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Search For "Foolproof Suffocation" Missed In Casey Anthony Case

Hugh Pickens writes "The Orlando Sentinel reports that a google search was made for the term 'foolproof suffocation' on the Anthony family's computer the day Casey Anthony's 2-year-old daughter Caylee was last seen alive by her family — a search that did not surface at Casey Anthony's trial for first degree murder. In the notorious 31 days which followed, Casey Anthony repeatedly lied about her and her daughter's whereabouts and at Anthony's trial, her defense attorney argued that her daughter drowned accidentally in the family's pool. Anthony was acquitted on all major charges in her daughter's death, including murder. Though computer searches were a key issue at Anthony's murder trial, the term 'foolproof suffocation' never came up. 'Our investigation reveals the person most likely at the computer was Casey Anthony,' says investigative reporter Tony Pipitone. Lead sheriff's Investigator Yuri Melich sent prosecutors a spreadsheet that contained less than 2 percent of the computer's Internet activity that day and included only Internet data from the computer's Internet Explorer browser – one Casey Anthony apparently stopped using months earlier — and failed to list 1,247 entries recorded on the Mozilla Firefox browser that day — including the search for 'foolproof suffocation.' Prosecutor Jeff Ashton said in a statement to WKMG that it's 'a shame we didn't have it. (It would have) put the accidental death claim in serious question.'"

379 comments

  1. First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why didn't she just put the kid up for adoption?

    1. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Bitches be crazy ?

    2. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mod parent up!

    3. Re:First by moderatorrater · · Score: 1

      Because of the stigma I'd guess. I know teenage girls who got pregnant and their parents pressured them into keeping the baby instead of putting it up for adoption even though it was going to destroy their lives.

      Of course, that doesn't excuse the murder in the slightest.

    4. Re:First by somersault · · Score: 2

      Ah yes, the feeling of being a murderer is obviously a lot easier to live with than giving a childless couple a chance at happiness.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    5. Re:First by blade8086 · · Score: 0

      And you know this is 'because of stigma' how?

      By this logic, noone would ever have kids, because they would 'destroy their lives'.

      Maybe they wanted to help their own child out by helping them raise their grandchild, until their own child was old enough to take proper responsibility for it?

    6. Re:First by gweihir · · Score: 1

      People are not rational. And many are just assholes that _like_ doing it to others.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    7. Re:First by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly. People like to play Jr. Detective and assign rational motives to people's action, and frequently it just won't work. I remember watching a round table news discussion show, and they were talking about a murder in which a pregnant woman opened the door to her home and she and the unborn baby were stabbed to death, but her 4-ish year old child who was right there was left unharmed. The estranged husband was the prime suspect, and one commentator said "ah, yes, stands to reason, since why else leave the other child alone?" And the other commentator said the thing I thought, "how can you assign rational motives to someone who stabs a pregnant to lady death?"

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    8. Re:First by rtfa-troll · · Score: 3, Insightful

      feeling

      You are assuming something for which there is little evidence.

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    9. Re:First by samoanbiscuit · · Score: 1

      Irrational actions can emerge from rational motives. A (relatively) rational insecurity about the paternity of the estranged wife's unborn child can snowball into killing her and the unborn child. All it takes is the right (or in this case wrong) brain chemistry. I don't know about the ex-husband guy being the prime suspect, but I sure as hell would be keeping track of his movements if I were in charge of that investigation.

    10. Re:First by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      For this case, he doesn't know which is specifically why he said "I'd guess", so you must be talking about his other example. But his other example of non-murderous non-adoptions is clearly because of stigma. Whether the girl's parents were willing to help out with the child is utterly irrelevant to whether their pressure constitutes stigma (or came from a position of stigma).

    11. Re:First by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Informative

      Its because so few have had to deal with the truly batshit and frankly don't LIKE the thought that death can come for no damned reason from somebody you have never done a damned thing to that its easier for them to try to come up with "motives" that frankly often may only exist in the mind of the killer, hell if there ever was one.

      Spending most of my life near the strip known as "the meth highway" and hanging out on the wrong side of the tracks i can tell you there ARE plenty of truly batshit crazy people out there, hell many of them manage to even hold jobs and live like normal people...until they snap like a twig. Down the street was an old home that had been in the family 5 generations, its gone now because the grandson killed everybody in the house and torched the place...why? Nobody knows, even he don't know, all he said at his trial is "somebody there must have made me mad or something". Hell he wasn't even on drugs at the time so he can't be written off as having a freak out, he just went total batshit one day.

      So maybe she had a reason, maybe she didn't, hell maybe grandpa did it and the daughter covered it up, who the fuck knows, that is why she got not guilty. Watching the trial it was obvious there was reason to believe it could be EITHER the mom (didn't want the kid) or grandpa (molestation) and the cops simply couldn't ever pin down one way or another who did it beyond a reasonable doubt. But to try to pin complex motives to most of these cases simply won't work, because frankly there are a LOT of truly right on the edge of rubber room batshit crazy people out there and frankly if they go off? The only "motive' might be as simple as "I didn't like his shirt".

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    12. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BLD

    13. Re:First by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      There is a rational possibility: the stabber was not the father of the unborn child.

    14. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      not really familiar with the case, but if the father was anywhere near the picture, he'd have to consent to the adoption. also, i'm pretty sure adoption is a lengthy, laborious, and expensive process (in terms of time and money). if you want to get rid of a child, the most efficient and logical method to a person that feels no moral obligation to the child is to simply kill it, make it look like an accident, get lots of sympathy/charity and time off from work.

    15. Re:First by Sulphur · · Score: 2

      So maybe she had a reason, maybe she didn't, hell maybe grandpa did it and the daughter covered it up, who the fuck knows, that is why she got not guilty. Watching the trial it was obvious there was reason to believe it could be EITHER the mom (didn't want the kid) or grandpa (molestation) and the cops simply couldn't ever pin down one way or another who did it beyond a reasonable doubt. But to try to pin complex motives to most of these cases simply won't work, because frankly there are a LOT of truly right on the edge of rubber room batshit crazy people out there and frankly if they go off? The only "motive' might be as simple as "I didn't like his shirt".

      While filming in a prison, Richard Pryor asked a prisoner "Why did you kill all those people."

      Answer : "They was at home."

    16. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah yes, the feeling of being a murderer is obviously a lot easier to live with than giving a childless couple a chance at happiness.

      Sociopathy allows for people to feel nothing when it comes to the needs and feelings of others. Especially children that cannot easily express their own thoughts or form complex reasoning and emotion.

    17. Re:First by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      Pretty much. Back in the 90s, my then GF and I was driving through a subdivision around 9pm when one of two men got out of his truck and shot at us with a bolt action rifle. The following day, I put a dowel rod through the bullet hole located in the passenger door. Had it gone 6 inches higher, my GF head would have exploded like a pumpkin! Reason? They were high on PCP and thought we were demons or something working for the devil. But yes, death can come without warning. All it takes is to be at the wrong place at the wrong time unfortunately.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    18. Re:First by Zen+Punk · · Score: 1

      It is exceedingly rare for any human being to lose the capacity for all rational thought and yet still maintain the presence of mind to do anything as complex as stabbing someone. People usually do have a rationale for their actions. It may based on on a warped logic or proceed from false presences, but there are reasons just the same.

      --
      Sleep is futile.
    19. Re:First by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      Yes, warped. There's no non-nuts reason for stabbing a pregnant woman to death. "Because I don't think it was my kid" is one step up from "because Jesus told me to."

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    20. Re:First by meta-monkey · · Score: 2

      Only if you want to play semantics about the difference between "rational" and "sane." No one sane stabs a defenseless pregnant woman to death. If we're dealing with insanity, then "because it wasn't my kid" is just as "rational" as "because god told me to." "And why didn't you kill the toddler?" "Because he wore a Piglet shirt. Pooh is The One True God, and Piglet his only begotten son."

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    21. Re:First by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In many species, including chimpanzees, when a male takes over leadership, it is common for him to kill infants because they are not his.

      What is irrational about killing someone else's unborn baby, and the traitorous mother bearing it, and leaving your own 4 year old child alive? It may be insane, it's certainly not very nice, but I don't see anything irrational about it, if the stabber is thinking only of propagating his own seed.

      Just because behavior violates every norm of civilization doesn't make it irrational.

      If someone is insane and thinks everyone is spying on him, it may be entirely rational to kill a bunch of them.

      If someone thinks a comet is an alien spaceship come to take away true believers, it may be entirely rational to kill oneself as an act of volunteering to travel with the aliens.

    22. Re:First by meta-monkey · · Score: 2

      Exactly. You can play semantics with "rational" and "sane" (which you're doing) but in the real world there's not much difference between "rationally insane" and "irrationally insane." At the end of the day, a woman is getting stabbed to death, and that's never sane. You can assume rationality, but you're only assuming, as an insane person stabbing a woman "because of paternity" isn't significantly more likely than an insane person stabbing a woman "because Space Jesus."

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    23. Re:First by gweihir · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sorry, the insecurity may be rational, but attributing any importance to it is not, it is pure animal brain. So even with this, the action does not stem from anything rational.

      Brain chemistry is not an excuse. Unless it is extreme, any adult can reasonably be expected to have control of his/her emotions and control extreme impulses. Those that do not learn impulse control may not be directly responsible for what they do, but they are guilty of endangerment by not getting these impulses under control. All those "my brain did it" defenses are pretty meaningless unless some serious abnormality is present. If not, the person in question was just to lazy to do something about it and getting control. (Yes, I think dualism has it right, and that the brain/body is actually only a kind of "carrier system", although with its own impulses and emotions. The mind is responsible for getting control over the whole and otherwise responsible if bad things happen from not having control.)

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    24. Re:First by dead_user · · Score: 1

      Not to mention giving the child a chance at happiness.

    25. Re:First by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Incredible. Although completely believable. True cavemen that have lost their tribe and kill everything in their way.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    26. Re:First by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Nothing rational in there.

      What problem did the deed fix? None that I can see. Even if it was child support, the penalty for getting caught multiplied with the probability of getting caught far outweighs that. And killing for adultery? What is rational about that? Nothing at all! Pure genetically driven evolutionary reflex.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    27. Re:First by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Actually stabbing someone is very easy. That is why in close quarters, a knife is far more dangerous than a gun. And cretin can stab somebody and even with paramedics standing by, it has a high possibility of being lethal.

      And "I was in a killing range" is not really a rationale. It is an admission of utter failure at being human, i.e. more than an animal.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    28. Re:First by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Some reasons may be constructed. But they will be complex and artificial. Nothing more normal qualifies, agreed. In basically all cases the people doing something like that are failed human beings that did not manage to raise above the state of an animal.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    29. Re:First by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Refusing to understand delusions does nothing to help prevent the results of those delusions. How can you fix problems you don't understand? I consider that irrational too. If you like living in a world governed by irrational fiat rather than understanding, you're on the right track.

    30. Re:First by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      If you want to look for a result, you already have one: descendant lives, potential competitor doesn't. It's nothing new under the sun. Put it down to genetic reflex if you want, but only someone willfully blind won't see it as having solved the problem. Just because it's abhorrent to most everybody else doesn't make it irrational to his thinking.

    31. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      an insane person stabbing a woman "because of paternity" isn't significantly more likely than an insane person stabbing a woman "because Space Jesus."

      Can you back this statement up with any evidence whatsoever?

    32. Re:First by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      No one sane stabs a defenseless pregnant woman to death.

      What if she's called Frau Schicklgruber?

      Or Sarah Connor, for that matter.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    33. Re:First by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      No.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    34. Re:First by andy.ruddock · · Score: 1

      Actually stabbing someone is very easy. That is why in close quarters, a knife is far more dangerous than a gun.

      Do you think so?
      Having done neither, I'd always thought that stabbing somebody would be more difficult - having to be "up close and personal", rather than at a distance and somewhat removed from the consequences of the act, as with a shooting.

      --
      God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
    35. Re:First by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      People are not rational.

      Indeed. Is it rational to put so much thought into people you never met, never would want to meet, who live thousands of miles away? How does Casey Anthony affect me in any way, except for my being constantly bombarded by it in the media?

      A kid died, that's tragic to the people involved. Meanwhile, children are being killed by their government bombing them, war in the Congo, war between the Palestineans and Israelis, auto accidents... yet we fixate on one kid?

      Indeed, we are not rational. I don't want to fucking hear about Casey Anthony. I'd rather hear about there being fewer violent crimes than before, a fact that the sensationalist media don't seem to want you to know about.

    36. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unexpected death is something that I used to see every day when I was a cop. They are called road traffic accidents. In the USA around 35,000 die every year - that's the rough equivalent of a 9/11 event occurring every month.

      Many of those who die and the hundreds of thousands maimed every year did nothing wrong. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more. However, unlike 9/11, nobody seems to care very much.

    37. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please define the "real world" ??? At best you will realize that your definition is your perception of what the term means

    38. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pass me that pipe!

    39. Re:First by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      The intent matters more than the body count. Just a fact of life regarding human nature. While we all care about traffic fatalities, at least there has been steady progression in laws, safety standards, and technology to reduce annual deaths. Terrorism however is all about how much death a single man can cause to a group of innocent people.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    40. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since this is Slashdot, I am going to assume "GF" means grandfather, not girlfriend.

    41. Re:First by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      No. Girlfriend. And she sucked a mean dick too! Stay jealous my friend.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    42. Re:First by psm321 · · Score: 1

      Incredible. Although completely believable.

      That word, I don't think you know what it means. :-D (Yes, I get your point, just found that humorous and had to point it out)

    43. Re:First by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, don't call me Girlfriend.

    44. Re:First by tolkienfan · · Score: 1

      I don't even think insanity should be a valid defense.

    45. Re:First by tolkienfan · · Score: 1

      I think you're thinking of "inconceivable"...

    46. Re:First by codewarren · · Score: 1

      It is important to distinguish between punishment for the sake of 1) retribution, 2) deterrent and 3) protection of others. A person's state of mind and health of mind definitely matter for the first one. There is no need to seek retribution on an insane person's actions, while it may still be wise to punish as a deterrent or at least incarcerate in order to protect others.

      Also, the cause of a person's state of mind also can matter in some cases for 2 and 3. It is certainly possible that a "tumor" did it, for example, which means that when the tumor is excised, there is really no cause to keep punishing yet another victim of the tumor.

    47. Re:First by psm321 · · Score: 1

      I wasn't going for a strong reference to the movie quote. More the fact that credible literally means believable :)

    48. Re:First by tolkienfan · · Score: 1

      I realized that after I posted... oh well. :)

  2. No Death Penalty by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In this case the prosecutors and justice system were incompetent to prove this person was the killer.

