The Washington Post has a story about flawed FBI science, and its effects on hundreds of cases prior to the year 2000.
The FBI has admitted that virtually all of their elite examiners have given tainted testimony overstating forensic hair matches.
The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.
Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
Hair match wasn't the ONLY evidence in these cases. But in many cases it may have been the only evidence that placed defendants at the scene. However, 32 of these cases were death penalty cases, and 14 of those defendants have been executed.
All of these cases are now going to be reviewed.
This is the second major use of junk science the FBI has been forced to admit. There was the whole Bullet Lead Analysis used for decades to claim that the lead in bullets used in a crime matched batches of bullets the defendant had access to.
Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, commended the FBI and department for the collaboration but said, "The FBI's three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster."
Related Stories
Common Dreams reports
The Trump administration's anti-science bent has reached the Department of Justice (DOJ), with Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying [April 10] that the department is ending the National Commission on Forensic Science.
The 30-member panel was described by ThinkProgress as "a group of scientists, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and other experts tasked by the Obama administration in 2013 with raising standards for the use of forensic evidence in criminal proceedings".
In its place, a senior forensic advisor will be appointed "to interface with forensic science stakeholders and advise department leadership", Sessions' statement said.
[...] "The reliance of law enforcement on questionable science and the overstatement of the reliability of that science has been a leading cause of the wrongful conviction of innocent people", said National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) president Barry Pollack on Monday. "The reason the National Commission on Forensic Science has been so important is that it includes leading independent scientists, allowing an unbiased expert evaluation of which techniques are scientifically valid and which are not. NACDL is terribly disappointed that even while acknowledging the crucial role played by the National Commission on Forensic Science, the Attorney General has chosen to disband it."
Additional Coverage:
Previous: Forensic Hair Matches: More Junk Science from the FBI
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SacredSalt on Monday April 20 2015, @04:59AM
If the hair doesn't have enough material to get a DNA match out of it, then the best thing to use comparisons for is as a tool of exclusion. I don't really believe you get a much better match that. Although you can find combinations of chemical traces on the hair which do match up fairly well if you have the person in custody almost immediately after; the value of these markers diminishes greatly as time passes by.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:23AM
- Mitch..., hey Mitch, com'ere...
- What is it?
- This strand of hair from the guy you for sure suspect did it, doesn't match the guy you just brought in for questioning
- Discard that information, I just found a guy on whom I can stick this charge... pretend you never saw it! I really need this conviction to get my promotion.
I still have to live the day where this conversation is not had...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by sjames on Monday April 20 2015, @08:10AM
Since DNA matching is done on a sampling of lengths of DNA segments rather than being a base by base comparison, it too is only properly used as exclusionary evidence. Alas, it's almost always misused.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday April 20 2015, @05:08AM
... will the forensic hair specialist be given the death penalty?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday April 20 2015, @06:49AM
In alternate reality maybe. Not this one.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 20 2015, @05:20AM
In one of my jobs, I was required to submit to a lie detector test.
Yes, I was nervous. Some suited tie-guy was going to determine my career with the company based on how conductive my skin was, and what his interpretation of it was.
Now, all of us who have gone to school know about the trick question. Just how does the grader want us to answer?
Anyway, I got so worked up over it the guy apparently could not get a reading.
I was later laid off from that company ( aerospace ) within a month or so.
I was right at 50 at that time. I never got a decent job since.
I can't help but think I failed that test, but they could not say so.
I think they were just trying to rid themselves of the older engineers so they could replace us with a younger model. Legally. I noted almost all of the older ones were either being given severance packages or having the division the worked for shut down and they did not "qualify" to transfer out.
