Nichols escapes death penalty

[Cymric]

Weird. I wonder what is causing the jury to deadlock.

[Cymric]

T_Bone wrote:
They already found him guilty, so it's all down to someone in the jury being against the death penalty. Ok, I can understand that, but yikes! Why does that person have to be on THIS jury!?

Well, that is the jury system for you. You can't have your cake and eat it, it works both ways. Although I think there is more to it than someone being opposed to the death penalty: this was the second deadlock, after all.

I remember stories about white collar criminals who embezzled tens of millions of dollars from the companies they were running. Some of these calculating snakes 'repented to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ' in court, upon which some jury members would do their utmost best to get them as low a sentence as possible. Same situation.

[Cymric]

T_Bone wrote:
I used to blame the Catholics for that, but Christianity as a whole seems to have embraced repentance as an "alternative" to making up for the wrong and serving the time, rather than something done in addition to it.

If I remember my history lessons correctly, the idea was introduced late in the Middle Ages as the perfect means to raise money. Instead of confessing to your sins, you'd pay a small sum of money called an 'aflaat' in Dutch (I don't know the translation, sorry) which would safeguard you from forgetting to mention sins you would undoubtedly commit in the future. Since the church was the only insurance you had to go to heaven, it fared very well under such a regime: St Peter's basilica was built with the money milked out of poor Dutch and German farmers. The building's beauty is a painful reminder of just how much money it must have cost. Comparing the workings of such a system with modern-day extortionists such as the mob or Scientology is frightening. In any case, the system led to protestantism (Maarten Luther) and countless schisms later on.

But to answer the question about the Jews, I have no idea :-).