    In other cases they're incompetent to tell that the prosecutors and justice system have failed to prove the person was the killer.

    When we execute convicted people there is no chance to catch the errors that are executing people who are not guilty. Not guilty people are killed because the system isn't adequate to execute only the guilty.

    We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    2. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann?yrail

    3. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Easy to answer. Cases are closed after execution and cannot be opened again, so no person is exonerated after execution.

      However, the fact that 130 people have been exonerated while awaiting their death should give you a good estimate.

    4. Re:No Death Penalty by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Could you please link to a single person who was exonerated after being executed in the U.S. in the last 20 years or so (when DNA evidence became popular)? Thanks!

      This is not a fair request. When DNA analysis of evidence first became available, many executed people were posthumously exonerated. This doesn't happen anymore because, obviously, we do the DNA analysis before their conviction. So you are implying that "now the system is perfect and we don't execute innocent people anymore", but I think a better interpretation is that "the system is deeply flawed, and the emergence of DNA evidence just exposed some of those flaws." For most criminal cases DNA evidence plays no role, and there is no reason to believe those people are less likely to be innocent.

    5. Re:No Death Penalty by gshegosh · · Score: 1

      If I were to be mistakenly held in prison for life, I'd rather die painlessly.

    6. Re:No Death Penalty by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.

      Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

    7. Re:No Death Penalty by bugs2squash · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, we shouldn't kill people because we're perfectly capable of keeping them locked up indefinitely. If we were some tinpot nation with no means to do so then execution or outsourcing the incarceration would be more of a necessity, but we're not, we're the most powerful nation on earth, so there's no need. I personally don't believe in capital punishment as a deterrent (it's not why I choose not to kill people at least) and so that really only leaves revenge. Maybe I'd think about it differently if someone killed my kids, but it does not seem like a good enough reason to keep execution on the books.

      --
      Nullius in verba
    8. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do they know it was her that did the search? And maybe it was the killer using her computer...

    9. Re:No Death Penalty by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      The exact some logic could be used to say we should not imprison people, or punish them in any way. "Because they might be innocent".

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    10. Re:No Death Penalty by Hentes · · Score: 1

      You assume that the chance of convicting an innocent man is the same as the chance of letting a guilty man run. In reality, the latter is big exactly because the justice system wants to be completely sure before convicting someone, in order to minimize the former.

    11. Re:No Death Penalty by SternisheFan · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Actually Life in prison without parole is less costly to taxpayers. Each individual death penalty case automatically gets appealed to the Supreme Court, at a cost of over $2,000,000 per. Here's one link: http://www.fnsa.org/v1n1/dieter1.html

      And a google page of links: http://www.google.com/search?q=real+cost+of+death+penalty+cases&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=_FeyULTuO7K00AGu-oG4BA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=480&bih=295

    12. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      To sum up, government makes mistakes, and death is irreversible. That is all that needs to be said, although we should always take note of the many cases of inmates put on "death row" who were later found to be innocent.

    13. Re:No Death Penalty by flimflammer · · Score: 2

      Then allow life prisoners to request execution, rather than automatically execute specific people regardless of our knowing whether they're really innocent or not.

      The same should be applied to terminal patients, too. If they want to die rather than suffer a horrible end, they should have the option. We think we can condemn people we think are murderers to death, but we refuse to allow people out of needless torture at the end of their life? What a weird society we've become.

    14. Re:No Death Penalty by flimflammer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But that would be taking the argument too far. The world isn't black and white. Death is the ultimate punishment. You can't make up for taking someone's life once they're already dead.

    15. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends what state you live in. Lethal injection is very painful.

    16. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ... and thereby lend credence to the incorrect implication that DNA evidence has stopped all wrongful executions.

    17. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You could have just said "No, I can't name a single person who has been wrongfully executed recently."

      The statement is meaningless.

      Lack of knowledge of error says nothing about lack of error -- it just means we don't know we're screwing up. More precisely, we do know we're screwing up... we just don't know which verdicts are wrong. Perhaps new technologies will edge us a little closer, but it's likely there will always be room for mistakes.

      FWIW, I'm not particularly bothered by the death penalty. I think there are people who are beyond any hope of rehabilitation, who should never be allowed to be free, and I don't see the point in paying to keep them locked up for decades, so we might as well kill them. But the existence of errors in the process is inevitable, and the fact that there is no possibility of recourse after execution is a valid point, as is the fact that, at least the way we do it, it's arguably cheaper to lock them up until they die of natural causes than it is to kill them.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    18. Re:No Death Penalty by BLKMGK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      DNA isn't the be all end all for a conviction either. It's quite possible to find DNA at a crime scene and NOT have it belong to a killer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn

      We have to be very careful about being lazy when a new tool is introduced as it very well may NOT prove what we think it does. Investigation still has to be done by investigators that have a clue. Sadly it looks like they used an amateur for this investigation.

      Frankly, the fact that they failed to recognize more than one browser was on this machine and in use is criminal in and of itself. Whoever did the forensic examination of this machine was an idiot and ought to be fired! they could easily have imaged the workstation, run the image, and explored it to figure out what was and wasn't in use. This could just as easily have been evidence to exonerate someone that was missed, this is disgusting!

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    19. Re:No Death Penalty by khallow · · Score: 1

      You can't return years for wrongful imprisonment either. Nor the pain of being punished for something you didn't do.

    20. Re:No Death Penalty by englishstudent · · Score: 3, Interesting

      and why is that exactly?

      --
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    21. Re:No Death Penalty by sco08y · · Score: 2

      Depends what state you live in. Lethal injection is very painful.

      Still quicker and less painful than 50 years in the pen living with society's worst.

    22. Re:No Death Penalty by spire3661 · · Score: 2

      'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.' - Marquis de Sade.

      --
      Good-bye
    23. Re:No Death Penalty by spire3661 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So the sanctity of life rests on COST??????? Fuck you.

      --
      Good-bye
    24. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But that would be taking the argument too far. The world isn't black and white. Death is the ultimate punishment. You can't make up for taking someone's life once they're already dead.

      Sure you can. Once I accidentally killed this hooker, so I made it up to her by making dinner, watching a movie on the couch, dancing with her and basically giving her a beautiful romantic evening. Strangely, she seemed a little indifferent to it all.

    25. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've always thought the most humane way to go about it would be to give the convicted person the choice. A judge would basically rule life imprisonment without chance of parole, and the convicted could decide if that meant life in prison or their own death.

      A lot of people would choose life in prison, especially those who declare their innocents all the way.

      Those who admit guilt however can choose to be locked in a cage until they die, or to be put to death and get it over with.

      Of course since our justice system is more bent towards revenge than justice, so this will be seen as offering an "easy way out" of the tortures of life in prison, and many would be against giving them that choice. As I said, I feel it's the most humane way, not necessarily the most satisfying form of torture and revenge way.

    26. Re:No Death Penalty by flimflammer · · Score: 2

      No, you're right. But things can be done to help, and they still have their life to live from that moment onward, of which they can work to piece their world back together again. Once you're dead, that's it.

    27. Re:No Death Penalty by Alomex · · Score: 1

      Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

      Frankly, I think it would be morally wrong if we had captured Hitler alive and we hadn't executed him.

    28. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 0, Troll

      So the sanctity of life rests on COST???????

      We're talking about people who've given up their right to life. Yeah, cost is all that's left. That plus the possibility that we might be wrong.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    29. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could have just said "No, I can't name a single person who has been wrongfully executed recently."

      Easier to whine about unfairness than to give a straight answer.

    30. Re:No Death Penalty by dbc · · Score: 1

      Well, except that we *don't* seem to be able to keep people locked up indefinitely. The mechanics of the parole system are broken. Personally, I agree that we should not use the death penalty. Killing makes us no better than the criminal. But until you convince me that the system *can* keep these same people locked up indefinitely, the we need the death penalty as a patch on beaurocratic incompentence. I'm pretty sure enough other people agree with me to keep the death penalty in place. The solution is simple -- demonstrate a system that *can* permanently separate the extremely dangerous from society. Then we can get rid of the death penalty.

    31. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Most European countries do not have the death penalty. I think we should look for the reasons why they don't and see if those reasons apply to the US.

    32. Re:No Death Penalty by Squiddie · · Score: 0

      We should do it the North Korean way. You won't feel a thing when that mortar hits you. No burial costs either.

    33. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that a link has been provided, a few extra seconds of googling has produced even MORE proof, and you are apparently incapable of 10 seconds of simple searching to discover this evidence yourself. Or maybe your search settings are configured to ignore facts you don't like from showing up. I have known (very conservative) people who do that.

    34. Re:No Death Penalty by Rhywden · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You could also make the argument that forcing him to watch his "1000 year dominion" crumble to dust in a matter of decades would also be plenty of punishment.

    35. Re:No Death Penalty by interkin3tic · · Score: 0

      Could you please point me to proof of a single documented case of one species naturally evolving into another one during the thousands of years of recorded history? Thanks!

      (Ugh... I feel sick saying that. And I guess I'm assuming AC is not a creationist. I suppose that might not be a safe assumption...)

    36. Re:No Death Penalty by Rhywden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right. Let's get rid of those "due process" shenanigans while we're at it. Death penalty is heavily biased anyway, so might as well admit to it and summarily execute people regardless of their actual guilt!

    37. Re:No Death Penalty by qbast · · Score: 1

      It always have been resting on cost - just how do you think healthcare system works?

    38. Re:No Death Penalty by capedgirardeau · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are plenty of states that have the sentence "life without parole" my state of Michigan being one of them.

      It works pretty well. There is no parole, no getting out, end of story.

      It is the automatic sentence required by law if one is convicted of pre meditated murder in Michigan, no exceptions.

      --
      Wax on, wax off baby!
    39. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you think life is inherently sacred? Over a hundred thousand people die every day... I seriously doubt you shed any tears over it.

    40. Re:No Death Penalty by dasunt · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

      I'm against it because it gives the state too much power.

      I will say it's odd how a lot of people who claim to be for more limited government tend to also be for giving government the ability to end a life.

    41. Re:No Death Penalty by Calydor · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why?

      Lock him up for life, no chance of parole, and have every last guard in the jail be Jewish. Not for them to take revenge, but simply so that every moment of his life behind bars would be at the whim of those he sought to wipe out. Poetic justice is the best kind.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    42. Re:No Death Penalty by dasunt · · Score: 4, Informative

      Could you please link to a single person who was exonerated after being executed in the U.S. in the last 20 years or so (when DNA evidence became popular)? Thanks!

      There's been no exonerations that I recall in the past 20 years. There has been a few executions where (IMO) there's a case for reasonable doubt.

      For example, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed for the deaths of his three children in a fire. The justice system claimed the fire was due to arson. Five years after his execution, a state-ordered investigation concluded that "a finding a arson could not be sustained".

      The trial was also notable for using Iron Maiden and Led Zepplin posters as evidence of Cameron's mental state.

      I'm not sure if he was innocent or guilty. He appears to have had quite a few run-ins with the law. But the interpretation of the evidence and trial appears deeply flawed, and I am not comfortable executing people based on such evidence.

      Maybe you are.

    43. Re:No Death Penalty by cdrguru · · Score: 1

      Wrong? According to whom?

      According to the Judeo-Christian ethics that most people in the West subscribe to, it could be considered wrong because we are depriving them of some valuable commodity - life. The problem with not having a death penalty is there are clearly some people that (a) their being alive constitutes a real threat to others around them, even in prison and (b) they do not consider their life to be a "valuable commodity" in any respect.

      Looking it at from a different perspective, by executing people we may be simply pressing a reset button and pushing them around a big circle so they get another chance to learn from their mistakes, a chance that continuing on the same course - their current life - does not allow them.

      There is also the idea that what we consider "life" and "conscientious" is a tiny portion of the existance of a soul. By executing someone we may be in fact freeing them from whatever chemical imbalances their brain had which made them into a murderer. Then they are free to go on in the universe without those chemical imbalances and learn to be better.

      Confining yourself to the Judeo-Christian model and believing that the current "life" is the only thing there is of value is far too limiting.

      I would say that in general there are crimes that demand a very high payment to society in return for committing. Let's put murder aside as there are indeed some justifications for such an act. How about the forcible rape of a child, one that is far too young to be able to enjoy the act simply because they are physically too small. Clearly an individual that has done this has taken something from both the child and society at large. How are they to repay society for what they have taken? I would say the only currency they have is their life and it is forfeit.

      There have been some cases where people have been improperly and unjustly convicted of crimes of far lesser severity than child rape and have been found to be innocent later. This is too bad and it clearly shows that society needs to do a better job. But to say that this means there should be no death penalty in many ways trivializes some crimes. My understanding is that most places without a death penalty also do not have the idea of incarcerating someone "forever" - they talk about life in prison but that really means something like 20 years or even less. There are some crimes that make an individual unsuited to ever return to society again and if society does not fear them sufficiently to make sure they never return then society is overdue for some real comeuppance.

    44. Re:No Death Penalty by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 1

      It also works to say that we shouldn't jail people, because we're not sure that we're jailing somebody who's guilty.

      My view is maximum punishment where warranted. Maximum punishment varies by person. Some people want death, so the punishment should be life.

      --
      Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
    45. Re:No Death Penalty by cdrguru · · Score: 0

      There is essentially no such thing as "indefinitely" when it comes to incarceration. It may mean that we are simply putting the execution into the hands of others, such as with Jeffery Dahlmer. Or, we face their eventually release as has nearly happened with Richard Speck and keeps coming up over and over with Charles Manson. Or, they might escape - escape from most prisons today is prevented not by bars and guards but by the unwillingness of prisoners to go to the effort. When someone is willing to go to the effort they are often successful.

      So don't believe that someone that has decided that other human lifes don't count as much as theirs does can be safely put away from society forever. They can't. And what exactly do we do with them then? Would you be comfortable with a new neighbor moving in that has a history of murdering people that were inconvenient to them?

      Today capital punishment isn't a deterrent because it is not swift and sure. Most crimes have appallingly low conviction rates. So a criminal can look at their friends and neighbors and see that maybe 20% of the time someone is caught, tried and convicted - and then serves a fraction of the sentance before being released. Most crimes aren't that complicated but still the police and prosecution seems to be able to screw things up. The complicated ones often are handled amazingly well but they are only a small fraction of cases.

      It is about time that we understand that when someone commits certain types of crimes they need to make some sort of reparation to society as a whole. And the only currency they have is their life.

    46. Re:No Death Penalty by cdrguru · · Score: 0

      Are you happy with the idea of the state outsourcing executions? Because in many cases that is exactly what is happening.

      I suggest you think long and hard about what happened to Jeffery Dahlmer and see if it would have been better for the state to have executed him rather than leaving it up to fellow inmates in prison.

