Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This year we can end the death penalty in California

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 242 posts

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

#91

Post by jacquesm »

Taek wrote: post #85
jernfrost wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards. But I think it is a fair point, which is why I am also against harsh prison conditions. I think prison should mainly be about rehabilitation and shielding society from the danger of the person. If prison mainly means losing freedom, you aren't necessarily ruined mentally when you get out.

That depends. If you spend long enough isolated from society you won't be able to function in it anymore. People coming out of jail after 10 years of imprisonment are used to the original iphone as the only smartphone. They don't know about Uber, Venmo, Bitcoin, Amazon and Google have both changed dramatically. Now you need an EZPass for most roads, healthcare laws are different, they missed the whole Snowden ordeal.…

None of the things you mention would stop someone from re-entering society, in quite a few countries there are rehabilitation programmes in the jails with gradual re-introduction to 'normal' life after longer jail sentences.

Yes, this costs money but it helps to reduce recidivism and in general is a good thing to do.

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

#92

Post by gxs »

mibbiting wrote: post #57
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 ques…

This is a bit of a red herring as I am making no assertions regarding what else may or may be assured 100%.

We have different tolerance for accuracy depending on the context, and my assertion was that in this case 100% would be necessary for, at least me, to feel comfortable carrying out the punishment.

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

#93

Post by mturmon »

ikeboy wrote: post #42

> In the real world, about 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent. So this is not about whether it's ok to kill killers. This is about whether it's ok to kill innocent people. >A child could answer that one for you. http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm N>25 [0] [0] Graham, 2016

Cute, but fallacious. To unpack, you seem to be arguing that since 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent, then about 1 in 25 people are wrongly convicted, and PG is saying that ratio is unacceptable.

I think your probabilistic reasoning is a bit off (by confusing P(I|DS) with P(DS|I)).

But the actual issue is about the punishment, not the guilty/innocent determination. So in other words, PG doesn't seem to be making any claim about the size of the group of "n guilty men" -- but rather about the way they can be punished.

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

#94

Post by pm90 »

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.

This is a difficult question. I have often thought about what would happen if for some reason I was wrongfully convicted of a serious crime (e.g. like in Shawshank Redemption). Its absolutely unimaginable for me to think of living a life such as one in prison, and in the US, even after you leave prison, your rights are severely curtailed, as are your job prospects and much of everything else. Stuff of nightmares, really.

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

#95

Post by Unbeliever69 »

I always think of Star Trek and how some advanced civilization or a future version of ourselves will perceive the barbarism of our current society. I would not be surprised if the earth gets paved over for an intergalactic superhighway because frankly, we are not worth saving. Humans, have very little humanity. We have a LONG way to go. This is a small start.

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

#96

Post by raverbashing »

Analemma_ wrote: post #82
raverbashing wrote: post #70

" This is about whether it's ok to kill innocent people." So why is the discussion to eliminate the death penalty instead of ensuring more oversight or limitations? Something like: - Not applicable when only one murder committed - Bigger burden of proof for the DP to be applicable (not only relying on witnesses, for example)

> So why is the discussion to eliminate the death penalty instead of ensuring more oversight or limitations? The Supreme Court has gradually been mandating more and more oversight and limitations on death penalty cases since 1976. It doesn't seem to have made a major dent in the false conviction rate or the arbitrariness of when capital punishment is used, especially with regards to race. And while I don't think cost…

Yes, I agree. Maybe it's not more oversight, but better oversight

And of course, prosecutors that push dubious cases should be punished as well.

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

#97

Post by jsjohns2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #60
jsjohns2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, some actions are more harmful than others. Killing a person is worse than imprisoning them indefinitely.

But the degree to which it is worse (and whether it is enough to ban the death penalty) seems quite subjective.

Seems to me that you could use an identical line of reasoning to conclude that prison sentences longer than N years should be banned.

Is it a matter of degree? Or is there something fundamentally different about the death penalty that warrants a ban?

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

#98

Post by paulddraper »

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.

There's no undo button for imprisonment.

Your life was taken, and no one can give it back.

It's a difference of degree only, not kind.

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

#99

Post by WillPostForFood »

mikestew wrote: post #62
murtnowski wrote: post #7

California already removed the death penalty in 1972 then later reinstated it. This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they wanted. Since being reinstated only 13 people have been executed. And none in the past 10 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Californ...

This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they wanted. And thus the state protects the convicted from the vengeful desires of the victim's family members and doles out the justice the community has deemed appropriate. Just because the victims pay the state to "string 'em up!" instead of doing it themselves does…

If by community you mean a few government elite, and some judges, then yes. If you mean the population of the state, a large majority at the time supported the death penalty, which why it was reinstated by popular vote soon after.

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

#100

Post by pm90 »

carapace wrote: post #54
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 !)

Its hard to fix the jails and prisons when widespread poverty still exists in society, for the simple reason that if the prisons offer a better lifestyle than living in the society, more people would choose to go to prison.
Post reply on HN