This year we can end the death penalty in California • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

xiaoma wrote: post #104

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 is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards. How do you compensate someone for being imprisoned (and likely raped) from the age of 28 to 45? In many cases, the death penalty is more humane.

Failure of the prison system to protect its inmates should not become a factor in deciding whether or not it is more 'humane' to kill them outright.

The you might as well kill all prisoners because it is more humane, after all where would you draw the line, 5 years, 10 years, 15 or 20, it's all time that has passed.

Compensation should be of such a magnitude that it incentivizes society to make sure it happens as little as possible.

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

#112

Post by greglindahl » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #99

mikestew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The population of the state simultaneously wanted the death penalty and to follow the Constitution. One role that the population of the state gave to judges is to referee these conflicting desires.

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

#113

Post by ikeboy » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:11 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #93

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…

Saying we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty, because 1 in 25 of them will be innocent, is making a claim about n guilty men. From my link:

>Commandments for man can be found in the book of Exodus, by the same Author(s), where God rejects the tradeoff between convicting the guilty and convicting the innocent, and simply commands, "the innocent and righteous slay thou not." 32 One can take this to imply an infinite value of n, at least in capital cases. The twelfth-century Judeo-Spanish legal theorist Moses Maimonides, however, interpreted the commandment of Exodus as implying a value of n = 1000 for execution. 33 He refers to it as the "290th Negative Commandment" and argues that executing an accused criminal on anything less than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens of proof, until we would be convicting merely "according to the judge's caprice. Hence the Exalted One has shut this door" 34 against the use of presumptive evidence, for "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent man to death once in a way." 35

There may be multiple ns required, one for conviction and one for punishment, but the underlying structure is the same.

>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)).

I'm not sure what you mean. If 25 people are sentenced to death, and one of them is innocent, then PG is arguing we should let 24 guilty men escape death rather than allowing 1 innocent man to be killed. I guess maybe I should have said n>24, then, but the overall point remains.

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

#114

Post by jernfrost » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:12 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #28

Back in the day, there was a serial killer named Ted Bundy. He killed a number of women, was imprisoned, escaped (twice) and killed at least three more people. That kind of incident makes the problem much more complicated. The typical argument against the death penalty is that sometimes innocent people are executed. And it's true, and it's horrible. But if you don't execute them, then the alternative is that they sho…

If we cared about this, then why is revenge the core focus on American justice system and not rehabilitation?

When people exit the prison system un-rehabilitated they will hurt more people.

I think this is a more important question. Why is revenge given priority over avoiding new victims?

Also if one actually cares about life, why are prisons such overcrowded hell holes that prisoners get shanked and killed on a regular basis?

This is my issue with this sort of reasoning as it easily becomes cherry picking of issues to support harsher justice system while ignoring all the related issues which speaks for a milder system.

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

#115

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

justabee wrote: post #110

jacquesm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We shouldn't be coddling those who commit violent acts against others. How is spending a lifetime in prison coddling? > The derrent of death alone would save far many more people. That isn't true, criminals as a rule have a hard time tying consequences to their actions, have a high incidence of mental issues. If deterrence would work at all it would be nice but it rarely does. http://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deter…

.

You are tying all kinds of societal failures to the death penalty, killing people will not solve any of that, it will in fact only make it worse.

But you're welcome to your own opinion, but 'you reap what you sow' applies to societies just as it does to farmers.

Violence projected and practiced by the state will not help in moving society to a more peaceful quadrant.

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

#116

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #113

mturmon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Saying we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty, because 1 in 25 of them will be innocent, is making a claim about n guilty men. From my link: >Commandments for man can be found in the book of Exodus, by the same Author(s), where God rejects the tradeoff between convicting the guilty and convicting the innocent, and simply commands, "the innocent and righteous slay thou not." 32 One can take this to imply an…

No, it doesn't. They won't escape death, they'll be dead sooner or later anyway. It is just that society will not have lowered itself to their level in response and will have an opportunity to figure out which of those people was in fact innocent.

It's all fun and games until you are that innocent person.

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

#117

Post by tptacek » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:17 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #84

tptacek wrote: post #56

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 c…

So how do people ever change their mind on anything? I'd say that within any group with a certain conviction there will always be people at the fringes which are less convinced and who are willing to explore alternatives. I once believed in the death penalty. I once believe in God. I was once a libertarian. Of course a single person didn't change my mind on these points, but being exposed to alternatives by many peop…

I'm not arguing against persuasive essays. Persuasive essays are great. I'm saying that this isn't a persuasive essay. It's a political bulletin. I agree with its politics, but not with its place on the HN front page.

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

#118

Post by mibbiting » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

gxs wrote: post #92

mibbiting wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But my point is that are you just "ignoring" the other side of the argument - if you don't put a serial killer to death, there's a chance others will be killed.

If you don't put them to death, can you be 100% sure saving that life isn't going to cause more people to die?

It's not simply a case of "punishment". It's preventing further crime and deaths.

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

#119

Post by ikeboy » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #116

ikeboy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty, because 1 in 25 of them will be innocent, is making a claim about n guilty men. From my link: >Commandments for man can be found in the book of Exodus, by the same Author(s), where God rejects the tradeoff between convicting the guilty and convicting the innocent, and simply commands, "the innocent and righteous slay thou not." 32 One can take this to imply an…

No, it doesn't. They won't escape death, they'll be dead sooner or later anyway. It is just that society will not have lowered itself to their level in response and will have an opportunity to figure out which of those people was in fact innocent. It's all fun and games until you are that innocent person.

Don't be pedantic, you know I meant "escape the death penalty".

Are you arguing for n=infinity?

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

#120

Post by lawpoop » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

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?

When someone is wrongly jailed, they often have a lawyer working on their case to exonerate them.

After someone has been executed, nobody pursues the case anymore.