why should this crim get off easily with a humane death. What he did to your uncle was not humane.

Because if we lose our humanity we have lost our civilisation and then what are we? “Eye for an eye” is about vengeance but the original Babylonian system was intended to restrict retribution to an equal response.

Kev, I do disagree with you but your post has been the first thing in this long discussion to make me pause and question my own views. I follow your logic but, even with all the safeguards you propose, you are denying the guilty of their opportunity to reform. They should be punished in full, the punishment should be relevant to the crime but shouldn’t society also give somebody the chance to be something better after that punishment? If you can demonstrate 100% that they will not change, then I would still opt for life without parole (we have examples now: Brady, Sutcliffe). Whether denying somebody freedom is more cruel than denying them life is another discussion.

Our justice system must deliver suitable punishments but also must show that punishment is relevant to the crime and provide proper support to victims. Your comments make me think that one or all of these has failed.

Allan

I parked on a road around the corner when I went. Google maps new streetview shows the building work and parking a little further along Albert Road South. You can even read the sign that says “Pay at meter”. Just type in their postcode: SO143FR

It’s a good museum – enjoy it.

It alright BB, the UK has signed the UN Convention Against Torture so nobody can make us do housework, or anything else that is Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading. :diablo:

Well, the Commander broke the law. Thus, they walked free…not as innocents, but as technicalities. For all we know they actually could have been guilty. Commander was an idiot.

Er, no. Not technicalities, they were entirely innocent. But, after torture, their confessions were the main evidence in their cases. The point being that torture can produce unreliable evidence, innocents are locked up, guilty go free and justice is not done.

And Arnie is waiting for your e-mail, I gather he needs your insight to sort out California’s penal system. :rolleyes:

Still as Shakespeare never said:

How happy a thing it is to look into bitterness through another man’s eyes

The bound volumes that I have for 44, 45 and 46 have a comprehensive index in the front. Each year is split into two volumes and the index (including illustrations) runs to 18 to 20+ pages of each volume. Quite extensive.

As you say, whether they have an index depends on many factors. One might be how they were originally made, either produced bound for libraries or a home enthusiast sending loose magazines to his local book binder.

Allan

you are quoting the costs of the Court case, and yes that would be more expensive for one with potential death at the end of it.

No, the Kansas audit was based on the costs of the total process, from arrest to conclusion of the punishment.

In California $137m is spent a year on cases involving the death penalty. If life without parole sentences were used instead, costs would drop to $11.5 million a year – including time spent in prison. You can read the report here and then think about how much good that money could do elsewhere in crime prevention.

Meanwhile back on topic, consider the case of Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and LeRoy Orange. They were sentenced to death but later pardoned after it was revealed that their confessions were extracted through torture by a Chicago Police Commander.

How can torture be allowed – and then controlled to prevent its abuse in such a manner?

How can you be sure that the person you want vital information from actually has that information?

Can the judicial system be structured to allow the police the licence to use torture without it becoming routine?

No, I don’t want to infringe anybody’s human rights but I’d much rather live in a society where the state knew who was in the country, who everybody was, where my DNA was kept on file and where if I was suspected of a crime I could be kept under surveillance, my phone could be tapped, my e-mail opened and under interrogation I could be given a ‘truth serum’ (should such a thing be developed).

Why? Because I’ve got nothing to hide…

Perhaps these things are not more widely used to ensure control is kept and their use is not abused. And that is one reason why torture should not be condoned.

Allan

This is a debate to which I have contributed a viewpoint and kept from emotion and person to person attacks.

It is not a debate – it seems more like a personal statement of extreme views. The debate was, at one point, an interesting one about torture. This one about the death penalty impinges itself on threads here regularly.

OK, another angle.
Who, in their right mind could resist the thought of killing the likes of Pol Pot?
Never mind any TV coverage or senstionalism….the Gun is in your hand, he is at the height of his menacing power. He is 3 feet in front of you. You have the means to stop it.
I wager that no person reading this would hesitate to pull that trigger at least 4 times.

I wouldn’t do it. And I’m grateful that the soldiers who found Saddam Hussein were well trained and morally grounded enough to bring him back to justice rather than indulging in their own vigilante action. This, Old Shape, is where you seem to have the problem, accepting that there is something to be gained from looking through another man’s eyes.

One quick point to answer the issue that has been raised about the costs of keeping people locked up for life.
– In 2003 in Kansas an audit found it cost 70% more to use the death penalty because of high legal costs (Ave $1.26m against $740,000 cost of incareration)
– In 2004 in Tenessee death penalty trials cost 48% more than equivalent trials seeking life imprisonment.
– In 2008 in Maryland death penalty cases cost three times as much.

Allan

And regarding the speculation the Captain wasn’t at the controls…
How would anyone know that?

Apparently it is based on the normal procedure on an Air France flight on that route. At that stage in the flight the Captain would be on his rest period. What was actually happening on the flight is presently unknown.

The image of the tail is chilling, and sure to be much repeated. Does anybody know whether it was found close to other wreckage or some distance away?

The other thing that brings home the reality of what is going on out there is this staement on the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8089917.stm

On Monday, officials revised downwards the number of bodies confirmed to have been found from 17 to 16.

Recovering human remains is bad enough but for it to be hard to work out how many have been brought on board must be harrowing.

Thanks Moggy, powerful sentiment. Could have been written yesterday not 25 years ago.

I might dig out my old video tape of A Foreign Field (Alec Guiness and Leo McKern) over the weekend. Marvellous poignant old film.

Or perhaps some Keith Douglas poetry, who was, of course, killed in Normandy.