Summations Only

That would be one type of training exercise, yes. But I submit that your logical approach is not the most effective.Studies have shown that people are generally much better at distinguishing members of their own race than they are of distinguishing between members of different races. That problem has led to plenty of well documented mis-identifications and wrongful convictions..That suggests that white policeman ought to be looking at faces of other folks. So should black policemen. And the more similar the faces looked at, the better the practice.Studies also suggest that with just a little practice, we can learn how to make cross race distinctions more accurately. We cannot do much about the failures of the general public, but we can give the police department practice.Frankly, I don't care what race you are. If you want to be a better policeman, you ought to be concerned about your unconscious tendency to think all blacks, Asians, whites, etc. look alike.On the other hand, unless we are shooting people on sight, I don't see any purpose in combining such training with target practice. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Then no, you don't consider yourself recovering from the state of being a homicidal racist. You just assume.And if you are a psychopath, you probably are not capable of the requisite introspection or the requisite restraint. You just might have that unfortunate result.

What Cat Sci has managed to show is that the people involved in the protests express larger issues than you do. At some point the question has to be why their own explanation of their motives is less credible than the ones you impute to them.

Part of the system is the idea that states have rights in the finality of their verdicts. In addition to whatever errors and/or malfeasance occurred in the original trial, the state indulged itself in 16 years of avoiding evidence that would have put things right. I think we can point to the system as contributing to the result.

That's simply not correct. The state's right to respect for its jury verdicts is difficult to overcome and it is respected by the Supreme Court. Just being honest is not enough. Evidence that simply casts doubt on the correctness of a verdict is not enough to get a new trial once a verdict has been rendered. The standard for reversal based on new evidence is very near certainty that the verdict was wrong unless malfeasance is proven. And guess where the burdens of proof lie after conviction?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Lol! You find it strange to assume that men fail? Isn't that what the Fall is all about?Recall that my remarks are about the delay with exonerating Hinton and not with his original conviction.An honest prosecutor who wanted to review the Hinton case would have had a tough road to overcome. Prosecutor is generally a public office which requires a tough on crime stance to get re-elected. I'm sure the electorates opinion of Hinton was not very high. On top of that, the legal hurdle to overturn a jury verdict is also very high, and such a burden is not met simply by the DA agreeing that some evidence was misinterpreted. A few prosecutors do spend some of their jurisdiction's time and lawyer resources looking at bad convictions but that cannot be very popular to do in many jurisdictions.To not attach some responsibility to the system which places obstacles in the way of even honest men is to be completely naive and marks an unfounded acceptance of the idea that things cannot be better than they are. As I lawyer, I know the values of the legal system and its way of working perhaps better than many. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. But it is unrealistic not to appreciate that some of the virtues are double edge swords that can grind up the innocent.Most wingnuts would tell you that Hinton should have been long dead by the time he was executed. It's a good thing for all of us that Hinton is even still here.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Generally speaking, there is no budget for the public defender to handle appeals. Those guys and gals have their hands full pleading cases and defending indigent defendants at trial.

How likely is it that it will matter why he ran? The Supreme Court has already said that the police cannot shoot criminals just to keep them from escaping. If this guy wasn't a threat to the policeman or the public, then he should not have been shot at even once. Just how many shots (less than eight I guess) do you think would be justified by running away? If the unofficial policies are the ones that get used, then they are the system because there are no working safeguards against people doing whatever the heck they want. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

She did indeed say exactly that. But she followed up with what seemed to me to some justification for shooting at the fleeing perp some number of times.In my view the dead, running away, no child support paying miscreant was clearly wrong and his reasons for running are no good. There is no question that there was a struggle with the police and that he as trying to avoid capture. But he still should not be dead.His life should have mattered. That's my point. Perhaps you might see some parallel between this miscreant and Eric Garner, because I certainly do.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Whoa.I explained why I made my comment. I may very well be wrong about what your words implied, but I felt the comment was warranted. I still feel that way. Perhaps it should not have been directed at you.With respect to the death penalty though, as best as I can tell, the law simply does not support it in this instance. Absent some kind of hate crime statute, there simply is no basis for asking for the death penalty in this case. And that's despite the fact that South Carolina has no problem with the death penalty per se. If you think such a penalty is warranted in this case, then I guess you have a problem with the system.ABE: No one seems to be talking about this, but there was an actual struggle between Scott and the officer that involved the two men tussling on the ground. It is entirely possible that the Scott got a hold of the officer's taser. The officer might have been within the law to have shot Scott at that point.However, at the time of the shooting, Scott had succeeded in breaking free, and clearly did not have the taser. I cannot read the officer's mind, but he might well have shot Scott out of frustration, anger, and some fear. But despite what some police will tell you, resisting arrest is not the type of dangerous felony that authorizes you to shoot a fleein' perp in the back. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Must be all of those liberals in South Carolina. They've watered down the criminal justice system so that you cannot execute a policeman for murder anymore.

Why would I look up South Carolina law in a commentary? Quite clearly the authorities in that state are not drawing on what you consider to be God's justice when they don't execute Officer Slager. It's quite apparently that South Carolina, like every other of the 50 states uses a quite different philosophy of crime and punishment.This is a perfect example of how law is not Bible based. Besides that, if has John cited an inappropriate verse (and I could argue that he has not), he could very well have talked about stoning a woman of ill repute to much better effect.I find it quite amusing that some Christians claim not to live under the law until the time arises to apply the law to others. Here is yet another example.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I appreciate the recommendation, but I am not so ignorant, and I know what I would find.First of all, your comment would not appear to be relevant to what South Carolina law is today. Second of all, I am not overly impressed with the original laws of this country. I understand that at one point in American history, you could hang witches (before you jerk your knee notice that I said "hang"). In North Carolina the state could execute bigamists and people who helped a slave run away. I find on balance that the departure from the laws in the early part of this countries history to be an improvement. But of course that's just my opinionEdited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You have that backwards. The application of the death penalty in accordance with the original laws of the colonies, whatever its basis, were ridiculous on its face, and therefore I am glad to see that law gone. I gave a few examples of what I was talking about. Unless you are prepared to defend those as correct applications of God's law, then you would not seem to have made a point. Actually, the original idea was that individual states would be set up based on whatever religion they wanted. Primarily that turned out to be the Catholic Church and the Church of England although there were some small enclaves of other religions.In any event, the original idea of equality in this country was extremely limited to the point of being morally indefensible. It is absolutely no guide a system of equality anyone ought to find tolerable. Yet you seem to think of it as freedom. Typical.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Blackstone's commentaries on criminal law are by and large post law apologetics. That is they attempt to show us that laws which are as they are are just and correct. This is not a source to be relied on for defending the Biblical basis of the law can be defended.Commentaries on the Laws of England - Wikipedia

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Of Public Wrongs is Blackstone's treatise on criminal law. Here, Blackstone the apologist takes centre stage; he seeks to explain how the criminal laws of England were just and merciful, despite becoming later known as the Bloody Code for their severity. He does however accept that "It is a melancholy truth, that among the variety of actions which men are daily liable to commit, no less than an hundred and sixty have been declared by Act of Parliament to be felonious without benefit of clergy; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death". Blackstone frequently had to resort to the devices of assuring his reader that the laws as written were not actually enforced, and that the King's power of pardon existed to correct any hardships or injustices.

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That's Blackstone's criminal law. Unduly harsh, relying on the King to fix things, and in some cases celebrated by departure from what was actually applied.