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Conferenza Transnational
Agora' Internet - 30 aprile 1995
Re: Self defense, due process, and the DP

From: Craig Harrison

To: Multiple recipients of list

Subject: Re: Self defense, due process, and the DP

X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas

X-Comment: The Transnational Radical Party List

I am touched by Dorry's faith in due process for indigents charged

with serious offenses, but this is contrary to my experience (and

I daresay to that of most indigents); it is not necessary to assume

that lawyers or public defenders for indigent defendants are

incompetent, just that they are overworked. Might not the Sing

Sing warden's famous comment that those who were executed on his

watch had one thing in common--they were poor be not that surprising?

(the same is true in other fields--doctors as well as lawyers have

"$100,000 educations, but the level of medical care for uninsured

indigent patients in General Hospitals or even VA hospitals is much

poorer for the same reasons). As for the cases I know of, it was

nothing as romantic as an evil "black belt" beating up on a ninety

pound weakling over an affair of the heart, but much more pedestrian

with no witnesses--the routineness of such affairs itself contributes

to the lack of careful due process. Nor do I think the fact that

there has been no revolution is evidence that the criminal justice

system is working well for everybody, but if it is not, a dramatic

increase in executions of offenders convicted in cursory trials

can only contribute to social unrest.

Dorry's first point, however is more interesting--by counting heads,

(no pun intended) an increase in executions of innocent parties, if

the increase is in direct proportion to the increase in executions

generally, will result in a net saving of lives, given the deterrent

effect of the hundred-fold or so rise in executions. Assuming that

Dorry is right that this does result in a dramatic reduction in

the murder rate, and no widespread protest against the new policy

results, due to the salutary decrease in homicides, there is still

the problem of getting from point A (where we are now) to point B

(Dorry's Utopia). It is simply not clear that a hundred-fold

increase

in the annual execution rate will immediately result in a dramatic

reduction in murders, and no significant protest or unrest. In the

real world, it often happens that point B is more desirable than

point A, while points in between are far more undesirable than

either one. The issue of gun control may supply another example.

The advocates of gun control may have a point, that the lower

rate of violent crime in Western Europe has a lot to do with the

relative unavailability of firearms. But how is the number of

handguns in this country to be reduced from the present 200 *million*

to Western European, without trampling on important freedoms (and

BTW, I'd say that the wide availability of handguns poses a larger

threat to public safety than evil black belts bent on

_crime passionel_) [oops Western European levels]. Meanwhile, the

levels of both CP and gun control we now have are useless or worse

than useless, being at best cosmetic and not getting to the root

of the problem. Yet I see little evidence of any inclination on

the part of the public for the drastic measures Dorry has in mind.

The example of Western Europe serves as a beacon for many would-be

reformers; at least it does show that a low rate of violent crime

is possible without capital punishment at all. But people argue

interminably about the reasons for this. The fact is that nobody

really *knows*, so that arguments get nowhere but continue

I myself would be reluctant to a drastic operation whithout more

than rhetorical arguments from the prospective operation [oops

the prospective surgeon] as to the expected benefits. And I

am similarly disinclined to support drastic increases in executions

without much more knowledge than I have seen from any source so

far (nor do I think that any such drastic increase is at all likely

to happen). The public prefers token CP and the Radical Party the

abolition of it. Neither policy has real effect one way or the

other, except as a matter of symbolism.

--Craig Harrison, San Francisco

 
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