Yes LEGO, that's right. It's a new thread. That means you can repeat all the claims I discredited in the last thread as if the question of their validity had somehow been reset.

And of course the most murders occur in the womb. Yep the Passover mentioned but no mention of the hundreds of thousands of butchered unborn baby. Unbelievable logic especially with someone with a science phd. Oh well just shows the smartest can be brainwashed and hard hearted.

Rehtcub
Even for people caught “red handed” there can be extenuating circumstances – threats or coercion, mental illness or incapacity, or ignorance (maybe Schapelle really didn’t know what was in her bag, though I doubt it).

No-one is sentenced to death, or life imprisonment, without the case against them being strong. But it can still be wrong. Since the 1970s, some 150 people in the USA who were sentenced to death were subsequently found to be innocent.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row?scid=6&did=110

Every time the death penalty is discussed on OLO, someone raises the notion of absolute certainty or being caught red-handed.

Now, while I can't speak for corrupt countries like Indonesia, in more civilised Western countries there is only the notion of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. The law can't work with a concept as problematic as absolute certainty, and nor could it ever reasonably be reached. How do we know, for example, that the Bali Nine weren't whisked away to a private room only to have kilos of heroin dumped on the desk in front of them and told that it was strapped to their bodies. With an Asian and a big black man present, I'm sure an eye witness or two would even inadvertently invent a memory of them being caught red-handed and report seeing the heroin. It happens easily, and it happens all the time. Ruben Carter's was a famous case that was subject to similar biases.

The above is unlikely almost to the point of absurd - even in a corrupt country like Indonesia. But the law has to entertain all possibilities, which is why 'beyond reasonable doubt' is used instead of something as unrealistic as absolute certainty. So to those who say they'd support capital punishment only when we could be absolutely certain that the accused was guilty, your position is pointless; and to those who think that being caught red-handed invalidates anti-death-penalty arguments in some instances, it doesn't

Indeed A J PHILIPS...Ruben ('Hurricane') CARTER, wrongly convicted of homicide, and a world champion pugilist, of some notoriety ! I believe the same fellow may've ultimately been 'Admitted to the Bar' in the State of his original conviction too ? Justice gone awry, I suspect ?

Rhian.

Your own premise asserts that scientific evidence into the effects of the death penalty are "contradictory and inconclusive". OK, so we are left with common sense. Common sense says that the more severe the penalty, the less the likelihood that people thinking of committing very serious crimes will commit them. Chan and Sukamaran are classic examples. They coldly considered the penalty, the rewards, and their chances of being caught, and they decided that it was worth it. They lost. They are guilty. They will be executed. Thair execution will be widely publicised. And there are probably some more imported ethnic criminals living in Australia who also dream of making themselves rich by killing Australians, who will have second thoughts about imitating Chan and Sukamaran's business model.

Your claim that life in jail is worse than execution is a contradiction. If life imprisonment is worse, than all of your arguments supporting the idea that innocents can be convicted and punished for a crime they did not commit just went right out of the window.

Australia has sentenced every member of ISIS to death without trial and our Air Force is carrying out those executions as we write. We do care if we kill innocents with our bombs but that will not stop us from killing people that we consider an unacceptable threat to our society. My main premise is, that if kuilling external enemies by the thousands is OK, then killing a few of the worst and dangerous examples of our internal enemies is also OK.

Murderers who are sentenced to long prison terms and then kill again after release should be executed. Same for prisoners who kill inmates or prison officers in jail. Ditto for those who kill police officers. Here in Australia, at least three undercover police oficers who penetrated criminal bikie gangs and later gave evidence against them, now live in fear of their lives. This is unacceptable. So too, those who abduct, rape, and murder for fun do not deserve to live. Toss in a few Trimboles and Clarks and Australia will be a better place.