      How about Richard Speck? He wasn't denied sex or drugs and managed quite well in prison. For a person with limited ambition this might be a really nice way to live with all your needs being taken care of by fearful inmates and the state.

      Wait until some inmate in Michigan is released incorrectly because of overcrowding as has happened in both Illinois and California. Or they escape.

    47. Re:No Death Penalty by dadelbunts · · Score: 2

      Ah yes, because many European countries do it it must be the correct course of action.

    48. Re:No Death Penalty by LulzAndOrder · · Score: 0

      actually, any type of "sanctity" rests on belief in a deity, so as an atheist, fuck yourself.

    49. Re:No Death Penalty by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 2

      I think there are people who are beyond any hope of rehabilitation, who should never be allowed to be free, and I don't see the point in paying to keep them locked up for decades, so we might as well kill them. But the existence of errors in the process is inevitable, and the fact that there is no possibility of recourse after execution is a valid point, as is the fact that, at least the way we do it, it's arguably cheaper to lock them up until they die of natural causes than it is to kill them.

      It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.

    50. Re:No Death Penalty by somersault · · Score: 1

      No, no, no, you're doing it wrong. You're meant to be telling us what is right and/or legal. It's the American way!

      --
      which is totally what she said
    51. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Its like a cremation and spreading the ashes all at once.

    52. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mentioned "we're the most powerful nation or earth". Are you Chinese?

    53. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure when there is a CCTV camera pointed at two people, one of them takes a gun out, and they shoot and kill the other person that we know who is guilty of the murder of the other person.

      With that said, rarely are cases that clear and to the point and there DOES exist some wiggle room that is exploited by the lawyers and the guilty parties which I think could be tightened up.

    54. Re:No Death Penalty by blade8086 · · Score: 0

      Quoth the AC

    55. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We should never punish anyone, because we're not really sure that we're killing Bpunishing who's guilty.

      FTFY.

      Your logic fails, doesn't it?

      Because when you send someone to prison, you can never give that person back the time they spent there.

      To follow your logic, that means no one could ever be punished for any crime - because there's always the possibility of a mistake.

    56. Re:No Death Penalty by blade8086 · · Score: 0

      Clearly you are a softie on BadGuys(tm)!
      I should shoot you with my gun!

      only, my head is too buried in the sand to aim properly.

      HALP!

    57. Re:No Death Penalty by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 0

      Frankly, I think it would be morally wrong if we had captured Hitler alive and we hadn't executed him.

      Frankly, I think that would only serve to fuel the general blood-thirstiness that ought to be suppressed in any population.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    58. Re:No Death Penalty by blade8086 · · Score: 1

      Irrespective of your link, Hitler still didn't *like* jews, and wanted to 'be rid' of them somehow.
      So, whether he himself initiated the holocaust itself or not, this doesn't really change the argument that
      being held in a jewish jail would be punishment, and a form of 'poetic justice'.

    59. Re:No Death Penalty by gweihir · · Score: 0

      I have no problem with the death penalty under one condition: If the verdict turns out to be wrong, all responsible go to death row for (attempted) murder. That should cut down on the false verdicts in no time.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    60. Re:No Death Penalty by blade8086 · · Score: 0

      > I will say it's odd how a lot of people who claim to be for more limited government tend to also be for giving government the ability to end a life.

      right right.
      this is because they are 'hypocrites'.

      Many of these also despise welfare, but yet somehow have no problem with corporate welfare in the form of useless R&D programs, etc. Or are opposed to 'pork barrel' spending, unless of course it benefits their state, county, etc.

    61. Re:No Death Penalty by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Looking it at from a different perspective, by executing people we may be simply pressing a reset button and pushing them around a big circle so they get another chance to learn from their mistakes, a chance that continuing on the same course - their current life - does not allow them.

      You're using imaginary thinking to justify killing people? #nohopeforhumanity

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    62. Re:No Death Penalty by kqs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That plus the possibility that we might be wrong.

      And trials are 100% correct, except for the we're wrong.

      If the number of death penalty cases which have been overturned (long after conviction) doesn't bother you, then you have an incredible trust of the government. The problem isn't the number overturned, it's the number which should have been overturned. If we're so often wrong at the initial trial, we're also wrong later.

    63. Re:No Death Penalty by evil_aaronm · · Score: 2

      I have to doubt this. I was present at the euthanasia of two of my family pets - I was holding them when the vet gave them the injection - and they were gone about as quick as they felt the injection. If lethal injection is painful, aside from the insertion of the IV, then they're doing it wrong.

    64. Re:No Death Penalty by dcherryholmes · · Score: 2

      No, but as mature western democracies very similar to our own, I would not just haughtily dismiss out of hand the possibility they may have gotten something right, or better.

    65. Re:No Death Penalty by Jiro · · Score: 1

      If someone spends 30 years in prison under a life sentence, dies, and is found innocent afterwards (or is just never found innocent at all), there is absolutely nothing we can do to help.

      Of course, there's a chance of them being found innocent before they die, but a chance, by definition, isn't going to apply to everyone. There will still be some innocent people who die in prison and for whom we can do nothing. There will be fewer of them, but they will still exist, and if you're bothered by the fact that they exist at all, the chance shouldn't matter unless the chance is certainty.

    66. Re:No Death Penalty by Jiro · · Score: 1

      If someone gets put in jail and turns out to be innocent, do you suggest that all responsible get put in jail for kidnapping and false imprisonment? If someone gets convicted of a crime, this is reported in the newspapers, and they are found innocent, do you want to put all responsible in jail for committing slander and libel? If they're fined for a crime, should we put the judge in jail for theft (stealing the amount of the fine)?

    67. Re:No Death Penalty by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      A judge would basically rule life imprisonment without chance of parole, and the convicted could decide if that meant life in prison or their own death.

      If I was innocent, convicted wrongly, and I had the choice of a concrete box for the rest of my life or death, I'd probably choose death.

    68. Re:No Death Penalty by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 0

      and why is that exactly?

      Because it's not civilized.

    69. Re:No Death Penalty by Jiro · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Japan has the death penalty.

      Now, you can make arguments about how barbaric Japanese culture is after the war, yadda yadda, but I have a simple theory for this: if you're a European activist group, it's easy to extend your activism efforts to another country that is right next to you where it's easy to contact sympathizers and where you probably know someone who speaks the right language. It's hard to do so when the country is on the other side of the world and speaks a completely unrelated language.

      In other words, you are implying each country in Europe just independently decided by themselves to not have capital punishment, so that you can imply it's a lot of decisions versus just one on the side of the US, and that's not true. It's more like one decision by European lobbyists versus the US.

    70. Re:No Death Penalty by Jiro · · Score: 1

      That argument would apply to prison as well. "If you cannot understand that kidnapping is wrong no matter who does it...." It would even apply to fines ("If you cannot understand that robbery is wrong....")

    71. Re:No Death Penalty by GofG · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Penn and Teller: Bullshit! episode on the death penalty showed quite a lot of evidence that the concoction of chemicals used to euthanize pets is significantly less painful than the one used to execute death row inmates. I don't know if it's still true, or if P&T made it up for TV, but I remember being quite impressed with the evidence they had.

      --
      GFA/M/S d-- s: a--- C++++ UBL++$ P+ L+++ !E- W++ N+ !o K- w--- !O !M !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP+ t+++ 5- X+ R tv@ b++ DI++++ D+ G
    72. Re:No Death Penalty by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 1

      The thing is, whoever is giving the lethal injection can very easily decide on the spur of the moment to "do it wrong."

      If I were going to be executed and were given a choice of method, I'd never choose lethal injection, just for that reason.

    73. Re:No Death Penalty by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

      But that isn't how the lethal injection works for humans. It's a much lengthier process involving three seperate drugs. It's supposed to be painless, but there's a lot of debate about that - certainly the final drug, potassium chloride, hurts like hell, but by that point the prisoner is supposed to be unconscious. The problem is that the first drug used is the anasthetic, and the second a paralytic: If the anasthetic doesn't work (equipment fault, unusually resistant prisoner, sheer bad luck) then it'd go unnoticed, as the paralysed prisoner would have no means to express the pain. And there would be pain: The reason for that paralytic is that without it, even an unconscious and heavily sedated prisoner would be writheing around just from reflexive responses to pain, much to the distress of the witnesses.

      You may wonder why the method you saw on the pets isn't used on humans. That's because it's too unreliable. There's a chance the 'dead' prisoner won't be quite dead. There are completly reliable, painless methods - aspixiation with nitrogen is easy - but there face political opposition. The very fact that they are painless ensures they are resisted by the hardcore pro-death-penalty crowd, who feel that a painless death (Or even worse, aspixiation euphoria) does not serve justice properly.

    74. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looking it at from a different perspective, by executing people we may be simply pressing a reset button and pushing them around a big circle so they get another chance to learn from their mistakes, a chance that continuing on the same course - their current life - does not allow them.

      Oh... or by executing people we could be releasing their spirits to prey on innocent dead people! Or anything else we just make up.

    75. Re:No Death Penalty by jamesh · · Score: 1

      No, we shouldn't kill people because we're perfectly capable of keeping them locked up indefinitely. If we were some tinpot nation with no means to do so then execution or outsourcing the incarceration would be more of a necessity, but we're not, we're the most powerful nation on earth, so there's no need. I personally don't believe in capital punishment as a deterrent (it's not why I choose not to kill people at least) and so that really only leaves revenge. Maybe I'd think about it differently if someone killed my kids, but it does not seem like a good enough reason to keep execution on the books.

      Maybe. The thing that bugs me is that a few of the mass murderers who have been locked up in the last few decades are still making the news. Anders Breivik is complaining how his cell isn't warm enough and he doesn't have enough time for his morning shave (which makes him seem more like a whiny little child than a cult leader, but I digress), and I seem to remember Martin Bryant back in the news sometime recently although I can't remember what for and I can't find anything after a quick google search... Charles Manson is still trying to get parole - I guess he probably never will but it's still a legal possibility.

      The thought of the person who killed their family or friends sitting in relative comfort in jail may not sit well with the survivors.

    76. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since when? Belief that something is or should be sacred, inviolable, doesn't require a deity at all.

    77. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a bit extreme a solution. You must not like the death penalty in the first place.

      The engineer's solution is to raise the standard of evidence required for the death penalty so such an error is impossible.

      I would have no objection to requiring eyewitness or camera witness to key aspects of the crime for the death penalty (e.g. caught in the act of kidnapping is fine, person last seen alive with is not).

    78. Re:No Death Penalty by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2

      Lots of civilizations do it. Thus, it must be civilized.

    79. Re:No Death Penalty by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 0

      Lots of civilizations do it. Thus, it must be civilized

      Sorry, didn't realize English wasn't your first language. Let me help you out -

      http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/civilized

      civilized
      civ-i-lized

      [siv-uh-lahyzd]

      adjective

      1. having an advanced or humane culture, society, etc.
      2. polite; well-bred; refined.
      3. of or pertaining to civilized people.

    80. Re:No Death Penalty by Hentes · · Score: 2

      Most European countries don't have a death penalty because the EU explicitly forbids it. Whithout that, the legislation may be more diverse.

    81. Re:No Death Penalty by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2

      Yes? There is absolutely nothing in your definition that precludes the rule of law. And the rule of law is, and can only be, enforced through violence. To cause death is an extreme form of violence, but not the most extreme. To jail a person for their entire life is more extreme.

      Oh, yes, we can let them go if we find we were wrong. Just like the way we've recently freed a man who spent his entire adult life in jail and is now ready for the senior home. That's more humane than killing him?

    82. Re:No Death Penalty by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      To cause death is an extreme form of violence, but not the most extreme. To jail a person for their entire life is more extreme.

      Ask an innocent person on death row which one they'd prefer.

    83. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're right, we should just kill them and make sure we don't get a chance to find them innocent.

      Your logic is awesome.

    84. Re:No Death Penalty by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2

      Ask an innocent person on death row which one they'd prefer.

      I assure you, there are lots of people in prison, and people who have incurable illness, etc., who would take a dignified and painless death over the painful and pointless life they've been forced into. It is unfortunate that our society can not see fit to offer them one.

    85. Re:No Death Penalty by muuh-gnu · · Score: 1

      > We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.

      And why should we execute somebody who we are perfectly sure _is_ guilty? Why cant they, you know, jsut go to prison like everybody else? Why do we have to intentionally _kill them_? Just because a lot of crazy people out there want to see their blood? This is the sick part, not the fact that statistically we also execute not guilty ones.

    86. Re:No Death Penalty by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We're talking about people who've given up their right to life.

      Some of us believe that no one ever gives up that right. Governments should never, ever, be given the authority to kill their citizens.

    87. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Prison exists to promote reform in a person, not to punish them - the latter idea being a complete waste of resources. If you encounter a prisoner who is beyond hope of reform - and will always be a danger to society - it becomes complicated to argue that preserving their existence is useful.

      No doubt the bar is too low in the American system, but perhaps it's too high in others. This guy, for example, made quite the splash in Australian news, and is a complete waste of resources to preserve - his sentence is over 1000 years without parole - but the lack of a death penalty for extreme cases in Australia ensures resources will be spent on keeping him alive and comfortable for many years to come.

      It's easier - and certainly safer - to not have such laws, and implementing them has become quite a slippery slope, but it's not necessarily true that the idea is completely flawed - just its implementations. One may wonder, then, if any implementation could ever serve 'the greater good.'

    88. Re:No Death Penalty by geoskd · · Score: 2

      It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.

      It's only cheaper because the death penalty comes with automatic and mandatory appeals, appeals which cost a damn fortune, as the state ends up footing the bill for both sides of the argument. If all life sentences came with automatic appeals of the same scope and nature as the death penalty, then it would be cheaper to execute. The only reason the process is so long, complicated and expensive is that we have chosen to make it that way. Our justice system is badly flawed. There are two reasons for having punishment for crimes. The first is to prevent a convict from committing further crimes by physically preventing them access (incarceration). The second is to prevent future criminals by deterrent. The latter is a complete joke, as deterrents have fundamental requirements to be successful which include: They must be swift, sure and severe. This is a natural extensions of deterrence. The heaviest emphasis must be placed on sureness, and the least emphasis is placed on severity. In fact in many cases, the severity of the punishment has little effect on recidivism or crime rate in general. Our legal system fails because punishment is far from sure. Our legal tenet of letting 10 guilty men go free so as to avoid one innocent man being wrongly convicted is deeply flawed. The problem is one of social good. How much harm does one innocent man being punished cause, vs how much harm does not catching and punishing all criminals cause. Much of our crime problem has to do with criminals not believing they will be caught. Every year, many people are murdered, and property crimes are out of control. In 2010 alone there were more than 9 million property crimes in the U.S. That's one crime for every 35 people. The reality is that our laws are not a deterrent, as they are supposed to be. Its time to give up the ghost and work on something better. Getting tough on crime doesn't have to mean longer sentences, and more severe punishment, it can simply mean taking the time and effort to catch and punish the criminals we allow to get away with the crime every day. Instead of having their department parking their patrol cars in hidey holes and trying to catch people who are speeding, the police departments of our country should be out investigating and solving real property crimes. Instead of making recreational drug use illegal in an ill-advised and idiotic "war on drugs", the pointless drug laws need to be stripped off the books and replaced with laws like the drunk driving laws which are aimed at keeping the public safest without making criminals out of people who would otherwise be upstanding citizens. In short, its time to update our legal system to take advantage of the last 200 years of advances in psychology and criminology, and start addressing the problem instead of fighting the symptoms.

