<story><title>The Case of Richard Glossip</title><url>http://pg.posthaven.com/the-case-of-richard-glossip</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lisa_henderson</author><text>About this:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Though a jury is a good idea and the best we&amp;#x27;ve got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;How do you justify the statement that a jury is the best idea that we have? Germany has the concept of Schöffe, and some believe this offers results that stick closer to the law than the jury system:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.britannica.com&amp;#x2F;topic&amp;#x2F;Schoffe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.britannica.com&amp;#x2F;topic&amp;#x2F;Schoffe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;While any government of mortal human flesh must inevitably have some flaws, the jury system seems especially bad at overcoming popular prejudice. In the USA, &amp;quot;a jury of one&amp;#x27;s peers&amp;quot; has often meant a mostly white (or all white) jury judging a black person, a circumstance that has given the USA many hundreds of famous miscarriages of justice.&lt;p&gt;The system that grew out of English Common Law, and which dominates England, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, is not the only system known to liberal Western societies. The English system is unique in the authority it gives to juries. Most of the Continental judicial systems either lack juries or have juries whose goal is constrained relative to the English system.&lt;p&gt;A review of the legal traditions in liberal Western nations reveals a lot of good ideas, many of which are probably superior to the jury system.</text></item><item><author>johnnyg</author><text>RE: How people are and the death penalty&lt;p&gt;The other day I was driving down the road and thinking about how people are.&lt;p&gt;It was 33 years coming but here&amp;#x27;s what hit me: people do what they want, even in the face of devastating consequences.&lt;p&gt;See that long line outside any burger joint? See the stats on the amount of hard drugs guaranteed to destroy your world we consume? See that person cheating? See that DA wanting a win?&lt;p&gt;If you want a burger, a high, an orgasm or a conviction, you generally will get it at some price that&amp;#x27;s ultimately...above market.&lt;p&gt;How much more prone to excess is someone in the heat of a moment? How unlike the event does its moment by moment reconstruction during a trial appear? The mismatch has always struck me as unjust. As people judging an event whose experience they haven&amp;#x27;t had and haven&amp;#x27;t attempted to recreate. Though a jury is a good idea and the best we&amp;#x27;ve got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.&lt;p&gt;An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation.&lt;p&gt;Any shade of grey zooming out from that seems too hard for any government system to decide well. I hear people say things in passing like &amp;quot;he only got 20 years&amp;quot;. 20 years is a huge and devastating amount of time, as is one year. As we&amp;#x27;ve ramped up the time on these sentences and made it an all or nothing proposition. Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t think 20 years will do it if 1 year hasn&amp;#x27;t and I don&amp;#x27;t think death will do it if 20 years hasn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;Regarding Richard Glossip. I don&amp;#x27;t know him or his case. I don&amp;#x27;t know the victim and while they won&amp;#x27;t return, there&amp;#x27;s a debt owed that I don&amp;#x27;t know how to pay. I want Richard Glossip to live. I don&amp;#x27;t think taking another life will pay the debt of the first. What I want most of all is for someone to tell me how to pay that debt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kriro</author><text>The bigger issue is that these things are hard to test and noone is willing to run the tests. In theory the US has a good setup for a state to decide to do some testing but politics make it impossible (and there&amp;#x27;s a decent ethical argument for either side that is far from simple). I mean think about the reactions if some politician would say &amp;quot;we need to see if our courts are as good as they can be, I propose we get rid of the jury system and replace it with X to see if X is superior&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;1) That&amp;#x27;s UNAMERICAN. Courts and jury is the way god intended it to be.&lt;p&gt;2) Lol crackpot.&lt;p&gt;3) What if X turns out to be worse, sucks for the people who got trials like this during that time.&lt;p&gt;4) Lol crackpot.&lt;p&gt;Experimentation for political systems, judiciary infrastructure and the like is a really hard problem and I think de facto impossible. I applaud everyone who tries no matter how crazy it seems (seasteading) but at the end of the day I think there is no such thing as radical political entrepreneurship.
I think it&amp;#x27;s unfortunate but I also can&amp;#x27;t envision how (rapid) experimentation cycles could be transfered to such systems.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Case of Richard Glossip</title><url>http://pg.posthaven.com/the-case-of-richard-glossip</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lisa_henderson</author><text>About this:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Though a jury is a good idea and the best we&amp;#x27;ve got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;How do you justify the statement that a jury is the best idea that we have? Germany has the concept of Schöffe, and some believe this offers results that stick closer to the law than the jury system:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.britannica.com&amp;#x2F;topic&amp;#x2F;Schoffe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.britannica.com&amp;#x2F;topic&amp;#x2F;Schoffe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;While any government of mortal human flesh must inevitably have some flaws, the jury system seems especially bad at overcoming popular prejudice. In the USA, &amp;quot;a jury of one&amp;#x27;s peers&amp;quot; has often meant a mostly white (or all white) jury judging a black person, a circumstance that has given the USA many hundreds of famous miscarriages of justice.&lt;p&gt;The system that grew out of English Common Law, and which dominates England, Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, is not the only system known to liberal Western societies. The English system is unique in the authority it gives to juries. Most of the Continental judicial systems either lack juries or have juries whose goal is constrained relative to the English system.&lt;p&gt;A review of the legal traditions in liberal Western nations reveals a lot of good ideas, many of which are probably superior to the jury system.</text></item><item><author>johnnyg</author><text>RE: How people are and the death penalty&lt;p&gt;The other day I was driving down the road and thinking about how people are.&lt;p&gt;It was 33 years coming but here&amp;#x27;s what hit me: people do what they want, even in the face of devastating consequences.&lt;p&gt;See that long line outside any burger joint? See the stats on the amount of hard drugs guaranteed to destroy your world we consume? See that person cheating? See that DA wanting a win?&lt;p&gt;If you want a burger, a high, an orgasm or a conviction, you generally will get it at some price that&amp;#x27;s ultimately...above market.&lt;p&gt;How much more prone to excess is someone in the heat of a moment? How unlike the event does its moment by moment reconstruction during a trial appear? The mismatch has always struck me as unjust. As people judging an event whose experience they haven&amp;#x27;t had and haven&amp;#x27;t attempted to recreate. Though a jury is a good idea and the best we&amp;#x27;ve got, the process they run through seems ripe for reform.&lt;p&gt;An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential rehabilitation.&lt;p&gt;Any shade of grey zooming out from that seems too hard for any government system to decide well. I hear people say things in passing like &amp;quot;he only got 20 years&amp;quot;. 20 years is a huge and devastating amount of time, as is one year. As we&amp;#x27;ve ramped up the time on these sentences and made it an all or nothing proposition. Unfortunately, I don&amp;#x27;t think 20 years will do it if 1 year hasn&amp;#x27;t and I don&amp;#x27;t think death will do it if 20 years hasn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;Regarding Richard Glossip. I don&amp;#x27;t know him or his case. I don&amp;#x27;t know the victim and while they won&amp;#x27;t return, there&amp;#x27;s a debt owed that I don&amp;#x27;t know how to pay. I want Richard Glossip to live. I don&amp;#x27;t think taking another life will pay the debt of the first. What I want most of all is for someone to tell me how to pay that debt.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>philwelch</author><text>The purpose of a jury isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily to make the best, most legally correct decision. The purpose of a jury is to put the people in control of the state.&lt;p&gt;One could argue, perhaps from the experience of China, that elections aren&amp;#x27;t the most effective means of choosing political leaders. But this misses the point of elections.</text></comment>