Two days ago, the state of Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Smith by essentially asphyxiating him.
Alabama faced widespread condemnation after the state executed Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday evening using nitrogen gas, the first time the method has been used in the United States to kill someone.
Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8pm local time.
Smith was fitted with a face mask. He used sign language to say “I love you” to witnesses in the viewing room, and in his final statement he said: “Tonight, Alabama caused humanity to take a step backward.”
After the nitrogen gas began flowing, Smith convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. The state had previously said the nitrogen gas would cause Smith to lose consciousness in seconds and die within minutes, according to the Associated Press.
“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser, was in the death chamber when Smith was killed. In a tearful television interview with CNN, he said Smith “popped up on the gurney over and over and over again. He shook the whole gurney.”
“I have never, ever seen anything like that,” he said. “That was torture.”
“I could see the corrections officers that were in there,” he added. “I think they were very surprised that this didn’t go smoother.”
Using nitrogen was a new method. A previous attempt to execute Smith using lethal injections had gone terribly awry..
In November 2022, the state strapped him for four hours to a gurney and punctured his arms and legs in a failed attempt to find a vein through which to kill him using lethal drugs.
That placed Smith in a highly rare class of an inmate who could describe what it was like to survive an execution.
Smith was convicted in the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett. Sennett’s husband, a pastor, allegedly paid Smith and another man $1,000 each to kill her.
A jury voted 11-1 to sentence Smith to life in prison, but the judge overseeing the case overrode that decision and sentenced him to death. That practice, called judicial override, has since been eliminated in all 50 US states. [My. italics-MS]
You would think that with such a horrific history, they would have granted clemency to Smith.
The execution has been widely condemned.
Four independent UN monitors had called on Alabama to call off the execution earlier this month.
The EU diplomatic service also condemned the execution. “According to leading experts, this method is a particularly cruel and unusual punishment, in addition to the fact that the inmate was already subjected to a failed execution attempt in November 2022,” it said in a statement.
…Maya Foa, joint executive director of the international human rights group Reprieve, said Smith’s execution was “torture” and disputed the claim that the execution was successful.
“Alabama is predictably claiming that this dangerous experimental method is now ‘proven’. Executing states are constantly looking for ways to pretend that executions are medical and modern, not brutal and violent,” she said in a statement.
“They said lethal injection was humane – that was a lie. They’re claiming this execution was humane, and that is a lie, too.”
Joel Zivot, an expert on execution at the Emory University School of Medicine, said the accounts of Smith’s death were what he anticipated. “He struggled to stay alive as his brain became deprived of oxygen. It is possible he had a seizure at some point and his death was of course slow and agonizing,” he said.
“The Alabama department of corrections claims the execution went exactly as they anticipated. Therefore, it can only be concluded that they intended to torture him to death. Further, the use of torture in execution is the definition of cruelty.”
Some day, people will look back at this and marvel that states went to such extremes to try and kill people.
It is truly barbaric.
Nitrogen is a good suicide gas, as is carbon monoxide -- but the person breathing it must want to die and not fight the loss of consciousness. Using it to commit judicial murder is cruel. I’m surprised they didn’t sedate the victim first, which they normally do with lethal injection (pancuronium bromide, e.g.: curare) which allows the victim to fully experience their death, but they can’t move.
Actually just shooting the victim is more merciful. The problem there is a headshot disintegrates the brain, causing instant loss of consciousness, but also a great big splat.
Considering the vast amounts of high explosive the US uses, its a shame they can’t use some for judicial murder. The propagation speed of a high explosive is faster than a nerve signal therefore it would be impossible for the victim to experience anything at all. Electrically triggering a mortar round and letting the birds and bugs clean it up would be merciful.
I don’t understand why the government hasn’t gotten one of the black laboratories in China, that make fentanyl, to whip up a few buckets of pentobarbitol. This has been suggested, actually, but the weirdass perverts who do executions said they were concerned about quality control. WTF? Heroin or fentanyl and bourbon would also obviously work well but they don’t want their victims to enjoy dying. They are sadists who want to ensure maximum psychological stress.
