3 ms·

Scalia was indeed very conservative, and I'm pretty sure he would tell you that. Often was not a friend of the accused or convicted, though there were some exce

Scalia was indeed very conservative, and I'm pretty sure he would tell you that. Often was not a friend of the accused or convicted, though there were some exceptions.

wyldfire 10y ago
But how should "conservatism" play into faith-in-forensic-evidence? Seems like it's mostly orthogonal. I suspect that trends of finding against the accused would track the issues well: Scalia was focused on a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Because death penalty supporters, like Scalia, ultimately have to accept the court's ruling as perfect or the government is just murdering random people. You can't have it both ways. You can't support the DP and also accept that our investigation tools, be them technical or social, are highly flawed and that our court is often wrong. That's the contradiction here.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > Because death penalty supporters, like Scalia, ultimately have to accept the court's ruling as perfect or the government is just murdering random people. False dichotomy. The court's ruling can be less than perfect and still be very far from random. (Perfection is clearly something they should strive for, of course.) But in fact, we are not (and should not be) willing to accept a 100% false negative rate in order to achieve a 0% false positive rate.
  - reality_czech 10y ago
    Everyone understands that the government and the criminal justice system is imperfect. We have them anyway, because the alternatives are worse. Sending an innocent man to jail for life is not fundamentally different from executing him. You can't give people back years of their life, and many people die in prison for various reasons.
    - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
      There is a fundamental difference: the living person could continue to lobby his case via extraordinary means (pardon, etc) or wait until there's some meta-analysis of evidence or other event that frees him. Being killed means this never happens. Once the execution takes place, there's no going back. We've seen several of these cases of people in prison for years getting their lives back recently. We don't hear about this happening to the executed, because we can't give life back.
      - reality_czech 10y ago
        I agree that the death penalty is not to be taken lightly, but that is different from arguing that it should not be used at all. There are lots of examples of crime bosses, murderers, and drug kingpins escaping from prison, but no instances of them returning from the dead. Lives may be lost from inaction as well as action, and the philosophy that "we must be 100% certain to do anything in life" is a self-serving and disingenuous argument, which could be applied equally well against any punishment the state might choose to apply.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        > the living person could continue to lobby his case via extraordinary means (pardon, etc) or wait until there's some meta-analysis of evidence or other event that frees him. That's theoretically true, but how often does it happen? My impression is that more people are exonerated on death row than when serving life sentences.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > how should "conservatism" play into faith-in-forensic-evidence? Seems like it's mostly orthogonal. That would be ideal, but the reality is that many judges make decisions, to significant degree, based on ideology. Of course there is no way to prove what someone's motive or state of mind is, but a few observations: 1) Many people think this is plainly true, 2) many votes by Supreme Court Justices can be predicted based solely on the politics of the issue, and with no knowledge of the facts or law, and 3) the Republicans in the Senate currently openly claim that Justice is an ideological job and therefore they won't vote for a Democrat's nominee. Judges are human beings; we shouldn't hold them to unrealistic standards or we will be shutting our eyes to the realities of how and when justice succeeds and fails. Some are more ideological, some less; some inject ideology more intentionally, some more unconciously based on biases and assumptions. I once attended a speech by a legal scholar who advocated doing away with juries, and all their human unreliability and flaws, and relying instead on the impartial wisdom of judges. An experienced litigator leaned over to me and whispered, 'judges put on their pants one leg at a time, just like everybody else.' > Scalia was focused on a strict interpretation of the Constitution. He said he was, but I've yet to see evidence that it was true. IMHO, he was strict about things he didn't like and flexible about those he did (e.g., Citizens United).

Scalia was indeed very conservative, and I'm pretty sure he would tell you that. Often was not a friend of the accused or convicted, though there were some exceptions.

wyldfire 10y ago

But how should "conservatism" play into faith-in-forensic-evidence? Seems like it's mostly orthogonal. I suspect that trends of finding against the accused would track the issues well: Scalia was focused on a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Because death penalty supporters, like Scalia, ultimately have to accept the court's ruling as perfect or the government is just murdering random people. You can't have it both ways. You can't support the DP and also accept that our investigation tools, be them technical or social, are highly flawed and that our court is often wrong. That's the contradiction here.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > Because death penalty supporters, like Scalia, ultimately have to accept the court's ruling as perfect or the government is just murdering random people. False dichotomy. The court's ruling can be less than perfect and still be very far from random. (Perfection is clearly something they should strive for, of course.) But in fact, we are not (and should not be) willing to accept a 100% false negative rate in order to achieve a 0% false positive rate.
- reality_czech 10y ago
  Everyone understands that the government and the criminal justice system is imperfect. We have them anyway, because the alternatives are worse. Sending an innocent man to jail for life is not fundamentally different from executing him. You can't give people back years of their life, and many people die in prison for various reasons.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    There is a fundamental difference: the living person could continue to lobby his case via extraordinary means (pardon, etc) or wait until there's some meta-analysis of evidence or other event that frees him. Being killed means this never happens. Once the execution takes place, there's no going back. We've seen several of these cases of people in prison for years getting their lives back recently. We don't hear about this happening to the executed, because we can't give life back.
    - reality_czech 10y ago
      I agree that the death penalty is not to be taken lightly, but that is different from arguing that it should not be used at all. There are lots of examples of crime bosses, murderers, and drug kingpins escaping from prison, but no instances of them returning from the dead. Lives may be lost from inaction as well as action, and the philosophy that "we must be 100% certain to do anything in life" is a self-serving and disingenuous argument, which could be applied equally well against any punishment the state might choose to apply.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > the living person could continue to lobby his case via extraordinary means (pardon, etc) or wait until there's some meta-analysis of evidence or other event that frees him. That's theoretically true, but how often does it happen? My impression is that more people are exonerated on death row than when serving life sentences.
hackuser 10y ago
> how should "conservatism" play into faith-in-forensic-evidence? Seems like it's mostly orthogonal. That would be ideal, but the reality is that many judges make decisions, to significant degree, based on ideology. Of course there is no way to prove what someone's motive or state of mind is, but a few observations: 1) Many people think this is plainly true, 2) many votes by Supreme Court Justices can be predicted based solely on the politics of the issue, and with no knowledge of the facts or law, and 3) the Republicans in the Senate currently openly claim that Justice is an ideological job and therefore they won't vote for a Democrat's nominee. Judges are human beings; we shouldn't hold them to unrealistic standards or we will be shutting our eyes to the realities of how and when justice succeeds and fails. Some are more ideological, some less; some inject ideology more intentionally, some more unconciously based on biases and assumptions. I once attended a speech by a legal scholar who advocated doing away with juries, and all their human unreliability and flaws, and relying instead on the impartial wisdom of judges. An experienced litigator leaned over to me and whispered, 'judges put on their pants one leg at a time, just like everybody else.' > Scalia was focused on a strict interpretation of the Constitution. He said he was, but I've yet to see evidence that it was true. IMHO, he was strict about things he didn't like and flexible about those he did (e.g., Citizens United).