The Death Penalty

@Native Jovian I would say that any risk of wrongful execution is too much because it cannot be at least partially overturned by early release after being found innocent, can work as an argument on its own. Yes, I'm making an argument that is not my actual position, but devil's advocate is an acceptable practice.

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 12:21:21 PM

Statista says around 1,560 executions since 1976 and the Death Penalty Information Centre is where I got 196 exonerations from [1], now even if we assume all the exonerations happened pre-execution (so need to be added to the executed number) that’s a greater than 10% exoneration rate.

Still I’m happy to defer to the Innocence Project on this, I’m curious as to what’s wrong with my amateur number crunching there, am I simply missing a ton of people sentenced since 1976 but not yet either executed or exonerated? Are there a statistically significant number of people sentenced to death who die due to causes other than execution?

Edited by Silasw on Feb 3rd 2024 at 11:22:52 AM

You can't just downplay severity, its the whole point. It's wrong to take an innocent person's drivers licence as well and the consequences are also going to be permanent and irrevocable if the person isn't quickly proved innocent. I can still support taking drivers licences but not the death penalty.

Damien Echols was on death row for the ritual murder of three children (convicted mostly due to hysteria of the satanic panic) before being released on an Alford plea after 18 years.

He met his now wife while imprisoned and has since released books on ceromonial magic which he studied while inside. Prison doesn't end peoples lives, execution does. That is undoubtedly a better outcome then if he had been killed and then found innocent.

Edited by Gaiazun on Feb 3rd 2024 at 4:07:51 AM

More than anything, I can't approve of taking the life of the condemned with a justice system as imperfect as ours currently is, including how racist and classist it is, just for the sake of collective catharsis and bloodlust, for very little utility. If the utility of life in prison and the death penalty to society are effectively the same, one costs less and have more allowances for reparation due to error, why choose the other option?

In the US, if you're a minority, you're more likely to get the death penalty. If your victim is a white woman instead of a black man, you're more likely to get the death penalty. If you're an unrepentant rich person who caused the deaths of many, you're more likely to get a lesser penalty than a sorrowful poor person who caused the death of one. If the death penalty is for the supposed justice of its victims, on behalf of their community, certain communities are greatly underserved. In this country, we don't treat all accused equitably, we don't value their victims equally, and we don't hand out judgment consistently, yet this is the system we believe should have the ultimate legal power over life and death, just so a chosen portion can have the supposed value of its catharsis?

Edited by HeyMikey on Feb 3rd 2024 at 4:31:23 AM

It's wrong to punch someone for no particular reason and it's wrong to kill hundreds in an act of terrorism too, but I don't see you making a moral equivalence there, because those acts are blatantly of different degrees. The question of degree is a lot more relevant than you seem to be acting like it is.

The problem isn't that the argument doesn't work, it's that it applies to imprisonment as well. My point this whole time has been that "but we could punish an innocent" is an argument against punishment in general, not against the death penalty. No one has yet provided a reason why we should draw the line at the death penalty... except the multiple people who have said "well, since I don't support the death penalty anyway..."

Of course you can, but can you give me a logically sound reason why? Or do you just dislike the death penalty for other reasons and so you'll use this convenient-but-inconsistent argument against it?

This is begging the question again. If the utility of life in prison and the death penalty are effectively the same, you're correct. But you've made no argument in support of the belief that the utility actually is the same.

Then make an argument for why it's acceptable to sentence someone to prison for life despite the possibility that they'll be exonerated after they die in prison, but it's not acceptable to sentence someone to death because of the possibility that they'll be exonerated after they're executed.

That's what you need to do for your position to be consistent. Ball's in your court. Make your case.

Because in the first situation, he will live longer, and as such, the chance of him being compensated for the government's mistake once his innocence is proven will increase as well.

Example:

A 20-year-old man is accused of murder. Let's assume that the trial will take 3 years before a final sentence is reached.

1-If you have the death penalty, then this man and his loved ones have only three years to save him.

2-If on the other hand, he is sentenced to life in prison, he may live for an additional 60 years or more, so the chance of him being saved and compensated is multiplied by 20.

