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Did Texas execute an innocent man?

newyorker.com

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Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#11

Post by slyn »

amichail wrote: post #6
rms wrote: post #3

Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not the first time. This is a more straightforward read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham

How is this any worse than the collateral damage of war?

The death penalty is far to permanent of a punishment to be wielded by organizations with such high false positive rates. We wouldn't put up with it with an anti-virus program or a SMART-esque hardware monitoring program, why do we put up with it when the price is not a few easily replicated digital files or some computer hardware, but rather an innocent persons _life_.

Capital punishment in it's current form is not a deterrence to crime, it doesn't fix the problems caused by the crimes it is punishing for (it doesn't bring back the murdered, etc), it's more expensive for the state (and therefore taxpayers) than life without parole, and innocents have died at the hands of overzealous police, judges, politicians, and public opinion. So the question then becomes, why do it?

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#12

Post by jerf »

Legion wrote: post #8
rms wrote: post #3

Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not the first time. This is a more straightforward read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham

Focusing on the death penalty is completely missing the point. If you're writing code and something keeps throwing nasty exceptions, you don't remove the exception handling - you fix the code. Death penalty isn't the problem (leaving aside the traditional death penalty debate for a moment). Innocent people being found guilty, often by highly (and unnecessarily) faulty process, is the problem. Cutting out the death pe…

While I still agree with your main points, it should be pointed out that any process that can be actually executed by real humans will throw up false positives. For that matter, any process actually executable by a benevolent AI will throw up a certain number of false positives, too. We need to be ready to deal with that.

So, both faulty process and the death penalty is the problem.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#13

Post by Rod »

Legion wrote: post #8
rms wrote: post #3

Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not the first time. This is a more straightforward read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham

Focusing on the death penalty is completely missing the point. If you're writing code and something keeps throwing nasty exceptions, you don't remove the exception handling - you fix the code. Death penalty isn't the problem (leaving aside the traditional death penalty debate for a moment). Innocent people being found guilty, often by highly (and unnecessarily) faulty process, is the problem. Cutting out the death pe…

Comparing death penalty to exception handling is the most distasteful metaphor ever. The real problem is that death penalty does not serve as deterrence. That is the problem.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#14

Post by Legion »

Rod wrote: post #13
Legion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing on the death penalty is completely missing the point. If you're writing code and something keeps throwing nasty exceptions, you don't remove the exception handling - you fix the code. Death penalty isn't the problem (leaving aside the traditional death penalty debate for a moment). Innocent people being found guilty, often by highly (and unnecessarily) faulty process, is the problem. Cutting out the death pe…

Comparing death penalty to exception handling is the most distasteful metaphor ever. The real problem is that death penalty does not serve as deterrence. That is the problem.

Luckily, the analogy had nothing to do with the death penalty, and was simply about focusing on the symptom instead of the root problem.

You'd have to really go out of your way to read it wrong to draw any sort of "this is comparing death penalty to exception handling" conclusion.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#15

Post by Eliezer »

jerf wrote: post #12
Legion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing on the death penalty is completely missing the point. If you're writing code and something keeps throwing nasty exceptions, you don't remove the exception handling - you fix the code. Death penalty isn't the problem (leaving aside the traditional death penalty debate for a moment). Innocent people being found guilty, often by highly (and unnecessarily) faulty process, is the problem. Cutting out the death pe…

While I still agree with your main points, it should be pointed out that any process that can be actually executed by real humans will throw up false positives. For that matter, any process actually executable by a benevolent AI will throw up a certain number of false positives, too. We need to be ready to deal with that. So, both faulty process and the death penalty is the problem.

Well then you need a benevolent AI and universal surveillance nanotechnology.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#17

Post by sant0sk1 »

slyn wrote: post #11
amichail wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any worse than the collateral damage of war?

The death penalty is far to permanent of a punishment to be wielded by organizations with such high false positive rates. We wouldn't put up with it with an anti-virus program or a SMART-esque hardware monitoring program, why do we put up with it when the price is not a few easily replicated digital files or some computer hardware, but rather an innocent persons _life_. Capital punishment in it's current form is not…

> it's more expensive for the state (and therefore taxpayers) than life without parole

Do you have a source to back that up?

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#18

Post by sho »

amichail wrote: post #6
rms wrote: post #3

Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not the first time. This is a more straightforward read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham

How is this any worse than the collateral damage of war?

Why is the parent being voted down? It's a sound point.

This guy was collateral damage of the legal system, a (retroactively) unintended killing while we all heartily support the intended ones. The only thing different is the "retroactively" and even then the analogy holds, if the army bombs the wrong people then realises its mistake later.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#19

Post by sho »

Rod wrote: post #9
amichail wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any worse than the collateral damage of war?

By definition, collateral damage is unintended killing, whereas capital punishment is doubtlessly intended killing.

Ah, but this is (retroactively) unintended killing.

Imagine a car being hit from the air by a Predator drone because analysis wrongly believes it's full of terrorists. Intended killing. They later realise they made a mistake a killed some family. Now it's unintended killing. Not much of a difference there by my reckoning.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#20

Post by greendestiny »

Legion wrote: post #8
rms wrote: post #3

Yes, they did. It is time for a national death penalty moratorium. This is not the first time. This is a more straightforward read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Willingham

Focusing on the death penalty is completely missing the point. If you're writing code and something keeps throwing nasty exceptions, you don't remove the exception handling - you fix the code. Death penalty isn't the problem (leaving aside the traditional death penalty debate for a moment). Innocent people being found guilty, often by highly (and unnecessarily) faulty process, is the problem. Cutting out the death pe…

You're solution is to have a perfect system? That's not possible.

But to torture your analogy more, its like saying instead of having exception handling in your programming, or crash handling in your operating systems, simply don't make any mistakes. All that happens in reality are more serious consequences for the mistakes that do happen.

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