I get the idea people involve a machine to give them plausible deniability for doing whatever they want to do. Machines enjoy a "hold harmless" stance people do not.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 20 2015, @06:00AM
From your description of the process, I presume that you have read some of the books published on the subject of lie detectors. You are right - it all boils down to the interviewers opinion. If he feels like you are being evasive, then you're a liar, no matter what the machine indicates. Likewise, if the interviewer trusts you, any results that machine might offer are irrelevant. Lie detector experts have stated, and published, as much, in multiple books.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 20 2015, @07:52AM
I guess I do know a lot about the machines themselves, as one of my first childhood curiosities was the "Metrigraph Psychogalvanometer" featured on the TV Cop show "Highway Patrol" which I watched as a kid. Oh yes... I remember that thing. I thought the machine could read someone's mind. I made it a point to find out how it worked.
To my dismay, I found out it was just a whetstone bridge. Yeh, it had a vacuum tube in it, just like my RCA Vacuum Tube Voltmeter (VTVM). It was very sensitive to resistance changes, and all those knobs on the instrument were just to balance out the bridge and set the gain, and the meter lets the proctor see the immediate changes in skin resistance while he manually re-adjusted the baseline for his next question.
Later, in College, I saw the thing again, but this time it had a new skin. Scientologists had an array of 'em set up offering free "stress tests", and trying to invite us to a scientology center where we could pay for more "treatments" to get "cleared" of some - uh - boogeymen. I knew what that thing was just the way they were using it. It could not have been much more than four transistors in the thing.
By that time, I knew exactly what that thing was and knew good and well that it was just an instrument used to scare the bejeebies out of anyone that did not know what it was. I saw it mostly a tool of intimidation. Yes, it would measure skin resistance, but that had nothing to do with the truth - no that had everything to do with how scared you had that bloke you hooked it up to.
Then, at work, they wanted us to report to some little industrial building across town where somebody had set up a interview room in it, and there - again - was another re-incarnation of that same machine... except this time I was having the electrodes put onto me, and my future with that company hinged on whatever that suit-guy behind the controls thought of me.
Now, here's my problem: I have developed a high distrust of people wearing suits. They do not seem to think at all like I think, and by and large, many seem to be about the greediest self-centered assholes on this planet - always trying to game the system to their advantage at the expense of others. Some people fear the man wearing a bandit mask. Well the guy wearing the bandit mask may deprive me of a week's wages. The guy wearing the suit has the power to deprive me of my career!
As much as I tried to hold my fear of losing my employment over this, it made my readings unusable to him. I knew how to swing the needle, but it was pegged. I was in a cold sweat and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not have had much more than 500 ohms across me. Nothing I could do about it.
I know the business suit is a power symbol, and people will wear them to garner respect. I am also quite aware that many business executives consider a handshake with a suit-guy a helluva lot more important than , say, stability of a phaselock loop in a communications system.
Incidentally, I never did get the art of lying down very well - its one of the reasons I went into engineering - no lying was tolerated. I show my work and how I arrived at my conclusion. If I could lie worth a damm, I would have went into sales or politics.
It seemed to me like lying was part of "people skills", and how to get others to carry out my will by giving them incomplete information, then covering my own ass with legal paper.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Touché) by jasassin on Monday April 20 2015, @06:21AM
So what exactly do you do here at Initech?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday April 20 2015, @06:23AM
Selfish self reply.... Please don't burn down the building.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @07:29AM
But I want my stapler back!
(Score: 4, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Monday April 20 2015, @09:40AM
But... but... I GOT PEOPLE SKILLS! WHY THE FUCK DONT YOU UNDERSTAND! CUSTOMERS MUST NOT DEAL WITH ENGINEERS BECAUSE I HAVE FUCKING PEOPLE SKILLS!
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Monday April 20 2015, @07:05AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Monday April 20 2015, @08:19AM
I did not know there was such a thing. Thanks. I'll revisit this when I get some mod points...
This was a government contractor. Nor can I prove that it was the polygraph that did me in.
What I experienced was being told to do something out of my expertise, then isolating me via "compartmentalization" so I could not network with others. Then they took the only DOS machine I had, and just to make me mad, stored it in my boss's office on a high shelf where I would have to pass it every day to see it up there, unused.
