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Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

nytimes.com

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Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#21

Post by dfxm12 »

Loughla wrote: post #8
ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some crimes deserve no less. I can somewhat buy arguments about not trusting the government, but I can't buy arguments that capital punishment is actually bad.

I'm going to step outside the political fight about whether or not the state should be able to kill people. I don't want to get into that. So, whether or not capital punishment should exists depends mostly on your theory of incarceration. If you believe prison and the law exists to remedy a wrong inside the person committing the crime, via rehabilitation, capital punishment serves no purpose. If prison exists as a ho…

FWIW, keeping prisoners on death row is also more expensive for tax payers than even life imprisonment. This money can be put to better use than pumping it towards lawyers and legal fees, for sure, whether it's prison reform, or anything.

allowing victims legal means of retribution/revenge, then capital punishment is absolutely necessary for some crimes

How can you be so sure? Dennis Shepard famously didn't want the death penalty for his son's murderer. You also hear of stories of the families of victims not getting any closure after a convict is put to death. The victims themselves are often dead and can't obtains things like retribution or revenge. It's not as "absolutely necessary" as you're painting it here.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#22

Post by HelloMcFly »

DrThunder wrote: post #5
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

Tell that to their victims. The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that, there are crimes that people commit where you can never trust them to be safe around people again. In that case, capital punishment is perfectly justified in my mind. The idea that keeping them in prison for life is somehow more humane is silly. The rest of the world is letting crime…

> The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that...

For many, myself included, there is no "other than that." My core and unbending opposition to capital punishments exists solely on the fact that the punishment is irreversible and there's too many documented cases where executed prisoners were likely wrongfully convicted.

I could perhaps support capital punishment if we had a higher level of guilt we could establish in our legal system reserved only where the evidence is entirely(!) unequivocal for particularly heinous crimes. I don't know exactly what that means, and is probably just another bad idea.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#23

Post by postexitus »

DrThunder wrote: post #5
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

Tell that to their victims. The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that, there are crimes that people commit where you can never trust them to be safe around people again. In that case, capital punishment is perfectly justified in my mind. The idea that keeping them in prison for life is somehow more humane is silly. The rest of the world is letting crime…

This is the same argument as there may be valid reasons to curbing free speech. Once you start going down that route, there is no end. You say death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst and only if we are 100% sure they committed the crime, the next one in line would say it may be suitable for more and when we are 90% sure of the crime. How come it is different from Sharia law, which demands a hand for theft and eye for infidelity - some can say those are also justified. All punishment that's irreversible and violates one's body should be banned.

On your second argument - if death penalty had the very least effect of turning people away from crime, USA would have much better crime stats than "rest of the western world". Most criminals operating at that level (murder, rape etc.) operate on the assumption that they will never be caught.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#24

Post by pavel_lishin »

umvi wrote: post #16
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

Some types of criminals (mafiosi, gang leaders, etc) can and do continue to run their criminal enterprises from within prison. This is a big problem in organized crime infested countries. You can't keep running your mafia if you are dead.

Is the US one of those countries?

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#25

Post by darkerside »

DrThunder wrote: post #5
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

Tell that to their victims. The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that, there are crimes that people commit where you can never trust them to be safe around people again. In that case, capital punishment is perfectly justified in my mind. The idea that keeping them in prison for life is somehow more humane is silly. The rest of the world is letting crime…

I'd say that extinguishing the sense of hope in a reformed human being is also a downside, but that's because I have a shred of empathy.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#26

Post by causi »

ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #4
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

Some crimes deserve no less. I can somewhat buy arguments about not trusting the government, but I can't buy arguments that capital punishment is actually bad.

For me an acceptable false positive rate would be somewhere around one in a thousand. The actual false positive rate is one in twenty-five or greater, despite the justice system spending more money ($1.26 million) per executed prisoner than it spends per life sentence prisoner. Since we are incapable of meeting a decent standard of surety I believe the death penalty should be abolished.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#27

Post by pseg134 »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #22
DrThunder wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to their victims. The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that, there are crimes that people commit where you can never trust them to be safe around people again. In that case, capital punishment is perfectly justified in my mind. The idea that keeping them in prison for life is somehow more humane is silly. The rest of the world is letting crime…

> The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that... For many, myself included, there is no "other than that." My core and unbending opposition to capital punishments exists solely on the fact that the punishment is irreversible and there's too many documented cases where executed prisoners were likely wrongfully convicted. I could perhaps support capital puni…

There are so many systems where some innocent people dying are just accepted and expected that it always confuses me why this one is so special. What is it about the justice system that makes you demand perfection where medicine, the military everyone else can just shrug and say sometimes an innocent person dies.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#28

Post by bikingbismuth »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #24
umvi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some types of criminals (mafiosi, gang leaders, etc) can and do continue to run their criminal enterprises from within prison. This is a big problem in organized crime infested countries. You can't keep running your mafia if you are dead.

Is the US one of those countries?

Sadly, yes. This isn’t a statement about the death penalty, just a confirmation that gang leaders have been known to continue to operate in a leadership capacity even when incarcerated.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#29

Post by andyjohnson0 »

ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #4
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

Some crimes deserve no less. I can somewhat buy arguments about not trusting the government, but I can't buy arguments that capital punishment is actually bad.

> Some crimes deserve no less.

If you believe in deserved individual punishment then wouldn't incarceration for life be a harsher punishment than execution? The imprisoned person experiences the personal consequnces day after day after day until the eventually die. Whereas the executed person experiences literally nothing at all. They may have lost the experience of living the rest of their life, but they're not even aware of that.

(fwiw I'm anti death penalty for ethical as well as peactical reasons, but i live in a country that is unlikely to ever reinstate it.)

Re: Dungeons and Dragons players of death row

#30

Post by crazygecko »

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #3

This is a heartbreaking story. I love playing D&D, and I can only imagine how important it is to these people in a setting like this. I hope the United States joins the rest of the western world and bans capital punishment soon--preferably yesterday.

and yet, how is death sentence any worse than life in prison? if it were me, I'd just want a quick exit rather than rotting in a cage for decades
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