|
I fully support the death penalty, however, I believe that the preponderance of evidence should be so overwhelmingly obvious, that guilt can't even be questioned as a hypothetical. video evidence would be great, otherwise, forensics should have to conclude that not even 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance that someone else committed that particular crime.
That being said, the sentencing phase of a trial should be done by a seperate jury than the one who decided guilt or acquittal. In most criminal trials, a jury of 12 of your peers listens to the evidence and decides whether or not you committed the crime. A sentencing jury should have 15 people on it and a death sentence MUST be decided by 2/3rds or more.
As in all death sentences, an appeal is automatic. This appeal should no longer be done by just a courtroom judge or bench. As all too often happens, a black robed tyrant inevitably fucks up the system by implementing his own ideology over the laws and we end up with murderers released on technicalities or innocent people still on death row. A death sentence appeal should be handled by yet another jury of peers, 15 again, and either the confirmation of said death sentence or commutation to life should be decided by 4/5ths of the peer jury.
Unfortunately, I don't see this happening because not enough people would care about the justice system as it pertains to criminals to actually want to be involved.....but if they were somehow caught up in it as a defendant, I wonder if that would change their mind?
__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
|