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The real reason to end the death penalty

paulgraham.com

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Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#361

Post by dragonwriter »

chrisco255 wrote: post #290
sneak wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This position is, from my viewpoint, indistinguishable from that of a mass murderer, as that is literally what you are calling for. By a strict logical interpretation, you might consider executing yourself as you have met your own stated criterion for being eligible for execution.

No, it's not. Self defense is moral and justified. And some people are more dangerous alive than dead. Worse, some people develop a cult-of-personality and a following that they can even control or influence from jail. You telling me a mafia or gang leader or a former dictator guilty of genocide doesn't deserve the death penalty? Naive, to say the least. You know little of true evil, which does exist and no amount of…

> Self defense is moral and justified.

To the extent that it is moral and justified, it does not extend to include intent to kill. To the extent intent to kill is present, it is not morally “self-defense”, though it may still be within the scope that law does not punish when the other moral elements of self-defense are present (which is, itself, right and proper despite allowing some immoral acts to go unpunished as criminal law should err on the side of nonpunishment and teasing out intent when the other elements of self-defense are present is more likely to result in the reverse error.)

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#362

Post by Gauge_Irrahphe »

kazinator wrote: post #265
klelatti wrote: post #232

I absolutely abhor the death penalty. I do find this reliance on a single rationale to stop the death penalty problematic though: - For many people I suspect that there is a combination of level of proof and severity of crime that would lead them to say the risk of erroneous conviction can be ignored. - Someone will say let's focus on improving the justice system to deal with the errors. I'd rather the burden of just…

The single rationale is perfectly fine. If we had a magic oracle which supplies us with the absolutely correct guilty or not guilty verdict, there would be no problem with the death penalty. > what does the death penalty actually achieve Rids the world of an instance of evil, efficiently and permanently. Vindicates victims.

>Rids the world of an instance of evil, efficiently and permanently.

That sounds like a motive for murder.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#363

Post by sneak »

rayiner wrote: post #358
sneak wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is significant tradition in the criminal justice system for the error bias to be in the other direction (in theory, if not in practice): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio I believe that to be "working as designed" we would see a lot more guilty people going free than innocent people being convicted.

> I believe that to be "working as designed" we would see a lot more guilty people going free than innocent people being convicted How do you know that’s not the case?

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.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#364

Post by JimBeans2131 »

sneak wrote: post #279
chrisco255 wrote: post #269

I think death penalty should be abolished for all crimes except mass murder. There was a killer in Norway that murdered something close to 70 people 8 or 9 years ago. Thanks to maximum sentences in Norway being 18 years or so, the guy will be walking free in another 9 years time. I'm sorry, but some people just want to watch the world burn and those people should be put down.

This position is, from my viewpoint, indistinguishable from that of a mass murderer, as that is literally what you are calling for. By a strict logical interpretation, you might consider executing yourself as you have met your own stated criterion for being eligible for execution.

By a strict logical interpretation, execution by death penalty is not murder. Dictionary definition of murder: "the _unlawful_ premeditated killing of one human being by another."

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#365

Post by hn8788 »

nefitty wrote: post #336
klelatti wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reducing a human being to a single binary classification - evil or not evil - an assessment that ignores the circumstances of their life, mental state etc at a particular point in time. You're also saying that you're prepared to ignore the wider impact that the act of executing that individual has on society. On the apparent grounds that the dead victim is somehow vindicated (which I can only interpret as mean…

Whatever rationalizations people make, I think ultimately, a belief that some people are evil is what the death penalty hinges on. I don’t believe in free will, thus I don’t believe in moral culpability, this I don’t believe in evil. From that vantage point it seems extremely barbaric to me to put anyone to death. They had no say in the circumstances that led up to who they became. I have similar feeling when I think…

If you think there's no free will, then how is it barbaric to execute people? No free will means the supporters of the death penalty didn't have a say in the circumstance that led to them supporting it, so there is no moral culpability to thinking some people should be executed. It's no more "barbaric" than thinking it's okay to kill rats and other pests for the good of society.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#366

Post by domador »

I think the main reason to end the death penalty is different: capital punishment is a very dangerous power for any nation to have over its inhabitants. Many of us are accustomed to living in stable democracies. Yet how easily and quickly could any of them become a totalitarian state or a reign of terror, where innocent people (especially activists and dissidents) are executed on false charges? Contemporary nations should not have the death penalty. If any nation legalizes it, that should serve as a canary to other nations that said nation is about to become an oppressive state with little appreciation for human rights.

