OT: Here comes da Judge

So guns should be outlawed. Problem solved.

Like a jury has intimate knowledge of the law... From this side of the big lake the US legal system looks like a complete joke.

Which is why the death penalty isn't the solution. It can't be set right. Over here things go wrong every now and then but people who went to jail for a crime they didn't commit get a large financial settlement.

at least then it will go to something we normally pay with other taxes and not to pay for guns, cars, planes, bribes or what ever drug lords spend their money on

and we wouldn't have to pay for a huge police force and agencies and their more and more military gadgets, one because they wouldn't have to deal with drug dealers, second there would probably be less crime when drugs are not so expensive you need to do crime to afford it

-Lasse

-Lasse

aren't they already?

-Lasse

Have you considered moving to Saudi Arabia? Granted, it is a bit more civilized than Arizona, but you would fit in.

Not to mention when you can get your weed at Wal-Mart, nobody is going to be fighting for their turf.

Until drugs are legalized, all we can hope is that the shootings remain in Texas and Arizona.

He is simply ignorant. There is prosecutorial discretion. Manslaughter versus degrees of murder, etc.

The weather in Saudi Arabia is better, too.

You don't know governments. They'd just find something extra to spend the money on, and keep all the existing taxes.

Meanwhile, the criminals would find another way of making money. People- trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, etc. Probably untaxed drugs. They did just as well after Prohibition, as during.

I'm not sure whether the Netherlands has a jury, or a judge panel system, or whether judges are elected or appointed.

In jury countries, the judge only rules on points of law. Matters of fact are decided by a jury, selected from the public. The criterion for acquittal is "reasonable doubt". The judge may direct a jury to acquit, on legal grounds, but not to convict.

A jury is not supposed to have *any* knowledge of the law, but to take instruction from the judge on legal points. Whilst legal points are being argued by counsel, the jury are usually sent out.

In the United States, judges are elected for a fixed term, and have to submit for re-election, at the end of that term.

I never claimed it was a solution. Only that one criterion of merit for a prosecutor is the number of successful convictions.

I offer no opinion regarding the death penalty per se.

after they banned marijuana so that all the policemen and FBI agents they had hired to fight Capone etc. wouldn't be out of work

and as a bonus banning hemp so it wouldn't compete with cotton ...

-Lasse

--- Simplistic utter Nonsense.

If guns were outlawed, the only ones who wouldn't have guns would be those who obey the law.

That, then, would deprive us of our right to defend ourselves, something the criminal element / government would very much like to see happen.

-- JF

Trying to start an argument ;-) Mikek

They hardly execute anyone anymore. When this show originally got started i n England, all felonies were capital offenses. It will come back now that t he U.S. is nosediving into third world status. They could have the subhuman s from the recent incidents in Oklahoma and Washington hung by the neck unt il dead by the end of the week if they expedited the process, but the grand standers are going to blow well over several million on legal proceedings f or a completely ineffective life in prison - maybe.

"Nico Coesel" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@news.kpn.nl...

If guns are outlawed only outlaws 'll have guns. Which here practically is. Off course, the police is there to protect you. A fine theory. And they also have guns but are almost never allowed to use them.

Nevertheless I don't like the idea of death sentence as a punishment. Not because of the guilty but because of the innocent. In spite of the huge and still growing number of rules, laws and so on to protect the innocent they nevertheless sentence innocent people every now and then. Last years we had several cases over here proven to be judicial errors even years after the assumes criminals served their terms. One can only imagine in how many cases the thruth never surfaced.

petrus bitbyter

lvo

you

Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson does have a problem with generating intelligent or well-informed responses.

I presume his son-in-law's 25 years as public prosecutor means that he spen t longer stuck at that stage of his career than more competent examples of the breed. That he got to put away a record number of seriously guilty (whi ch in the US seems to mean lower social class) offenders in that time would n't seem to be anything to boast about.

any

le,

Probably true, but sine it's the police who put together the case against t he unfortunate perp (or the even more unfortunate scape-goat who keeps thei r clean-up rate looking good) and the prison service who eventually execute s them, the prosecutor doesn't get much of the credit for any individual ex ecution. Jim would presumably much prouder if his son-in-law had murdered s ome left-wing neighbour of Jim's with his own hands.

e,

s.

Unless the drug they are running is alcohol or tobacco.

ilty

rs

Right-wing nitwits believe this, but there not a shred of evidence to suppo rt this belief, and some studies seem to show that murders are more common in places where they still have the death penalty.

And there's a even higher chance of the kind of civil unrest which would allow Jim to start shooting his more left-wing neighbours.

Since even Jim wouldn't have the money to be able live cheek by jowl with the members of the Saudi royal family, there's the added bonus that more of his neighbours would be likely to be left-wing enough for him to want to shoot them.

And you think it's OK that someone who takes a life is allowed to keep his?

Moral moron.

G²