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Did Texas execute an innocent man?

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Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#41

Post by wlievens »

Rod wrote: post #40
wlievens wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I absolutely agree that the risk of false positives is enough reason. I can't understand how people think that can be acceptable under any circumstances. I'm just not sure that the death penalty is not a deterrent.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#42

Post by sho »

Rod wrote: post #37
sho wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

collateral damage — Unintentional or incidental injury or damage to persons or objects that would not be lawful military targets in the circumstances ruling at the time.

DoD manual: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf

Civilian families aren't lawful military targets.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#44

Post by anamax »

PostOnce wrote: post #36
anamax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

You misunderstand - I'm not saying anything about quality of life.

I'm pointing out that innocent people on death row are far more likely to be released than innocent people sentenced to life without parole.

In fact, even less than life sentences are frequently fatal.

Prison life is very deadly.

FWIW, death row is safer and has better quality of life in many respects.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#45

Post by adrianwaj »

"Me and Stacy’s been together for four years, but off and on we get into a fight and split up for a while and I think those babies is what brought us so close together . . . neither one of us . . . could live without them kids."

Did Stacy have jealous boyfriend or secret admirer? She did work at a bar. Murdering Stacy's partner Willingham and their kids could bring them a step closer. Maybe someone was targeting Stacy. Who knows?

The system went for the dad because he was an easy target, and so the system could then move on.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#46

Post by sant0sk1 »

btilly wrote: post #22
sant0sk1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's more expensive for the state (and therefore taxpayers) than life without parole Do you have a source to back that up?

5 seconds with Google would have given you http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty which links to multiple sources that have looked into the issue and found that the additional cost of prosecuting the death penalty is significantly more than life without parole. The amount of difference varies with jurisdiction and the methodology of the study, but the differences support the claim.

Fair enough. I was on my iPhone and about to go to bed. It was an interesting claim and I wanted to know if it was founded or not.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#47

Post by alextp »

steiger wrote: post #5

That's the most outrageous, devilish thing that can and eventually had happened or will happen with death penalty. Someday, we will know we killed an innocent man, and in that day we will ALL be murderers. We all being murderers, we should all be sentenced to death (the Death Penalty Paradox).

Technically we would all be accomplices to murder (after all it is quite hard to find a not-Orient-Express scenario in which more than a couple of people kill another one), which does not usually get the death penalty, so paradox is avoided. I do agree with you, though :-)

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#48

Post by adrianwaj »

steiger wrote: post #5

That's the most outrageous, devilish thing that can and eventually had happened or will happen with death penalty. Someday, we will know we killed an innocent man, and in that day we will ALL be murderers. We all being murderers, we should all be sentenced to death (the Death Penalty Paradox).

When there is a miscarriage of justice, those responsible for it must be brought to justice.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#49

Post by Legion »

Rod wrote: post #38
edmccaffrey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I agree with your comment about the DP not being a deterrent. People who murder people aren't thinking, "I can handle life without parole, but gee, I can't handle that death penalty!". Thoughts about consequences only begin for them after getting caught.

I'm neutral on your second point. I think there are examples of criminals with crimes that are so sick and heinous in nature to where I could see the argument that taking their life away is a just and proportional penalty.

I do think there's one thing that has to be taken into account when talking about the DP, though: it seems to be a powerful bargaining chip. Here's a paper from earlier this year that finds criminals are significantly more likely to plea to life or long sentences in states where they may face the DP compared to states where they will not: http://www.cjlf.org/papers/wpaper09-01.pdf

There are papers, though, which make arguments that come to different conclusions. This is well outside of my area of knowledge, but my point in bringing it up is to identify it as another thing that bears consideration in the DP discussion.

Re: Did Texas execute an innocent man?

#50

Post by JulianMorrison »

Eliezer wrote: post #15
jerf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Better, both of the above and the AI is bright enough to contrive that a crime fails when it isn't targeting a willing victim or a sockpuppet.
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