They then gave me a windows box, 386SX, running doublespace, and expected me to produce CAD drawings in it using a CAD system I had never used before. It would barely run, and locked up all the time with "General Protection Fault". I remember being so frustrated wondering if the computer got the mouse click. Often it would delay several seconds before it would do anything, and if I jumped the gun and clicked again, all sorts of odd stuff would happen. It was driving me nuts.
I could not bring any diagnostics in to help me figure out why my machine was locking up so much. Nor could I load my DOS programs, I could not even defrag the disk with doublespace on it.
Then watched me fall further and further behind.
Then justified the termination on that.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:01PM
So, basically you ended up losing your job because they refused to train you on the equipment you were required to use. Horray for private contractors cutting corners to pocket higher profits!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:21AM
Good word of warning for any other of you considering a gig with the military-industrial complex.
If you are not one of the highly paid suit-guys running the thing, you are highly expendable, needed only for one contract, and there are no protections as they hold the "security" trump card. You will know you are planned for dismissal if you see them placing you in "compartmentalized" projects. It is their way of keeping you ignorant so you won't learn enough to become valuable.
They are exempt from damn near every employment law.
Main trouble is that they are about the only game in town for the STEM graduate, as most of the other stuff is either offshored or taken by H1-B.
My advice to the young'uns is to learn skills other people, not industry, needs. Welding, construction, dentistry, auto repair, refrigeration ( that's what's keeping me going ), electrician, whatever.... and find a good trade union if you have to deal with business.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:29AM
According to the US Department of Labor [dol.gov], the Employee Polygraph Protection Act has the following exemptions:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @09:20AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @10:33AM
This pseudoscientific garbage shouldn't be used by anyone, and especially not by the government.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Monday April 20 2015, @02:05PM
Hey, now, be nice. It worked on Aldrich Ames [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:25AM
When I followed your link, I just felt more and more like Frank Grimes [wikia.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by tathra on Monday April 20 2015, @05:51PM
polygraphs are total bullshit [apa.org] and even the people administering them know that. how they get people to tell the truth is, after the test, they lay a line like, "Well we've found out that you're lying, so why don't you go ahead and come clean and maybe we can get you some leniency" or something like that, tricking people into spilling their guts after the bullshit show. that's for legal matters, for less objective means, like employment, it would come down to whatever the conman - i mean, examiner - thinks.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 20 2015, @05:54AM
Take this nonsense of matching hair fibers. Take the subject of lie detectors, itself a mess of pseudo-science with no validity. Gubbermint has been using this pseudo science for decades to catch and to convict "criminals", all the while assuring the public and the courts that they know what they are doing.
Now, move into today's world. Global warming. Advocates have a lot of convincing arguments. Deniers have a lot of convincing arguments. But, for the most part, we're expected to "trust the experts". Those experts don't exactly want to share their data, instead, they expect us to just trust their models, and accept their conclusions.
Sorry - but I grew up questioning authority. I'm not going to believe ANYONE just because they have a uniform, a badge, a gun, a degree, or petabytes of data on their hard drives.
Pseudo-science is pseudo-science, people. If the expert isn't willing to turn over verified and verifiable data, and to prove and re-prove his conclusions repeatedly, then he's not really a scientist.
Better to put your faith in something important, I would say. http://www.venganza.org/ [venganza.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:04AM
You should not use a computer or the internet, those we put together by experts.
Go troll to your local pub where people who can hear you can punch you.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:26AM
It is called the death of expertise. As the internet has arisen so has trust in people that have dedicated their lives to any specific field. This growing distrust of the most qualified has been written about a number of times. Here is a random paper I found after a short search: http://emergentpublications.com/ECO/ECO_other/Issue_12_2_11_FM.pdf?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 [emergentpublications.com]
Clearly I am just as good as any academic researcher ;)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 20 2015, @10:04AM
Sorry, Pal - computer components are assembled by unskilled labor in sweatshops in Asia. Those components are shopped from places like Newegg, and assembled into a working computer right here on my own desk.
Experts? Yeah - there are some experts involved in the designing of computers. More "experts" market the stuff. And, other "experts" guard the corporate assets and liabilities.