And that was the point. The entire point. It’s trivially easy to kill someone in a painless, quick way. For example, a shotgun blast to the head would essentially be instantaneous, but some of the people watching would object the ugliness of the act, while others would object because it’s so quick. It’s the latter who craft methods like the one used in Kenneth Smith’s murder.
Lethal injection is designed to be as agonizing as possible, while also looking neat and clean. It starts with a paralytic, so that the person being murdered won’t be able to thrash around while the rest of the drugs slowly, painfully kill them. Wouldn’t want to upset those witnesses who still have a conscience, after all.
I suspect the only tinkering that will go into these nitrogen hypoxia murders is to strap people down better, or find some way of paralyzing victims before killing them. People like Governor Kay Ivey want to inflict maximum suffering, but they don’t want to be criticized for it. Mostly because it’s not legal for them to murder their critics. Yet.
I have a number of problems with this.
The first is the obvious one, which is that execution by the state is self-evidently a barbaric practice carried out only in the most backward uncivilised shitholes. But leaving that aside for a moment:
I have some applicable professional expertise here. Pure nitrogen is extremely widely used in the chemical process industries as an inerting agent. An acceptable basis of safety for a potentially explosive process or situation is that you will eliminate oxidants from the point of potential ignition by use of a nitrogen blanket. There is an associated but acceptable risk of asphyxiation, but this risk is more controllable and taken VERY seriously. If there’s a tank or vessel full of nitrogen not only are you not allowed to enter it until it’s been proven safe, you’re not even allowed to open a manway on the top a couple of feet across and stick your head inside for a quick look around. The reason for this serious treatment is that it is well known from DECADES of practice that unconsciousness comes on EXTREMELY QUICKLY and with NO WARNING. I’ve expressed puzzlement before (especially when US states were struggling to buy drugs to torture people to death because the companies who made it didn’t fancy being associated with torturing people to death) why the US didn’t use cheap and plentiful nitrogen, as a victim wouldn’t know it was even happening. I obviously didn’t factor in the innate deliberate sadism of American “justice”. Silly me.
Nitrogen is (obviously) completely colourless and odourless, forming as it does 78% of the air you’re breathing now. Decades of documented evidence of incidents and near misses in the process industries have proven beyond argument that if you enter a pure nitrogen atmosphere unknowingly, you will function for a surprising short amount of time, then just pass out completely. You won’t struggle, you won’t have any warning, you’ll just… go to sleep. And if you’re not retrieved from that situation more or less immediately, you will die, in minutes. And if someone who isn’t wearing self-contained breathing apparatus comes to retrieve you, they will die too. This has happened, over and over again in chemical plants the world over, for decades. Survivors (and there have been some) report no pain, just blackout, and gratitude to the people who brought them out.
For these reasons, nitrogen is regarded as one of the biggest hazards on a chemical plant. Oxygen deprivation asphyxiation is not limited to blanketed vessels, though -- there’s a well known case where a mild steel tank containing just water was drained and entered. Atmospheric air was allowed in through the top manway, so the work permit just let the guy who needed to go into the tank to inspect it do so without breathing apparatus -- I mean, it was just water before, and now it’s just air, right? He died. The man who went in to retrieve him died too. The air filled the tank as expected… but the oxygen was almost immediately adsorbed onto the surface of the mild steel tank, essentially rusting almost instantly, and that was enough to reduce the oxygen concentration below the useful limit. Two deaths, and neither of them would have known what was happening.
All that being said:
Media witnesses. When did they start the clock? When did they stop it? What information did they have?
The USA was already backward, and how dare he implicate anyone in the civilised world in this barbarity.
Well yeah -- because crucially, he knew what was about to happen. Not because the nitrogen was causing him pain… but an uninformed witness (e.g. a journalist who hadn’t bothered to do any research about the stuff I’ve discussed above) wouldn’t know that.