      -=Geoskd

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    89. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You just summed up everything that is wrong with the (in)justice system in your last paragraph. The conservatives in our society believe that the purpose of a justice system is to extract revenge, not punnishment and certainly not, in the name of all that's holy, rehabilitation for lesser crimes. Forgiveness, despite the tennets of their religion, is simply not their policy, no matter what the crime. Unless, of course, it is committed by one of their leaders.

      Funny thing, and I suppose it's just a coincidence, that this mentatlity just happens to feed into the profit motivations of the for-profit prison industry, law enforcement and their hunger for expansion of power, and of course the need for more and more criminal judges, judicial programs and the hoardes of incompetent administrators those entail. I must simply be imagining that the interests of profit and religious conservatives just happen to coincide once again. Funny how that happens. Even when, for lesser crimes and certain kinds of people, rehabilitation and reintroduction to society has proven effective and much, much cheaper than other alternatives, the "small government" conservatives don't want to hear it.

    90. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 1

      Good for you. I disagree.

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      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    91. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 0

      Read my other post a few levels up in the thread.

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    92. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The death penalty also provides justice. It seems strange to me that people value human life so little that a murderer would not be put to death as a just punishment for his actions.

    93. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      aspixiation euphoria does not serve justice properly.

      No one wants to see a convicted murderer die with a woody and an O-face.

    94. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      killing a known murdering predator stops his killing rampage. oth, millions of civilian deaths, many excrutiatingly brutal - are a-ok during war since its out of sight out of mind & the guys & girls on tv news say they hate us for our freedom.

    95. Re:No Death Penalty by satcomjimmy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The state should be no more than a representative of the population, if the people in that state believe it is better to put down a rabid dog, or a serial rapist or a murdering mother, than it is not the state asserting power. It is the people stating that they believe there are things and people that are not capable of rehabilitation and not worth keeping alive indefinitely. If you actively catch someone in the act of murder and can justify killing them to save a life, then why is it so reprehensible for a jury to later point out that the same murderer has no right to further life?

    96. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Civilized? It's not civilized to put animals in cages and kill them order to eat them.

      We are animals, not "civilized" people. Laws should reflect who we are, not who we like to pretend to be.

    97. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We *could* have kept him alive long enough to watch all those Downfall videos on YouTube. Talk about punishment!

    98. Re:No Death Penalty by KevReedUK · · Score: 1

      With that said, rarely are cases that clear and to the point and there DOES exist some wiggle room that is exploited by the lawyers and the guilty parties which I think could be tightened up.

      (Emphasis mine)

      So you're saying that defendants, regardless of actual guilt, should not be allowed to present a full and robust defence? If that is the case, what's the point of a having any justice system, just dole out summary executions at point of arrest?

      I imagine you'd be somewhat surprised at how many people are glad we don't live in your world?!?

      --
      Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
    99. Re:No Death Penalty by KevReedUK · · Score: 1

      We should never punish anyone, because we're not really sure that we're killing Bpunishing who's guilty.

      FTFY.

      Your logic fails, doesn't it?

      Because when you send someone to prison, you can never give that person back the time they spent there.

      To follow your logic, that means no one could ever be punished for any crime - because there's always the possibility of a mistake.

      Except, as has been pointed out several times already, you can compensate a released inmate who has been exonerated. How, exactly, do you propose to compensate a corpse (and the family doesn't count!)?

      --
      Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
    100. Re:No Death Penalty by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 1

      Someone doesn't realize that some things like that can be there by other means. For instance, lots of people are convicted over just 1 or 2 strands of hair found on the victim's clothing. Did you know that if you happened to use a public laundry mat and used the same washer or dryer before the person that was killed used it, you may very well have some of your hair on their cloths?

      --
      We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
    101. Re:No Death Penalty by nbauman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "the system is deeply flawed, and the emergence of DNA evidence just exposed some of those flaws." For most criminal cases DNA evidence plays no role, and there is no reason to believe those people are less likely to be innocent.

      You are correct.

      I heard a panel where Barry C. Scheck and some others from the Innocence Project spoke.

      Scheck said that the important lesson of DNA testing was not that a few specific people were innocent, but that it demonstrates the error rate of the criminal justice system. The DNA cases are a sampling.

      People were falsely convicted, most often by eyewitness testimony and confessions, and the Innocence Project could prove that they were innocent because they were fortunate enough to be involved in crimes that involved DNA evidence.

      This demonstrates how unreliable eyewitness testimony and confessions are.

      It also demonstrates that other people must have been convicted falsely by eyewitness testimony and confessions, but have no DNA evidence to exonerate them.

      (This was actually demonstrated before DNA testing. Psychologists tested the accuracy of eyewitness testimony decades ago. People have been convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony in circumstances where the eyewitness couldn't possibly have recognized their face -- like being on the other side of the street, watching a crime being committed in dim light. Defense lawyers aren't allowed to have experts testify on the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony.)

      Significantly, it also demonstrates how flawed the criminal justice system is.

      Some of these people were on death row. The advocates of the death penalty will often claim that we're so thorough and careful to protect the rights of defendants that it's impossible for an innocent person to be convicted. (Supreme Court Justice Scalia seems to have made that argument.) The sampling of cases that can be confirmed with DNA evidence demonstrates that they're wrong.

      One good story about eyewitness testimony -- a young man was on trial for rape in New England. His defense lawyer was sitting in court, with a young man in a plaid shirt sitting next to him. He cross-examined the victim, asked her to describe the man who raped her, and then pulled the prosecutor's favorite line -- "Do you see that man in this court?" She pointed to the young man who had been sitting next to him. The lawyer asked the young man to identify himself. It wasn't the defendant. The lawyer had brought a decoy. The case collapsed, and his defendant was acquitted. But the judge sanctioned the lawyer. Apparently, they don't sanction the prosecution for bringing an witness who's so unreliable that she will testify that the wrong person did it. But they do sanction a defense lawyer who demonstrates how unreliable the witness is.

    102. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From Wikipedia: On returning to the house after the fire in the company of fireman Ron Franks, Willingham said that he had been over earlier and poured flammable British Sterling cologne in the hallway from the bathroom to the bedroom in which the twins had died, because they had loved its smell when they were alive.[9]

      I would have found him guilty as well.

    103. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or so you think at the moment, about this theoretical situation. If the situation were real, you might think differently. You might, for example, hold out for the possibility of being able to prove your innocences some time into the future.

    104. Re:No Death Penalty by Tagged_84 · · Score: 2

      And this is why I get so upset when religious idiots question where non-believers get their morals if not from a sky fairy.

    105. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Laws should reflect what we aspire to be.

    106. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Depends what state you live in. Lethal injection is very painful.

      Still quicker and less painful than 50 years in the pen living with society's worst.

      Who is the society's worst? The ones that sent you to a shit-hole or the other human beings that was sent to the shit-hole with you? The worst of society are the moral faggots that will torture peoples for 'justice'. Only dangerous person should be jailed and death should be provided to whoever demanded it; be it a life time dangerous prisoner or a suffering terminal cancer patient.

    107. Re:No Death Penalty by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 2

      There are two reasons for having punishment for crimes. The first is to prevent a convict from committing further crimes by physically preventing them access (incarceration). The second is to prevent future criminals by deterrent. The latter is a complete joke, as deterrents have fundamental requirements to be successful which include: They must be swift, sure and severe. This is a natural extensions of deterrence. The heaviest emphasis must be placed on sureness, and the least emphasis is placed on severity. In fact in many cases, the severity of the punishment has little effect on recidivism or crime rate in general. Our legal system fails because punishment is far from sure. Our legal tenet of letting 10 guilty men go free so as to avoid one innocent man being wrongly convicted is deeply flawed. The problem is one of social good. How much harm does one innocent man being punished cause, vs how much harm does not catching and punishing all criminals cause. Much of our crime problem has to do with criminals not believing they will be caught. Every year, many people are murdered, and property crimes [fbi.gov] are out of control. In 2010 alone there were more than 9 million property crimes in the U.S. That's one crime for every 35 people

      I'm going to have to scream bullshit, though that's a mild exaggeration. You've missed reality by a wide margin though. First, crime is not out of control-- crime is at historic lows. The world is safer now than it has been in decades, for both violent and property crimes. There are not just fewer crimes, but there are also far more people in jail than ever before, both in absolute and per capita terms. In other words, you are less likely to be the victim of a crime and you are more likely to be convicted for committing a crime, than at any time in the last few decades.

      Second, there are a long list of other reasons to have punishments for crimes. You're guilty of espousing a false dichotomy so absurd it barely warrants rebuttal. Deterrent, restraint, rehabilitation, quarantine, retribution, fairness, etc. (some of these overlap partially with others, but they are more or less distinct justifications).

    108. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Life imprisonment serves the 'greater good' of saving us from barbarism.

    109. Re:No Death Penalty by Johann+Lau · · Score: 3, Informative

      Legislation IS diverse, you're just making stuff up about it instead of looking at it.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_capital_punishment_by_country#Europe

      Belarus is the last remaining country in Europe to practice the death penalty.

      Last execution in the UK was in 1964. The last execution on British Overseas Territory occurred in Bermuda in 1977. Abolished for murder in 1969 in Great Britain and 1973 in Northern Ireland. Abolished for all remaining offences (high treason, piracy with violence and offences under military jurisdiction) in UK in 1998.

      France: The death penalty was initially abolished by the Directory in 1795 but re-introduced by Napoleon in 1810. It was re-abolished in law in 1981 and by Constitution in 2007.

      Spain: Abolished in 1978 by constitution except for military laws during wartime. Abolished from the military penal code in 1995.

      Prohibited in West Germany by the Basic Law since 1949. US military authorities carried out an execution on West German territory in 1956. The now defunct GDR abolished the death penalty in 1987.

      Italy On 30 November 1786 the Duchy of Tuscany (then independent, now a part of Italy) became the first state in the modern era to completely abolish the death penalty. The short lived Roman Republic of Feb-July 1849 abolished the death penalty before being overthrown by French troops. When the Kingdom of Italy was formed in 1860 all the constituent states except Tuscany allowed capital punishment until it was abolished from the civil code in 1889 â" although it was maintained under military and colonial law. In 1926 Mussolini reintroduced the death penalty into civil Italian law. It was re-abolished from the civil code except in time of war in 1948 (by the Constitution of the Italian Republic). Capital punishment was finally completely abolished by removing it from the military penal code in 1994. Constitution amended in 2007 to make reintroduction unconstitutional without a further constitutional amendment.

      And last, but surely not least:

      San Marino: Last Execution: 1468. Capital Punishment was abolished for civil crimes in 1848. The Death penalty was completely abolished for all crimes in 1865.

      "the EU" - LOL! Europe motherfucker, do you speak it?

    110. Re:No Death Penalty by Johann+Lau · · Score: 1

      Who needs activism or lobbyists, when you can have hot brain-on-brain action? European countries always warred with each other, but also peacefully fertilized one another. Giving people you consider useful green cards isn't the same, and neither is sitting on an island with an actually serious concept of "non-Japanese". Sorry, but Europe isn't holding her breath. Cope with it.

    111. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In this case the prosecutors and justice system were incompetent to prove this person was the killer.

      May i ask who you are to judge? For all you know, and considering your justice system, they competently ruled him innocent.

      In other cases they're incompetent to tell that the prosecutors and justice system have failed to prove the person was the killer.

      An in some cases, they were competent to turn an innocent person into a guilty person, and vice versa. That is what justice is all about -- and the reason you occasionally need an attorney, not to mention a non-corrupt police system (which, btw, you haven't if the various 3-letter acronyme agencies you have are anything to go by).

    112. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and why is that exactly?

      Because there are much better things to do. Take a Islamic fundamentalist for instance. He'd rather die than be taken up the ass by an inmate in a shower. Personally, I'd rather know he's getting getting "killed" by a thousasand sodomites.

    113. Re:No Death Penalty by dtmancom · · Score: 2

      If you learned one thing from the study of human history, it is that human life is extremely cheap.

    114. Re:No Death Penalty by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      I still wonder who the heck came up with that particular idea for lethal injection, and how this is "better" than either a firing squad or sufficient depressants / tranquilizers to stop the heart.

      But no, an expensive cocktail of 3 drugs which can go wrong in all sorts of ways is clearly better.

    115. Re:No Death Penalty by GumphMaster · · Score: 1

      Regardless of which side of the death penalty argument you fall on there is something that we can all agree on... If you haven't already watched this David R. Dow: Lessons from death row inmates do yourself a 20 minute favour.

      --
      Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
    116. Re:No Death Penalty by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Fitting the punishment to the crime, for a crime of orchestrating the murder of millions, seems to require at the least depriving him of his life.

    117. Re:No Death Penalty by LordLimecat · · Score: 2

      Whether or not we can keep them locked up indefinately doesnt address whether it is just or not, and as for the notion of deterrent, I would just offer up these thoughts:

      According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal......
      My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

      The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert.

      But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust.....There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

      --CS Lewis, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

    118. Re:No Death Penalty by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      It's not arguably cheaper, it's demonstratively and definitively cheaper by leaps and bounds.

      You're not counting legal administrative fees and the shit-piles of money the lawers make. I can guarantee you that a single 45 round, time it takes to execute, and burial ceremony would be far far far and away cheaper.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    119. Re:No Death Penalty by BrianH · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've always thought that this was the simplest solution to it. Keep the death penalty, but remove the power of the judiciary to apply it. A judge can sentence a killer to life in prison, but the killer has the power to decide how long that will be. They can spend the rest of their lives in a cage, or they can request execution if they want the easy way out. If you want to remove the possibility of a decision made under duress, or want to enforce a mandatory minimum punishment, just stipulate that they can't request it for 10 years or so.

