The Death Penalty

I'm curious: To the people who support the death penalty, how would you react if said hypothetical criminal about to be executed was your child?

As for me, I don't want to have children, so I have no idea how I would react, but I know one thing for sure: I'd never raise my child to do crime, so if they did something serious enough to warrant death penalty, I'd disown him/her/them.

Edited by CosmosAndChaos on Feb 3rd 2024 at 3:17:47 PM

The calculus greatly changes depending on whether you think they're innocent or guilty. Usually for people who support the death penalty, when they provide a hypothetical or even an example, they make the assumption that the person has done the crime, and they'll claim they have done the absolute scummiest horrific things ever and that since they did such a thing, they deserve death. Rarely do they entertain the idea that maybe they might have gotten the wrong guy, and by killing them, two injustices have been performed and one of which can never even attempt to be repaid.

But the justice system isn't perfect and people will get sent down death row without giving the accused the best chance to prove their case, either that they were innocent, or that there were extenuating circumstances that if the justice system was being consistent, they would be given a lesser penalty.

It is impossible to know for sure, until one faces that situation.

By instinct, parents are made to care for their children and value their well-being over the rest of the world.

So even if they think their child committed the crime, and their principles dictate that they should be punished, they may still take their children's side.

Parental emotions will overwhelm abstract principles.

............

Those who uphold their principles over their loved ones, are the exception, not the rule.

Ultimately, the validity of the Death Penalty is irrelevant to the parent's position.

If the parents disown their children, this will not make the penalty moral, and vice versa.

The "What if it was YOUR family?" Argument is actually an argument against, not for the Death Penalty.

Would I want the killer of my family dead? Well, yeah, obviously. But does that mean that the State should work as a hitman on my behalf, because of my personal feelings? No.

Justice is blind. There is a reason why Prosecutors, Lawyers, Judges, Members of a Jury etc have to recuse themselves from a case if they are personally affected by it.

Edited by Forenperser on Feb 3rd 2024 at 8:31:27 PM

Frankly, "what if it was someone you care about" is an emotional appeal and that has nothing to do with good reasoning.

Worth pointing out that "but sometimes we punish innocent people" isn't an argument against the death penalty so much as an argument against punishment of any kind. If you refuse to accept the death penalty because of the possibility that an innocent person may be executed, then why do you accept life sentencing, even though that may be inflicted on an innocent person too?

Yes, you can release someone who's later found to be innocent... unless they've already died in prison, in which case it's exactly the same situation as them being executed. But more than that, simply being released doesn't give them back the years they spent imprisoned. Nothing can. You can try to compensate them for it by giving them money, but the time they lost is well and truly gone. In that way, prison time is as permanent and irreversible as execution is. So why does "but we might be wrong" only apply to the death penalty?

Uhm, because that is a pretty significant difference there?

Yes, you cannot give somebody back the years they lost of their life, but at least they'll still have a life. They can still live a better lot than before, find love, find a new job, be happy again etc

Once you are dead, you are dead. No way to live better after you are found to be innocent.

Edited by Forenperser on Feb 3rd 2024 at 9:57:38 PM

It applies only to death penalty because loss of time is better than a loss of life.

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 9:55:12 PM

But we can compensate them with new time. Wealth is known to impact life span, so the right level of financial compensation would extend a person’s life expectancy such that they’d live extra years equivalent to those lost in prison.

Also a release at least stops the harm, if we’ve already taken 10 years from someone who’d been wrongly convicted at 30 we can stop at 10 by releasing them, but if we’ve executed them and they’d have lived to 60 we’re taking the full 30 even if we discover the miscarriage of justice after 10 years.

If the execution provides no other value (which I’d argue it doesn’t) then it’s just an unesisary restriction on our ability to reduce the harm from miscarriages of justice.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 3rd 2024 at 9:01:16 AM

As I pointed out, getting a life sentence and then dying in prison before being exonerated is literally identical to being executed in terms of miscarriage of justice. So at what point does "but we could be wrong!" stop being a valid argument? Life sentencing? 20 years? Should there be a sliding scale depending on the age/health of the convicted?

That works in theory, but in practice it only applies to people who are relatively young and spend relatively short amounts of time in prison. If you're convicted when you're 25 and spend 10 years in prison before being released, then sure, I can see monetary compensation meaning you live ten years longer than you would have in prison. But if you're convicted when you're 40 and then spend 30 years, there's no amount of money that will give you an extra 30 years of lifespan when you're released from prison as a 70 year old.

Well, that's fair, but that's a different argument. The argument I'm addressing is "some people do deserve to be executed but we shouldn't actually ever use the death penalty because we might accidentally execute an innocent person". If you think execution offers no value even when the person is guilty, then yeah, obviously the risk/reward equation there is trivial.

Even if you can’t give a prisoner found innocent at 70 all the taken years back, you can give some. Simply letting them out of prison at 70 would boost their life expectancy by a few years. Partial compensation is better than no compensation.

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 10:27:23 AM

It also ignores the stress of sitting under the death penalty for years not knowing if your next appeal is going to extend your life for another year.