And as stated there’s decades of evidence to back that up… if the victim is unwitting. If they can hold their breath, though… how long can you hold your breath? I’m getting on in years and can’t manage much more than a couple of minutes, nowhere near the three and a half I used to be able to manage. I think I’d bloody manage it if I knew someone was fixing to asphyxiate me though. It is unconscionable that they fed the N2 through a mask so he’d know it was coming. That is torture -- psychological, not physical, but very definitely torture by anyone’s definition.
This is extremely bad reporting. His clear implication is that the thrashing was a reaction to the nitrogen gas. If it was, we’d ALL be thrashing constantly, every minute of our lives, waking and sleeping. It wasn’t a reaction to the nitrogen, it was a reaction to the procedure. Again -- didn’t he do ANY research?
I can’t be the only one who winced at what is surely a comedically unfortunate choice of words, given that the guy is definitely dead.
With nitrogen as the asphyxiant, there was absolutely no “of course” about it -- it could easily have been uneventful and painless. But that’s not the American way, eh?
Er… no.
Not “some day” : TODAY, civilised people look across the Atlantic at this and marvel that states do this AT ALL, with no regard at all for “extremes”.
If you’re suggesting that one day the people of the USA might be brought into the twentieth century and become civilised enough to stop executing people, all I’ll say is that, unlike Kenneth Smith, I’m not holding my breath.
Let’s not forget that a lot of these people believe in a all-loving, all-forgiving god who tortures people forever for having sex with the wrong person or not believing in him, so of course they’d want to get a little cruelty in themselves before sending the victims down to eternal fire.
I’m a strong believer in the right to die and there are assisted suicide medications that can make this process a lot less unpleasant. I don’t think they’d even try getting those, but one of the issues with even lethal injections is manufacturers not wanting their products to be used for this. Hell, these states don’t want innocent people in unimaginable pain to get their hands on those.
There are street drugs, as Marcus mentioned. If I ever find myself in a position where I want to go out with some dignity but can’t get a doctor to sign off, I’ll probably look into how I could get some fentanyl myself (mostly likely early on after a dementia diagnosis while I still have my facilities about me).
Marcus #1:
Sedation by injection wasn’t an option in this case. They would have had to do it another way.
In November 2022, the state strapped him for four hours to a gurney and punctured his arms and legs in a failed attempt to find a vein through which to kill him using lethal drugs.
Also, if Smith’s desperate attempt to hold his breath, to live, caused the seizures, then holding his breath to avoid sedation before execution could have caused the same result.
Should have just let him live.
They could have just left him in a cell and filled that with nitrogen while he slept the night before. It wouldn’t meet the need Americans have for execution to be a public theatrical event, though.
Very strange. I remember killing mice with nitrogen in a biology lab, and the deaths were very calm and peaceful. Nitrogen gassing itself is actually considered the most humane way to kill lab animals, and is done by simply placing them in a receptacle that they can’t get out of, and filling it with N2 gas. They fall asleep in less than a minute with no show of alarm, and then stop breathing within the next minute. I suspect the thrashing was much more related to his objection to dying, fear, unwillingness, and the ridiculous theatre of strapping a mask to his head.
If the state genuinely wished to execute people in a manner that was actually humane -- or as close as can be achieved while killing someone against their will -- it could achieve this in numerous ways, but they recoil from them for dumb reasons. An overdose quantity of a strong opiate would do it, causing the person to more or less relax to death -- but but drugs are for druggies (and the Sacklers’ victims but never mind about them)! A shooting gallery or decapitation would be instant -- but but only savages use such barbaric methods (Here the phrase ‘yes, and?’ comes to mind)! And so on.
sigh
Always preview! (I am a hypocrite, I never preview)
[I fixed it. -- Mano]
Ironically, the guillotine is fast and painless. But that would give away the game; execution is inherently barbaric.
Give the Republs more leeway and they will sell tickets for watching the execution, quoting the need to reduce taxpayer costs for the prison system.
.
In the 1970s there was a brief pause with US executions but it merely gave Republican candidates something to rum on.
