131–140 of 242 posts
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It is a fact that Charles Mason was relieved from execution. Just like it is a fact that because of the court rulings around 1972 he became eligible for parole. Charles Manson and other 106 inmates on death row in 1972 were all convicted killers who were relieved from the death penalty. Many victim's family members were upset by the courts decision.
Now I get to turn your technique back on you: I never said that wasn't factual.
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"The will of the people is the ultimate mandate in a democracy." Until a small group of judges say otherwise.
Actually I think the above statement is correct. If the U.S. was a pure democracy, the will of the people would be ultimate. As a constitutional republic, the constitution is ultimate, and in the U.S.'s particular implementation of the republic, the will of the people would mandate a law, and the supreme court would determine if that law comports with the constitution or not.
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> 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. That qualifies more as 'revenge' than as 'justice'.
The whole idea of a punitive system is broken at the foundation. Jail is not there to remove people from the pool (though in some cases that is a happy side effect), it is there to rehabilitate. In extreme cases this means people will never be released. But executing them makes 'us' just as bad as 'them'.
According to whom?
> But executing them makes 'us' just as bad as 'them'.
So you're saying that, for example, the state executing a mass murderer is just as bad as mass murder?
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...
Why can't people speak in honest terms? What you mean isn't justice, but revenge. Killing a killer will not undo the damage they have done. It will not bring a life back. If people require revenge for emotionally healing then that is because society has promoted this as justice. I've never heard of victims desiring death for killers in my home country, but we are not so big on revenge and don't. The American justice…
Where did you get this idea, that pro-life people are anti-help, pro-intimidation people?
> It is a fundamentally negative and cynical perspective on humanity. I guess that is what you get when people follow a faith which teaches that people are only good because the fear eternal punishment in hell.
That's not what Christianity teaches. Christianity teaches that people are sinful, period. It is only through the redeeming sacrifice of Christ that we can be washed of our sins and be seen as holy in God's sight. We should then be motivated to lead holy lives primarily in gratitude and love, not out of fear. For example, I John 4:18: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."
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Why can't people speak in honest terms? What you mean isn't justice, but revenge. Killing a killer will not undo the damage they have done. It will not bring a life back. If people require revenge for emotionally healing then that is because society has promoted this as justice. I've never heard of victims desiring death for killers in my home country, but we are not so big on revenge and don't. The American justice…
Imprisoning a killer will not undo the damage they have done, but that doesn't make imprisonment revenge.
Regardless of where you stand on either issue, supporting one but not the other seems like hypocrisy.
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.
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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…
> 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. No. PG's piece leaves open the option for punishment by other means, even if they do turn out to be innocent. For instance, to take the extreme case, nothing in PG's article says he would have a problem with punishing everyone accused of murder with one year imprisonment, with pr…
The Volokh article allows for multiple levels of punishment as well. The quote from Maimonides doesn't mean we simply let them go free if we aren't absolutely sure that they are guilty, instead we would lock them up.
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Don't be pedantic, you know I meant "escape the death penalty". Are you arguing for n=infinity?
Well, it all depends on how many people you intend to kill, it's all about the ratio npeopleinnocent/npeopleguilty after all. The problem is that no matter how small the ratio gets in absolute terms there is only the possibility of killing an innocent person or not killing an innocent person. Even if you assume that everybody is guilty I'd still make the argument that people can genuinely change and that no matter wh…
That may be (and I agree with it), but I'm critiquing PG's argument (in particular his assertion that it's obvious), not his conclusion.
>The extreme example of that is a society that simply kills everybody that is convicted of a crime, after all, why not, it makes society better, right? Or does it?
You need different punishments for different crimes, or someone who commits a small crime has no more deterrence against big crimes. I'm not sure what point you're making with this.
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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.
I also think that your flag-marshalling is in pretty poor taste, flagging it yourself for whatever reasons you have is fine but to call on others to do so as well is really not good.