Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hyperbole won't solve the issue you see.
Firing all white police officers would certainly make a dent though
Trolling isn't helpful to discussion about this topic.
The real reason to end the death penalty
521–530 of 546 posts
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#522[flagged]
Please omit nationalistic flamebait and political swipes from your posts here. They just make things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900759 .
my apologies. I obviously failed to communicate my point clearly enough and unintentionally created flamebait. Thanks for being an excellent mod :)
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
I heard another interesting thought experiment on this topic recently. It said there should be a referendum about whether to keep (or adopt) the death penalty, but the names of everyone who voted for allowing the death penalty would be recorded in a list. Then, whenever someone sentenced to death was later found to be innocent (or pardoned), a random name on the list of "Yes" voters would be picked to be killed in pl…
I wouldn't do pardoned. That's a whole other bag of things. A guy could be completely guilty and get a posthumous pardon because of reasons.
Actually the original idea that I based this on didn't mention pardons, but I thought that adding that element would make it more thought-provoking and put people off voting "Yes" in this hypothetical. Your comment suggests it has achieved both those goals.
Don't you think it's an interesting quirk for a legal system to allow both execution and posthumous pardons? If the point of a pardon is to end someone's punishment (even someone "completely guilty"), then shouldn't that necessitate that all punishments imposed by the justice system be impermanent, at least in principle?
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#524To 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…
And putting them in prison for multiple years, or even decades, is better ? Hardly. I think the point should be more: the justice system sucks and we should work very hard to make it better, instead of complaining about a particular consequence of it, that is ultimately irrelevant.
If you read the linked story about Kevin Cooper, it sounds like he is a better human being today than when he was almost certainly wrongfully convicted. Just one data point, but at least regular prison has redemptive potential, while the lethal syringe, I think, has none.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/17/opinion/sunda...
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I find any - I would gladly change my mind. Then let me offer you this question to ponder: What benefit is there to adding another tally to the body count from a mass shooting, once the perpetrator has been taken into custody? Executing someone doesn't reduce the number of unnecessarily lost lives, it only increases it.
One possible benefit is that it might help provide closure for the people who lost friends and relatives in the mass shooting.
Someone who is assaulted or robbed might also benefit from the sense of closure they would receive knowing that the perpetrator had died. Similarly someone who found their partner cheating on them with a rival might find it easier to move on from that if their rival was then killed.
In general I don't think that society is best served by legitimising and implementing the irrational desires we have for killing people who have emotionally hurt us.
I think it would instead make sense to try to improve the support given to people who have suffered from crimes. If this means years of expensive therapy, paid for by the near-slavery of the perpetrator carrying out their life sentence, then we could have an outcome that is slightly more humane.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't do pardoned. That's a whole other bag of things. A guy could be completely guilty and get a posthumous pardon because of reasons.
Actually the original idea that I based this on didn't mention pardons, but I thought that adding that element would make it more thought-provoking and put people off voting "Yes" in this hypothetical. Your comment suggests it has achieved both those goals. Don't you think it's an interesting quirk for a legal system to allow both execution and posthumous pardons? If the point of a pardon is to end someone's punishme…
I feel as if it's a different question with the pardons. You can pardon a guilty person. Pardons have nothing to do with innocence. Regardless of my feelings on whether or not I'd executed if an innocent man was executed, I definitely wouldn't want to be executed for a guilty person.
So rather than being thought-provoking, it's almost thought-terminating.
And I haven't touched on whether we should execute people in my post. So engaging on that front is also going to be a short road for us. Because in another post, I can get to "the death penalty" is wrong in a much more direct fashion. It's a game you're not allowed to make mistakes in. The minute you've executed an innocent person, you've failed.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have discussions about how to reduce the number of deaths by cars every day. Don't pretend we don't. We have discussions about suicide prevention. Cancer prevention and treatment. Healthy living, blah blah blah. Yes, the number of people who die from those things are still non-zero. But what you're suggesting is that we need to get those to zero before we address the death penalty. That's a false dichotomy. The de…
I'm not suggesting that we need to get those things to zero. I'm suggesting that's what PG is making the argument for. You can't have it both ways, you can't argue that the death penalty is a unique harm because of the innocent deaths whilst ignoring other innocent deaths. The death penalty is all about the state's role -that is the thing that distinguishes it from traffic deaths. If you really do subcribe to PG's ar…
You're ignoring our active participation in it. It's not about the state's role in it per se, so much as, like I've said previously, the fact that we are choosing to directly end someone's life.
And innocent people don't die in car accidents, unfortunate people do. People who get executed are deliberately executed.
It's as 0 cost as you can get. It's not a hugely expensive process, courts can just not sentence people to death. It's not like we're sticking these people on a huge conveyor belt that's impossible to remove them from.
> Not to mention the fact that these people who are sentenced to death incorrectly aren't being set free, they're likely still spending decades in prison.
And? Because we've wronged them somewhat, it's ok that we wrong them further? What sort of logic is that?
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a life sentence in prison with a noose in it is humane?
Once you've decided to throw someone's life away, keeping them around to experience their thrown-away life is not particularly kind, is the point.
If human life is so precious that it must not be taken, then it's precious enough that it must not be taken by oneself as well as others. If people are worth the chance at life, then a life in a prison cell is as worth that chance as life in a palace.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#529It's honestly messed up that in 2021 there are parts of so-called "civilized world" where this discussion is still ongoing.
Re: The real reason to end the death penalty
#530To 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 don't know how you could replace the jurors but
One part of this is the education system. A jury who is susceptible to junk science and junk logic is more likely to run into these issues.