. . . is that our legal system does not provide for any determination of degrees of certainty as to guilt, and therefore there no way to ensure that the death penalty will only be used in such cases. There is ONE standard of criminal guilt in our legal system: guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond <i>all</i> doubt. As West's Encyclopedia of American Law elaborates:
Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is not beyond all possible or imaginary doubt, but such proof as precludes every reasonable hypothesis except that which it tends to support. It is proof to a moral certainty, that is, such proof as satisfies the judgment and consciences of the jury, as reasonable people and applying their reason to the evidence before them, that the crime charged has been committed by the defendant, and so satisfies them as to leave no other reasonable conclusion possible.
A Reasonable Doubt is such a doubt as would cause a reasonable and prudent person in the graver and more important affairs of life to pause and hesitate to act upon the truth of the matter charged. It does not mean a mere possible doubt, because everything relating to human affairs, and depending on moral evidence, is open to some possible or imaginary doubt
Under our criminal justice system, if there is doubt sufficient to call into question the imposition of a legal sentence that is among the possible sentences for a particular crime, then there is sufficient reason to call into question the conviction itself.
What's more, if we were to try to enact a new standard of guilt for such cases, under which some persons guilty verdicts are deemed to be more "certain" than others, we would immediately come up against two serious problems: one of definition, the other of logistics. The problem of definition arises in how to define what would constitute a guilty verdict about which there is "no doubt about it." DNA evidence, you say? I would remind you that just a few years ago, there was a rash of guilty verdicts in Texas that were called into question as a result of corruption in a couple of DNA labs. I submit there is no definition that would constitute a fail-safe definition in determining which cases meet the standard of certainly you suggest.
Assuming we could surmount the problem of definition, our courts would then be faced with a logistical nightmare. An entire new phase of proceedings would be required, post-verdict and pre-sentencing, to determine whether or not a particular guilty verdict met the standard of certainty that would make it eligible for a death sentence.
Anyone who claims to support the death penalty, then, must accept that there will always be the possibility of wrongful convictions, and therefore wrongful impositions of the death sentence. And if you are going to be at all ethically and intellectually honest, if you are going to support the death penalty, you are really obligated to articulate a rationale that can somehow justify the fact that it is, and will be, sometimes unjustly imposed. If you can't do that, then you have no business supporting it.
= new reply since forum marked as read
