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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

#501

Post by yesenadam »

I don't have a strong feeling about the death penalty one way or the other.

It would be great though if the USA would end killing people in other countries! Most of whom don't come anywhere near a trial or even being accused of a crime. They probably outnumber the wrongly imprisoned/executed by thousands or hundreds of thousands to 1.

This reminds me of trying to read Phil Zimbardo's recent book, half of which is about Abu Ghraib. He agonizes over that, while totally ignoring the bloodbath going on in Iraq, as if that raised no ethical issues. I couldn't read it.

Sorry if this comment is deemed whataboutism/off-topic.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#502

Post by dusted »

I went from being a child the day I realized that you don't have to _REALLY_ prove that a person did a crime, you just need to construct a circumstance where it'd make sense.

Reasonable doubt.. super dangerous, because it relies entirely on spinning a story, and reality has no obligation to be reasonable.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#503

Post by thraxil »

Y_Y wrote: post #223
ufo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Framing this as a left vs right issue is an USA-centric way to frame the question. Consider how the US is basically the only country in the american continent that still goes ahead with capital punishment. Most other countries in the continent, from all kinds of political orientations, have either banned capital punishment outright or haven't executed anyone in more than a decade.

Referring to "the American continent" is a very South American thing to do. I think in the US they consider themselves to be sharing a continent with just Mexico and Canada. Furthermore I think you don't go far enough. Around the world, abolishing the death penalty seems to be a mark of high development, apart from Japan (and arguably China and India) there aren't any highly developed nations that are still killing p…

Not getting into anything else, but I will remark that I got in trouble in 5th grade (in a US school) and a letter sent home to my parents about my bad attitude and showing of disrespect towards my teacher after she asserted that Mexico was in "South America" and that "North America" consisted exclusively of the USA and Canada. I argued with her and neither of us would back down. It was the first time I'd ever been in any kind of trouble. My parents were proud and took me out for ice cream. US public schools have some decent teachers but also some really ignorant ones.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#504

Post by iso1631 »

tertius wrote: post #484
sjg007 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the ones that essentially allow street executions by the police. This is America and it needs to change.

Hyperbole won't solve the issue you see.

Firing all white police officers would certainly make a dent though

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#505

Post by iso1631 »

buyx wrote: post #222
kelp wrote: post #188

I'm glad this is being shared widely, because I agree with it. That said, I have to snark a little about it, because I was in high school, in the 90s, when I came to the same realization about why the death penalty is wrong. So this seems pretty obvious to me. Our justice system is not reliable enough to have the death penalty.

When I was in high school, in the 90s, I also vehemently opposed the death penalty. In English class, I’d be on the anti-death penalty side during debates (I’d be the only one). My country was in the process of abolishing the death penalty at the time, so it was a little more than just an academic proposition. When I hit my late 30s, my position changed entirely. It’s hard to tell why. I now have no moral qualms abou…

> I now have no moral qualms about a society choosing to put to death people who are guilty of heinous and depraved acts

I consider the society to be at least somewhat to blame for those acts.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#506

Post by tmilard »

Brutality is also not progress. Far from it. We shall try elavating ourselves away from brutality.

Killing is the upper end point of brutality.

Society not deciding to end death penalty is Society with one foot in the mud of ancient brutal regime.

Ending dath penalty is, of course, avoiding killing by mistake 4% of those sentenced. But is is also elavating ourselves from the mud of past regime.

We shall not kill

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#507

Post by iso1631 »

slg wrote: post #244
otalp wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there are cases where you have clear video evidence of murder, or mass shootings where it's obvious who the killer was with 100 witnesses. If a proposal came to redefine the threshold for the death penalty from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "irrefutable" then the arguments here would not hold.

Video isn't truly irrefutable. Two people can look at the same video and draw different conclusions. You can see this anywhere from instant replay review in sports to some people's reactions to the Chauvin verdict.

And that's assume a genuine video that isn't doctored. Just a few months ago the Queen of England was on national TV dancing on her desk.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#508

Post by iso1631 »

outworlder wrote: post #212
alexashka wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our roads and speed limits are not reliable enough to have cars. Pretty obvious we should abolish cars. Duh.

Please stop and reflect a bit on your comparison. As a reminder, we are talking about the state intentionally taking human lives. Not accidents.

If 300 people died in accidents in amazon warehouse or walmart accidents in the US each year OSHA would shut them down.

But 36,000 deaths from road accidents are fine. 892 of them in 2019 were "large truck occupants" that died - i.e. people working.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#510

Post by austincheney »

The death penalty comes and goes because it’s frequently improperly applied, making it a thorn of criminal justice much like plea bargains.

There are only two legal remedies provided by the death penalty:

* Repeat offenders of capital crimes have no cause for separation or special treatment from a prison’s general population. This is a rare edge cases that generally only applies to inmates that continue to participate in extreme criminal activities even under incarceration. Death row prisoners are generally isolated from the general population of a prison system to limit such interaction where such separation is otherwise not typically available.

* Capital punishment is a legal surety to enforce life without parole even if there is no intention to execute the convict.

Capital punishment provides those two legal remedies that the law otherwise does not fulfill or fulfills with numerous exceptions.

Unfortunately, the death penalty is frequently used for a variety of other concerns, such as compelling testimony. The same problems the plague the US criminal justice system at large also allow abuse and misuse of the death penalty.

The US’s two largest problems in regards to criminal justice are cultural and funding inversion. The cultural problem is that many people believe incarceration is a form of revenge or retribution but the constitution was written to prevent such sentiments creating a conflict of motive. The funding inversion applies to many police forces receiving funding disproportionately to their respective district attorneys offices resulting in system overload and backlog with insufficient oversight.

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