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Should there be a "Swift Justice" law

Swift Justice?

  • Yes

    Votes: 3 15.0%
  • No

    Votes: 17 85.0%

  • Total voters
    20
If you go to the doctor, do you want swift treatment or effective treatment? The same goes for justice.

If guilt is so obvious then it should be easy to prove. If it can't be proven then guess what, even murderers go free. This is to protect the innocent.

No judge should have summary sentencing powers, let alone sole authority to execute! Any place in the world where judges have this power and juries are absent, there are widespread abuses.

You can't create a safe standard where judges won't be able to abuse this ability. A jury is needed, along with legal defense.

Capital punishment should be abolished in general because already innocents have paid the price, and it's expensive.
 
Challenger blew up in 1986. Should we shut down NASA?

They were innocent too.
 
And its painfully obvious given the barbarity of his crimes, and his depraved reasoning that he has simply forfieted his right to live.

In this case, I believe a summary execution is entirely justified. No need for torture, no fuss, just taken behind the shed and put down.

But he's only one example.

I believe there should be a clause in the justice system for events like this, and for example Loughner, for acts such as this, where its painfully obvious that they're guilty and willfully carried out the actions of their own free will, that they should be summarily executed.

To begin with, I'm against capital punishment, period. Lengthy appeals process or not, so many people have been exonerated by advancements in evidence analysis that would otherwise have died for a crime that they didn't commit that I can never in good conscience support the death penalty. I'll reconsider my position when we can guarantee that only the guilty are punished thus.

I don't care if somebody is obviously guilty. I don't care if the accused from the rooftops of their guilt, or if 50 witnesses step forward, or if there were 6 different camera angles plus DNA and ballistics and fingerprints all over the goddamn place -- our justice system is far from perfect, which by definition should exclude the use of an irreversible punishment.

As far as it goes with the pace of the justice system, that's the product an overburdened system. Depending on your perspective, either there aren't enough bodies to keep the mill grinding up people fast enough, or far too many people are being ground up. My opinion leans towards the latter: Too many prosecutors charging too many people because there's no metric to measure actual justice throughput -- just the number of convictions, the overall conviction rate and total years sentenced.

Whichever angle you take, one or the other is the ultimate cause for the snail's pace of justice in this country. It's not that we don't take heinous crimes seriously enough to get off our ass and prosecute somebody, it's a systemic problem.

The best remedy is the one that addresses the root cause, rather than the one that treats the symptoms -- don't create a special express lane for mass-murderers, get the courts running more smoothly.
 
Challenger blew up in 1986. Should we shut down NASA?

They were innocent too.

There's a distinct difference between space exploration -- which involves a variety of risks that astronauts volunteer to brave -- and capital punishment, which involves the risk that an innocent will be punished in a manner most permanent and foul.
 
Go to wikipedia and look up the case of Giuseppe Zangara who killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak in 1933 and tried to kill President elect Roosevelt. It took five weeks from the day of the crime to his execution.
 
Breivik should not face capital punishment. There is no compelling interest in killing him as opposed to life in prison. The legal system isn't around to satisfy emotional revenge, it is protect society. Most mass shooters end up killing themselves so there isn't even any deterrence in preventing similar crimes.
 
I haven't read the thread, but have a couple of thoughts on the OP. The USA already has the right to a speedy trial, although that right is usually waived by the defense to allow longer to prepare. However, Anders Behring Breivik will not spend the rest of his life in prison. In Norway, the most he can be sentenced to is 21 years. Given that paltry sentence for such a heinous crime, I'm not going to shed tears if he spends a few extra years preparing for trial.

Loughner is a different situation. He is certifiably insane, unable to understand the charges against him, unable to aid in his own defense, and will most likely never be tried for his crimes. He will also most likely never be released from the psychiatric institution.

I'm not usually in favor of the death penalty, but when talking about mass murder with the bodies at the perpetrator's feet, I'd be willing to put a bullet in the guy's brain myself.

Most trials are not so cut-and-dried. Too many innocents are being convicted based upon thin circumstantial evidence, only to be proven innocent after years and even decades in jail. I'm certainly not willing to take every convicted murderer out behind the courthouse and put them down immediately. Justice isn't always just, but it's the best system we currently have. It would be even better if it weren't riddled with so damned much behind-the-scenes corruption. Just sayin'.
 
I voted the obvious answer of yes BUT I'm not sure how the law should be written. Of course I would not want to give up all rights but the worthless loop holes that people use to appeal etc etc need to be removed of blocked in some cases.

There are people that have confessed and there's video/DNA evidence they did it and they still wait years to get executed. What a wast.
 
Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people including children on the 22nd of July 2011.

He will be tried through a painfully slow justice system and ultimately will be convicted and spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.

Now normally I'm against the death penalty. But it just seems to me that acts of this nature, extraordinary nature I might add, require extraordinary responses. Its obvious he did it, I don't need a jury or a judge to tell me otherwise.

And its painfully obvious given the barbarity of his crimes, and his depraved reasoning that he has simply forfieted his right to live.

