Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#31

Post by anamax »

PostOnce wrote: post #28
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…

Summary: Eliminating the death penalty without fixing the trial process will still send innocent men to prison for a very long time. Hard to do though.

> Eliminating the death penalty without fixing the trial process will still send innocent men to prison for a very long time.

Actually, sending innocent people to prison will kill a significant number of them, especially if the sentence is "life without parole".

If you're innocent, you're actually much better off being sentenced to death.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#32

Post by edmccaffrey »

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.

> The real problem is that death penalty does not serve as deterrence.

What do you suggest in order to deter an innocent man from committing the crime that he never committed?

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#33

Post by jodrellblank »

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…

We do put up with it in anti virus programs - mcafee deletes Daneware mini remote control service and angryziber ip scan both of which are innocent useful tools.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#34

Post by thaumaturgy »

covercash wrote: post #23

All of the people that contributed to his execution with their b.s. science and swayed testimony need to be severely punished IMO. Maybe a prison sentence will deter these "experts" from claiming their findings are 100% correct without some sort of scientific proof. This reminds me of a similar story I read recently about bite mark experts being used in murder investigations... just like these arson experts, they had…

I thought the quote near the beginning of the article about how the death penalty proves the sanctity of life gave a pretty good solution to the "problem" of the death penalty:

Anyone who, either knowingly or negligently, contributes to the execution of any person later found innocent, is guilty of murder punishable by death.

Now, who wants to be the first to help put someone on death row?

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#36

Post by PostOnce »

anamax wrote: post #31
PostOnce wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summary: Eliminating the death penalty without fixing the trial process will still send innocent men to prison for a very long time. Hard to do though.

> Eliminating the death penalty without fixing the trial process will still send innocent men to prison for a very long time. Actually, sending innocent people to prison will kill a significant number of them, especially if the sentence is "life without parole". If you're innocent, you're actually much better off being sentenced to death.

People have their opinions on what sort of life is worse than death, so I won't argue with you.

I was simply saying that the parent of my above comment was arguing that the problem is doing bad things to innocent people, and that we are focusing on a subset of that problem, rather than the problem as a whole.

And then I said that the problem as a whole is hard to fix.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#37

Post by Rod »

sho wrote: post #19
Rod wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that the scenario you've described is not collateral damage. According to the U.S. Air Force:

"Broadly defined, collateral damage is unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities."

Source: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/usaf/afpam14-210/part20.htm#pa...

If a Predator blows up a car and the family traveling inside it because some intelligence analyst believes it's full of terrorists, that is killing, pure and simple. There's no "collateral" here. If during the same strike, another car with another family is accidently destroyed by the blast, that is, indeed, collateral damage.

To summarize, if you destroy what you're targeting, there's no collateral damage. If you destroy something other than what you're targeting, then there's collateral damage. Collateral damage is unintended killing, but not all unintended killing is collateral damage. Hence, your argument is fallacious.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#38

Post by Rod »

edmccaffrey wrote: post #32
Rod wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The real problem is that death penalty does not serve as deterrence. What do you suggest in order to deter an innocent man from committing the crime that he never committed?

That was not my point. My point was that death penalty does not prevent actual criminals from murdering people. Hence, I don't see what is the point of capital punishment. Moreover, I don't think that judges and juries should have the right to play God and decide who lives or dies.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#39

Post by wlievens »

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.

According to Freakonomics it does. But the deterrence isn't the only aspect important to the matter. The risk of false positives alone is enough to forget about possible deterrence value. And that's not even about the ethics of the matter.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#40

Post by Rod »

wlievens wrote: post #39
Rod wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to Freakonomics it does. But the deterrence isn't the only aspect important to the matter. The risk of false positives alone is enough to forget about possible deterrence value. And that's not even about the ethics of the matter.

1) Economics is called the dismal science for a reason. I don't care what Freakonomics says.

2) I believe that the risk of false positives should be enough reason to abolish the death penalty.

Post reply on HN