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> The vast majority of trials You skirt the question. It said "those killed because trial went wrong and an innocent man was sentenced". So it asked exactly a

> The vast majority of trials You skirt the question. It said "those killed because trial went wrong and an innocent man was sentenced". So it asked exactly about those that you exclude.

laichzeit0 10y ago
>If you see no problem, how do you propose to revive those killed because trial went wrong and an innocent man was sentenced? I don't. They are dead. They got unlucky. I reject the idea that we can't have capital punishment because sometimes the outcome of a trial is wrong. If you think this is a real problem then quantify it. Put down exactly what the percentage is (i.e. out of every X trials how many "go wrong" as you say). Then we can talk about a feasible upper bound. To say "If the percentage of people wrongly convicted is > 0% then we can never have a death penalty" is too idealistic. If it's 10% then it's obviously too high. Now we have a lower bound and an upper bound and can have a debate about what is an acceptable number of innocents dying. (again, 0 is infeasible). > One person is one person too many! This is the Blackstone principle. As I have said in the first post, I reject this. We both seem to disagree on a "first principle".
- Noseshine 10y ago
  > Put down exactly what the percentage is. That statement makes no sense at all! There have been proven cases (headlines about people freed from death row more than once in the last few years; and no, that's not a sign that "the system works", quite the opposite), so there is no question that they exist. Asking the obviously impossible and completely unconnected question "how many exactly" makes no sense, what would that achieve, even if it were possible? One person is one person too many! I am all for weighing risk or cost vs. benefit, but what would be the benefit of killing people, apart from "revenge feeling"? Also paart from costs, because the death penalty AFAIK is very costly to the US taxpayer and I've read actually more expensive than life in prison. So zero benefit against killing even one innocent person. I'm not even someone who is dead set against killing.
- vidarh 10y ago
  > To say "If the percentage of people wrongly convicted is > 0% then we can never have a death penalty" is too idealistic. Is it? It is exactly the view I hold. I propose that if you are willing to accept a higher rate, then on each conviction let us make it equally likely that the jury and prosecutor gets executed instead. 5% chance of killing an innocent? Only fair that the prosecutor and jury faces the same odds. Let's see how many are willing to take that risk if their own life is on the line.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Can you explain why you care whether a murderer is dead or in prison for life?
- euyyn 10y ago
  > To say "If the percentage of people wrongly convicted is > 0% then we can never have a death penalty" is too idealistic. 1) That's how it is in many first-world countries, so it's obviously not too idealistic. 2) If you don't see the death penalty as a deterrent, what is that supposed pragmatic reason why it's needed (that makes absence of it idealistic)? That doesn't make sense.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  I am kind of confused by your stance on capital punishment. You seem to accept that it is not a deterrent and accept that it is more or less just a "punishment". You also seem to accept that innocent people will get executed. So what is the purpose? "Punishment" seems an overtly emotional basis for such a stance, and "the dead got unlucky" seems rather callous. In my opinion, this is an awful lot of power that you are trusting to the state for weak reasons. Historically, the death penalty has been wielded by some people in power not just for crimes like murder, but also for more awful reasons like, say, people who had different opinions or were "other" ethnic groups etc. Were they unlucky too? Even in America, where our criminal justice system for all its lumps and flaws is still better than many, we have probably killed a couple of innocent people (the Cameron Todd Willingham case being the strongest evidence of an innocent person being killed so far). We probably would have killed a lot more innocent people had our bar for actually performing the execution not been relatively high (149 exonerated from death row since 1973 according to this CBS News article in 2015 -- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/30-years-on-death-row-exoneration-60-minutes/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/30-years-on-death-row-exoneratio...).
gedy 10y ago
The issue was the trial went wrong, not that the death penalty is wrong.

> The vast majority of trials You skirt the question. It said "those killed because trial went wrong and an innocent man was sentenced". So it asked exactly about those that you exclude.

laichzeit0 10y ago

>If you see no problem, how do you propose to revive those killed because trial went wrong and an innocent man was sentenced? I don't. They are dead. They got unlucky. I reject the idea that we can't have capital punishment because sometimes the outcome of a trial is wrong. If you think this is a real problem then quantify it. Put down exactly what the percentage is (i.e. out of every X trials how many "go wrong" as you say). Then we can talk about a feasible upper bound. To say "If the percentage of people wrongly convicted is > 0% then we can never have a death penalty" is too idealistic. If it's 10% then it's obviously too high. Now we have a lower bound and an upper bound and can have a debate about what is an acceptable number of innocents dying. (again, 0 is infeasible). > One person is one person too many! This is the Blackstone principle. As I have said in the first post, I reject this. We both seem to disagree on a "first principle".

Noseshine 10y ago
> Put down exactly what the percentage is. That statement makes no sense at all! There have been proven cases (headlines about people freed from death row more than once in the last few years; and no, that's not a sign that "the system works", quite the opposite), so there is no question that they exist. Asking the obviously impossible and completely unconnected question "how many exactly" makes no sense, what would that achieve, even if it were possible? One person is one person too many! I am all for weighing risk or cost vs. benefit, but what would be the benefit of killing people, apart from "revenge feeling"? Also paart from costs, because the death penalty AFAIK is very costly to the US taxpayer and I've read actually more expensive than life in prison. So zero benefit against killing even one innocent person. I'm not even someone who is dead set against killing.
vidarh 10y ago
> To say "If the percentage of people wrongly convicted is > 0% then we can never have a death penalty" is too idealistic. Is it? It is exactly the view I hold. I propose that if you are willing to accept a higher rate, then on each conviction let us make it equally likely that the jury and prosecutor gets executed instead. 5% chance of killing an innocent? Only fair that the prosecutor and jury faces the same odds. Let's see how many are willing to take that risk if their own life is on the line.
burkaman 10y ago
Can you explain why you care whether a murderer is dead or in prison for life?
euyyn 10y ago
> To say "If the percentage of people wrongly convicted is > 0% then we can never have a death penalty" is too idealistic. 1) That's how it is in many first-world countries, so it's obviously not too idealistic. 2) If you don't see the death penalty as a deterrent, what is that supposed pragmatic reason why it's needed (that makes absence of it idealistic)? That doesn't make sense.
soundwave106 10y ago
I am kind of confused by your stance on capital punishment. You seem to accept that it is not a deterrent and accept that it is more or less just a "punishment". You also seem to accept that innocent people will get executed. So what is the purpose? "Punishment" seems an overtly emotional basis for such a stance, and "the dead got unlucky" seems rather callous. In my opinion, this is an awful lot of power that you are trusting to the state for weak reasons. Historically, the death penalty has been wielded by some people in power not just for crimes like murder, but also for more awful reasons like, say, people who had different opinions or were "other" ethnic groups etc. Were they unlucky too? Even in America, where our criminal justice system for all its lumps and flaws is still better than many, we have probably killed a couple of innocent people (the Cameron Todd Willingham case being the strongest evidence of an innocent person being killed so far). We probably would have killed a lot more innocent people had our bar for actually performing the execution not been relatively high (149 exonerated from death row since 1973 according to this CBS News article in 2015 -- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/30-years-on-death-row-exoneration-60-minutes/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/30-years-on-death-row-exoneratio...).

gedy 10y ago

The issue was the trial went wrong, not that the death penalty is wrong.