----- Original Message -----
From: Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org>
> Unless you take into account the possibility that he might be innocent
> but wrongly convicted. Here in the UK, they've tightened up the appeals
> and miscarriages-of-justice process a bit in the past few years, and
> added DNA testing to the battery of forensic techniques available.
> The result is that roughly 10-15% of historic "guilty" verdicts are
> being overturned, in crimes as serious as murder.
The problem with 'life in prison', is that nobody loses sleep when someone is
sentenced to it. There are people who are sentenced to life in prison, because
they are frustrated by the legal system and resort to blowing away a bad guy.
There are people sentenced to life on very little evidence. But nobody cares.
But let a hardened criminal, with a rap sheet a mile long, get sententenced to
death for killing and torturing a bunch of cute little kids, and all hell breaks
lose. A ton of lawyers and activists spring to the rescue.
Argh!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:37 MDT