5 ms·
Shouldn't a person's admittance of guilt and the sincerity of that admittance be a factor in determining their sentence?
by ryanklee 3y ago
Shouldn't a person's admittance of guilt and the sincerity of that admittance be a factor in determining their sentence?
- johngladtj 3y agoNo. You should not incentivise people to lie, or give a specific answer. Nor should you incentivise innocent people to proclaim their guilt
- ryanklee 3y agoI didn't say we should, I asked if someone's admittance of guilt and their sincerity is relevant to sentencing measures.
- johngladtj 3y agoIf it's relevant then people will be incentivise to lie to get better outcomes for themselves
- kaibee 3y agoNo, I don't think acting ability should factor into sentencing decisions.
- ryanklee 3y agoThat wasn't my question.
- cma 3y agoSomeone with low affect likely just gets seen as insincere, and a professional actor gets impunity?
- ceejayoz 3y agoHumans are not well equipped to accurately judge sincerity.
- ryanklee 3y agoThat has no relevance to my question. What I want to know is if admittance of guilt and sincerity is at all relevant to sentencing, not about whether a particular mechanism is fit to determine either point.
- ceejayoz 3y agoIf we can't accurately assess it, it should absolutely not be considered in sentencing. It's like giving someone a longer jail sentence for having a blue aura instead of a pink one.
- ryanklee 3y agoI think it's rather unfair to say that we can't accurately judge sincerity unless you talk about levels of precision. Because, for instance, accuracy in judgment of sincerity is a basic requirement of getting through any day for any human. In other words, we can certainly judge it accurately enough for many purposes.
- ceejayoz 3y agoGullible people and great liars abound. People fall for "we're the IRS and we need you to buy some iTunes gift cards" all the time, the entire country is deeply split on what's "fake news" and what isn't; we're clearly not cut out for these assessments. Normal life works reasonably OK, but sentencing isn't a "normal life" scenario; it's the sort of thing that sends people to jail wrongly for decades fairly frequently.
- ryanklee 3y agoYes, all of which sentencing is also based on human judgement of persons character, witness statements, expert statements, presentation of evidence, etc etc Judgement of sincerity is woven into the entirety of court procedures. Why would you exclude this additional relevant data point regarding sincerity of allocution?
- watwut 3y agoThese are not measures of sincerity. They are pop science at best, gut feelings based on nothing at worst.