@Holms, 7:
Thinking about it for a moment, I don’t remember any state ever saying they wish for that -- only that they could do it legally, by convincing enough dupes that what they were doing was not “cruel or unusual”. Absolute nonsense, obviously, since the premeditated killing of someone over whom you have complete, 100% power already certainly fits those criteria regardless of the chosen method.
I think you mischaracterise the American objection to this method. It’s not, despite a strong American tradition, po-faced moralising -- not this time. It’s a combination of jealousy, sadism and hypocrisy. They may SAY “drugs are for druggies”, disguising their true meaning behind a judgemental-sounding lie. What they mean is “we know drugs are FUN, and the last thing we want is our victim feeling anything pleasant as we premeditatedly and cold-bloodedly kill them”.
@11 sonofrojblake:
That would be “cruel and unusual”. You’re allowed to be cruel, or unusual, but you’re not supposed to be both at the same time.
Background: I am utterly opposed to the death penalty except in the case of mass murder where there is no doubt (not just “reasonable” doubt) as to who did it.
When discussing cases other than the exception, any discussion as to how to kill “humanely” sticks in my craw. No form of execution is acceptable; nothing can be humane. In fact even a life sentence with the stricture that there can be no parole is barbaric. Sentence someone to preventative detention if they are deemed an ongoing threat to society and keep them locked up as long as is necessary, but don’t mandate that they can never be paroled.
When discussing the exception though, the killer no longer has any value as a person to me but that doesn’t mean I want to inflict suffering upon them, or any other animal. Let the condemned choose the method, be it hanging, lethal injection, heroin overdose or whatever. If they refuse to choose then it’s firing squad. Personally in that situation I’d choose guillotine.
(As an aside, should Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine place him in the second category? Theoretically, but acts of war are simply too big to be handled by any legal system. Left as a discussion point)
“I have never, ever seen anything like that,” he said. “That was torture.”
What other kinds of executions has this guy watched? If he’s a “spiritual advisor” to people on death row, I guess he’d have seen quite a few — enough to make him a connoisseur of sorts.
“I could see the corrections officers that were in there,” he added. “I think they were very surprised that this didn’t go smoother.”
Surprised? Or embarrassed?
I imagine a dystopian future where the states live broadcast executions and let people vote for method of execution by phone, the favourites being ghastly medieval methods.
@file thirteen, 13:
Ah, the old “only if we’re definitely sure” exception. Which starts from the presumption that all those other executions, the BAD executions, they were done when they were, y’know, fairly sure they were justified killing the guy, but that YOUR justice system would be different, would make a distinction between fairly sure and, y’know, pinky swear really really really sure.
Which is self-evidently bullshit, obviously. You support the death penalty, in a world where the justice system is administered by fallible humans and therefore wrongful executions are inevitable. Just own up to it. Or, y’know, stop supporting the death penalty, because it’s inherently barbaric regardless of the crime it’s “punishing” and is an affront to any society with pretensions to civilisation.
When discussing cases other than the exception, any discussion as to how to kill “humanely” sticks in my craw…
I sort of agree. If — I repeat IF — we’re going to be killing people convicted of certain crimes, maybe we should cut all the modern high-tech “scientific” methods that are supposed to be more “humane,” and just stick with what we at least know kills QUICKLY — beheading, bullets to the head, that sort of thing. If we’re gonna do it, we should do it simple, quick and honest.
Or, you know, we could just abolish capital punishment and sentence our worst criminals to life without parole instead. I won’t complain (much) either way…
“IF — we’re going to be killing people… I won’t complain (much) either way…”
No complaints about carrying on murdering people in cold blood. Thanks for being so clear in your statement of your moral position.
I’m not sure for whom I have more contempt -- people who are upfront and honest about their flog’em-and-hang’em barbarity and can thus be safely written off, or the kind of stealth fascist who wheedles their way into polite society, puts on a liberal face and makes all the right progressive noises until they let slip that they oppose capital punishment EXCEPT…
file thirteen@13
As long as there is capital punishment, some of those executed will be innocent. Whatever “only if there’s absolutely no doubt” conditions you advocate, there will be pressure to find that there’s “no doubt” in cases that particularly outrage public opinion, or of course, the police. And in some of those “no doubt” cases, the wrong person will be convicted and killed.
