever you did to a victim, you have done to you. i.e. if you killed someone, you get killed.

 

[Giancarlo]

what about a case like the current case against Michael Jackson, there are plenty of people comming forward to sell stories saying that they were molested. but there are plenty more people who are saying that they weren't and believed he'd not do such a thing..

If there are cases that are well substantiated enough against Jackson then he should be convicted on those crimes and believe me there is enough evidence.

Same for murder, There is rarely ever truly conclusive proof, DNA testing is not 100% accurate, there is always a remote possibility that yuo've killed the wrong person.

DNA testing is not 100% accurate? What are you talking about? How can you say stuff like that? Do you know what they actually test? They test parts of the gene that are unique to the individual. So to say it is not 100% accurate is ridiculous. Also it goes back to circumstances. Say there were four people at the crime scene, and only one has the matching DNA.. and they do one that tests six sequences and get a match.. that means 1 in 5,000 or 10,000 people have that. However there are only four people the accuracy is much greater.

So the anti-death penalty agrument is a bit... off.

if you imprisson the wrong person then they can always be released, but if they are dead there s no way they are coming back.

But in the US, there is an extensive appeals process and it takes years for someone to get executed.

in a lot of countries in the world, (britain and america included) the people in pemtention seem to recieve better treatment than people say in state run care homes, honest people who in many cases fuoght for our freedoms, and they live in smaller rooms, get less exercise, less privellages in the way of technologies, and cheaper meas, (hell in britain its been shown that people inside the prison system have more money spent on their meals than school kids, retirement homes, and hospitals!
so yes in the c ase of a real 'lifer' I think the death penalty is more sutable than a life behind bars simply to free up either the cell space, or the money he government pays to run prisons.

Letting first degree murderers live is giving them a slap on the wrist because US prisons are even better. I think execution is a perfect way to end the lives of first degree murderers who do not even deserve the most horrible conditions. First degree murderers don't even deserve to live.

I am for the death penalty for all the right reasons. It is a just form of punishment.

Thank goodness I live in a country overwhelmingly in favor of the death penalty (even in California).

 

[mighty_chick]

DNA testing is not 100% accurate? What are you talking about? How can you say stuff like that? Do you know what they actually test? They test parts of the gene that are unique to the individual. So to say it is not 100% accurate is ridiculous.

this is a false statement, weither the odds are amazingly huge, 1 in say 10billion or even 100 billion theres still the slight chance that there could be someone with the same information. think about it, according to some megazine a read awhile ago it said 2 in 3 billion people will live past 110. theres about 10 people on the news every year that are over 110. 10 people or more across the world and yet theres only 6 billion est. people in the world.

 

[Syn7ax 3rror]

Ok. 1 out of 10 billion. I don't think that it can get much more accurate.

 

[Amorssang1]

Yeah, I mean, if you can't put your trust in odds like that, what can you trust?

 

[mighty_chick]

yes but thats still not 100% theres still the amazinly small chance that it could be from someone else.

 

[Amorssang1]

What if it turns out that the only other possiblity is some African boy in Kenya...

 

[alvino]

DNA is very accurate, because DNA is unique to every human being. No one has the same exact genes (or else we would look similar to each other).

 

[Giancarlo]

this is a false statement, weither the odds are amazingly huge, 1 in say 10billion or even 100 billion theres still the slight chance that there could be someone with the same information. think about it, according to some megazine a read awhile ago it said 2 in 3 billion people will live past 110. theres about 10 people on the news every year that are over 110. 10 people or more across the world and yet theres only 6 billion est. people in the world.

This is the false CSI effect that influences people who watch too much hollywood. Your statement is false because you fail to look at other evidence. Warrants for arrest are done on the presumption that the police have adequately proven circumstances, and if that is backed up by fingerprints or DNA then that is great. You are again not thinking about the other evidence that is provided. DNA is just a mere supplement. You need to rethink your logic. I hope you never get on a jury.

If the prosecution puts on a weak case then there is an acquittal.

DNA evidence by the way is close to 99.9% accurate and even my chemistry professor who has a PhD backing him can say this. He has worked in the field by developing mass spectrometers. People who dispute DNA evidence are ignorant at best. That's like disputing fingerprint evidence. Fingerprints are unique, as is the portion of the DNA they test.

It is not looks. What they test is basically junk DNA. It is totally unique from person to person. In fact it is so uncommon for someone to have the same, it makes it very practical to be used as a test.

 

[root]

first off DNA testing is not 100%...
100% would mean that it is indisputable, nobody else in the world would have a matching gene, (you said in your own post that the chance of a false positive is something like 1 in 5000 or 1 in 10,000.

perhaps you need a better definition of 100% accurate, I'm not sure I can provide on, certinaly 1 in 5000 is not 100%

Genes run in families so there is a good chance that you will have some matching DNA as say your brother or father or mother /kids etc. even quite distant relative can have a simillar or even exact part of a DNA sequence.

If you've ever seen a DNA test you'll realise that the test could not possibly differentiate between all the diferent people on earth, there siply isn't the resolution in the test equipment to find enough difference to accuratly identify everyone on earth.

fingerprints are also not entierly uniquie, certinaly not in the way they are detected, physically there is a very finite amount of fingerprint patterns that there can be, (thats why they take all 8 fingers and both thumbs -to reduce the possibility of a flase positive), I was once told it is a statistical certainty that you will share the same finger print pattern with at least 4 other people, (though not all finger prints! -though the chance does exist). again the possibilities are still there, so should peole die when there may be some doubt?

Lastly, since you are not on the jury, (and thank god for that since you've already made up your mind) who are you to say whether Micheal Jackson is innocent or guilty? -I don't want to turn this into a dispute about a legal case.
But there is evidence both for an against, a lot of the evidence against him has been discredited and the testemonies of people have been cast into disrepute. The kid who started it all stood in court and said he'd never tried to sell his story...
until tapes were played of him contacting Jay leno trying to sell his story.

I'm sure you won't see the point I'm trying to make. So I'll try to make it a little clearer.
The death penalty is only used in very high profile cases, and that is quite possibly the problem, in a high profile case, a lot of the time, there are people with twisted ambitions, people who feel they can get something out of it, or sell their story, and this quite a lot of the time, (as in the previous example) distorts what people say, they stand up in court, swear to tell the truth and then lie for their own gains.

If the death penalty were allowed it could be a case of some poor person (who is innocent) dies so that someone else can make a few thousand pounds/dollars selling their story.

Do you really think that is right?