      --

      There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
    120. Re:No Death Penalty by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 1

      Bullet to the head. Yeah it's ugly and barbaric and messy, but it is also reliable, fast, and cheap, and you can always throw in an extra couple of bullets to make sure the job is done.

      I don't support the death penalty, mainly because of the high rates of false positives, but also because I don't really see it as "punishment". Life in prison is a punishment. But if we are going to execute prisoners, why should we pretend to be humane about how we do it?

    121. Re:No Death Penalty by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 1

      Here is Wikipedia's list of people exonerated from death row. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates#United_States
      This is the National Registry of Exonerations http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx

      No matter what the crime or conviction, if new exonerating evidence comes to light, a person's conviction can be overturned. If that person has been convicted to life without parole they at least are alive and can be released. Execution, obviously, can not be overturned.

    122. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then it looks like you've given up your right to life, you piece of shit.

    123. Re:No Death Penalty by cheekyjohnson · · Score: 1

      No, but I think it's pretty silly to reject god based on a lack of evidence but then turn around and believe in magical rights fairies/magical moral fairies/whatever their explanation is. Opinions are fine, but it's the absolutes that I don't understand.

      --
      Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
    124. Re:No Death Penalty by evil_aaronm · · Score: 1

      As the post to which you're replying points out, it's evidently not supposed to be "humane"; just not grotesque. We want to know the criminal suffered - the potassium chloride - but we don't want to see them flopping like a fish. Let them die painfully, yet gracefully.

      Anyone else find that perverted?

    125. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The state should be no more than a representative of the population

      I disagree. There are certain things that I don't believe the state should be able to do under any circumstances; one of those things is violating the constitution. Well, you said the "state," but my point is that mob rule is a terrible idea in most cases.

      then why is it so reprehensible for a jury to later point out that the same murderer has no right to further life?

      Because self-defense is no longer necessary. People who hate freedom don't understand why the death penalty is evil.

    126. Re:No Death Penalty by cheekyjohnson · · Score: 1

      It seems strange to me that people value human life so little

      You're talking about the ones who don't want anyone murdered? Really?

      that a murderer would not be put to death as a just punishment for his actions.

      The people who were murdered will not miraculously come back to love. Revenge will not magically cure everyone involved. There are innocent people who were executed; if we would have kept them in prison, at least they'd still be alive.

      --
      Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
    127. Re:No Death Penalty by gweihir · · Score: 1

      If somebody intentionally put them there, e.g. by ignoring, withholding or falsifying evidence, lying, jury tampering, etc. sure. Although it is imprisonment only, not kidnapping. Same for the other examples. Although the newspaper is not responsible, unless they falsified evidence or the like.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    128. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your plan has absolutely zero flaws and could never be used to kill an innocent. Oh, wait... you bloodthirsty idiots have already done that multiple times. Well done!

    129. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Locking someone up forever is also revenge. What the most powerful nation on earth should be able to do is have a prison system which properly rehabilitates criminals into useful members of society. Once they are rehabilitated and are no longer a threat then to keep them incarcerated is only an exercise in revenge.

    130. Re:No Death Penalty by aevan · · Score: 1

      Not the AC but I'll echo the sentiment to a degree, at least the later half.

      A stranger had a heart-attack by my work, and people were all upset-how tragic, how horrid, let's spend the day solemn and despaired. They were further upset that that I just continued on ignoring it (911 was informed, paramedics on site were in attendance).
      "How can you be cheerful, a man is dying!"
      "So are a few hundred others this moment, are you upset for them as well or only if they do it in your eyesight?"
      They get especially annoyed if you then tap out seconds with 'One death, two deaths, one death, two deaths"

      Not saying to go out of your way to disrespect a death, but to make a production over a particular stranger just because you were more aware of it seems hypocritical, or at least self-centered. Maybe even grandstanding? I'd been understanding they were related or knew them but.. meh.

    131. Re:No Death Penalty by aevan · · Score: 1

      Provided you offer safe guards against pressuring (say, transfer to a prison in another state or such with interviews by third party to clearly state there is no duress) go for it. Though would also have to have something for those that would keep changing their minds just to screw with the system.

    132. Re:No Death Penalty by aevan · · Score: 1

      It doesn't serve 'justice'..'justice' would be exacting exactly the pain, suffering and torment their victim did.

      It would also be rather impossible to determine, hard to carry out, be damaging to the people carrying it out (even if they did rationalise it in their heads), and in the end serve no real gain.

      If there were a magic button that determined guilt, severity and carried out the 'perfect punishment' I'd be all over it. As it stands I'll be just as happy with a rabid animal being put down quick. Just be sure the animal was rabid, oh, and the right one too. Oops, sounds like communism now; nice theory, practical isn't panning out so well (cost, outcry, false positive, false negatives... ).

    133. Re:No Death Penalty by aevan · · Score: 1

      Why are there people who would rather die than go to jail?

    134. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We shouldn't execute people, because we're not really sure that we're killing someone who's guilty.

      Maybe we shouldn't execute people because it's wrong.

      You might feel that it is "wrong", however many of us do not.
      The only reason I'm opposed to the death penalty is because the State isn't always right and juries sometimes hand a guilty verdict to an innocent person.

    135. Re:No Death Penalty by aevan · · Score: 1

      I'm not really sure what compensation would satisfy me were I locked up for 30 years and emerged a senior citizen in a now-alien world. Hookers, viagra and a mountain of cocaine in a penthouse to spend my twilight few years? The execution of anyone found to have perjured in my case?

      Sure if the evidence is early and you're freed in the first few years I can see compensation being reasonable.. but isn't that what all the lengthy appeals are all about? Execution takes someone's life, but life behind bars has pretty much done the same thing.

    136. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People spend a lot of time trying to rationalize his actions, when it's more likely he was simply a sociopath without a conscience. I really don't think he hated jews more than anyone else, or that he loved Aryans more than others. I think he targeted the groups he did because there were pre-existing cultural prejudices and thus they were perfect scapegoats.
      Besides, he'd been getting daily IV injections of Meth for so long the guy's brain was most likely perma-fried by the time the Allies got to Berlin. I doubt he'd have really known what was happening to him in jail even if he'd lived long enough to get tossed in the slammer.

      And just FYI, what you're advocating IS revenge. Sticking someone in jail serves one of three purposes- Rehabilitation, Punishment, or the permanent removal of that person from society. A life sentence obviously is not for the purposes of Rehabilitation, so that leaves the motivating factor as Punishment (revenge) or removal from society. The only non-emotional reason for giving someone life instead of just flat out killing them, is so that you can (partially) undo your mistake if you find out the person didn't really commit the crime.

    137. Re:No Death Penalty by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Reliability. Fireing squads miss. They are also rather messy. Not sure what is wrong with a single massive overdose, though. I'm sure the idea was considered, so there must be some reason it was rejected.

      Personally, if the condemned is free from disease, I'd want to at least put the organs to use. The problem there is that almost all doctors in the US are prohibited by oath and professional association membership rules from involvement in executions, and you'd need a doctor to perform a transplant. Plus the difficulty in getting a condemned criminal securely and without public protest into a hospital. The lethal injection process is administered by medical technicians: You don't need three years of med-school to learn how to put an IV in.

    138. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you put a hashtag in a /. comment.

      #twitterisforfaggots

    139. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a pair of mr. Awlaki who would like a word with you.

    140. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is not necessarily incompetence. Sometimes, there are impossible cases because this is reality, not murder mystery film where everything is solvable.

    141. Re:No Death Penalty by Solandri · · Score: 2

      I will say it's odd how a lot of people who claim to be for more limited government tend to also be for giving government the ability to end a life.

      People rarely decide things based on a single factor. When you characterize their decisions in terms of that single factor, you usually arrive at an incorrect assessment of their motivations. Unfortunately, it's become popular to pick the one factor which makes people with opposing viewpoints look the worst, and then boldly claim that that's their sole motivation. Great for getting cheap acknowledgement from those with similar viewpoints to yours, very bad for creating rational debate about an issue.

      For the death penalty, people who support it are generally strongly in favor of individual responsibility. You should reap the rewards of the good you do, bear the consequences of the bad. More succinctly, the priority they assign to punishment for bad deeds is higher than the priority they assign to preservation of life. Deliberately depriving another fellow human being of their life without justification is the ultimate bad, and so being deprived of yours seems an equitable punishment (this is simplified, as obviously degree of mitigating factors can play into it - e.g. abused wife kills husband).

      That the government is acting as the agent for the penalty is inconsequential. Most of them would probably vote to acquit a posse who lynched a murderer if they were sitting on the jury. Now, if these people believed government should be so limited it doesn't have the right to punish a convicted criminal, then you'd be correct that they're being hypocrites. But they universally believe government does have that right, so the only variable is degree of punishment. Limitations of government powers simply isn't a factor on this issue for them.

      And FWIW, I agree with the reasoning of those for the death penalty. But I oppose it because I don't think our legal systems are sophisticated enough to mete it out in a just manner. There are an uncomfortable number of people on death row whose cases have reasonable doubt in my mind. We have to keep in mind that people and our systems are not perfect, and will inevitably sometimes fail. If it fails and you jail someone, hopefully at some point the person can be released. But if it fails and you execute someone, you can't bring them back from the dead.

    142. Re:No Death Penalty by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      a public laundry mat

      They don't have those at the one near us. It just has some kind of plastic flooring.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    143. Re:No Death Penalty by englishstudent · · Score: 1

      How do you know he wouldn't be the one giving it?

      --
      We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
    144. Re:No Death Penalty by Cederic · · Score: 1

      I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago at the moment. His world did exist; it's pretty fucking horrific.

      The drawings of Danzig Baldaev are equally awful, if you're more into pictures than words.

    145. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There was also a documentary on Discovery or BBC where an English professor came up with the best way to kill a human humanly, when presenting this to the presidents aid in these matters he was scolded for even thinking that prisoners should be killed humanely. The argument was that it was not humane for the victims of crime, they want the accused to die horrible due to revenge.

    146. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot is not twatter #stopit #juststopit

    147. Re:No Death Penalty by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Oh, yes, we can let them go if we find we were wrong. Just like the way we've recently freed a man who spent his entire adult life in jail and is now ready for the senior home. That's more humane than killing him?

      Maybe you could ask him. Allow lifers to request suicide, see how many ask for it. I'm betting it wouldn't be many, judging by how most people on death row try to drag the process out for as long as possible and make every possible appeal.

      Besides which you are trying to use an extreme case as justification for the far more common scenario where a person wrongly spends a few years or a decade tops in jail before being cleared. Losing 10-15% of your life, for which you will at least be compensated, doesn't seem as bad as being killed.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    148. Re:No Death Penalty by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      If you actively catch someone in the act of murder and can justify killing them to save a life, then why is it so reprehensible for a jury to later point out that the same murderer has no right to further life?

      Because in the former case you no choice, in the latter you do.

      Your scenario is flawed anyway. In real life you don't get people who are just born evil, they are made. Their life up until that point, mental illness, things they had done to them and so forth lead them to commit their crimes. Writing them off as simply evil is shirking society's responsibility to understand and prevent those things happening, and to rehabilitate people when they do (preferably before they murder someone).

      Plus the right to life is considered a human right in the EU, and thus cannot be revoked.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    149. Re:No Death Penalty by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 0

      The thought of the person who killed their family or friends sitting in relative comfort in jail may not sit well with the survivors.

      Neither does the thought that their friend or family is dead sit well with them. Nothing will change or ameliorate that fact. That condition is immutable.

      Revenge does not improve the situation. Dead is dead. The only thing we should be considerned about is rehabilitation or protection. Once you have either of those two items covered, anything additional serves no useful public interest. If anything, a revenge-focused justice system exacerbates the culture of violence which breeds the exact type of behavior we want to see curtailed.

      That a small group of people may wish additional harm upon an individual may appeal to them, but it does not serve the public interest. The justice system is not intended to 'make whole' a victim of a crime.

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    150. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wait until some inmate in Michigan is released incorrectly because of overcrowding as has happened in both Illinois and California.

      Then perhaps we shouldn't be putting people in there for doing drugs and such?

      That said, murder is not the answer just because something might happen.

    151. Re:No Death Penalty by cheekyjohnson · · Score: 1

      Execution takes someone's life, but life behind bars has pretty much done the same thing.

      No, because they can still live afterwards. Of course, I can think of no one that wouldn't be resentful of the fact that they spent years in prison even though they were innocent. I know that people who want to live after getting out of prison do exist, and without the death penalty, they have that option even though they can't make up for the time lost in prison.

      --
      Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
    152. Re:No Death Penalty by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 1

      The exact some logic could be used to say we should not imprison people, or punish them in any way. "Because they might be innocent".

      For that to be an issue, you must first accept that the argument is valid and true for the Death Penalty. If you accept that premise to be valid and accept it, only then may you extend it to evaluate imprisonment as a punishment.

      So, if you wish to pursue this line of discussion, you must first accept that the original premise is valid, and therfore agree that the Death Penalty is unethical because innocent people killed.

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      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
    153. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the courts are looking into reasons why people wont serve on jury duty . i personally (as an AC) think its reasons like this that folks wont lend thier credibilty to an
      (searching for the correct word here , adjective maybe the only one that comes to mind that fits is ---->) fucked up court system

    154. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about the forcible rape of a child, one that is far too young to be able to enjoy the act simply because they are physically too small.

      Wow.

      Is that how we rate the severity of rape? By how much the victim might have been able to enjoy it? Rape is violence. That's like punishing murderers differently based on how painful the victim's death was. You are sick.

    155. Re:No Death Penalty by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Personally, if the condemned is free from disease, I'd want to at least put the organs to use.

      Condemned or not, its still a person, not a sack of organs, and mandatory organ donation blurs that distinction in a way thats kind of scary.

    156. Re:No Death Penalty by T+Murphy · · Score: 1

      I assume by "never ever" you mean "except for when there is an active shooter". But sure, pretend it's black and white.

    157. Re:No Death Penalty by Jiro · · Score: 1

      Maybe more awesome than you think.

      The point is that common anti-death-penalty arguments claim that it's wrong to have even one irreversible punishment. No allowances are made for frequency--if it happens at all, the death penalty is bad.

      If so, then you need to apply this to other irreversible punishments as well. It is contradictory to say "even one irreversible punishment is wrong", and "it's okay because they have a chance of being reversed". A chance of being reversed means that some won't be reversed, so there will be at least one.

    158. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So he's saying MOST countries in Europe don't have capital punishment, because the EU expressly forbids it. Which is true.

      You counter this by saying legislation IS diverse, pointing out that capital punishment WAS abolished at different times in different countries. Which makes no sense.

      Legislation was diverse, but now it's not. Some countries abolished capital punishment to qualify for the EU, so that has some part in it.