Discussion of capital punishment always reminds me of a rejoinder to a supporter of it, made by the former UK (Tory) Prime minister, Edward Heath -- not a man I generally admire. This was in a parliamentary debate, running up to a free vote on (IIRC) whether to restore the death penalty. The pro-death MP (another Tory, name forgotten) said that if the death penalty was reinstated, he would be prepared to act as executioner (this was probably in response to someone raising the moral/psychological effects on those who carry out the killing). “That’s not the question”, said Heath, “The question is whether you’re prepared to be executed by mistake”.
It’s not like anybody, ever, in the entire history of the world, has ever said “You know, let’s just institute a system of capital punishment that executes whoever the hell we feel like, based on whatever biases and prejudices happen to be popular at the time! It’ll be great!” Everybody always intends that it should only ever come into play for really heinous crimes (for whatever the currently-applicable value of “really heinous” is) where we’re really, really sure of guilt.
And yet, somehow, it always ends up with cases like that of Derek Bentley, a young working-class man with mental health issues and some kind of learning disability, who was hanged at the age of 19 for murder of a police officer on the basis of a tendentious interpretation of the phrase “let him have it”, in combination with the legal doctrine of “joint enterprise”, despite the fact that there was never any question of him actually firing the fatal shot. He was there, he was old enough to hang, the stupid kid who actually did fire the fatal shot wasn’t, and somebody had to pay. So he did.
It’s almost like people can’t be trusted with the power to kill under cover of the law.
sonofrojblake #16 et al
Is it really impossible for there to be cases where there is no doubt at all? If that’s true then I’ll change my position. But what doubt can there be when a gunman kills multiple innocents in front of witnesses and is apprehended at the scene? What did I miss?
@22: it’s not really a complicated concept, I’m surprised you’re failing to understand it. But I can tell you what you’ve missed.
It is obvious that historically there have been cases where there’s no doubt at all who done it -- multiple witnesses, video footage, perp proudly stating it’s a fair cop they got me bang to rights guv etc.
However -- and this is where you run into a nasty dose of having to live in reality, rather than your revenge fantasy -- when it comes time to prosecute, you have to apply a system. Which means you have to WRITE a system. And you can’t just write “make sure”. You can’t even write “no doubt”. Because -- and I hate to be the one to have to break it to you -- people aren’t perfect.
Sooner or later, regardless of how carefully you phrase your “y’know, make REALLY sure” clause, you are DEFINITELY going to get an edge case where, well, we were really sure AT THE TIME, but on deeper reflection it now appears that hey, actually, he wasn’t guilty after all. But he’s DEAD, so we can’t just release him and pay him a million pounds for every year he wrongly served in compensation. (Also… do we kill the executioner, because he definitely killed an innocent man?)
Summary: yes, there are cases where there’s no doubt. No, you can’t execute in those cases, because whatever system you have in place to make sure of that “there’s no doubt” bit will have flaws.
I’ll trot this out again: I believe there should be a national referendum on capital punishment. Two simple questions:
1. do you support capital punishment AT ALL? (YES/NO)
2. given that the justice system is administered by fallible humans and that the execution of an innocent person is therefore unarguably something that’s definitely going to happen sooner or later -- do YOU, today, personally volunteer to be the first innocent person executed? (YES/NO).
Anyone voting NO/NO gets their voted counted.
Anyone voting NO/YES gets some counselling and possibly remedial reading classes.
Anyone voting YES/NO gets ignored, because they didn’t really mean the first “Yes”, they meant “Yes, but only if it only applies to other people” (and you and I know that probably means mainly brown people, even if the fuckwits who’d vote this way would deny it).
Anyone voting YES/YES gets a bullet in the back of their skull as they leave the voting booth.