Does that hypothetical 40-year-old innocent person get a vote on the matter ?

if a person, no matter his age, is forced to choose between:

1-Spent time in prison, with the hope that someday your innocence will be proven, and you will get to see the outside world again.

2-Die now, the End.

Will go and choose option 1.

.............

Also, what guarantee is that it will take 30 years to prove their innocence? For all we know, in only 3 years, new evidence may turn up and exonerate them, so they will be 43 years old and still able to enjoy life.

Edited by jawal on Feb 3rd 2024 at 10:33:16 AM

I actually would not be too surprised if someone choose life over death even without the possibility of release. Suicide is a pretty extreme decision.

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 10:44:29 AM

I’ve said before that I’m okay with giving the convicted the choice between the two options laid out. Though there is a risk that such a choice causes people running prisons to deliberately make the lives of prisoners miserable as a backdoor method of execution n

Edited by Silasw on Feb 3rd 2024 at 9:45:23 AM

And you can give money to a wrongfully executed person's next of kin, too. Wrongful death claims are a well-established legal principle. No, it's not going to bring the executed person back to life, but by your own admission, partial compensation is better than no compensation, right?

We're already talking about exceptions to exceptions to exceptions. Most people who are sentenced to death are guilty. Most innocent people who are sentenced to death will be exonerated before they're executed. How do you justify saying that we should never execute anyone just in case we're wrong, but it's okay to let someone spend their whole life in prison, even though sometimes we'll be wrong about that too?

No, they don't. They're a prisoner being sentenced for crimes they were duly convicted of. Obviously they're going to prefer a lighter sentence for themselves. Why would they get a vote on the matter?

Even an exception to an exception is worth the trouble in my opinion. It is human lives we are talking about here. Human lives are important, and since I see no other benefit to death penalty...

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 11:17:50 AM

Because (in developed countries with secure prisons) there is a significant benefit to public safety from locking a person up that doesn’t increase any substantial amount if we execute them.

All criminal punishments are about trading a reduction in the rights of the person being punished for an increase in the rights of the population at large, in developed countries there simply isn’t enough gain to the public from execution over imprisonment to justify the loss to the convicted.

Aaaaand there it is. Like I said to Silasw, if you think that no one should be executed anyway then that's a different story.

Again: this is an argument against the death penalty categorically. That is not the argument I'm addressing here.

Edited by NativeJovian on Feb 3rd 2024 at 5:23:28 AM

That is a side note. Even a small chance of execution of an innocent person is simply too much.

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 11:25:03 AM

While this is true we should note that the death penalty has a pretty high rate of false convicted. Around 1560 people have been executed in the US since 1976, while since 1973 there have been at least 196 people sentenced to death that have been discovered to have been wrongly convicted. Playing the numbers we’ve got an over 12% false death sentence rate, we wouldn’t allow a rollercoaster that killed 12% of people doing nothing wrong to continue operating.

Edited by Silasw on Feb 3rd 2024 at 10:28:29 AM

Your point was that life imprisonment of an innocent person is comparable to execution, the condemned is in the best position to make the distinction and would almost certainly choose the former.

Edited by Gaiazun on Feb 3rd 2024 at 2:31:32 AM

Well then, I am not "a prisoner being sentenced for crimes that I was duly convicted of" so I still get a vote.

And I vote for having a system where if I or a loved one are by any chance wrongly convicted, then we at least must be kept alive as long as possible in the hope of the authorities realizing their mistake, instead of them just killing us ASAP.

Also this.

.................

To be honest, when this conversation started a weak ago, I was unsure about my position.

I was against the death penalty in my country because I don't trust the legal system not to intentionally target innocents, but in general, I wasn't sure if I was with or against the penalty in a country where there is a more trustworthy legal system.

Now, after thinking about it and considering all the opinions that have been posted, I believe I am inclined to be against it.

................

Even if it is just one person in 100,000 who may be executed by error, then it is worth it to not have the death penalty in order to save him.

Edited by jawal on Feb 3rd 2024 at 11:44:38 AM

No, it's core to your argument. What you're actually arguing is that "since the death penalty has increased risk (consequences of using it on an innocent person are worse than it would be for other punishments) and no benefit, it doesn't make sense to use it". But whether or not there is any benefit to using the death penalty is a completely separate argument. You're just sneaking it in here as an unexamined assumption. The argument does not work unless you agree with the premise that there is no benefit to the death penalty to begin with.

Which means that it doesn't work as an argument against the death penalty, period. It's classic begging the question. You're using "there's no benefit to the death penalty" as the basis for your argument against the death penalty without actually making a case that there's no benefit to the death penalty.

Those numbers are wildly off base. Even the Innocence Project, an organization devoted entirely to overturning wrongful convictions, only cites a 4% rate for capital convictions (compared to a general rate of 6%).

No it wasn't. Execution is obviously a more severe punishment than life imprisonment and most people would rather serve a life sentence than be executed. My point is that the consequences for inflicting it on an innocent person are permanent and irrevocable for both. "It's wrong to use the death penalty because it might be used on an innocent person, we should use life in prison instead" fails as an argument because it's also wrong to put an innocent person in prison for life. To support life sentences but not the death sentence because of the possibility for wrongful conviction in a death sentence case is not a logically sound argument.