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

If for example, the real culprit is caught ten years later and the man is in prison, he will be free while he is still 30 years old, and he will be compensated financially. He can still form a family, start a career, and have a good life.

If you have the death penalty, then he will just be a skeleton, or a jar of ashes, and that is that.

Edited by jawal on Feb 3rd 2024 at 4:26:09 PM

This is also why civil law has a lower standard of evidence.

If someone is later exonerated, the worst penalty civil court can impose is a financial one. They just get the money back.

Utility-wise, what does life in prison and capital punishment provide for to society? The primary utility is that they are separated from normal society so that they can no longer do any harm. The main difference is that if they're alive, they have a minute chance to escape and a possibility of still being detrimental to society while still in prison, compared to the death penalty, where once they're executed, they can no longer do harm. The only other difference would be a supposed catharsis to the public to see someone who performed a capital offense pay for it. The comparison in states that hold the death penalty and those that don't doesn't show a notable difference in violent crime rates, so keeping general society safer isn't one of the benefits of the death penalty.

The possibility of escaping prison for someone on death row is miniscule. Has happened before, but again, incredibly unlikely. Amount of people who escape prison in general are fairly small, especially from high security prisons where the type of people we're talking about are held. And the type of people in the US who would have the connections to do the type of thing where they can continue to commit crimes while in prison are usually not the people we put on death row anyways, due to that whole class thing where the higher up you are, the more resources you can put in to lower your penalty. And that's up against the cost of keeping it. In order to lessen the chance of executing an innocent person, we include a very expensive appeals process (that still fails), which means making executing a person expensive compared to life in prison. Any attempts to make it more efficient, will lead to more mistakes in execution. So it doesn't from a systemic and general perspective make us safer than life in prison, it costs more, and the benefits it does potentially provide apply to a very small group of people, that the resources would have much more substantial effect if it had been put to better prisons or more guards, unless you are willing to up the amount of innocents killed just to get at that very small number.

And that still doesn't get to how inequitable the system is, between the racism and classism. If killers are supposed to be put to death, why does the victim matter or why is it effectively only a poor person's punishment? Why would we want to put an unjust system in charge of deciding the ultimate punishment?

I gave you an example, Damien Echols was sentenced to death for being a Gothy teen in a town during the satanic panic. Instead he served approximately 1/3 of a life sentence. Inarguably a better result then being executed, you can't administer 1/3 of a death penalty.

As is he spent 18 years on death row never knowing if he'd make it to his next birthday, death row is well known to be have a higher suicide rate and worse health rate then a life imprisonment. That's harm done and a risk of death done to an innocent person that wouldn't have been done in a state without a death penalty. Sure harm was done to his co-accused who were sentenced to life but they weren't living on death row and only served 1/3 of that sentence wheras again you can't administer 1/3 of a death sentence.

And I should note the deal they were given after 18 years was an Alford plea, basically agreeing to be considered guilty but not plead guilty in exchange for being released on time served. If he'd waited to be found innocent he may have been excecuted before that happened because in this case the state decided it would rather potentially execute an innocent person than admit it bungled the investigation, so I'm unsure if he'd be classed as an exoneration.

Edited by Gaiazun on Feb 4th 2024 at 12:29:19 PM

@Native Jovian My point is that you can at release an innocent person as soon as they are found innocent. Yes, part of that punishment has already been imposed, but not the whole of it. When you execute someone, the entirety of the punishment is imposed immediately.

I think this notion of a prison-for-life inmate being exonerated after death is an objection to any legal sanction, whether fine, jail, or capital. I don't think it tells us anything. Exonerations often happen while the convict is alive. Since you can't resurrect the dead, it's easier to remedy the problem when you don't have a capital sentence.

The point I'm making is that if your argument is "we shouldn't allow this punishment because we might use it on an innocent person", then applying that to the death penalty but not life in prison is completely arbitrary. It's not a good argument against the death penalty specifically because the same logic can be used against lesser punishments as well, and no one has yet given an answer for why the line should be drawn there except for "I don't like the death penalty for other, unrelated reasons".

But at this point I'm just repeating myself because people aren't actually engaging with my point.

For example:

This isn't what I asked. You've changed the premise of the question.