This referendum would have a number of benefits. First, it would reassure the NO/NOs that they were comfortably in the majority. It would help the NO/YES people get the help they need with understanding the world. It would help the YES/NO people (looking at you, file thirteen and Raging Bee) understand that this issue is important, they’ve really not thought it through, and nobody is going to take any notice of them until they do. And finally the national average IQ would go up several points because the YES/YES people all got their wish. I can’t see a downside.
@22 f13:
No, I’m sure there have been a great many cases where there is no doubt at all.
And for some of them they were mistaken. They shoulda doubted when they didn’ta.
cf. theism.
@23 sonof:
Alternatively, for a fair chunk, they know exactly what they want which is to see a bunch of other people suffer, and any expression of their position in words is merely a means to achieve that without *obviously* coming across as a complete monster.
Indeed. I think it goes further than that, even. I’m pretty sure that file thirteen and Raging Bee don’t think of themselves as complete monsters, even if they self-evidently are based on what they say. They’re not thinking “I need to couch my opinion in these terms to avoid coming across as what I am -- a complete monster”. Rather, they honestly believe themselves to be on the side of right, bless ’em. Only comic book villains think of themselves as villains. REAL villains think they’re the misunderstood hero.
Me, I’m constantly on the lookout for where I’m doing the same in my own life. Where am I wrong? Where am I deluding myself? Among other influences, I credit this blog network and my engagement with it for adjusting my attitude to quite a few subjects over the years. I’ll hold my hands up and admit it -- I was wronger than Wrong Ron McWrong about a few things until I got fully on board the SJW train thanks to the discourse here. I do my best to be as woke as a cishetwhite bloke in his mid 50s can reasonably be expected to be, and I’m always on the lookout for blindspots. But the death penalty and my absolute abhorrence for it in principle is one attitude I’ve held true to for as long as I can remember, and I simply can’t empathise with anyone who doesn’t get it.
sonofrojblake #23
it’s not really a complicated concept, I’m surprised you’re failing to understand it
If it’s so easy and uncomplicated, why didn’t you answer the question? Here it is again: what doubt can there be when a gunman kills multiple innocents in front of witnesses and is apprehended at the scene?
And try not to use generalities of how it’s impossible to craft watertight law again. Details matter.
Actually though, it’s clear that you don’t want to use reasoned discussion, you just want to vent, so have at it.
revenge fantasy
It’s not a fantasy if executions actually happen is it? But revenge is a personal thing (very similar to your motivation for hurling abuse when anyone has the temerity to disagree with you -- you must have copped a lot of abuse to retort the way you do). I haven’t personally lost anyone to a mass-murderer, so it’s not revenge for me; rather it’s me sympathising with those that have experienced loss, and not sympathising with the murderers themselves. The latter have lost all value to me.
xohjoh2n #24
You’re also making the general assertion that a line can’t be drawn. Maybe you could have a go at describing a situation that breaks my example as well. Also, note that what I’m suggesting is far better than what the law in the US is at the moment. Are you sure that you’re not falling into the trap of the perfect being the enemy of the good?
The latter have lost all value to me.
Ok, that’s exaggerating, I mean as far as being a human goes. I still value them as much as I would a dangerous animal. I don’t want them to suffer, but I do understand that dangerous animals sometimes need to be put down.
@25 sonof:
Well, you could start with your poll in @23 where you advocated a bullet in the back of the skull for the YES/YES crowd. Sure, you’re never going to be in a position to put that poll into practice, and most likely no one else ever is either. But you’ve just right there fantasized about the death penalty for people who disagree with you.
@26 f13:
Oh, I’m not saying that at all. You can of course draw whatever lines you like, wherever you like. What I’m saying is that wherever you draw them, even if you believe a decision is on the right side of the side and is therefore the right decision (which I would say is inherently arguable anyway), there are going to be mistakes. And that kind of violates *your* premise, not mine, that you can formulate a rule where there won’t be mistakes…
I don’t see why I need to do that. All existing systems have made mistakes. (And been open to outright abuse.) I see no reason to foresee that any future system will not also make mistakes.