      I really don't get the scoring here.

    159. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ironically painless death penalty methods are also opposed by some that oppose the death penalty. The rationale being that is it is painless there is less horror that can be used against capital punishment.

      Pretty messed up.

    160. Re:No Death Penalty by swalve · · Score: 0

      It's pretty simple: when you have the choice between killing and not killing, making the choice to kill is wrong.

    161. Re:No Death Penalty by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Then so is torture. And war.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    162. Re:No Death Penalty by willpb · · Score: 1

      Take money out of the picture and we might be able to have a decent criminal justice system. As it stands prosecutors have an incentive to slap higher charges on people with heavier fines to keep the money flowing in. They'll threaten someone with death so they can force them into a plea bargain. If government would reform the system and prove they were able to act responsibly then maybe people wouldn't have a problem with the death penalty.

    163. Re:No Death Penalty by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Would you rather just let the organs rot or burn, when they could potentially save many lives and reduce suffering for a few more? Seems a terrible waste.

    164. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I think you nailed it. The reason the death penalty is done the way it is (and I absolutely 100% believe that the lethal injection is specifically designed to hurt them, but with none of the witnesses seeing the reaction) is because they still want one final 'punishment' before the person takes the 'easy' way out.

      If they actually wanted to do it painlessly, they'd either just throw a scuba mask on their head and put a tank of helium in (or any other inert gas that your body won't adversely react to), or get a giant mechanical press to crush 50,000 pounds of weight onto his skull in 1/100th of a second. Like seriously, there's a million less complicated, less prone to problems ways to execute someone.

      Hell, even that pet IV could be used. So it has potential to not quite work? Well shit, stop trying to put only the exactly required amount in! You're executing them! If 10ml is supposed to be enough (or whatever amount), put a liter or two of it into them instead! If you pump enough into them to kill a herd of elephants, then it's not gonna fail.

      This whole system currently of doing the bare miminum, or some convoluted series of multiple things needing to be done with a dozen steps? That's just idiotic bullshit designed to have multiple things that CAN go wrong. Nay, the people who most want to see them punished are probably PRAYING for somethign to go wrong, just so they suffer more.

      Just do it instantly and effectively. Or if not instantly, guaranteed painlessly such as the breathing an inert gas thing. Any deviation from doing so is only for the sadistic pleasure of others still alive.

    165. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pro-death penalty because I'm not naive enough to believe that if the government wants you dead, no law is going to stop that. If they can't do it legally, then it will just be done behind closed doors (figuratively).

      And before you say that there would be a public outcry, that's only if said person is well known to the public as a whole, AND has their support, AND is in a position where they would typically receive a death penalty if it were allowed (Julian Assange comes to mind). There will be a rare few cases (such as Assange) where all of those match up... but for most everything else, if they wanted a person dead, that person will simply vanish one day if the legal means to kill them aren't available.

      So I'd rather that there's some accountability and transparency to the process, since it's going to happen no matter what. Not that I believe that there will be transparency to begin with, but at least there's the OPTION of transparency.

    166. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But we didn't capture, or execute him...

    167. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, what you're saying is that the world as a whole needs to get its as in gear developing crygenic (or other methods) stasis.

      Think about it... if you can safely and reliably 'freeze' someone in time for all intents and purposes, then instead of having resort-level prisions (another pet-peeve of mine with today's society), costing billions of dollars in food, heating, staffing, etc... for (according to a quick google) 2.3 million prisoners costing 24k per inmate.

      Now, if we could 'freeze' them somehow and stack them like cordwood somewhere, the cost drops down to this massive storage facility, and the maintenance/running thereof. I imagine it wouldn't be cheap, but neither is over 55 billion dollars a year fro the above listed costs of keeping them fed/etc.

      And hasn't there been studies showing that people stuck in prison have a tendancy to just learn how to be better criminals from eachother? Might as well have them completely non-communicative.

      And it goes without saying that this would be for the prisoners who have been deemed un-rehabitable. Obviously you can't rehab if you're frozen in time. And you'd probably want to have it such that after 80 years or whatever (perhaps when they reach what would normally be the average life span at the time), assuming some new evidence hasn't been found that deems them innocent, you'd destroy the frozen body. Otherwise, people would commit crimes to get frozen purely so they can see what the world becomes like in 80 years, but without aging.

      But for people on the death penalty... just freeze them. Hell, you can use the same facility to store people with bizarre diseases until such time a cure is found.

    168. Re:No Death Penalty by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Since the US government, under the most liberal of administrations, still engages in torture, this should not surprise you.

      And yes, there are just wars.

    169. Re:No Death Penalty by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      There are just wars, but no civilized ones.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    170. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'd get rid of the death penalty unless the imprisoned person requested it?

      And you're comparing someone who's terminally ill to someone wrongfully convicted? You can appeal a conviction, a death sentence from cancer not so much.

      These are serious issues, and this will sound rude but it's not meant to be, but we all need to type less and think things through a little more.

    171. Re:No Death Penalty by Richy_T · · Score: 1

      Go read some Larry Niven.

    172. Re:No Death Penalty by flimflammer · · Score: 1

      You missed the entire point of the post.

    173. Re:No Death Penalty by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

      Whats a terrible waste is throwing caution to the wind and profitizing capital punishment. You really want to live in a world where people wait in eager anticipation of the day they can get their hands on the organs in a convict's body?

      More to the point, do you really want a pricetag stuck on someone's forehead as soon as the jury passes judgement?

    174. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if murder weren't wrong, why are we executing people; i believe mr warner had it right: "murder is murder whether done for duty, profit or fun"

    175. Re:No Death Penalty by dissy · · Score: 1

      Yea I'm pretty positive I would choose death as well. Much better than the ruined life of routine and regular torture that would follow otherwise.

    176. Re:No Death Penalty by Johann+Lau · · Score: 1

      Legislation was diverse, but now it's not. Some countries abolished capital punishment to qualify for the EU, so that has some part in it.

      Most didn't tho, they abolished it before the EU was even an idea - so that has no part in it? You just ignore that? Really, if you insist that European countries have abolished the death penalty because one central body forced them to, or because one lobby, one group of activists, made it that way, then I don't know what to tell you other than "lol?".

    177. Re:No Death Penalty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not meaningless since you can't seem to refute it or prove its lack or relevance...

    178. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 1

      It's not meaningless since you can't seem to refute it or prove its lack or relevance...

      Well, not if you can't be bothered to read past the first sentence.

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    179. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 1

      Then it looks like you've given up your right to life, you piece of shit.

      Wow, you'd take my right to life over a web forum post? I wouldn't say you lost yours unless you killed a bunch of people or tortured some kids to death or something similar.

      --
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    180. Re:No Death Penalty by randyleepublic · · Score: 1

      Are you retarded?

      --
      Social Credit would solve everything...
    181. Re:No Death Penalty by randyleepublic · · Score: 1

      >> I think there are people who are beyond any hope of rehabilitation, who should never be allowed to be free, and I don't see the point in paying to keep them locked up for decades, so we might as well kill them.

      Mercy? Ever heard the word?

      --
      Social Credit would solve everything...
    182. Re:No Death Penalty by swillden · · Score: 1

      Is it really more merciful to keep them locked up for the rest of their lives? Or are you saying they should just be released?

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    183. Re:No Death Penalty by Jiro · · Score: 1

      But when you said it for the death penalty, you didn't add a clause about it being intentional. Why do you limit it to intentional cases here?

    184. Re:No Death Penalty by mog007 · · Score: 1

      The problem there is that almost all doctors in the US are prohibited by oath and professional association membership rules from involvement in executions

      Funny, in Texas, doctors are the ones who perform the executions by lethal injection. The reason is because an autopsy does not need to be performed if a doctor performs the execution.

    185. Re:No Death Penalty by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Is it really that hard to build safeguards in? Just make sure there is no way to determine before the execution who the organs will go to. Make it a lottery or something - take the next few hundred people in line, pick one at random.

    186. Re:No Death Penalty by dasunt · · Score: 1

      From Wikipedia: On returning to the house after the fire in the company of fireman Ron Franks, Willingham said that he had been over earlier and poured flammable British Sterling cologne in the hallway from the bathroom to the bedroom in which the twins had died, because they had loved its smell when they were alive.[9]

      You would have found him guilty because he poured cologne on the remains of the house after the fire?

    187. Re:No Death Penalty by gshegosh · · Score: 1

      And for the most shocking crimes there should be life sentence with artificial life prolonging ;-)

  3. Are we still dragging this out? by davydagger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    She was found innocent, and a bunch of big media dipshits, and powerful figures are still trying to lynch her. Why? She's poor, and in all this rubble, they want one big poor villian to crucify, so they can shift the focus away.

    Part of the assault on her character includes the fact that case was concieved out of rape, something that would have every major neo-liberal "feminist" group up in arms if it was someone the system was protecting.

    I'll tell you something else. I'll contrast this to another femme fatale who got out of prison around the same time. "Amanda Knox"

    http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/print-edition/2011/10/21/seattle-pr-firm-reveals-efforts-to.html?page=all

    Looks like the media industry wasted no time revealing if you got money to spend on a PR campaign they could fix your broken character flaws and get murder raps thrown out.

    if its any more proof of just how biased the system is, and the system is run by hoardes of PR/advertising goons and lawyers, who seem to want nothing more than to shake you down for verbal and character protection money.

    Of course the real enemies of this system are those who can't raise enough money to pay for their services.

    Its sick, its real sick.

    1. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Zouden · · Score: 2

      It doesn't matter if the media has decided she's guilty. She may actually be guilty. What makes you so certain that she's not?

      --
      "A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
    2. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      She was found innocent

      No, she was found not guilty and acquitted. There is a rather large difference. In the United States, the is a presumption of innocence which means that in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt the person is acquitted of the charge. There is no statement about the innocence of the person.

    3. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the judge that said she wasn't.

    4. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since she has the presumption of innocence going into the trial, and the jury found her not guilty of the charges brought against her by the state, she emerges from the trial maintaining her state of innocence. The presumption of innocence was examined through trial and confirmed by acquittal.

    5. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by guises · · Score: 3, Insightful

      She may actually be guilty.

      No, she's innocent. She wasn't proven guilty. Why is this so hard to understand?

    6. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't matter if the media has decided she's guilty. She may actually be guilty. What makes you so certain that she's not?

      Because the media decided she was guilty. Duh. Since the media is my enemy, everything they say must be false and a lie, just like how if !($POLITICAL_PARTY) says the sky is blue, then by God that sky is damn well orange. This makes my investigative process so much easier, resulting in less stress on my chick pea-sized brain.

    7. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by guises · · Score: 1, Insightful

      There is no statement about the innocence of the person.

      Yes, there is. A person is presumed innocent until the jury finds a guilty verdict, an acquittal is simply a confirmation of this assumption.

    8. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your guilt or innocence is a matter of fact, not opinion. You either killed someone or you didn't. No arbitrary number of people sitting on a stand can change reality.

    9. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by cvtan · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Keep in mind that the jury does not find anyone innocent. They get to say guilty or not guilty; there is no innocent. Not guilty does not mean innocent.

      --
      Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
    10. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Millennium · · Score: 1

      She got off on a technicality, as the jury was swayed by improper use of the CSI Effect. The evidence presented at trial is more than sufficient to dispel any reasonable doubt. She cannot be convicted or sentenced, but that doesn't mean there is any chance that she didn't do it.

    11. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      She may actually be guilty.

      No, she's innocent. She wasn't proven guilty. Why is this so hard to understand?

      Acquittal != innocence.

      Similarly, conviction != guilt.

      The goal of the system is to approximate accuracy, with a strong bias towards acquittal where the situation is in doubt. Hopefully, you can assume that a conviction is a very strong indicator of guilt, but you can't assume that an acquittal indicates innocence.

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    12. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the fact that you killed someone may be true, but you being guilty depends on whether the law says you are. The law said she wasn't, so she isn't.

    13. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      I a court of law, 'not guilty' is the the same as innocent. More accurately, she was 'not found guilty', as opposed to 'found not guilty'.

    14. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think more to the point, the media should stay completely away from lawsuits and police investigations concerning private individuals. They should be fined a few hundred thousand usd for every paper sold that contains the article.

      This is circus for the masses. It only does harm to the case, the investigation and the person.

    15. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      She's innocent - just like OJ.

    16. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      Duh, sorry, I meant to say 'Not Guilty' is *not* the same as innocent.

    17. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by sco08y · · Score: 2

      She was found innocent

      No, she was found not guilty and acquitted. There is a rather large difference. In the United States, the is a presumption of innocence which means that in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt the person is acquitted of the charge. There is no statement about the innocence of the person.

      No statement, except for the original presumption of innocence. We are all, for instance, affirmatively innocent of every conceivable crime that we haven't been tried for.

    18. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      She is legally considered innocent (until the ruling is overturned). That doesn't make her factually innocent. I'm not a judge, I can judge people by my own standards which don't have to be those of the law.

    19. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      It's an assumption, not a fact. It was not proven that she was guilty, nor was it proven that she was innocent. It's just our default assumption ... it doesn't mean it's true.

    20. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So if a judge ruled that the earth is flat... I know your answer.

    21. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, she's innocent. She wasn't proven guilty. Why is this so hard to understand?

      I don't usually post on Slashdot, but sometimes I can't help it. Guises, you're a moron. You really can't differentiate between (1) someone who is guilty, and (2) someone who is found guilty in a trial? I'll give you a hint: It's entirely possible to be guilty of a crime, yet be found innocent in a trial.

      It's really not complex, yet somehow you conflate a person's innocence with their guilt in a trial. Apparently, you think the two concepts are the same, when in fact they are completely different. Idiots like you drive me crazy

    22. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by BLKMGK · · Score: 2

      What's so hard to understand about new evidence surfacing that throws doubt on her innocence? A forensic examiner apparently only pulled the browsing history for IE and failed to recognize that a second browser was installed. The browsing history for that browser has now been examined and on the day that this child disappeared there were searches regarding methods for killing someone. Why is importance of THAT so hard to understand?

      --
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    23. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Guilt or innocence are LEGAL terms only. You cannot declare someone guilty or innocent without a legal framework becasue the terms are relative and extremely perspective bound.

      --
      Good-bye
    24. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. Powerful media figures are still trying to lynch her because she was a mother who was likes sex for sex's sake and parties. Damn the woman who didn't really want kids at all (but was coerced to because, you know, America reproductive laws) and doesn't make her whole life about her kid.

    25. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Does that apply to regualr people too? If i start a campaign to clear someone of charges, at exactly how many people do i become 'media'

      --
      Good-bye
    26. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 1

      And, she will remain "innocent".

      She can not be tried again for the crime due to double jeopardy - even if she publicly admits killing.