You're arguing that no system is perfect, therefore if executions are allowed then we will execute an innocent eventually, and this is categorically unacceptable, therefore we should not use the death penalty. But the same logic applies to life in prison. No system is perfect, therefore if life sentences are allowed then we will eventually condemn an innocent to die in prison. Someone, somewhere will get a life sentence despite being innocent, and spend the rest of their life in prison, and then only be exonerated after they die.

Why is the first one unacceptable but the second one is okay?

We would we want to put an unjust system in charge of deciding any punishment? Why is this injustice bad enough that the death penalty shouldn't be allowed, but other punishments, which are still inflicted by an unjust system, are okay?

Is this supposed to be an argument against the use of the death penalty? He was falsely convicted and sentenced to death but had it overturned before he was executed. "The system did not execute an innocent man, so therefore we should abolish the death penalty" is a weird argument.

I'll posit an argument then: I'll say that prison shouldn't actually be that bad. Though I guess the reality is that it is, and what to do about that is a matter for a different thread.

Edited by Risa123 on Feb 4th 2024 at 7:14:22 PM

Weird.

I would have sworn that I answered this question in the first part of the post that you didn't quote.

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

Yes, that is a shame.

Oh, well, I guess I have nothing more to say on the matter, thank you for the conversation.

Edited by jawal on Feb 4th 2024 at 8:13:39 PM

I don't see how it is completely arbitrary. As has been made clear in previous posts by others, one is reversible and amends can be made for the miscarriage of justice to the wrongly accused for (via freeing them for the remaining years and compensation), the other cannot (since the wrongly accused is dead, there is nothing you can do to reverse that or make real amends to the victim for that). Taking away a decade or two from someone's life but righting the wrong by releasing him to live the rest of his life is better than taking away all of his life and thus, having no way to make up for the miscarriage of justice.

Edited by xyzt on Feb 5th 2024 at 12:06:57 AM

You cant just ignore the risk that he could have been excecuted before being released, I was pretty clear their was a real chance . I also made clear his conviction wasn't overturned -the state would rather execute him than admit its mistake Ask Damien Echols

Edited by Gaiazun on Feb 4th 2024 at 12:45:02 PM

@Jovian: The number of prisoners serving life sentences who have requested to be put to death is very small; but conversely the number of prisoners on death row who have sought to have their sentences reduced to life in prison is significant—therefore we are justified in concluding that for a majority of people death is a more severe punishment than life in prison. Given the fallibility of the justice system, it is rational to want to reduce the negative consequences of mistakes. By eliminating the death penalty in favor of life in prison, the possible negative consequences of errors is reduced.

I found out about from someone who had briefly confused it with the hypoxia execution that Alabama has had a recent problem with deceased prisoners having their organs illegally removed before being returned to their families.

While not directly related to the death penalty, Jovian has already made the claim that dying in prison is no different from being executed, and it seems like an execution method that leaves the organs as intact as possible would create perverse incentives for a prison system where that kind of corruption is established.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Feb 4th 2024 at 12:34:35 PM

The number of people in the US who escape from prison is 2-3 thousand a year, which sounds high until you realize that almost all of those are people in minimum security prisons for low-level crimes that just walk out the door and disappear. The number of escapees from maximum security prisons isn't tracked, but the articles I've seen suggests there was one over a five year period in the US.

Basically, nobody in the real life is the Joker.

I think there's an argument for the death penalty for people who retain and choose to use the ability to direct hits on people from inside prison using their control over an organization (think mob bosses), but I don't know how common that is. That's at least a scenario where one could define conditions for when one would apply the death penalty and has a plausible reason why life imprisonment wouldn't be enough.

I haven't been responding because there hasn't been anything that I haven't already responded to, but I did want to address this:

No, I haven't.

Actually wait, I've already responded to this too.

As much as I loathe to pick apart posts like this, if you say The point I'm making is that if your argument is "we shouldn't allow this punishment because we might use it on an innocent person", then applying that to the death penalty but not life in prison is completely arbitrary. (emphasis mine), people are bound to think you aren't making such a distinction - life in prison, conceptually, ends when the person dies in prison. I don't agree it's a completely arbitrary distinction, b/c it's easier to remedy an erroneous life-in-prison sentence than an erroneous capital sentence.