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> Saying we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty, because 1 in 25 of them will be innocent, is making a claim about n guilty men. No. PG's piece lea
by mturmon 10y ago
> Saying we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty, because 1 in 25 of them will be innocent, is making a claim about n guilty men.
No. PG's piece leaves open the option for punishment by other means, even if they do turn out to be innocent.
For instance, to take the extreme case, nothing in PG's article says he would have a problem with punishing everyone accused of murder with one year imprisonment, with probability one.
I get that you want to tie PG's piece to the Volokh article, but PG's piece is about this particular form of punishment.
[edited to add: since we're going in circles, I'll stop now]
- ikeboy 10y agoI think you misunderstood me. "we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty" means we shouldn't kill anyone, it allows for other methods of punishment. The Volokh article allows for multiple levels of punishment as well. The quote from Maimonides doesn't mean we simply let them go free if we aren't absolutely sure that they are guilty, instead we would lock them up.