Apparently, you really don't know how the real world works.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 20 2015, @07:35AM
runaway1956, are you seriously suggesting that your hair is on global warming? Or that your hair is causing global warming? I think we need to run a polygraph on you. It has poly graphs, you see, which in Greek means "many graphs", so how could the machine possibly be lying? And, this is one of the worse attempts at thread hijacking I have ever seen here at SN. Turn over your data, now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:48AM
Err, you stopped halfway in your analysis of the word: You also should have looked up the ethymology of "graph". Citing Wiktionary [wiktionary.org]:
So "polygraph" means "many scratches. Thus a polygraph is a device to scratch you a lot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @09:24AM
http://ur1.ca/k7o5q [ur1.ca]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 20 2015, @10:28AM
Whooosh!
That was the sound of your post going right over my head. It took some time to for me to catch on. *sigh*
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:06AM
You ought to refuse to run any code you did not write or evaluate fully yourself and doesn't run on hardware you assembled yourself or have been able to fully evaluate yourself, after all it such code was written, designed, and built by people with degrees in computer science and engineering which just aren't good enough for you, and you really ought to check everything out first yourself.
In the same way, you ought to stop using any motor vehicle you did not design and build yourself or whose design that you in your infinite wisdom have learned how to evaluate properly, as they were made only under the supervision of people with degrees in mechanical engineering, and you ought not to just take them at their word when they tell you that the car won't explode when you turn the ignition.
In the same way, you ought not to eat any food you did not harvest from plants you cultivated by your own hand or from animals you did not breed yourself from stock that you have personally evaluated, as you shouldn't trust these experts in agriculture not to feed you something that will cause you to develop some nasty disease later on. After all, these agriculturists aren't willing to turn over verified and verifiable data that their products are safe!
It takes most of a human lifetime to become an expert in any of these fields, and obviously no one person can develop the expertise to properly evaluate everything we use on their own. There are, fortunately, communities of such experts, and if they concur about something, then there's a pretty good chance that they're right, most especially if reality bears their conclusions out. Millions of people aren't dying from motorcars exploding after all. At some point you have to trust someone, but you don't trust them blindly either. You see who they are and who they work for, and if they are really impartial. Toyota's engineers might tell you their motorcar's brakes are fine, but there are other engineers working for the NTSB who also evaluate their designs and see if they actually are as fine as Toyota's engineers say they are.
The same is true of climate science. It also takes a significant part of a human lifetime to become an expert in climatology enough to evaluate climate data and models, and it's not something one can pick up from just a few minutes with Google, no matter what one might think. There is a community of such experts who examine each others' data and models, and they largely agree with one another about the conclusions, excepting a few sceptics who have largely been shown to be under the control of vested interests who stand to lose a lot if action is taken on global warming. And while this is still open to debate, reality does seem to be bearing their conclusions out. The climate is changing for the warmer. Polar ice is melting and global sea levels are rising as a result.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 20 2015, @10:19AM
That's a pretty lame attempt to draw analogies. Automobiles are sold to members of the public, many of whom tear into those automobiles, and alter them in any number of ways. In fact, I've done so, with older, less sophisticated models. My sons have done so. One of my sons enjoys modifying motorcycles. Those machines are verifiable by any motorhead with minimal education. Change out part A for part B, and you will alter these parameters. I've known genuine mental midgets who could perform these tasks.
Agriculture and animal husbandry. Right here on my own property, we breed sheep and goats. My duaghter in law and granddaughter know everything about the breeds they are interested in, and they know a hell of a lot about other breeds. No one in my family has cultivated and/or engineered a new tomatoe, or melon, but several of us know how the various cultivars were produced.
Most of a human lifetime to become an expert? Uh-huh - maybe. On the other hand, maybe it takes a lifetime to bullshit other people into believing that you're an expert. A nineteen year old kid making outrageous claims is usually just laughed at. A fifty nine year old man WITH DEMONSTRABLE WEALTH can often pass himself off as an "expert".