Pretty sure, at least on that count. You’re not falling into the trap of assuming that killing right sort of people can count as good if only you were “sure” they are the right sort? Or perhaps you believe that outright prohibition of judicial execution is just impossible, despite the number of countries that have done so? Or that the only way to modify the US system in this regard is to change the underlying motivation but leave the mechanism intact (which just seems totally arse-about-face to me)?
xohjoh2n #28
Nope.
So because you don’t want to consider my question you’re falling back on the theoretician’s argument that mistakes are inevitable and must eventually happen. Like one day the sun will explode. Any reason why I should think that your hypothetical mistakes are more likely than the sun exploding tomorrow?
The best refutation of what I wrote would be to come up with an example of a real (no spherical cows) mistake that could happen. But if you don’t want to address what I wrote, I can’t make you. Just don’t expect me to be very impressed by the “mistakes are inevitable” argument.
@29 f13:
I’ve no idea why you interjected into something I clearly directed at sonof. You’re not actually them, are you?
Bizarre.
You asked me to posit a hypothetical, to which I refused. And now you’re accusing me of being a theoretician after I pointed out all the real systems we’ve tried have failed and there’s no reason to assume we can do better.
Just, bizarre.
So “could happen” is real, but extrapolating from actual real mistakes is somehow hypothetical.
Truly bizarre.
Whoops, so you did, thought that was directed at me. My mistake.
You didn’t point out jack. All you did was to avoid the question by trying to sweep it together with “actual real mistakes” that you won’t name. I get it though, you want to avoid going into detail. Best leave it at that.
Well, if we’re doing away with the “reasonable doubt” standard -- the incident never actually happened, the evidence is all fake, and all the witnesses are lying. Or the universe as it appears does not actually exist -- it’s a figment of my imagination, or a simulation, or somehow popped into existence fully formed 30 seconds ago.
But the real point, which you keep not getting, is that “are there ever any cases where there is no doubt?” is the wrong question to be asking. The right question is “are there ever any cases where there appears to be no doubt, where that subsequently turns out not to be the case?” Especially bearing in mind the very well documented tendency for police and prosecutors to manipulate, supress, or manufacture evidence in order to support their desired outcome.
The fundamental problem is that it is not possible to design a system for determining whether there is any doubt which will not be gamed and manipulated by the people operating it.
Dunc #32
I think the right question to ask was the specific question I asked, which you quoted. And I note that, like others, you made no attempt to answer it. But for the sake of discussion I’ll try to rework it towards something closer to your question.
Have there been any cases where a gunman killed multiple people (ok, during peacetime, let’s not open the “military justice” can of worms) in front of witnesses, was apprehended at the scene, and was found guilty of multiple charges of murder “beyond reasonable doubt”, but that judgement was later deemed to have been “wrong”? (“Wrong” quoted in order to give you plenty of leeway here)
I don’t know of any. Do you? It’s not a trick question, and if you can answer affirmatively then great, but going by the disappointing responses I’ve had so far I’m more likely to get a reply that criticises the question (or questioner) than an answer in the negative.
Quoting this just to show that I’m not glossing over your comment. I’m well aware of the machinations that prosecutors get up to, and their lack of ethics in this area.
But you’re wrong to emphasise this. You might as well say that it’s better to have no laws at all because they will always be gamed and manipulated. Out goes the bathwater, baby and all.
I don’t think this is a reasonable question, because I do not have complete knowledge of every criminal case in the history of the world. The fact that I don’t personally know of a specific example that meets your threshold is not sufficinent to prove that no such event has ever occurred. And even if we grant that no such event has ever occurred in the past, that does not mean that it is not possible for such an event to occur in the future -- especially if you write your specific criteria into law, and so set them up as a target to be achieved or manipulated.
No, that’s absurd. It just means that we must always design our laws with the possiblity of making mistakes in mind. We can never assume perfection in either design or implementation, because humans are notoriously imperfect.
Dunc #34
It wasn’t a “gotcha” question. I was genuinely interested whether anyone did have such an example, even though it would have immediately shot me down. I do realise that it doesn’t prove anything that nobody did.
Ok, fair enough.