3 ms·

I'm against following George R.R. Martin's lead, because I suspect it would cause different judges to sentence different punishments for similar trials given th

by lev99 8y ago

I'm against following George R.R. Martin's lead, because I suspect it would cause different judges to sentence different punishments for similar trials given their own person aversion or attraction to killing. This would be equivalent of people being treated unequally by the law, which is against the equal protection clause of the fourteen amendment.

lb1lf 8y ago
-I think your point is a valid (and good!) one, but I like - that is hardly an appropriate verb in this context - the concept. Perhaps any prosecutor seeking the death penalty in a case would have to join a pool of executioner's assistants? (Same for jurors and judges - unless you are willing to follow through on actually killing someone, you are barred from deciding on the matters of life and death?) In this way, their verdict on any particular case wouldn't make any difference (to them!) - they could be called upon to take part in the dirty details of an actual execution in any other case but the one they sat in on. The only problem I have with such a system, is that there's probably people out there who'd basically ask 'Cool, where do I sign up?', which is somewhat scary. The civilized thing, of course, would be to abolish it altogether. Capital punishment basically ensures that The System(tm) WILL murder innocents on occasion. As I like to ask proponents of the death penalty - what false positive rate is acceptable?
- burfog 8y ago
  An interesting thing to ask about the false positive rate: What is the false positive rate on determining that there was a false positive? That is, we may decide that someone was wrongly convicted, but we may be wrong in that determination. It is also interesting to note that a "wrong" conviction seldom means that the person was a fine upstanding citizen. Often it means something like "convicted of the killing, but only provided the weapon" or "convicted of the killing, but was only trying to help a fellow gang member by disposing of the body". This sort of false positive isn't anywhere near as bad as what we commonly imagine to be the case, with a 100% innocent person being wrongly convicted.
  - lb1lf 8y ago
    -IMHO even a tiny minority of actual, true, false positives are enough to warrant getting rid of capital punishment (for that reason alone; there are other arguments, too!) To phrase my question differently - if we take your concerns about false positives into account, and accept that trying to help dispose of the body or providing a weapon makes you fair game, capital punishment-wise - how large a remaining false positive rate is acceptable to maintain that fine institution, capital punishment? 1 in 100 fine, upstanding citizens being wrongfully convicted and executed? 1 in 1,000? At which point is the collateral damage, if you like, acceptable? The matter was discussed here on HN recently, in the case of Kevin Cooper[0]. That's but one instance of what seems like a case where there's definitely reasonable doubt - to put it mildly - regarding the convict's guilt. Whether the person was a 'fine, upstanding citizen' IMHO is largely irrelevant, unless one wants to set the bar for being sentenced to death lower - like, for being an accessory to murder, for instance. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098059
    - burfog 8y ago
      Probability for people on trial, or total lifetime probability? It's very different. I think the total lifetime probability matters more. We consider it acceptable to drive cars. This kills 1% to 2% of the population. This seems like the baseline for acceptability. Not even 1% of the population gets put on trial with the possibility of the death penalty, so we could just go straight to execution without a trial and still be more acceptable than letting people drive cars. Or shall we ban cars? Only 1 in 119,012 die from execution. Another baseline for acceptability is drowning. Homes all across America have pools. A person is about 100x more likely to die of drowning than an execution, yet pools are still legal.
      - lb1lf 8y ago
        ...but surely it is reasonable to maintain there's a distinction between having people die from what we can call accidents or mishaps - falling into a pool, being run over by a truck, getting electrocuted or choking on a peanut &c on one side... ...and on the other being locked up for years by the system we - as a collective - have created to protect us from just that kind of arbitrary violence, before that same system murders you -ahem- for the Greater Good(tm)? The fact that the murder of an innocent is highly unlikely doesn't (IMHO) make it any more acceptable. Government is supposed to protect you; not kill you in the very textbook definition of premeditated murder. (Besides, cars and swimming pools have verifiable upsides. The 'benefits' -if any- of the death penalty are highly debatable.)

by lev99 8y ago

lb1lf 8y ago

-I think your point is a valid (and good!) one, but I like - that is hardly an appropriate verb in this context - the concept. Perhaps any prosecutor seeking the death penalty in a case would have to join a pool of executioner's assistants? (Same for jurors and judges - unless you are willing to follow through on actually killing someone, you are barred from deciding on the matters of life and death?) In this way, their verdict on any particular case wouldn't make any difference (to them!) - they could be called upon to take part in the dirty details of an actual execution in any other case but the one they sat in on. The only problem I have with such a system, is that there's probably people out there who'd basically ask 'Cool, where do I sign up?', which is somewhat scary. The civilized thing, of course, would be to abolish it altogether. Capital punishment basically ensures that The System(tm) WILL murder innocents on occasion. As I like to ask proponents of the death penalty - what false positive rate is acceptable?

burfog 8y ago
An interesting thing to ask about the false positive rate: What is the false positive rate on determining that there was a false positive? That is, we may decide that someone was wrongly convicted, but we may be wrong in that determination. It is also interesting to note that a "wrong" conviction seldom means that the person was a fine upstanding citizen. Often it means something like "convicted of the killing, but only provided the weapon" or "convicted of the killing, but was only trying to help a fellow gang member by disposing of the body". This sort of false positive isn't anywhere near as bad as what we commonly imagine to be the case, with a 100% innocent person being wrongly convicted.
- lb1lf 8y ago
  -IMHO even a tiny minority of actual, true, false positives are enough to warrant getting rid of capital punishment (for that reason alone; there are other arguments, too!) To phrase my question differently - if we take your concerns about false positives into account, and accept that trying to help dispose of the body or providing a weapon makes you fair game, capital punishment-wise - how large a remaining false positive rate is acceptable to maintain that fine institution, capital punishment? 1 in 100 fine, upstanding citizens being wrongfully convicted and executed? 1 in 1,000? At which point is the collateral damage, if you like, acceptable? The matter was discussed here on HN recently, in the case of Kevin Cooper[0]. That's but one instance of what seems like a case where there's definitely reasonable doubt - to put it mildly - regarding the convict's guilt. Whether the person was a 'fine, upstanding citizen' IMHO is largely irrelevant, unless one wants to set the bar for being sentenced to death lower - like, for being an accessory to murder, for instance. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098059
  - burfog 8y ago
    Probability for people on trial, or total lifetime probability? It's very different. I think the total lifetime probability matters more. We consider it acceptable to drive cars. This kills 1% to 2% of the population. This seems like the baseline for acceptability. Not even 1% of the population gets put on trial with the possibility of the death penalty, so we could just go straight to execution without a trial and still be more acceptable than letting people drive cars. Or shall we ban cars? Only 1 in 119,012 die from execution. Another baseline for acceptability is drowning. Homes all across America have pools. A person is about 100x more likely to die of drowning than an execution, yet pools are still legal.
    - lb1lf 8y ago
      ...but surely it is reasonable to maintain there's a distinction between having people die from what we can call accidents or mishaps - falling into a pool, being run over by a truck, getting electrocuted or choking on a peanut &c on one side... ...and on the other being locked up for years by the system we - as a collective - have created to protect us from just that kind of arbitrary violence, before that same system murders you -ahem- for the Greater Good(tm)? The fact that the murder of an innocent is highly unlikely doesn't (IMHO) make it any more acceptable. Government is supposed to protect you; not kill you in the very textbook definition of premeditated murder. (Besides, cars and swimming pools have verifiable upsides. The 'benefits' -if any- of the death penalty are highly debatable.)