Just look at the death penalty historically, even not too long ago, and how it was used in many now "civilized" countries to kill people for minor crimes. Or look at the contemporary world, at the countries that use capital punishment and the crimes they prescribe it for (even assuming they were prescribing it justly.) Aren't these countries themselves a good argument that it's best to err on the side of not having capital punishment at all, anywhere?

I think some criminals are truly awful and deserve to die for their heinous crimes. Yet it's simply too dangerous for any society to have the death penalty, even for these heinous crimes. As an intellectual, I'd be somewhat or very scared of living in any of the contemporary countries that have capital punishment (not to mention the ones that essentially allow street executions by the police. But that is another topic for another day...)

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#367

Post by dan-robertson »

exclusiv wrote: post #359
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…

I don't know how you could replace the jurors but I think they're only as good as the rest of the system. I mean, if they don't get to hear or see certain evidence because it was deemed non-permissible or it was hidden or destroyed, they can't make a good decision. Not to mention at one point we had no DNA evidence. We relied on junk science with bite marks and shoe prints and other things. Although there are indeed…

I think the suggestion is that not having a death penalty reduces the harm of incorrect decisions

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#368

Post by sneak »

JimBeans2131 wrote: post #364
sneak wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This position is, from my viewpoint, indistinguishable from that of a mass murderer, as that is literally what you are calling for. By a strict logical interpretation, you might consider executing yourself as you have met your own stated criterion for being eligible for execution.

By a strict logical interpretation, execution by death penalty is not murder. Dictionary definition of murder: "the _unlawful_ premeditated killing of one human being by another."

Violation of one's inalienable right to life (as written in the US declaration of independence, as well as the UN's universal declaration of human rights) is unlawful, regardless of any state legislation.

States can't legislate you out of your human rights.

One day the US federal courts will notice this error that they've made and fix the glitch.

As Churchill famously said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#369

Post by newacct583 »

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…

To be clear: I don't think that anyone is surprised to see a 4% error rate here. No one ever really thought this system was perfect, and in point of fact perfect determination of innocence wasn't even a design goal of the jury system. The point to selecting juries from the public is to make it harder for a corrupt government to employ its own law enforcement apparatus corruptly. (Whether that works is also an argument of some topicality right now...)

But yeah: given that the error rate is in the 1-2 9's range, it seems like applying it to capital cases is a horrifying mistake. Imagine a medical device with only a 99% chance of not killing you.

Re: The real reason to end the death penalty

#370

Post by gnulinux »

mrweasel wrote: post #326
whatever1 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a practical aspect a lot of benefits for death penalties: 1) Low cost. No need for jails and their associated costs 2) Great scaling. You can kill as many as you want, but you cannot build a jail every day 3) Safe. People don’t come back to repeat their mistakes. 4) It’s the only language that many criminals speak and understand. The downsides are of a moral nature and twofold: 1) We should not punish innocent p…

As much as I dislike the idea of a government killing someone for a crime, the cost and potential elimination of future trouble with an individual is tempting. Assuming that we absolutely know that someone is guilt (ignoring how that would happen), it doesn't need to take years and millions of dollars to simply shoot someone. Then there are the people who are not only a financial burden on society, they are actively…

> Sometimes we just sit back an wonder why even spend resources keep this person terrible person imprisoned for decades.

Because they're a human. Humans are capable of change. And killing a human "because it's expensive" is a barbaric mindset.

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