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> The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that... For many, myself included, there is no "other th

> The only downside to capital punishment is that it's possible to wrongly convict someone. Other than that... For many, myself included, there is no "other than that." My core and unbending opposition to capital punishments exists solely on the fact that the punishment is irreversible and there's too many documented cases where executed prisoners were likely wrongfully convicted. I could perhaps support capital punishment if we had a higher level of guilt we could establish in our legal system reserved only where the evidence is entirely(!) unequivocal for particularly heinous crimes. I don't know exactly what that means, and is probably just another bad idea.

Ferret7446 3y ago
I don't think it's that clear cut. Imprisoning someone for 40 years and then exonerating them can be reasonably considered a far crueler punishment than death sentence.
pseg134 3y ago
There are so many systems where some innocent people dying are just accepted and expected that it always confuses me why this one is so special. What is it about the justice system that makes you demand perfection where medicine, the military everyone else can just shrug and say sometimes an innocent person dies.
- tough 3y ago
  Justice was supposed to be blind and oh well, -just-
- RavingGoat 3y ago
  For me, it's the incompetence and level of corruption in the US justice system starting at the police level on up. I have very little faith in it.
- wonderwonder 3y ago
  Because in this case its the government killing its own citizens. Medicine is human error, one person with no more legal power than the victim made the mistake. The military kills people but they are not citizens (that sounds terrible and it very much is, I am not excusing the deaths of innocents). With death row mistakes, you have the full weight of the United states government using its power to kill one of its own citizens. In addition, its a long process where the person that dies for a crime they did not commit has to witness their life taken from them one step at a time due to compounding failures. It can also happen to anyone which is the frightening part, a government actor (police, prosecutor, judge, etc) can just decide that you fit the bill and take your life from you. I am very much in favor of executing the worst criminals but I find myself generally against the death penalty due to the risk of executing an innocent person. I am conflicted and find myself moving back and forth on this topic.
wombatpm 3y ago
I agree. I feel ok for the John Wayne Gacy’s, Richard Spec’s and Ted Bundy’s of the world. I have a problem when it’s a mentally deficient person in Texas who may or may not have murdered someone and was represented by ineffective counsel.
sdfghswe 3y ago
> My core and unbending opposition to capital punishments exists solely on the fact that the punishment is irreversible Ah, this meme again. I have no problem with the reasoning "it's irreversible" in itself. However, I wonder how many of the people repeating it are just mindlessly parroting something they heard, sounded good, and never thoughts about it for 2 seconds. Putting someone in prison wrongly for 40 years is also irreversible. There is nothing you can do to reverse the fact that you unjustly stole 40 years from someone's life. Are you then also against prison terms of 40 years, given that they're irreversible? What about 20 years? What about 1 year? Those are all irreversible. Now you can say that it's a matter of degree. Sure it is, but there's a continuum all the way to death sentence. Are you also against life in prison?
- dustyleary 3y ago
  > What about 20 years? What about 1 year? Those are all irreversible. You are using linguistic tricks to make a bad argument. The fact that the past is immutable doesn’t mean that things can’t be reversed. If you’re planning your day in the morning and you decide you’re going to have chicken tonight, you can never change the fact that you decided that you’re going to have chicken, but you can choose to not have chicken. One way to stop yourself from making these sorts of bad linguistic arguments is to ask yourself, “does my argument mean that a word has essentially no use or meaning?” That applies here, because your argument basically makes “irreversible” a nearly useless word. Any time your argument is effectively making an adjective tautological, there is a problem. Because otherwise, why does the word exist? > but there's a continuum all the way to death sentence. Are you also against life in prison? And now you have moved to making a like kind argument that the death penalty is essentially the same as a slap on the wrist, since the past is immutable. Here is another opportunity for a sanity check on your argument. When the state has executed someone, that person can never be apologized to. That person can never receive any sort of restitution. That person went to their death, very often in extreme physical agony. (Both electric chair and lethal injection have horrific failure rates on this. Firing squad, hanging, and guillotine are all much more humane). That person dies while a roomful of people who hate them watch through a pane of glass, sometimes cheering. They die, knowing that most people think of them as an awful person undeserving of pity, sympathy, or love. “””It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.””” To make an argument that this is essentially the same as any other punishment, even life in prison, is really kind of gross. > and never thoughts about it for 2 seconds. Sometimes more than 2 seconds is good, too.

Ferret7446 3y ago

I don't think it's that clear cut. Imprisoning someone for 40 years and then exonerating them can be reasonably considered a far crueler punishment than death sentence.

pseg134 3y ago

There are so many systems where some innocent people dying are just accepted and expected that it always confuses me why this one is so special. What is it about the justice system that makes you demand perfection where medicine, the military everyone else can just shrug and say sometimes an innocent person dies.

tough 3y ago
Justice was supposed to be blind and oh well, -just-
RavingGoat 3y ago
For me, it's the incompetence and level of corruption in the US justice system starting at the police level on up. I have very little faith in it.
wonderwonder 3y ago
Because in this case its the government killing its own citizens. Medicine is human error, one person with no more legal power than the victim made the mistake. The military kills people but they are not citizens (that sounds terrible and it very much is, I am not excusing the deaths of innocents). With death row mistakes, you have the full weight of the United states government using its power to kill one of its own citizens. In addition, its a long process where the person that dies for a crime they did not commit has to witness their life taken from them one step at a time due to compounding failures. It can also happen to anyone which is the frightening part, a government actor (police, prosecutor, judge, etc) can just decide that you fit the bill and take your life from you. I am very much in favor of executing the worst criminals but I find myself generally against the death penalty due to the risk of executing an innocent person. I am conflicted and find myself moving back and forth on this topic.

wombatpm 3y ago

I agree. I feel ok for the John Wayne Gacy’s, Richard Spec’s and Ted Bundy’s of the world. I have a problem when it’s a mentally deficient person in Texas who may or may not have murdered someone and was represented by ineffective counsel.

sdfghswe 3y ago

> My core and unbending opposition to capital punishments exists solely on the fact that the punishment is irreversible Ah, this meme again. I have no problem with the reasoning "it's irreversible" in itself. However, I wonder how many of the people repeating it are just mindlessly parroting something they heard, sounded good, and never thoughts about it for 2 seconds. Putting someone in prison wrongly for 40 years is also irreversible. There is nothing you can do to reverse the fact that you unjustly stole 40 years from someone's life. Are you then also against prison terms of 40 years, given that they're irreversible? What about 20 years? What about 1 year? Those are all irreversible. Now you can say that it's a matter of degree. Sure it is, but there's a continuum all the way to death sentence. Are you also against life in prison?

dustyleary 3y ago
> What about 20 years? What about 1 year? Those are all irreversible. You are using linguistic tricks to make a bad argument. The fact that the past is immutable doesn’t mean that things can’t be reversed. If you’re planning your day in the morning and you decide you’re going to have chicken tonight, you can never change the fact that you decided that you’re going to have chicken, but you can choose to not have chicken. One way to stop yourself from making these sorts of bad linguistic arguments is to ask yourself, “does my argument mean that a word has essentially no use or meaning?” That applies here, because your argument basically makes “irreversible” a nearly useless word. Any time your argument is effectively making an adjective tautological, there is a problem. Because otherwise, why does the word exist? > but there's a continuum all the way to death sentence. Are you also against life in prison? And now you have moved to making a like kind argument that the death penalty is essentially the same as a slap on the wrist, since the past is immutable. Here is another opportunity for a sanity check on your argument. When the state has executed someone, that person can never be apologized to. That person can never receive any sort of restitution. That person went to their death, very often in extreme physical agony. (Both electric chair and lethal injection have horrific failure rates on this. Firing squad, hanging, and guillotine are all much more humane). That person dies while a roomful of people who hate them watch through a pane of glass, sometimes cheering. They die, knowing that most people think of them as an awful person undeserving of pity, sympathy, or love. “””It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.””” To make an argument that this is essentially the same as any other punishment, even life in prison, is really kind of gross. > and never thoughts about it for 2 seconds. Sometimes more than 2 seconds is good, too.