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

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#511

Post by timwaagh » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

Well no. I don't think that this should be the reason. It makes altogether too much sense and removes all morality from the matter. It also lacks any zeal or conviction. It will also unfortunately convince nobody.

The real reason is that you should respect life. You should give it your utmost respect. Taking away a life when it's unnecessary, speaks of a lack of respect. Innocent people getting punished unfairly is a terrible thing, but it happens all the time. Justice systems are imperfect. And removing the death penalty won't change that. Maybe it will make injustice slightly less permanent but that's about it. It will however make a symbolic point. That you can't morally justify murder. That's probably a better deterrent to murder than harsh punishment. If 'eye for an eye' is the standard for the state why would you expect the people to do any better? Why would you not expect them to say, carry arms all the time and get provoked into making a headline when they have a bad day? It's all connected. Leadership sometimes means leading by example and a firm 'no' to murder implies a 'no' to the death penalty.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#512

Post by austincheney » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:16 AM UTC

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…

No system is perfect, but perfection isn’t the point. The point is the error rate that you alluded to.

At any rate judges sometimes make really bad decisions. The most remembered from where I live is Affluenza:

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#513

Post by Hitton » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

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…

Trial-by-peers is not the problem, problem is prosecutorial, police and expert misconduct. Vast majority of wrongful convictions are caused by withholding(or even falsifying) evidence, police forcing out confession from innocent or experts who are either ignorant or deliberately lying. And those who are later caught doing these things are nearly never held accountable and in rare case when they are, it's just a slap on the wrist.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#514

Post by jhgb » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:34 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #344

It’s atypically sloppy of Graham to throw out the 4% number without mentioning that it’s just one estimate of a hard to ascertain number. One survey puts it much lower: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&con... > This Article challenges the seemingly developing conventional wisdom that the error rate in America’s criminal justice system is 1% or even higher. In fact, looking at the best availabl…

If I remember it correctly, it's the 4% that were supposed to be the conservative estimate.

Anyone who says the rate is 0.027% is obviously bonkers, given what sample you'd need to specify the result with a 0.0005% error. I don't see how anyone could practically do that.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#515

Post by jhgb » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

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…

> Most people plead out because they’re ridiculously guilty.

"Most people" can be as low as 51%, which is not very useful here.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#516

Post by jhgb » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:46 AM UTC

olivierduval wrote: post #129

tchalla wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume the "innocent people get killed" argument abolishes death penalty today. What are the second-order effects of that argument which can be detrimental to the society that you can think of?

Actually, the counter-argument is "innocent people get killed by already convincted murderer that went out of jail"... ECONOMICS: Another counter-argument is "the society pay for the whole life of the jailed murderer, so it's a cost paid by the society for something that broke society laws" And then another argument is "a murderer may prefer to be killed than to be kept in jail for the rest of his life". Actually, th…

> Actually, the counter-argument is "innocent people get killed by already convincted murderer that went out of jail"...

Counter-argument to what? Surely not counter-argument to the death penalty since "releasing people" is not the alternative to the death penalty, life imprisonment is.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#517

Post by Hitton » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:52 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #313

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.

Were our justice system provably 100% reliable, it would still be barbaric and uncivilized to execute human beings. pg is dead wrong on this one.

There are crimes that warrant stopping considering someone to be a human being.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#518

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:47 AM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #481

sjg007 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on if you are an originalist or not.

Nope. A textualist, maybe, but originalists would very much be looking towards English law for guidance on what the Constitution meant.

It’s called originalism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#519

Post by tertius » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

Doxin wrote: post #500

tertius wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole won't solve the issue you see.

Is it actually hyperbole though?

Yes. There are many successful arrests of people who would face the death penalty if convicted without them being killed.

The number of police killings are a very small number. This is blatantly obvious to anyone who cares about the truth.

And I'm strongly against police brutality.

But you don't solve that by being ignorant about what actually happened in reality.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#520

Post by throw0101a » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

qwytw wrote: post #456

throw0101a wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd rather the burden of justification be the other way: what does the death penalty actually achieve, with a high burden of proof (beyond reasonable doubt) that as a policy it actually benefits society as a whole. In the past: societal self-defence. Older prisons were not as secure, and so the risk of dangerous people escaping was high(er). If they got out they could do more harm to innocent people. This is less o…

Or rather it was simply cheaper to execute someone, pre modern societies simply couldn't really afford keeping a large number of people imprisoned for significant periods of time. Considering that during some periods a fine or monetary compensation to the victims family was considered to be reasonable punishment for murder and that on the (on the opposite end of the spectrum) during other periods people were often ha…

> petty theft

Petty theft to us now, but in previous ages there was much more scarcity, so any particular item would have been a higher percentage of a person's 'wealth' (property).

Further remember that labour is the use of one's most precious resource, time (spent living), for either money or goods (if one crafts something themselves). By stealing a possession, you are stealing a portion of a person's life (that they use to earn/make that possession).