In this case, I believe a summary execution is entirely justified. No need for torture, no fuss, just taken behind the shed and put down.

But he's only one example.

I believe there should be a clause in the justice system for events like this, and for example Loughner, for acts such as this, where its painfully obvious that they're guilty and willfully carried out the actions of their own free will, that they should be summarily executed.

Of course this is a pipe dream, very extreme on my part and I'll be first one to admit it goes against alot of what I believe and it goes against the very fabric that the law is. The law has to apply equally, and at the end of the day, is there truly a moral difference between someone who stabs a woman to death for $130 or shoots a person in cold blood because they believe they're an idealogical enemy...

Not really.

But mass murderers, especially ones like Loughner, and Breivik, don't just wake up one day and decide to committ these acts, they take time, careful consideration, planning and execution, and lets go one step further. For world leaders that committ crimes against their own people. Such as genocide and other maliticous acts. Lets do it to them as well. Milosovec didn't deserve the ICC, he deserved a shot to the back of the head after bring raped with a hot iron for all the attrocities he caused. He carefully planned and executed a campaign of national ethnic cleansing and mass rape that was years in the making and lasted 3 years. The Nazi leaders that were hung deserved their fate for the brutal and systematic slaughter they unleashed...

But again I absolutely and openly admit that its all in the end emotionalism. This whole post is. But when I see Breivik and Loughner being coddled, relatively speaking, given the so much rights and priveledges when its obvious and doesn't even require a judge, jury of investigation that the only priveledge these men gave to anyone was a bullet or a bomb... its enough to boil your blood.

I haven't read the rest of this thread, but I would be against such a clause.

It's important to give prosecutors and the state the time they need to investigate spree crimes such as this. A "swift justice" law may impede the investigation to bring spree killers to justice and to give them a sentence they deserve. This is especially true when it comes to spree killers who may be mentally ill, especially since in the U.S. our mental health system is absolutely atrocious.

So by implementing such a clause it may hurt the state, and therefore the people, more than it would help.
 
Before I clicked on this thread, when I read the title, I was expecting something along the lines of how long it can take to move through the process of arrest to verdict.

True justice is blind. Always has been, always will be. Even the worst of terrorists, pedophiles, and mass murderers are entitled to legal rights in the system that tries them. Even if everybody else knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did it, they must be allowed the opportunity of a reasonable defense.

Recognize that if we reduce the arrest-to-verdict time, it's going to require more manpower, which means increased costs. Two courtrooms that can handle the exact same function as one but do so faster, increases costs. But of course, that ignores the benefit to society in the form of having the innocent released faster and the guilty sentenced faster. It is for that reason that I do favor reforms to expedite the process in a manner that does not deny the accused their legal rights. After all, the right to a speedy trial is explicitly stated in the Constitution as one of those rights.
 
Before I clicked on this thread, when I read the title, I was expecting something along the lines of how long it can take to move through the process of arrest to verdict.

True justice is blind. Always has been, always will be. Even the worst of terrorists, pedophiles, and mass murderers are entitled to legal rights in the system that tries them. Even if everybody else knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they did it, they must be allowed the opportunity of a reasonable defense.

Recognize that if we reduce the arrest-to-verdict time, it's going to require more manpower, which means increased costs. Two courtrooms that can handle the exact same function as one but do so faster, increases costs. But of course, that ignores the benefit to society in the form of having the innocent released faster and the guilty sentenced faster. It is for that reason that I do favor reforms to expedite the process in a manner that does not deny the accused their legal rights. After all, the right to a speedy trial is explicitly stated in the Constitution as one of those rights.

Excellent points. I'm in law school at the moment and I have been stunned to find out how insanely underfunded the courts are. It's totally absurd. It is not unusual for parties to have to wait several months just for a 5 minute appearance in front of a judge for some minor procedural thing they need to proceed. Often times the plaintiff dies before the case is resolved... Or, more commonly, whatever they needed from the court is no longer relevant before the case is resolved. We are so short on courts that if more than 1% of the cases actually go to trial the system would break. So, judges are forced to penalize parties so harshly for bringing cases to trial that nobody ever does. For example, in a criminal case, if you don't accept the DA's plea bargain offer and go to trial you are almost certain to get a sentence 3 or more times harsher than what the DA offered you. That is the judge punishing you for taking up the ultra-precious resource of courtroom time. It isn't that the judges are bad people, it is that if they didn't do that they would immediately become completely overwhelmed. In my view that isn't how it is supposed to work at all. People have a right to be heard and we need to provide the funding necessary to give them that opportunity. And it isn't that expensive. In terms of our overall government budgets it is only a miniscule percentage that we spend on courts.
 
