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Conferenza Transnational
Agora' Internet - 5 maggio 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

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

 
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