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The real reason to end the death penalty

paulgraham.com

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Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#411

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kazinator wrote: post #341
nefitty wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever rationalizations people make, I think ultimately, a belief that some people are evil is what the death penalty hinges on. I don’t believe in free will, thus I don’t believe in moral culpability, this I don’t believe in evil. From that vantage point it seems extremely barbaric to me to put anyone to death. They had no say in the circumstances that led up to who they became. I have similar feeling when I think…

OK, so you don't believe in "evil", but you believe in "barbaric". I believe that determinism and free will are entirely compatible. An algorithm has free will. More complicated algorithms have a more nuanced, richer free will. That's it. For instance, a coin-operated machine that gives you a bag of potato chips in exchange for a dollar has a form of free will. It does that because it wants to. It is just not capable…

This is why we leave judging to the judicial system, and don't hand it over to developers who will try to treat life or death decisions as an undergraduate algorithm design exercise.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#412

Post by jjk166 »

samatman wrote: post #242
Blumfid wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to kill someone. I don't know if or why a person became a murderer. It could be their upbringing which should be the responsibility of the society and clearly the society failed. It could be a medical issue. A biological one. It could be that the murderer did nothing wrong in their worldview. We have to understand this as a society. We have to teach it if people don't understand it.

That's fine, just understand that your moral intuition isn't universal. If there were some device (which doesn't exist and maybe can't) which simply lights up with perfect accuracy when pointed at someone who tortured someone before murdering them, I would support instant execution of that person by firing squad. I'm not willing to accept a 4% error rate however. I'm not sure how low it would have to go, but it's low…

I don't know how anyone can acknowledge that moral intuitions aren't universal while simultaneously believing their moral intuition can be used to justify the death penalty.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#413

Post by ur-whale »

> District attorneys want to be seen as effective and tough on crime, and in order to win convictions are willing to manipulate witnesses and withhold evidence. Court-appointed defense attorneys are overworked and often incompetent.

I'll note that most of these problems are unique to the US justice system.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#414

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

rayiner wrote: post #377
sneak wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Pr…

I was on a jury for a trial where they had crap on the kid accused of conspiracy to create meth.

He drove an old high school friend, who he hadn't seen for years, to a park. He drove into a parking lot on the way and turned around "as if trying to avoid tails." He returned to the car and the undercover cop put the key back in his hand after putting ingredients in the car.

AND...he was being accused of conspiracy (which raises the seriousness of the crime to a felony!) to create meth because...there were drug ingredients in the car and the keys were in his hand. He'd spent his time at the park napping on the grass with his hat over his head. Or, as the cops testified, "probably acting as a lookout."

We of course said "not guilty." No one even wanted to argue. No idea why they thought they had a case.

But the kid in this case was white. I could totally see a black kid deciding that accepting a "lesser plea" would have been preferable to taking a chance on a 95%+ white jury (was in a predominantly white area; I don't think there was a single black juror, though I wasn't keeping count).

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#415

Post by kazinator »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #411
kazinator wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so you don't believe in "evil", but you believe in "barbaric". I believe that determinism and free will are entirely compatible. An algorithm has free will. More complicated algorithms have a more nuanced, richer free will. That's it. For instance, a coin-operated machine that gives you a bag of potato chips in exchange for a dollar has a form of free will. It does that because it wants to. It is just not capable…

This is why we leave judging to the judicial system, and don't hand it over to developers who will try to treat life or death decisions as an undergraduate algorithm design exercise.

Right, so we instead hand matters over to people who do things like hide phone call records that would prove that someone should not be put on death row.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#416

Post by gweinberg »

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.

Yeah, and there are a lot of people who are most likely guilty who never even get charged. A prosecutor won't want to take up a case when he thinks the evidence is in the zone between "preponderance" and "beyond reasonable doubt".

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#418

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

rayiner wrote: post #348
jpmattia wrote: post #316

To amplify Paul's point: The legal standard in all criminal trials is "Beyond a reasonable doubt": > The standard that must be met by the prosecution's evidence in a criminal prosecution: that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts except that the defendant committed the crime, thereby overcoming the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty. And yet, DNA testing has exonerated man…

What does “beyond a reasonable doubt” mean in probability terms? Most people say 90-95%, which suggests even Graham’s 4% number (which is on the high end of such estimates, see: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con... ) is actually consistent with the system working as designed. Also, while you’re thinking about that, what’s your estimate of the probability that Derek Chauvin’s negligence was…

Reasonable doubt means doubts that a person is guilty. In probability terms it can be interpreted as a state of belief in the guilt (or innocence) of the accused. PG's 4% number is offered as the frequency of wrongful convictions. The two concepts are not related.

For example, if a body of jurors say that they are 95% certain that John Smith murdered Jane Brown, that does not mean that there is a 5% probability that John Smith did not commit the murder, or a 5% probability that he will be wrongfully convicted. The 95% number quantifies the belief of the jurors that John Smith is the murderer. 5% quantifies their belief that John Smith is not the murderer. Nothing in those numbers tells us anything about how often jurors are wrong- it only tells us how strongly they believe they are right.

To know the frequency of wrongful convictions we must look at the frequency of exonerations. Whatever is the state of belief of jurors or judges etc during the trial where someone was convicted of a crime can't really inform us about the probability of their future exoneration.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#419

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

abakker wrote: post #240
djoldman wrote: post #179

On the subject of deterrence: If someone commits a premeditated crime carrying a guideline sentence of {20 years in State A, vs 30 years in State B} do we really think that they're more likely to commit the crime in State A? It's my intuition that for the most part, people committing crimes aren't thinking about potential repercussions, much less measuring them. I mean is someone thinking "Oh, only 10 years? I'll do…

I think most people who commit crimes do not believe they will be caught. Most data shows sentencing shows no deterrence. Alternatively sometimes fines do more to deter than other penalties. A theory I remember from a college class on the topic were that sentences are so unevenly applied that many people reason that they won't actually get the max sentence.

Most people who commit crimes aren't caught. Around 38% of murders remain unsolved.

Most of those who are caught aren't brought to trial. For obvious reasons, prosecutors strongly prefer cases supported by very strong evidence.

The corollary is there are a lot of murderers walking around unremarked and free - either caught and released for lack of evidence, or not caught at all.

So it's unlikely the death penalty has much a deterrent effect. There would be a much stronger deterrent effect if there was some magic way to increase the catch rate which didn't also intrude on privacy or civil liberties.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#420

Post by sharkjacobs »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #402
throwaway932234 wrote: post #394

I seriously think the ability to end one's life "if sentenced to life in prison" is the ethical, humane, and moral thing to allow for everyone. We're starting to allow euthanasia for intolerable suffering from medical conditions. Well, I assert that people being isolated from society for a severe crime because of their "ill mindset" is identical to severe illnesses and where they may suffer intolerable psychological…

That's an amazingly slippery slope if I ever saw one: "We've eliminated the death penalty because we are so enlightened. But now that we've sentenced you to life in prison, every morning with breakfast, we offer a side of poison just in case you would like to exercise your right to check out of this hell hole. No pressure. Just being helpful."

Can't wait for cutting edge prisons which AB test changes to diet, schedule, and accommodations to maximize prisoner self terminations.

All within the bounds of strict adherence to ethics regulations of course.

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