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Originally Posted by CrazyFlamingos  Not necessarily. Ask any experienced law enforcement officer and they will likely tell you that eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable in the case of crimes committed by strangers.
If the perpetrator was known to all of the witnesses or was apprehended during the commission of the crime and there were several eye witnesses then that would be irrefutable.
But eye witnesses IDing a stranger after the fact? Not going to convince me to give someone the death penalty. | You raise a good point, one I had been thinking about since I keyed the post you just replied to. Maybe not even those circumstances qualify as "no doubt at all."
My state of Illinois has a death penalty statute, so it's conceivable I could one day be called for jury duty and asked my opinion of the death penalty.
Based partly on the discussion here, I would have to say that I would consider it in cases where "no doubt at all" is established, but not in cases that are "just" 99.999% sure.
I imagine that position would lead to me being excused from jury duty, in favor of someone more willing to impose the death penalty, and I'm fine with that. |