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Excellent points. I'm in law school at the moment and I have been stunned to find out how insanely underfunded the courts are. It's totally absurd. It is not unusual for parties to have to wait several months just for a 5 minute appearance in front of a judge for some minor procedural thing they need to proceed. Often times the plaintiff dies before the case is resolved... Or, more commonly, whatever they needed from the court is no longer relevant before the case is resolved. We are so short on courts that if more than 1% of the cases actually go to trial the system would break. So, judges are forced to penalize parties so harshly for bringing cases to trial that nobody ever does. For example, in a criminal case, if you don't accept the DA's plea bargain offer and go to trial you are almost certain to get a sentence 3 or more times harsher than what the DA offered you. That is the judge punishing you for taking up the ultra-precious resource of courtroom time. It isn't that the judges are bad people, it is that if they didn't do that they would immediately become completely overwhelmed. In my view that isn't how it is supposed to work at all. People have a right to be heard and we need to provide the funding necessary to give them that opportunity. And it isn't that expensive. In terms of our overall government budgets it is only a miniscule percentage that we spend on courts.


You can thank the War On Drugs for much of that. Seriously. Drug-related charges swallow up a huge percentage of law enforcement, justice system, and incarceration costs. They are the major reason that courts are so overtaxed and prisons overpopulation. Unfortunately, the War On Drugs is also known as the Law Enforcement Employment Protection Act, so I doubt anything will change.
 
You can thank the War On Drugs for much of that. Seriously. Drug-related charges swallow up a huge percentage of law enforcement, justice system, and incarceration costs. They are the major reason that courts are so overtaxed and prisons overpopulation. Unfortunately, the War On Drugs is also known as the Law Enforcement Employment Protection Act, so I doubt anything will change.

There's a lot of legislation tied up with the Drug War, too. Confiscated property from drug related arrests (like any car even vaguely related to a drug deal, and property where drugs were made or stored) makes up a large portion of funding for police departments. There's a lot to be fixed with all the problems with the Drug War, its affects on police, and how it's torn our fourth amendment rights to shreds.
 
There's a lot of legislation tied up with the Drug War, too. Confiscated property from drug related arrests (like any car even vaguely related to a drug deal, and property where drugs were made or stored) makes up a large portion of funding for police departments. There's a lot to be fixed with all the problems with the Drug War, its affects on police, and how it's torn our fourth amendment rights to shreds.

Indeed. I worked for a SoCal city when the drug confiscation laws were introduced, and our police department was ecstatic! They totally changed departmental focus from patrolling neighborhoods to setting up drug stings, because they knew the proceeds of confiscated property would go directly into police coffers... and they didn't have to account for a dime of it. I was so damned certain that something so clearly unconstitutional would be overturned within months. Ha! It's now been 20 years. Shows what I know about how the real world works. Not only was it not overturned, but the major focus of the nation's police efforts have been drug-related... and not for altruistic good-of-the-community reasons. It's strictly for the cash they can pile up in departmental coffers. Utterly disgusting.
 
Indeed. I worked for a SoCal city when the drug confiscation laws were introduced, and our police department was ecstatic! They totally changed departmental focus from patrolling neighborhoods to setting up drug stings, because they knew the proceeds of confiscated property would go directly into police coffers... and they didn't have to account for a dime of it. I was so damned certain that something so clearly unconstitutional would be overturned within months. Ha! It's now been 20 years. Shows what I know about how the real world works. Not only was it not overturned, but the major focus of the nation's police efforts have been drug-related... and not for altruistic good-of-the-community reasons. It's strictly for the cash they can pile up in departmental coffers. Utterly disgusting.

Maybe if we stopped making police rely on drug busts to pay their salaries, they could go back to actually trying to protect us from violent criminals. All of those infringements of our rights would diminish. We could see about overturning a lot of Supreme Court cases that supported the Drug War. I think people's support for police would be renewed, as well. Once their job doesn't center around constantly keeping tabs on us and screwing us over so much...
 
First Norway may be the best place in the world to be found guilty of any crime because prison is like a Country Club where there is is no punishment what so ever. If you follow the lick you will see that a cell looks like a dorm room and it's in a brightly colored wooden chalet.
They have no death penalty, even for this guy who should not have been taken alive.

Besides enjoying views of the surrounding fjord, they go horseback riding and throw barbecues, and have access to a movie theater, tanning bed and, during winter, two ski jumps.
Sentenced to Serving the Good Life in Norway - TIME
 
Maybe if we stopped making police rely on drug busts to pay their salaries, they could go back to actually trying to protect us from violent criminals. All of those infringements of our rights would diminish. We could see about overturning a lot of Supreme Court cases that supported the Drug War. I think people's support for police would be renewed, as well. Once their job doesn't center around constantly keeping tabs on us and screwing us over so much...

Pay their salaries??? Oh no, you misunderstand. The taxpayers still pay their salaries. Confiscation money does not go back into the city's general fund; it goes into a separate slush fund of the police department itself, to spend on whatever it wishes, without accounting for it and without audit.
 
Any of you guys ever seen Breaking Bad? I am reminded of a scene where a certain character's bag of cash is alleged to be drug money and taken...
 
Pay their salaries??? Oh no, you misunderstand. The taxpayers still pay their salaries. Confiscation money does not go back into the city's general fund; it goes into a separate slush fund of the police department itself, to spend on whatever it wishes, without accounting for it and without audit.

Okay, so it's perks, not salaries. Either way, the point is still that policemen have a personal financial interest in the drug war. That is a major obstacle to overcome if we are to solve this problem.
 
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