At 1:00 AM -0400 06/11/2000, Tarr, Kevin wrote:
> You want a national standard for a local issue. Right to council,
>isn't that a given already? Procedures for appeal? One state gives ten
>avenues for appeal and another only eight, that's a moral outrage? Here's a
>411 for criminals: Stop committing crimes!
Ahem. Look at the demographics for who's punished for crimes and who's
convicted for crimes. Over-representation of specific racial groups in the
USA and Canada is a fact of life. It goes so far that I once had a
character in a story I abandoned declare that crime in the West is simply a
form of class struggle where bourgeois declare "proletarian" theft as
"crime" and "bourgeois" theft as "business" or "politics". A bit extreme,
but hey, who set up the rules, and were they set up retroactively? I don't
think so.
Besides which there's a difference between complaining about 8 appeals vs.
10, and complaining that one state gives the death penalty while another
doesn't.
Gord
