The real reason to end the death penalty • Hacker News Board

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#371

Post by gwd » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #264

klelatti wrote: post #232

I absolutely abhor the death penalty. I do find this reliance on a single rationale to stop the death penalty problematic though: - For many people I suspect that there is a combination of level of proof and severity of crime that would lead them to say the risk of erroneous conviction can be ignored. - Someone will say let's focus on improving the justice system to deal with the errors. I'd rather the burden of just…

From a practical aspect a lot of benefits for death penalties: 1) Low cost. No need for jails and their associated costs 2) Great scaling. You can kill as many as you want, but you cannot build a jail every day 3) Safe. People don’t come back to repeat their mistakes. 4) It’s the only language that many criminals speak and understand. The downsides are of a moral nature and twofold: 1) We should not punish innocent p…

If the US us worried about cost, maybe they could stop throwing people in jail for non-violent drug charges -- particularly marijuana? That would reduce our prison cost a heck of a lot more than executing murderers, even if execution was much cheaper than lifetime imprisonment (which as others have pointed out, it's almost certainly not).

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#372

Post by JimBeans2131 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #295

chrisco255 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Self defense is moral and justified. And some people are more dangerous alive than dead. Worse, some people develop a cult-of-personality and a following that they can even control or influence from jail. You telling me a mafia or gang leader or a former dictator guilty of genocide doesn't deserve the death penalty? Naive, to say the least. You know little of true evil, which does exist and no amount of…

Someone held securely in prison does not pose an imminent threat to you, and thus an argument from self-defense is void. The fact that you move on so deftly to the word "deserve" suggests that it's vengeance you seek. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

You are being disingenuous. A murderous psychopath is a danger to people. This is obvious and something that a five year old child can understand. Some people cross the line and forfeit their lives. The death penalty is absolutely justifiable unless you are a moral relativist, which is a logically inconsistent world view.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#373

Post by spoonjim » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

svieira wrote: post #327

spoonjim wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, free will may not exist, but we don’t have much of a civilization if we don’t pretend that it does.

How do we choose to pretend free will exists?

By rewarding people who help others and punishing people who hurt others.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#374

Post by spoonjim » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #258

spoonjim wrote: post #17

I have very strong beliefs about the death penalty. I believe it is the only just punishment for murder; that ALL murderers should be executed; that anything less than execution is a grave miscarriage of justice for a crime that is so horrible the mind cannot even wrap around it. I also think that pain should be part of the death penalty... that a murderer doesn’t deserve a quick and painless death but rather a healt…

Murder already has one of the lowest recidivism rates of crimes. Murderers typically don't murder again. And that's mostly because murder is a heat of the moment crime. Planned murders are fairly rare. If you seriously wanted to use the death penalty to deter crime, you'd do better executing people for smaller offenses. If you got executed for drunk driving rather than a fine, there would be less drunk driving. Not s…

Nothing about my opinion is based on the existence or non-existence of a deterrent effect.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#375

Post by cecilpl2 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #326

whatever1 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a practical aspect a lot of benefits for death penalties: 1) Low cost. No need for jails and their associated costs 2) Great scaling. You can kill as many as you want, but you cannot build a jail every day 3) Safe. People don’t come back to repeat their mistakes. 4) It’s the only language that many criminals speak and understand. The downsides are of a moral nature and twofold: 1) We should not punish innocent p…

As much as I dislike the idea of a government killing someone for a crime, the cost and potential elimination of future trouble with an individual is tempting. Assuming that we absolutely know that someone is guilt (ignoring how that would happen), it doesn't need to take years and millions of dollars to simply shoot someone. Then there are the people who are not only a financial burden on society, they are actively…

> Assuming that we absolutely know that someone is guilt (ignoring how that would happen), it doesn't need to take years and millions of dollars to simply shoot someone.

The years and the millions of dollars are spent establishing your premise.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#376

Post by greedo » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #329

greedo wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who has experienced a family member's murder, the death penalty would in no way "vindicate" anyone.

I'm not sure what definition of "vindicate" you're working with, but when I use that word (in this specific context), it doesn't refer to anything like a complete restitution as if nothing had happened, which is obviously impossible.

I think you should reconsider the use of "vindicate" since none of the definitions I can find seem to apply at all. And your latest reply doesn't seem to clear up what you mean in your usage.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#377

Post by rayiner » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #363

rayiner wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that to be "working as designed" we would see a lot more guilty people going free than innocent people being convicted How do you know that’s not the case?

Conviction and plea bargain rates. Most (>90%) people who are charged (in the US) end up with either a guilty verdict or a guilty plea. IIRC even the ones that don't plead out are ~90% conviction rate, at least at the federal level. Doesn't jive at all with what we know of competence and bias levels observed in police and prosecutors in the US.

Most people plead out because they’re ridiculously guilty.

I’m a crunchy hippie on criminal justice, but I’ve also seen these cases first hand working for an appellate judge. Prosecutors go after cases that are open and shut. You wouldn’t believe how much evidence there is in a typical case that doesn’t go to trial. They have the guy on CCTV with stolen goods in his car and cell phone records of fencing.

Innocence Projects weed out hundreds of meritless requests for help for the relatively few meritorious cases they take.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#378

Post by jandrese » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #282

It seems to me that multi-decade prison terms are at least as severe as death. It doesn't seem terrible as long as prisoners are able to kill themselves. But a life sentence in a prison with effective suicide prevention seems far harsher than a lethal injection next week.

The problem with capital punishment is what do you do when you discover after the fact that the person was innocent?

If the justice system were perfect there could be a case for execution in place of life sentences, but it has been shown time and time again that going free depends more on the quality of your lawyer than the facts of the case. Prosecutors will lie and fabricate evidence because the cops did a terrible job and they figure you must be guilty. Even if it's not of this particular crime you're just the criminal type and they'll be doing society a favor by locking you away.

The system is highly classist and racist. It shouldn't be allowed to make such final decisions like killing someone. This makes it impossible to reverse the injustice in the future.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#379

Post by JimBeans2131 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #368

JimBeans2131 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By a strict logical interpretation, execution by death penalty is not murder. Dictionary definition of murder: "the _unlawful_ premeditated killing of one human being by another."

Violation of one's inalienable right to life (as written in the US declaration of independence, as well as the UN's universal declaration of human rights) is unlawful, regardless of any state legislation. States can't legislate you out of your human rights. One day the US federal courts will notice this error that they've made and fix the glitch. As Churchill famously said, "You can always count on Americans to do th…

By that clown logic, any hostile forces can freely invade and conquer the United States, because it's universally illegal to kill human beings, including enemies.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#380

Post by cecilpl2 » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #311

klelatti wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reducing a human being to a single binary classification - evil or not evil - an assessment that ignores the circumstances of their life, mental state etc at a particular point in time. You're also saying that you're prepared to ignore the wider impact that the act of executing that individual has on society. On the apparent grounds that the dead victim is somehow vindicated (which I can only interpret as mean…

> You're reducing a human being to a single binary classification - evil or not evil That is correct. > You're also saying that you're prepared to ignore the wider impact that the act of executing that individual has on society. That must specifically not be allowed to cloud our judgment. "Society" is word which refers to collection of people, the vast majority of whom have no connection to the case.

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil."

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn