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I'm glad this is being shared widely, because I agree with it. That said, I have to snark a little about it, because I was in high school, in the 90s, when I c
by kelp 5y ago
I'm glad this is being shared widely, because I agree with it.
That said, I have to snark a little about it, because I was in high school, in the 90s, when I came to the same realization about why the death penalty is wrong. So this seems pretty obvious to me.
Our justice system is not reliable enough to have the death penalty.
- alexgmcm 5y agoI don't support the death penalty because as has been mentioned the justice system is unreliable. But I can understand why some people do when we see so many violent offenders released only to reoffend. If people are going to have faith in the justice system then a whole life tariff needs to be a reasonable possibility - the USA actually isn't so bad for this but over here in Europe we have far shorter sentences.
- alexashka 5y agoOur roads and speed limits are not reliable enough to have cars. Pretty obvious we should abolish cars. Duh.
- outworlder 5y agoPlease stop and reflect a bit on your comparison. As a reminder, we are talking about the state intentionally taking human lives. Not accidents.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- iso1631 5y agoIf 300 people died in accidents in amazon warehouse or walmart accidents in the US each year OSHA would shut them down. But 36,000 deaths from road accidents are fine. 892 of them in 2019 were "large truck occupants" that died - i.e. people working.
- teddyh 5y agoWhile made in jest and insincerely, your point is not entirely without merit. Technology has come a long way since the 1960’s, and will come further still in the future. Self-driving cars may never be a reality, but other forms of transport could be invented and constructed which were never previously feasible.
- aeternum 5y agoBut our justice system is reliable enough to lock people up for life just because there's a small chance we may find out they are innocent before they die in prison? There must be a better way.
- filoeleven 5y agoNorway gave 21 years, their maximum sentence, plus “the possibility of one or more extensions for as long as he is deemed a danger to society” to Breivik for killing 69 people. This seems like a better way to go. He will be evaluated for extensions of his sentence periodically, and (showing my ignorance of their system here) I presume the panel will include medical professionals who are more equipped to gauge his mental health and danger to society than a judge would. A family member of mine was murdered in the 90s. I would advocate for the same treatment of the killer. Though I suppose I am still biased since it was unprovoked, and the killer would probably be judged a continual danger to society.
- aeternum 5y agoI'd prefer we treat prisons as mini-societies. Only a minimal set of rules should be set and enforced by the guards. The majority of the rules should be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves. Guards would step in if things go awry, but in general there would be a strong incentive to cooperate and contribute as that would be the primary indicator that the prisoner is ready to be released and can contribute to society outside the prison. This should make prisons much more self-sufficient and less costly.
- otalp 5y agoI mean, there are cases where you have clear video evidence of murder, or mass shootings where it's obvious who the killer was with 100 witnesses. If a proposal came to redefine the threshold for the death penalty from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "irrefutable" then the arguments here would not hold.
- slg 5y agoVideo isn't truly irrefutable. Two people can look at the same video and draw different conclusions. You can see this anywhere from instant replay review in sports to some people's reactions to the Chauvin verdict.
- clairity 5y agoalso, given the collective (non-)evidence, we should expect that the number of people who are irredeemably and imminently threatening, and therefore truly deserving of the death penalty, to be extraordinarily small, like 5 sigma, rather than 2-3 sigma, which seems to be the mental model implicit in our justice system. with such extraordinarily tiny incidence rates and an erroneous implicit mental model, it's no surprise that we misidentify the truly irredeemable so often. our implicit expectations simply get in the way of being impartial and objective.
- buyx 5y agoWhen I was in high school, in the 90s, I also vehemently opposed the death penalty. In English class, I’d be on the anti-death penalty side during debates (I’d be the only one). My country was in the process of abolishing the death penalty at the time, so it was a little more than just an academic proposition. When I hit my late 30s, my position changed entirely. It’s hard to tell why. I now have no moral qualms about a society choosing to put to death people who are guilty of heinous and depraved acts against others. That said, I’m reading the March National Geographic, and the pictures of innocent men freed after being sentenced to death have given me pause. Given the apparent scope of prosecutorial misconduct (in the US, but it’s likely to be worse in many other places), it’s hard to entrust the state with this sort of responsibility, especially when there are alternatives that greatly reduce the threat to others, while avoiding the finality of capital punishment.
- iso1631 5y ago> I now have no moral qualms about a society choosing to put to death people who are guilty of heinous and depraved acts I consider the society to be at least somewhat to blame for those acts.
- HWR_14 5y agoPart of the issue is that we divide the trial into (guilty or not) and (determine punishment if guilty). There's no 95% chance of guilty, go to jail and 100% chance of guilty, death penalty. But, ultimately, some people are going to go away forever. People like Manson are never going to get released. What's the big difference between the death penalty and life imprisonment with no parole that attenuates the error in the conviction process.
- slg 5y ago>What's the big difference between the death penalty and life imprisonment with no parole that attenuates the error in the conviction process. You can't reverse the damage done by either sentence. However a sentence of life without parole is correctible as soon as a mistake is identified. Releasing an innocent person after taking 40 years of their life is awful, but it is better than realizing we killed an innocent person 25 years ago.
- HWR_14 5y agoI question how often people are really released after 40 years in prison. It happens, but it certainly doesn't happen frequently. In fact, it's so infrequent it seems any false release after a decade or more seems to pop up in national news. I feel like fictional accounts of long-delayed justice are more common than real ones. Either way a tragedy occurs, but I'm not sure how much our system should be informed by ultra-rare edge cases.
- treis 5y ago>So this seems pretty obvious to me If you extend the logic to other sentences they become similarly problematic. In other words, clearly it's bad to execute an innocent person. But it's also bad to imprison them for life, or 30 years or 20 years or 10 years and so on. There's no clear reason to draw the line at execution but not at life imprisonment.
- depaya 5y agoYou can at least let someone out of prison. You cannot undo execution.
- Bishop_ 5y agoYou can let someone go if you found out they were innocent. This is still bad that they serviced time in prison while innocent. However it is currently impossible to unkill someone, which makes executing someone for a crime they didn't commit significantly worse, this seems a reasonable place to draw a line to me.
- sneak 5y agoWere our justice system provably 100% reliable, it would still be barbaric and uncivilized to execute human beings. pg is dead wrong on this one.
- Hitton 5y agoThere are crimes that warrant stopping considering someone to be a human being.