171–180 of 242 posts
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
Other errors can be remedied. Death penalty not so much.
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
Now that I'm older, I worry about the possibility that banning the death penalty is an implicit acceptance of the policy of locking people away for life. According to the article 4% of people who are sentenced to the death penalty on death row are innocent. He doesn't offer statistics for the number who actually receive the punishment however given that not all people on death row are executed, and the significant resources devoted to the appeal process, the percentage of innocents who are executed must be lower than the 4% who are sentenced.
I must ask how many innocent people are sentenced to life in prison. I can't imagine anything worse than an innocent person sentenced to life in prison -- and eventually dying in prison.
If we are to make decisions about punishment taking into account the possibility of an incorrect sentence, I believe we need to be more realistic with regard to the hierarchy of punishments that we are inflicting. A sentence of Life in Prison carried to term is a worse punishment than Execution.
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
Other errors can be remedied. Death penalty not so much.
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
Death is a permanent sentence while other sentences are not.
(Clarification: don't have an opinion on overall debate, just picking on details of individual arguments).
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
You can release a wrongly imprisoned person or refund a wrongly imposed fine.
So even though you're partially(1) right about reversibility it doesn't really matter given that this won't actually come up most of the time. There will still be wrongfully penalized people.
1. I would argue that you're only partially right because wrongful imprisonment can be compensated for but not really undone.
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.
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
You can release a wrongly imprisoned person or refund a wrongly imposed fine.
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning in this essay. Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons. I don't see a good justification to apply th…
You can release a wrongly imprisoned person or refund a wrongly imposed fine.