Whatever. You place your faith in those people you choose, and allow me to place my own faith in whatever I choose. I don't accept your global warming - climate change "experts" as worthy of my faith.
Once again - I learned of global warming in 1963, listening to my third grade teacher explaining about the interglacial period that we are blessed with today. These "experts" probably learned the same lessons that I did, and immediately started imagining how they could profit from the natural causes and effects being explained to them. To bad I didn't think of that, huh? I could have beaten Al Gore to those carbon credit dollars! With all that money, I might have also had time to invent the internets!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2015, @03:45AM
> Once again - I learned of global warming in 1963, listening to my third grade teacher explaining about the interglacial period that we are blessed with today.
When lecturing about global warming I suggest you always lead with that fact.
It will really help your audience to understand where you are coming from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:07PM
"Don't trust the government" does not logically lead to "Don't trust anyone that disagrees with you".
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 21 2015, @10:01PM
Sorry, I have actually noticed the global warming hands on. So I do find it highly probable. And still changing the climate such that its makeup is the same as when the whole planet consisted of tropical forests and sauna temperatures is not a good idea.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @05:55AM
Innocent people* are put to death and nobody else gives a fuck.
*Yes, we cannot know for sure. But statistically it happened/will happen.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday April 20 2015, @07:02AM
Lying scumbag prosecutor, helpful judge, paid jailhouse snitch, pseudoscience:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/08/03/fresh-doubts-over-a-texas-execution/ [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:11PM
Lots of redundancy here.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 20 2015, @06:52PM
There's a magic veil of denial in the US. It covers gun violence, wrongful death penalties... Someone has been recently interfering with its LGBT, Black Racism and also Drugs reaches, but it's still firmly anchored when it comes to Latino/Middle-East Racism, environmental damage...
Every country has its own magic veil, but the US' one has many aspects which are highly puzzling to most everyone else on the planet
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:04AM
The FBI and the Myth of the Fingerprint [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [hpub.org]
Add in shoe prints, lip prints, and ear prints while you're at it.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 20 2015, @04:52PM
One of these things is not like the other.....
Good clear Shoe Prints, on well worn shoes actually do contain marks that become unique just because the pebbles and glass fragments you've stepped are unlikely to ever be duplicated naturally. Nicks, cuts, etc.
Wear patterns can't be used, because if you are about the same size and wear the same size, and make of shoe, and we both drive bus for a living, chances are the wear patterns will be similar.
Prints are never used to match some random shoe in a database (other than to identify the maker of the sole). Shoe prints can only compared to one specific shoe. New shoes can never be used for this purpose.
The rub is that shoes taken for evidence can always be manipulated to replicate the prints take at the scene of the crime. Shoe print evidence always carries a certain jaundice, and defense attorneys know this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by ghost on Monday April 20 2015, @01:54PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @03:23PM
Here's the story of how criminal 'profiling' was invented out of bogus results. [newyorker.com]
The problem with DNA matches [latimes.com] (bad application of statistics) leading example being a black man and a white man who came up as the 'same' person:
Then there is the use of drug-dogs that don't detect drugs, they detect subconscious (and sometimes conscious) cues from their handlers. [reason.com]
Also, the latest bogus fad - micro-expressions as a form of lie detection. The TSA has spent a billion+ dollars [cnn.com] on it with zero useful results.
Seems to me that the constant push to mechanize judgment is commendable but misguided. Far too often people in authority are willing to use these results as cover for their own biases - they have a gut feeling that someone is guilty, but since that's obviously not scientific they seek a way to mask their bias in pseudoscience.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday April 20 2015, @03:35PM
I used to be pro death penalty but damn! There are just way too many false convictions. This is just another way they have happened. I now believe that life and death is a power that no court should hold.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday April 20 2015, @04:02PM
You're okay with the state having the ability to lock people in a concrete box until they die, but not okay with the state killing those same people? The former punishment actually seems more torturous than the latter, at least to me. Do you want some sort of European-island-resort-prisons, instead of our current concrete-rape-box-prisons? This could potentially make the position have some consistency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @04:57PM
The thing about that concrete box is that it can be unlocked. You can't unexecute someone.
