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
Dan (esq)--I'd like to respond to a few points, though I must be
brief, having been asked rather pointedly to shut up [Re: Fw: CP ad
nauseam] to which I more or less assented. First, you wrote:
CAPITAL CASES ARE CHOCK FULL OF PROCEDURAL SAFEGUARDS THAT PROTECT
EVEN THE POOREST DEFENDANT FROM PREJUDICE. THATS THE REASON THAT
DEATH ROW DEFENDANTS SPEND YEARS ON DEATH ROW.
Which even now has clogged up the courts to the point that DA's have
become reluctant in many cases to ask for the death penalty, due to
the law's delay and the resulting expense. If you multiply this by
100 or so, resulting from a 100-fold increase increase in executions
achieved by executing 100% of convicted murderers, the result is
daunting indeed, unless of course DA's bring murder charges only
under the same circumstances under which they now ask for the death
penalty in which case there would be no dramatic increase in
executions after all.
On the more or less mundane circumstances with which I am acquainted
in which an accomplished martial artist killed an attacker but in the
absence of witnesses was not acquitted but served time:
SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES DO NOT IMPACT ON DUE PROCESS...THEY DO, HOWEVER
MAKE IT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO WIN AN ACQUITTAL. BAD LUCK <> LACK OF
DUE PROCESS.
You're right about that. But if they'd been executed instead of
serving time, it would have been a much more serious matter.
Self-defense is, after all, a basic human right. In such situations
there are always gray areas--was the response to the attack
excessive?
We'll never know, there were no witnesses.
IF INNOCENT PEOPLE WERE PUT TO DEATH OR JAILED WITH ANY
REGULARITY...THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN A REVOLUTION.
That's not at all clear to me. It is widely believed by poorer
people, especially minorities, that innocent people _are_ put to
death or jailed with some regularity; in fact that perception among
black people in Los Angeles appears to have been an important
contributing factor to the Rodney King riots. But there wasn't a
revolution.
ARE YOU AFRAID OF ALL DEM CRAZY NIGGA-FOLK GONNA COME BURNING DOWN
YOUR LILY WHITE MANSION IN THE CLOISTERED FRISCO 'BURBS.
I won't take offense to the first part since I'm sure none was
intended, but I can't help being amused by the second part. No, I
live in a walk-up flat in an inner city neighborhood which is not by
any stretch of the imagination "cloistered" (The Western
Addition--ask any San Franciscan).
PERHAPS A GLANCE AT THE OPINION POLLS WOULD BE IN ORDER CRAIG
They show support for CP at the level it exists now, but it doesn't
follow that they would support the kind of increase you're
contemplating which, I grant, might indeed result in a dramatic
decrease in murders (but perhaps with an accompanying increase in the
deaths of potential witnesses, a long-standing fact of life in
Chicago and elsewhere in the case of gangland murders, which by the
way are unlikely to decrease, given the rarity of convictions there).
As to my comment that since either the presence or absence of DP at
present levels has, as we both agree, no noticeable effect on the
murder rate, its presence or absence can have only symbolic
significance:
YOU ARE BOTH CYNICAL AND WRONG.
Neither. If neither policy effects the murder rate, what other
significance can either one have?
There I go again, not brief despite the best intentions. Oh well,
so be it.
--Craig Harrison, San Francisco
