Isn't community service better than capital punishment?
What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
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Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the USA, innocence isn't grounds for an appeal. Actual, post-conviction DNA tests aren't a basis. Errors at trial are. So good lawyers find one. Jury instructions, evidentiary errors, procedural, etc., which is why money buys justice.
Just going to jump in here and point out rayiner is an appellate lawyer.
And he has been grossly wrong about legal matters before, so take anything he says with a ton of salt.
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#93I live in Denmark. As do around 5.7 million others, all told. We have no death penalty. In 2015 we had 41 cases of homicide. It can be done.
Denmark doesn't exactly have the cultural baggage the US has.
There isn't a gun culture* (just picking one aspect) at all in Denmark, there is a rich culture in the US to the point that people think you are changing the identity of the country if you reform gun law. Stating that a progressive state that never had such problems can solve them has no meaning.
* guns would be the leading cause of homicide in the US.
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very easy for me to have a preferred moral code that is almost like yours except that I do not axiomatically declare that capital punishment is equivalent to murder.
Governments are made by people out of people. The whole system is just people, telling one another what to do, with the carrot of reward and the rod of violence, as necessary. An organization isn't a shield against personal morality. Capital punishment is a bunch of people telling another person to kill yet another person. That's all it is. (And yes, war is murder too.)
I agree with most of that, except for the "is" in "war is murder".
What do you mean by "is"? At the end of the day we have decided as a society that "Killing people is called murder and it's Very Bad", and we can also decide that "killing people who don't deserve it is murder and it's Very Bad" if we prefer.
Personally, I vacillate between thinking that capital punishment and life-imprisonment is quite immoral (and that we should fine something like 'exile' as an alternative), and a more utilitarian stance that, well, we have to find something to do with dangerous people and it doesn't really bother me if getting rid of them entirely is it.
[n.b. these stances are all in a vacuum and do not reflect my policy beliefs, which are specifically attuned to our society's pisspoor implementation of life-imprisonment and capital punishment.]
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#95The family of four he brutally murdered might have had an opinion on that, too.
There are victims and families of victims who do not support the death penalty. A documentary aired in the UK a few years ago that spoke with the family of a prison officer (Daniel Nagle) who was murdered, the perpetrator (Robert Pruett) had been sentenced to the death penalty and the Nagle family were against the sentence -- even though they believe him to be guilty of the murder. If you're in the UK you can watch t…
But there are families who clearly want revenge as well.
Revenge or resiprocity seems a pretty core part of the human condition.
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actual innocence is a grounds for vacating a conviction.
“There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in the Constitution a right to demand judicial consideration of newly discovered evidence of innocence brought forward after conviction.”
One could argue that the 10th Amendment counts here. Of course it's such a "catch all" that it's basically always ignored...
OTOH, the govt. chooses to acknowledge the vague and fuzzy parts of the Constitution (eg, the "necessary and reasonable clause") when it's convenient for the State. But if a vague and fuzzy part of the Constitution could be seen as establishing more of a check on the power of the State, well...
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#97Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's not make blanket statements or anything.
There are cases in which blanket statements are valid. I'm hesitant to do so in the case of moral arguments, though I find the case in favour of the death penalty, particularly given the many, many abuses, and utter and final nature, phenomenally weak. That said, I disagree with the HN hive-mind's obliterating your comment.
Agree to disagree about the blanket statements, and I actually do agree that for what most people are picturing here, the death penalty should be abhorred. But, seriously, it's rough out there. Almost nobody actually lives in San Francisco, when you think about it. (Or similar.)
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some might say that the practice of allowing brutal murderers and rapists to live out their lives and die in peace is totally abhorrent and has no place in any liberal society. It's almost as though different rational people of good will disagree about moral matters.
A couple points: > the practice of allowing brutal murderers and rapists to live out their lives and die in peace Unless I'm misreading you, that's a huge misrepresentation of what death penalty abolitionists advocate. I don't want violent criminals to have zero repercussions for their actions, and no present-day society I've ever heard of allows them to. But I agree with (what I perceive to be your greater) point ab…
Maybe I wasn't talking about Western / liberal society. Maybe most people don't currently live in that.
Re: What It’s Like to Almost Get Executed
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only if you consider the only societies of value to be "liberal"
Call it what you want. IMO, any society that recognizes the problems with capital punishment and accordingly outlaws it has at least some liberal tendencies.
That's a pretty cheap cop-out, using the tendencies of something to justify calling it that something.