      The prosecutor blew this case.

    27. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the legal sense it absolutely means its true.

    28. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by guises · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's something that a lot of people in this thread seem to be missing. You, as many people here, are equating guilt and innocence with "something which did or did not happen" and this is not the way the system works. Guilt and innocence are not provable facts in the rigorous sense and, as such, are not facts at all in the way that a person commonly thinks of that term.

      The jurors' official roles in court are as the "finders of fact." The system operates under the necessary assumption that the jurors are correct when they find someone to be not guilty, not because the jurors are always right but because operating under this assumption is the only way to hold a real trial where an accused person who hasn't committed a crime can walk away at the end.

      The important thing here is that this does not end in the courtroom, the assumption of innocence is a sadly neglected obligation that the population holds as well. Our justice system relies on the idea that a person can be tried and found not guilty and be unharmed by the process. This can only happen if that person's friends and neighbors hold to the presumption of innocence just as the court does. Unfortunately the media circumvents this, and for that reason reporting on pending court cases is banned or partially banned in many countries.

    29. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Tut-tut. The law says she wasn't found guilty. The law can't say whether or not she really is guilty. I assume you haven't taken any statistics courses.

      --
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    30. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Squiddie · · Score: 1

      Not guilty != innocent. She could be guilty but never found out.

    31. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fortunately, our legal system is based on the principle that the prosecution has to prove you guilty beyond reasonable doubt. You do not have to prove your innocence. If you are facing criminal charges in the US, the odds are stacked against you enough already. We have more people in prison than any other nation in the world. The financial cost of a defense is ruinous, even if you are completely innocent.
      If the prosecution fumbled this one, it is the price we pay for what vestige of freedom remains in this country.

    32. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ruling can't be overturned, she was acquitted. You need to read the Constitution and understand double jeopary, son.

    33. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by blade8086 · · Score: 1

      take that, morons! +1

    34. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by blade8086 · · Score: 2

      As someone who watches entirely too much Fox News, and completely misses the point by shoehorning my political ideology onto every single current event, whether it is related or not, I totally and completely agree with you.

    35. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Grayhand · · Score: 0

      Two radically different cases. Amanda Knox was convicted on virtually no evidence. With Casey Anthony she was found innocent even though there was a mountain of evidence and no other suspects. The Italian press also created the persona for Amanda Knox while I'd say Anthony worked hard to create her own. Partying it up while your daughter is missing and not reporting it to the police was hardly innocent behavior. Now you are still proclaiming her innocence after even more evidence was found on the computer showing she was looking up ways to kill some one that just happened to be how her daughter died. People don't want to believe a young spoiled mother could do it so some people will never believe it. Amanda Knox got a raw deal and finally got her freedom back. Very different cases.

    36. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I have a vision of her doing a little dance while waving her behind in the prosecution's face and chanting 'double je-par-dee-A!, double je-per-dee-A!"

    37. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      Someone may be morally guilty of murder without being legally guilty.

    38. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      No, we can also use the terms morally. If there were no factual basis for guilt or innocence, then why have trials? Why not just convict/acquit people for any reason whatsoever?

    39. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      You, as many people here, are equating guilt and innocence with "something which did or did not happen" and this is not the way the system works.

      Yes, I am equating guilt (moral, not legal) with "something which did or did not happen". Your system does not get to decide what the facts are.

    40. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The goal of the system is to approximate accuracy, with a strong bias towards acquittal where the situation is in doubt. Hopefully, you can assume that a conviction is a very strong indicator of guilt, but you can't assume that an acquittal indicates innocence.

      Meanwhile, the US having more people in jail than any other means any errors of conviction without guilt are exaggerated. At least freedom of speech is in the US constitution and the US libel laws are fairly sane.

    41. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      She was found "not guilty."

      There's a world of difference between that and "innocent."

    42. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the Scottish Legal system we have three potential verdicts:

      Guilty
      Not guilty
      Not proven

      I've always enjoyed the fact that there is that third option "We're pretty certain that you're guilty, we can't prove it, and don't do it again".

    43. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by davydagger · · Score: 1

      because she was found not guilty in a court of law, and she had no special attournies, nor privledge, and nothing to save her.

      Its also about, why is the media lynching HER in particular.

    44. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As scientists, we learn that reality is that which can be measured and tested. If the best available test - i.e. a trial - says that "she's not guilty", then we can't appeal to some "reality" that has the power to overrule that finding - that would be to ignore our own test results.

    45. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by geoskd · · Score: 1

      The prosecutor blew this case.

      No, the forensic examiners blew the case, the prosecutor has to work with what they are given.

      -=Geoskd

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    46. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by swillden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Meanwhile, the US having more people in jail than any other means any errors of conviction without guilt are exaggerated.

      No, it means we criminalize a bunch of stuff that shouldn't be criminalized.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    47. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      casey was concieved out of rape, something that would have every major neo-liberal "feminist" group up in arms

      Then according to Obama her mom didn't do anything wrong. Casey deserved to be aborted since her father was a rapist. Obama says that babies that should have been aborted can be killed after they're born. .'. Obama approves of Casey Anthony's post-birth abortion. Forward!

    48. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Guises, stop your intellectual (*ahem* semantic) masturbation and think about it, you twit. You can argue about "the system" all you want, but the fact remains that both "guilty" and "innocent" are english words with actual meanings. I suggest you look them up. Quite simply, you can be "guilty" and still be found "innocent". You can be "innocent" and still be found "guilty". It amazes me, too :D

      Sure, a jury is -in some sense- a "finder of fact", but you can't be dumb enough to think a jury's verdict IS fact? For example, tomorrow a jury might say you're 100% brain dead, but even I know you're only 75% of the way there. In other words, a jury's verdict has only a tangential relationship with the facts

      So Guises, at the very least, could you limit your semantic circle jerk to 1 person? And please, keep the cum shot on your own face. Thanks!

    49. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In America you can it is enshrined in our constitution. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. The default state of being is innocent. It does not matter if a person actually committed a crime. Even if they murder 10 people while video taping it in front of 100 cops they are still innocent until there is a guilty verdict. If they are somehow acquitted then they remain innocent forever.
      In this case since she was acquitted and can never have a guilty verdict entered due to double jeopardy, she is forever innocent of that crime.

    50. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      She got off on a technicality, as the jury was swayed by improper use of the CSI Effect. The evidence presented at trial is more than sufficient to dispel any reasonable doubt. She cannot be convicted or sentenced, but that doesn't mean there is any chance that she didn't do it.

      Exactly, There was so much evidence. The prosecutor failed at his job and the jury failed at theirs.

    51. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It actually means you give more and longer prison sentences than others. Where I come from we usually try to help the criminals(!) in the cases where it's clear they are not in control of their own lives. I know it might sound kind of funny to help them instead of punishing them, but the punishment includes "correctional" measures.

    52. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tell that to the LAPD officers who were convicted in the media of saving Rodney King's life.

    53. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by swillden · · Score: 1

      It actually means you give more and longer prison sentences than others. Where I come from we usually try to help the criminals(!) in the cases where it's clear they are not in control of their own lives. I know it might sound kind of funny to help them instead of punishing them, but the punishment includes "correctional" measures.

      Good point. Sentences in the US are more about punishment than rehabilitation. But we also criminalize a lot of stuff (especially drug-related) that should not be a crime.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    54. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As scientists, we recognize that a legal proceeding is not a test in the scientific sense.

    55. Re:Are we still dragging this out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A forensic examiner apparently only pulled the browsing history for IE and failed to recognize that a second browser was installed.

      How the fuck can anybody be this bad at their job and still be employed?

  4. The prosecutor's incompetence = higher office. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No really, that's exactly what happened.

    He blew it, he retired, he wrote a book...

    Now he's a state prosecutor?

  5. Clear Cache? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, just how effective is clear cache anyway?

    Is it... foolproof?

    1. Re:Clear Cache? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.google.com/search?q=foolproof+way+to+clear+evidence+of+computer+searches

      Try not to be arrested while conducting this search.

    2. Re:Clear Cache? by BLKMGK · · Score: 2

      In IE it doesn't clear anything but the cache that YOU can see. There are a number .DAT files (index.dat I think) that store your COMPLETE history. There are tools to recover this data and this is what this idiot used on her computer image. Firefox also has a database of browser history that I'm pretty sure is also NOT cleared just like IE. Chrome I'm least sure of but judging from the fact the other browsers may not clear history I wouldn't bet that it's any better - I'd be interested in hearing from someone that knows.

      Also, the "secure" browsing that IE does? It caches things normally and then deletes them when you close the browser. It's far from "secure". In fact I'm not even sure it's a secure delete that's done. FireFox does this better, I assume Chrome does as well since of the three it handles security the best despite being based on WebKit.

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    3. Re:Clear Cache? by reub2000 · · Score: 1

      Or just do your search from a livecd. Of course then you still have to worry about the data stored by your ISP.

    4. Re:Clear Cache? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Useful things those index.dat files. We used to use them at work when someone was accused of looking at porn when they should be working (happened a lot). That was before we got a decent proxy server.

      Incidentially: Smoothwall, win. RM Smartcache, fail.

  6. I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OK, so I searched for Foolproof Suffocation myself just now... does that mean I'm screwed forever if someone near me turns up suspiciously dead?

    1. Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Yes it probably would. And where exactly is the issue? Police should investigate all angles.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? by JWSmythe · · Score: 2

      That's one of those questionable items....

      I search for a lot of things, because I don't know everything. When we're watching a TV show, I may do a quick search to see how plausible a portrayed scenario is.

      Who's to say that someone else in the home did or didn't search for something else. Not everything is a conspiracy, sometimes it's just a coincidence.

      Based on what came out about how the whole thing was handled, it doesn't sound like the murder was very organized. I'd find it hard to believe that she did any sort of in-depth research on how to do it, based on the result. We're only getting a snapshot of what was searched for. One item of thousands. If the other surrounding searches were related to suicide, then it portrays a grieving mother (or other family member) looking for a foolproof way to end their own life.

      But hey, she was convicted by the media long before it went to trial, why not take everything as proof the courts are wrong.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    3. Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, especially if that someone drowned by falling into a pool instead of being suffocated.

    4. Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? by The+Barking+Dog · · Score: 1

      I'd hate if someone from the government ever got ahold of my searches while watching Breaking Bad...

    5. Re:I just searched for it myself...am I screwed? by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

          Well, mine aren't too bad. I already knew the explosives. I don't care to know how to cook drugs. The only thing I looked up was his source of ammonium nitrate. I was really surprised that it was correct.

          I spoke with someone who is a chemist (like scientist, not drug manufacturer), and he said other than leaving a few things out, it was very accurate. I noticed the same with the explosives. Some key piece was left out.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  7. Shades of OJ by stevegee58 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "If the search didn't hit, then you must acquit."

  8. So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for that! by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe she was planning some autoerotic asphyxiation and didn't know how to spell "asphyxiation!" Jeez, you people, always jumping to conclusions!

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  9. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by dwye · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bad example, but still proves the point. This datum of a search would not be enough to shift someone from not guilty by reason that I am not sure to absolutely guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. This WOULD be worth something in a Wrongful Death lawsuit, where the standard is merely the preponderence of evidence, but no one has standing.

  10. Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What is the /. interest in this story? It already kinda disgusting how these local crime stories dominate the national media, but now that the case is over with double-jeopardy attached, it appears on /. just because a search term was involved? Big whoop.

    1. Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Because apparently using Firefox over Internet Explorer will help you keep your criminal searches hidden. If only Hans Reiser knew this, he could be finishing up ReiserFS5.

    2. Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.? by JWSmythe · · Score: 3, Insightful

          No, it's that Slashdot has gone the way of all other mainstream media. If it involves any piece of technology, it falls into that mysterious "tech" category. Oohh, high tech, they used not one but *two* browsers. Someone in the house searched that intertube thing for something. They even used it to send private messages like "what r u up 2?" She must have been conspiring with the illumanti to distract from [some other bigger BS conspiracy]. It's the NWO washing your brain...

          I'm sorry, I can't continue. It's hard to lower myself to that level of stupidity. It hurts.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    3. Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The one thing I find interesting here is contrasting it to the Strafor hacking case, or some Jane Doe RIAA/MIAA case. Those forensic experts wouldn't have missed this if she searched for "FREE MP3 DOWNLOADZ".

      Otherwise, from a technical standpoint this is entirely uninteresting.

    4. Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.? by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      with apologies to MacBeth: Not all great [Firefox's] oceans can remove the blood from this [passenger seat]!

    5. Re:Why is this Nancy Grace bait posted on /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Reiser's search history remained a secret because he gave the hard drive that was in his computer to his lawyer. The prosecution found out about it during the trial but they were unable to get any evidence off it because EnCase, or whatever tool the investigator used, couldn't read the Reiser4 filesystem. So yes, using obscure software can frustrate the State's ability to gather evidence that can be used against you in court.

  11. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    foolproof suffocation orgasm

  12. Re:She got away with murder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, she'll change her name, live the next 50 years just like any other white trash from Florida, and then get buried in the ground for good.

  13. Re:She got away with murder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please leave your moronic superstitions outside. Here we discuss science!

  14. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by Hentes · · Score: 1

    You are right in that it's no proof in itself. What makes it suspicious is the timing.

  15. Re:She got away with murder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lord Blargzorxx (Ted to his friends) will reward her handsomely for her crimes. A mansion! A little bench in the garden from which she can laugh as the non-murderers burn in Hell!

    I feel this to be true in my heart.

  16. ObJwz by GGardner · · Score: 1
    ObJwz: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/07/mork-keeps-on-giving-when-the-database-worms-eat-into-your-murder-trial/

    That mork format was really something else. Whoever thought that having the browser history stored in an impenetrable format with no tools to read it should turn in their nerd badge.

  17. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by swillden · · Score: 1

    You are right in that it's no proof in itself. What makes it suspicious is the timing.

    And even the combination of search and timing aren't proof. But that's why we have juries, whose job it is to weigh the totality of the evidence. If the jury was teetering on the edge of convicting but could find just enough doubt to call it reasonable, perhaps this bit of information would have pushed them the other direction. Or not. But it's the sort of thing that should have been presented to them.

    --
    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  18. Newspaper access to hard drive? by gQuigs · · Score: 1

    Did the local newspaper actually get a copy of the hard drive?
    "Repeated requests by Local 6 beginning in 2009 for a copy of the hard drive that contained the Internet histories were denied by the state attorney's office, which claimed -- correctly, it turned out -- it did not have the data in its possession."

    This kind of request should be denied outright, not because they don't have it.