> Do you want some sort of European-island-resort-prisons, instead of our current concrete-rape-box-prisons?
> This could potentially make the position have some consistency.
That's an interesting phrasing. The difference between the OP's argument and yours is that his is utilitarian, yours is ethical. They can't be consistent without referring to some greater principle that you have not articulated.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday April 20 2015, @11:12PM
The thing about that concrete box is that it can be unlocked. You can't unexecute someone.
You can't unrape someone either.
The difference between the OP's argument and yours is that his is utilitarian, yours is ethical. They can't be consistent without referring to some greater principle that you have not articulated.
You might be making some assumptions about my positions. I was asking about morgauxo's views on what the state ought to be able to subject prisoners to. I didn't say European-island-resort-prisons are a bad thing, they certainly seem preferable to concrete-rape-box-prisons.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @11:25PM
> You can't unrape someone either.
Irrelevant to the original question.
No form of punishment is undoable, but executions are final. Please don't pretend that you can't see the difference.
Whether rape is an acceptable form of punishment is an entirely different question - one of ethics, not utility.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:29PM
No form of punishment is undoable, but executions are final. Please don't pretend that you can't see the difference.
I really don't see a difference. I think maybe you're assuming that life has some inherent value we both recognise, or something? Death is simply a lack of life, it can happen quickly and painlessly (though it doesn't in the US prison system). I am contending that torture is more horrifying than death. Torture changes the individual beyond current repair, as does death. Death changes us more, but I don't think that makes it inherently worse.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday April 21 2015, @06:15PM
I really don't see a difference.
"You can't unrape someone either." was completely irrelevant to the discussion. When you take into account the possibility of innocents being executed even after all those trials, the fact that the person can't live anything resembling a life after they've been executed (because they're dead, and this doesn't apply to rape), and the fact that the person has already been captured, one can come to the conclusion that they should not be executed. If they want to die so badly, and they're determined, they will probably do so themselves. But lots of people don't kill themselves in prison or when they get out, so obviously not everyone agrees with your logic.
I am contending that torture is more horrifying than death.
Well, lots of people don't want to die (even ones in prison), so that's merely your opinion, not a universal fact, and especially if the form of "torture" is being in prison.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Monday April 20 2015, @08:59PM
You're okay with the state having the power to murder people? They can't let out a person who later proves to have been innocent if they've been murdered.
The former punishment actually seems more torturous than the latter, at least to me.
You could always commit suicide if you end up in that situation. Don't try to make life-and-death decisions for others.
Do you want some sort of European-island-resort-prisons, instead of our current concrete-rape-box-prisons?
I want our 'justice' system to focus on rehabilitation, not vengeance. That likely does mean changing the prison environment, and it would certainly mean getting rid of private prisons. But that won't appease the barbarians, so it'll be an uphill battle getting that to happen.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday April 21 2015, @01:40PM
You're okay with the state having the power to murder people? They can't let out a person who later proves to have been innocent if they've been murdered.
Man, I don't even support the existence of the state above a municipal level. I was just inquiring about somebody else's views, the only view of my own that I expressed was that I consider torture worse than death.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 21 2015, @10:27PM
The justice system is just to have a rule book to follow when evaluating who's guilty and how hard the punishment should be. It has nothing to do with justice, if it does it's just plain fluke. Focusing on rehabilitation instead of vengeance would probably be more effective but then that requires people to raise above their own emotion driven decision making. Not likely to happen to a majority of voters.
The barbarians are most likely just emotionally driven people that just can't see above that. And politicians use it to win elections.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 21 2015, @10:41PM
FBI prime tools:
* Bullet lead analyze
* Lie detector
* Hair fiber matching
* Crystal ball
I suspect that length of DNA segments isn't a good method to use as identification either.
All in all, living in America is like playing a daily Russian roulette of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.