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This year we can end the death penalty in California

paulgraham.com

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Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#51

Post by cobalt »

a13n wrote: post #47
jernfrost wrote: post #44

The death penalty makes no logical sense. It only appeals to primitive emotions. Why have a penalty which 1) Can never be reversed if you kill an innocent 2) Cost a lot more than life in prison. Now why it might be argued that a killer has no right to life, what about those close to the killer? Killers might have a wife, husband, brother, sister, friends, mother and a a father. By killing the killer you inflict hards…

The death penalty costs more than life in prison? Source?

Plenty of articles if you google. Gist of it is that the repeals process and such take many years and often end up costing more. Most people are on death row for >10 years

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#52

Post by jernfrost »

Alex3917 wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #21

The single best reason why the death penalty should be abolished is because it does not have an 'undo' button. It's bad enough if people get jailed for a long time when they are innocent, it is much worse when they're murdered by the state for crimes they did not commit. Other important work done: http://www.innocenceproject.org/ edit: sad to see this thread flagged off the homepage.

> The single best reason why the death penalty should be abolished is because it does not have an 'undo' button. Neither does killing people with drones...

Exactly. I am astonished that there is no debate around this. Drone killing ought to be regarded as a war crime. When you go around performing targeted killing of people in peace time, then that is unlawful execution.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#53

Post by matt4077 »

jacquesm wrote: post #21

The single best reason why the death penalty should be abolished is because it does not have an 'undo' button. It's bad enough if people get jailed for a long time when they are innocent, it is much worse when they're murdered by the state for crimes they did not commit. Other important work done: http://www.innocenceproject.org/ edit: sad to see this thread flagged off the homepage.

That's the single best argument. The single best reason is the immorality of killing.

If you want to gouge a society's level of civilization, look at their prisons. What sets humanity apart is the ability of reason to control instinct. It has taken us from beast to philosopher to The Weather Channel, and its measure is how we treat those everyone hates.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#54

Post by carapace »

eikenberry wrote: post #24

Is it better to kill an innocent or let them spend their life in jail? Given the states of our jails, I'm not sure but I think I'd prefer death.

Well, okay, when you are wrongly convicted and sentenced to life in prison you can request execution. For every other innocent person that's wrongly convicted let's not murder them against their will, eh?

(Also, let's fix the jails and prisons!)

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#55

Post by mikeash »

murtnowski wrote: post #41
mikeash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument seems to contradict itself. The death penalty is necessary for justice, but at the same time we should be OK with having it because it hasn't been used in a decade?

I'm not making an argument. I'm stating facts. I never said I was OK with it.

I don't believe it. Bringing up Charles Manson and using loaded language to describe his avoidance of it clearly makes an argument for the death penalty.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#56

Post by tptacek »

This kind of post isn't going to change anybody's mind, and isn't intended to (Paul Graham is a fine persuasive writer, and good persuasive writing tends not to include appeals like "a child could answer that one for you").

No, this is just an update, for Graham's California readers, most of whom can safely be assumed to agree with him, that they should take special care to vote this year.

I'm glad California has a chance to end the death penalty this year. You'll catch up to Illinois soon enough, Silicon Valley!

But this isn't the kind of post that finds a good home here on HN. This is the kind thing you want to post (repeatedly) to Twitter. Here, it's just more flame war stimulus.

I flagged this post --- and, because it's a PG post, did so vocally this time. You should too!

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#57

Post by mibbiting »

gxs wrote: post #22

I like his message mainly because I agree with the death penalty in principle. If you want to be a shitty human being, with 7B people on the planet we don't really need you. But, in practice, we will never get it 100% right. Probability of killing an innocent person will always be >0. For that reason alone, we should get rid of it.

Nothing is 100% certain. If you perform a heart operation, there's a chance you'll kill the patient. Does that mean we should get rid of heart operations?

If you put a serial killer to death, you can be 100% sure they won't kill any more people. If you put him in prison, you can't. He may escape, or he may get released early and kill again. Or as often happens, he'll kill other prisoners whilst in prison.

It's a question of whether you value potential victims, or potential falsely convicted innocent people. IMHO the former is a far bigger problem.

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#58

Post by 1024core »

a13n wrote: post #47
jernfrost wrote: post #44

The death penalty makes no logical sense. It only appeals to primitive emotions. Why have a penalty which 1) Can never be reversed if you kill an innocent 2) Cost a lot more than life in prison. Now why it might be argued that a killer has no right to life, what about those close to the killer? Killers might have a wife, husband, brother, sister, friends, mother and a a father. By killing the killer you inflict hards…

The death penalty costs more than life in prison? Source?

"It’s 10 times more expensive to kill them than to keep them alive,"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/05/01/cons...

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#59

Post by greglindahl »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #36
DubiousPusher wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the best takes on this issue was a quote from a death penalty critic in the documentary film "Deadline". He said, "We all agree that we should have a system that kills John Wayne Gacy but there is no way to create a system that kills only John Wayne Gacy." Meaning that, there are certain cases where we are 100% certain of a persons guilt and can mostly agree that that person should die but how do we en…

I suppose one starting point would be to allow executions in the case where the defendant confesses under oath in a courtroom. Though it might be considered poor policy, since it would discourage people from accepting a plea bargain or confessing.

Not to mention all of the people who give false confessions.

False confessions are a common cause of incorrect convictions.

https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/...

Re: This year we can end the death penalty in California

#60

Post by jacquesm »

jsjohns2 wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #21

The single best reason why the death penalty should be abolished is because it does not have an 'undo' button. It's bad enough if people get jailed for a long time when they are innocent, it is much worse when they're murdered by the state for crimes they did not commit. Other important work done: http://www.innocenceproject.org/ edit: sad to see this thread flagged off the homepage.

The lack of an "undo" button is not exclusive to the death penalty, many serious forms of punishment are irreversible. Why, in your view, is it much worse for the state to jail an innocent person for a long time (say, their entire adult life) instead of killing them?

Even a single minute of my time wasted can not be un-done. So if you accept the arrow of time points forward and that no single action can ever be truly un-done there are some actions that are worse than others. And so it would be good to aim for the least harm done.
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