  19. Re:She got away with murder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another true believer! I'm glad I wasn't the only one to hear Ted's words from a bloody pool of a loved one's tragic ending. And you know it has to be true, because who would make up such a terrible and strange thing?*

    *the entire premise of all holy books is exactly just as plausible.

  20. Her google searches mean nothing by Cito · · Score: 1

    I've googled

    r@ygold
    hussyfan
    babyshivid
    kingpass

    Doesn't mean I've killed a killed, raped, and videotaped the aftermath of a kid.

    I also have the old crappy anarchist cookbook, a ebook on better living through chemistry

    as well as googling how to assassinate the president and get away with it.

    also how to murder my wife in a dolcett fashion, or use ammonium nitrate and methanol to visibly protest against the city hall the raising of property taxes...

    google searches mean squat.

    1. Re:Her google searches mean nothing by cdrguru · · Score: 2

      Oh boy, how the Internet can get you trouble...

      OK, I admit to not being familiar with the term "dolcett fashion" and looked it up. Gah! I do not recommend this course of action.

      I believe it would be difficult to categorize a murder as "dolcett fashion" as this truely would be more likely a suicide, perhaps with the assistance of a lot of psychobabble and drugs. Dolcett seems to imply the willing cooperation of the participant.

      Again, I do not recommend researching this topic. If you ignore this you will understand this recommendation all too well afterword.

    2. Re:Her google searches mean nothing by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Everyone has the cookbook. It's historic. Everyone also has a slightly different version, due to the nature of the text. A living document for some decades.

  21. Re:It's because she was SO CLEARLY GUILTY by sjames · · Score: 1

    No, given that the prosecution tried to phone it in, the jury came to the only conclusion they could come to. They got it right. If that verdict doesn't match the facts, crucify the prosecutor that couldn't be bothered to do his job properly even though he was handed a gimmee.

  22. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obviously we need to do a brain scan on everyone so we know the real truth!

  23. Re:It's because she was SO CLEARLY GUILTY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    given that the prosecution tried to phone it in

    Not only that, but all the peripheral circumstantial evidence that the prosecution presented only served to bolster the defense argument that she was a awful, selfish, negligent mother who could believably leave her child unattended by a pool to accidentally fall in and drown. IIRC, there were jurors interviewed after the trial who openly questioned why the prosecution did not try her on the lesser charge of negligent homicide (which they were ready to convict her on) instead of first degree murder.

  24. "certified" digital forensics expert? by Python · · Score: 2

    I wonder if this another case of certifications being treated as evidence of competence and experience. With the hundreds of infosec certs out there, and law enforcement agencies essentially being too ignorant to know the difference, or even to know if a certification has any value, I wonder if this happened because of incompetence disguised by a certification? Who doesn't know to look at all the browsers installed on the system? Seriously, that's such a boneheaded mistakes its frightening to think it happened.

    The follow up to this should be an investigation into the whole certification process for all digital forensics persons working on this case, and if the certification turn out to be a joke, banning them and everyone that has the cert.

    --

    Python

    1. Re: "certified" digital forensics expert? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If its a Microsoft certification, they're not supposed to know Firefox exists.

    2. Re: "certified" digital forensics expert? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 0

      This was back in 2008. Bare in mind just 4 years earlier when the digital foresenics guy came out of school 93% of people used IE 6 while the 5.5% used Netscae 4.7. Mozilla was at .5% marketshare.

      So out of habbit you checked for IE only.

      Today in 2012 IE has less than 50% of the US market according to g.statcounter.com as Chrome and Firefox overcame it. Even in 2008 Firefox was a geek thing and a few non technical users just started using it from their geek friends. I was paranoid when Chrome first came out because only 11% of people in those days used FF and if half switched to Webkit it would give a reason for webmasters to make IE only websites again as they wont bother with anyone with 5 or 6% markethsare.

      What really it shows is that foresnic experts need to be recertified every few years like teachers do to stay current. That way he or she would know what Firefox is by 2008 and by 2011 would not only know about Chrome but would also know how to check a Chrome users history.

    3. Re: "certified" digital forensics expert? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Totally just a dumb mistake by a hardworking, underpaid, honest, white cop that led to the acquittal of a young white female with strong evidence against her. Yep. Definitely just a mistake. No money involved here. You can look away now.

    4. Re: "certified" digital forensics expert? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would recommend checking into the certification process. Forensic certification is not like getting an MCSE. The CFCE, which is the gold standard certification for computer forensics in the law enforcement community and one of the few recognized by the certifying boards for forensic science, is a grueling process. Not only does it require an advanced level of education and training, but the practical testing portion consists of 5 increasingly difficult forensic problems that move from floppy disk analysis all the way to full disk analysis including encryption and other difficult forensic issues. If a person passes that, they then have a very in-depth written exam. The entire process takes about one year and has a very low completion rate because of the difficulty.

      That being said, everyone makes mistakes of one form or another. There may have been mitigating factors that served to have other browsers ignored or suppressed. Or this could have been an administrative error.

    5. Re: "certified" digital forensics expert? by thoromyr · · Score: 1

      I haven't read TFA, but this case was interesting to computer forensic circles because the trial was broadcast and computer forensics played a role -- it is not particularly convenient to track a trial, fly there and attend court to follow it but this trial was easy to follow. So, with that in mind, I find it interesting that somone "just discovered" that she was using Firefox because *that* was the source for the browser evidence that was put forth. Unfortunately, it was entirely bungled. I don't recall the historic versions of Firefox, but what she was using was newish and Firefox had changed the storage method for history, etc.

      This is significant, because the forensic tools hadn't caught up yet. The detective(s) working the case attended a class by the author of the tool they were using, said they were having problems and he hacked out a fix. The detective(s) used this to provide evidence pertaining to the number of searches for a particular term set. Unfortunately for the prosecution, the quick fix was not accurate (resulted in inflating the count) and the results were never verified or crosschecked in any manner. The defense had a field day.

      In terms of certifications I don't recall if the testifying detective had any, though I'm sure she did. The main error was one of general process (failure to validate the finding) with a secondary of using a not-quite-working tool (for the new version of firefox) without being more open with the tool's author as to their needs. But that is lesser: a well established component of methodology is to validate any finding of significance.

      In the end, the prosecution did not make their case and the defendant was found not guilty. People don't like it (most want someone to be punished in murder cases, particularly when juveniles are involved), but that is how our legal system is supposed to work.

  25. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well if the cops missed checking the firefox browser cache, what makes you confident they would have checked to see if the system time was set correctly?

    captcha word: echelon

  26. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by joe_frisch · · Score: 2

    You need to be very careful in using people's searches in court. As an example, I run role-playing games, some of which are set in the modern world. I've searched for all sorts of information on criminal activity.

  27. Re:It's because she was SO CLEARLY GUILTY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, given that the prosecution tried to phone it in, the jury came to the only conclusion they could come to. They got it right. If that verdict doesn't match the facts, crucify the prosecutor that couldn't be bothered to do his job properly even though he was handed a gimmee.

    They did not phone it in, forensic fucking up the search history notwithstanding. There was plenty of evidence to convict, the jury simply wanted a smoking gun that was blatant and immediately obvious rather than something that required putting 2 + 2 together. This IS NOT the standard of guilt in the USA; you need guilt beyond reasonable doubt, not guilt beyond any possibility of innocence.

    The jury convicted her of lying to the police and served time for it. What the fuck else could she have been lying ABOUT?

  28. She wouldn't have found anything... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just searched for it and the results are about Casey Anthony! So she wouldn't have found anything but herself if she searched for it, would she?

    1. Re:She wouldn't have found anything... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      I found it a bit creepy when searches like that started finding the slashdot article I was currently reading. Presumably something to do with referrer links which trigger the google spider.

  29. Re:It's because she was SO CLEARLY GUILTY by sjames · · Score: 1

    It is actually the prosecutor's job to put 2 and 2 together. Everything I have seen about the prosecution suggested that they didn't even present all of the available evidence to the jury. It's worth noting that just because you saw evidence in the media that was enough to convict, it doesn't mean the prosecution presented it to the jury.

  30. Shadetree forensics by cdrguru · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Back before cars had emission controls there was a class of people known as "shadetree mechanics" that could actually fix a car without knowing much about what they were doing. No formal or even informal training, but they got by because of simplicity of the engines at the time. I know of someone in the computer forensics business that rails against "shadetree forensics" because it will be the downfall of computer forensic examination as a whole.

    Someone I know in the FBI has rather strong words about pushbutton forensics where if you click the right button you get an answer. Maybe not the right answer, but something to put in a report. In some ways, computer forensics tools are moving in that direction with more and more automation and less and less understanding. When it takes several weeks of intensive training to understand a tool it does in some ways open the doors to this sort of use.

    What we have here is very simply a case of pushbutton forensics. The examiner failed to conduct a proper examination of the computer and was misled by getting some easy results. These easy results were put in a report and passed on. Nobody ever questioned the examiner about what he or she might have missed - like the simple and obvious question of "What about alternative browsers?"

    This is altogether too common today. Yes, there is a lot of training out there for people and there are various certifications, but none of it means the person doing the examination is actually performing an examinations or just pushing buttons to see what pops out. No, the certifications are not a joke and it takes a lot of effort to get certified. Unfortunately, there is little followup once someone is certified it is just assumed that they know what they are doing and how to perform a correct examination.

    In defense of examiners I must say they all have huge backlogs and the pressure to deliver a report quickly is incredible. But that doesn't excuse being sloppy and at its core pushbutton forensics is just being sloppy.

  31. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by blade8086 · · Score: 1

    And, it would also be evident that your searches related to the game being played.

  32. All that remains... by Doctor_Jest · · Score: 2

    Is for her to get into an armed robbery attempt to recover her sports memorabilia and she'll be doing time for what she deserves. :) Hope it doesn't take too long, though.

    --
    It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
  33. Newsflash... she's innocent. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So because she googled for "foolproof suffocation" that makes her automatically guilty in your eyes? Because you saw ALL the evidence the rest of the jurors saw?

    Or are you just playing the hypocritical progressive as usual and calling others incompetent to make up for your shortcomings?

    BTW in all your rantings and ravings about the war-monkey evil rethuglicans and your oh-so-noble pacifist nature I notice you can't be bothered to condemn Obama for drone assassinations...

    1. Re:Newsflash... she's innocent. by rtfa-troll · · Score: 2

      So because she googled for "foolproof suffocation" that makes her automatically guilty in your eyes?

      It's a total fuck up to not notice it, and, in the hands of a skilled interrogator almost certainly enough to get a full and convincing confession. If she actually is innocent, which I personally doubt, it's quite likely that explaining this would have made her give a sufficient explanation that the case would never proceed. If she is guilty then all they had to do was to insert it at the right moment when she's given a completely incompatible explanation of events, question her about it and end up with her confessing in a way that they could prove was true. Having said that; if they can make this kind of mess, they would probably get the interrogation wrong too.

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  34. Do NOT press the red button. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    Damn. Must now resist urge to Google "foolproof suffocation."

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  35. Firefox by surveyork · · Score: 0

    Helping criminals evade justice since 2004.

    --
    2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
  36. So only IE was looked upon by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    I guess back in 2008 most people still used Internet Explorer. I guess the foresincs team were used to 95% of people using IE 6 just 4 years earlier and it never dawned on them to ask what the red fox over the world icon was on her computer?

    It also makes me wonder if use a minority browser like Opera today if I could get away with the same crime. 4 years later it is not just geeks who use alternative browsers but everyone and their brother runs the top 3.

  37. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    Really? Do you think it'd be evident to a jury of non-gamers? When the prosecution has only submitted the searches as evidence that support their case, dismissing all the obviously game-related searches as unimportant?

  38. Re:It's because she was SO CLEARLY GUILTY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    She lied about what they did with the body after they found it in the pool and how her father disposed of it.

  39. Death Blog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Alright folks, before you kill anyone, I wanted to let you all know that the fancy blog about suffocating and torturing children is actually a honey pot, edited by the same chaps over at Inspire. If you really want to know how to kill people, sign up for our free news letter. We teach the A's and B's of killing everything from small fury creatures, to large important people. Just because we care, we've included in this post our free clue of the day: When searching for homicidal procedures, be sure to remain indirect -- you should try things like "how to avoid fatally injuring someone" and simply do the opposite. For more great tips on premeditated murder in the age of Google, please send your contact information to foiled@fbi.guv

  40. ephemeral by kstahmer · · Score: 1

    Casey Anthony, thou art ephemeral.

    --
    HRH The Duke of Windsor
  41. Hans Reiser? by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

    I would like to know how she got off but Hans Reisier didn't Not that I believe(d) Reiser was innocent, but the level of doubt seems the same, except for one thing. Reiser was weird. As a weird person who is slightly more law abiding then the average person, I find the idea that I could be convicted of something because I act weird disturbing.

    1. Re:Hans Reiser? by dalias · · Score: 1

      Apparently you missed the part where he told the cops where he hid the body...

    2. Re:Hans Reiser? by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

      What kind of idiot upvoted this?

      He told them the location of the bady long, long after the trial.

      In fact they found the Anthony body before her trial, with some indications of foul play. So they had more evidence in her case.

  42. Topic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any chance you all could stay on the topic of prosecutorial incompetence? No? Ah, didn't think so.

  43. Why did the prosecution rush the case? by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 1

    That is the real question. Why was it rushed? There was no physical evidence to her. Just lies and uncooperativeness by her. Had they done their jobs and waited until the had more evidence instead of rushing to trial because the big flapping/talking heads were yelling and screaming, she would be going to trial now (after court date set) and would be taking either a plea deal (assuming one was even offered, which in this case it probably would not be), and be in jail in 3-4 weeks for the rest of her life (be it taken early by the state or not).

    --
    We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
  44. Maybe he was "Microsoft Certified" ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I may be possible that his Certification covered only IE

  45. TROLOLOL by gumpish · · Score: 1

    n/t

  46. they should not be evidence by kenorland · · Score: 1

    I think computer searches should usually not be used as evidence in trials at all; there is too much potential for bias and misinterpretation.

  47. Too much power? by dtmancom · · Score: 1

    The President has a "Kill List." The death penalty is executed, at least, as the result of a trial by jury. Capital punishment is not even close to the thing that gives the government "too much power."

  48. Re:So? There are LOTS of reasons to search for tha by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    There's this guy called counsel for the defense. He isn't there for decoration.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  49. Back in 2006 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in 2006 I was searching for the "housing crash". In 2008 we had a financial meltdown. Just sayin...

  50. Dex? by wiedzmin · · Score: 1

    Where's Dexter when you need him :)

    --
    Bow before me, for I am root.
  51. Re:It's because she was SO CLEARLY GUILTY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree, the jury did the right thing *GIVEN THEY NEVER SAW the evidence that was so damning.