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This is silly. Suppose you were wrongly imprisoned for 20 years, but later freed. You could reasonably argue that you would rather have been killed (but would
by JabavuAdams 17y ago
This is silly.
Suppose you were wrongly imprisoned for 20 years, but later freed. You could reasonably argue that you would rather have been killed (but would you?). You cannot reasonably argue that I, or your friend, or your mother would prefer to be executed rather than to live in prison for 20 years.
Second, what does the extra scrutiny matter if we still execute innocent people? If there were no capital punishment, we by definition would not execute any innocent people.
Your no-right-to-life argument is predicated on your own stated, but not proven, value judgement, but it's murderous to force this on others.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoI'm not arguing that a mistaken execution is equal to a mistaken 20 years in prison. For a person with 40 years left to live, I'm arguing that 20 years in prison is half as bad as killing them (ignoring the fact that early years are probably higher value than later ones). Extra scrutiny matters because the goal is not minimizing execution of the innocent, but minimizing punishment of the innocent. I don't see how wrongly making a person live out their life in jail is significantly worse than killing them. Extra scrutiny matters because it would reduce our error rate. I'd prefer one mistaken execution to two mistaken life imprisonments. Note that this latter point is strictly a utilitarian one, not a moral one. In a world without assorted lawyers/activists/etc working to prevent wrongful executions, the argument would not apply.