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This is why I'm against the death penalty.

• A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
  The death penalty isn't the problem here. We arguably still have an innocent person wasting away in prison, which is hardly much better than death. The problem is a judicial review system that's extremely hesitant to consider exculpatory evidence following a conviction... and here we have an edge case where the conviction was gained by discredited scientific means. Science adapts quickly to new evidence and new methods, and quickly discards old ones; the courts don't work that way.
  • gambiting 3y ago
    The core of the issue is somewhere else - it's the jury system. It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them. At the end it's a matter of which side can build a more passionate argument to sway the juries, rather than what evidence is actually presented and its rational meaning. So yeah of course the American judicial system is not willing to review past convictions based on scientific discoveries, because the convictions were rarely made on that basis anyway.
    • resolutebat 3y ago
      Statistically speaking, isn't it still better to have a jury of multiple people requiring unanimous consent, as opposed to a single equally fallible judge?
      • rg111 3y ago
        You can appeal many times. And there are multiple judges listening to a case. And we also need to get rid of elected judges. The developed world do just fine wuthout a jury system.
        • redeeman 3y ago
          except in the very rare cases where they cave to political pressure
        • FpUser 3y ago
          Jury can declare person innocent if they believe that the law is unjust. Can judge do the same?
          • gambiting 3y ago
            Yes. Of course they can.
            • danaris 3y ago
              Do you have a source on that? I'm unfamiliar with the laws and jurisprudence on bench trials in the US, but the impression I have is that judges are either required to simply follow the law, or are at least bound by custom to do so.
              • gambiting 3y ago
                Most of the time a judge doesn't need to provide justification of any kind when issuing a verdict. The assumption (and it's a big one) is that they follow the law when issuing verdicts - like you said it's more like a custom. I suppose the difference is that a judge cannot stand up and say "I found you have broken the law but I disagree with the law so I won't find you guilty" while a jury can - but judges have an almost absolute discretion at deciding what the verdict is, if they internally disagree with a law they can just find you not guilty if they so wish.
          • edgyquant 3y ago
            Even if they could, and they probably can, they are inherently cogs in the machine of the law and shaped by it. A jury of twelve layman will always be more fair and I’m glad America has a system that understands this fact. People arguing against juries must be so ignorant to why they’re even a thing to even begin debating why they are a bad thing.
      • Broken_Hippo 3y ago
        You certainly don't have to choose between the two. You can have multiple judges decide over a case, which will work even better if you don't allow fake science into the courts.
        • edgyquant 3y ago
          That’s still choosing allowing judges, a part of the government, total control of your fate. Dystopian stuff
      • ffgjgf1 3y ago
        For serious crimes you generally have a panel of judges.
      • Yeul 3y ago
        In my country you can usually appeal a decision and a new judge takes that case. Mind you a judge is probably smarter and less "fallible" than the average guy/gal on the street. We don't drag someone off the street at random for most jobs now do we?
        • johannes1234321 3y ago
          A judge is (hopefully) trained and experienced with questioning both sides of the argument and weighing the arguments. While jurors just have their natural intuition. Here in Germany we have a system were "volunteer" judges are elected from the general public. On lower levels there then are two volunteer and one regular judge*, where the regular judge is leading the trial, but volunteers got same right to ask question and votes are equal, thus the two volunteers could overrule the regular judge, (both for deciding whether guilty or not and the punishment) while in most cases they probably follow the suggestion of the regular judge. If the verdict is challenged upper courts only have regular judges. Goal is to have, both the legal expertise, but also the "common sense" in the ruling. * in some cases the numbers may be different, there are sometimes 3 regular and two volunteer or something in between
          • gambiting 3y ago
            Same(or very similar) in the UK - you have lower level "magistrates court" where the judges are volunteers who are given legal training and are given access to actual paid career judges if they need clarification on something. I'm not sure if the magistrates can overrule regular judges in any way, but yeah, you can always appeal to a higher court if needed.
        • dpflug 3y ago
          I've worked with judges. I could give you a mapping of charges to local judges where I'd prefer the judgement of 12 random people off the street. This isn't a normal job. We don't hire 6 to 23 people for a single job, and jurors aren't random. Yes, jury summons are sent randomly, but they'll have hundreds summoned and then jury selection starts. It's not unlike a job interview. If someone is on the jury who's going to be biased or unreasonable, that's a failure of their legal counsel.
      • dwighttk 3y ago
        Depends on the facts of the case…
    • thriftwy 3y ago
      I don't see how professional judges are forced into taking evidence into an account. As far as I know, they get a lot of money, funny hair and get to do whatever they want with no checks. It's a mystery why it would work even part of the time.
      • gambiting 3y ago
        Because such a conviction would be so much easier to appeal. If you presented the judge with solid evidence and they ignored it anyway, you'd have a solid case on appeal. So yes, judges wouldn't be forced to accept your evidence, but their verdicts would be less likely to stand. With juries they are completely free to ignore any and all evidence but because it's a jury, you get 12 people agreeing on something together, it's so much harder to get an appeal because "you were judged fairly by your peers" and all of that nonsense. And of course, lastly - there are many countries with no jury systems or where juries are only used in the worst of crimes, and I have never seen any stat suggesting that these countries are less just than US is.
    • A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
      The judges are evidently the problem here. They control the evidence the jury sees, and can give the jury instructions -- and, moreover, are now the ones blocking judicial review. Judges are no better than juries of one. Worse, for consider what type of person becomes a judge. ...You must become a lawyer. But note the fact that judges earn 10-20x less than top-decile lawyers at an equal stage in their careers. The best lawyers can actually make 100x. (About $20M/year.) ...So you're either a failed lawyer who absolutely can't cut it in private practice, or the type of twisted personality who values status and power over your fellow man FAR more than you value money. Most of the time, the latter; in some cases you are a "covert politician" who wants to legislate from the bench. Given the financial and status incentives, it's an extremely strange person who becomes a judge. I'd trust a jury, whatever its composition, before I trust an American judge to fairly determine my fate.
      • cesaref 3y ago
        I think you'll find that there are other motivations in life other than earning money. I'd suggest that the judges maybe motivated by something else.
        • A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
          Exactly the problem. Consider a judge's position in the modern world. What could possibly be those motivations?
          • gambiting 3y ago
            .....you really can't think of any? Being in a position to help people by seeing that justice is done fairly isn't a motivation to you? Let me ask it this way - why are nurses doing what they do, even though it's a grueling job that pays very little? Is it fair to conclude that they must all be psychopaths because only a psychopath would agree to these conditions?
            • A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
              I have to hazard a guess: You don't have first-hand experience with the Federal court system. Trust me on this, "justice" is somewhere down its list of priorities; it cares more for tradition, ritual, and form. In civil court, just causes very frequently (indeed, almost as a rule,) lose -- and often because one side doesn't have deep enough pockets to engage proper representation and survive the expensive process of discovery in Federal court. A noble-minded judge, as you describe, wouldn't last a year. He'd quickly end up looking like the stereotype of the beleaguered public defender: Harried, exhausted, and unable to do a good job as he sees it. The people who do survive as judges are a very, very strange breed.
    • akira2501 3y ago
      > It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them. That's a feature of the system. If we had perfect information and judgement we wouldn't even need courts in the first place. It's also the case that the law itself can be unjust, should it be blindly applied, or is it good that the jury can declare someone not guilty anyways? > At the end it's a matter of which side can build a more passionate argument to sway the juries Right. So it's interesting that the prosecution gets a regular plus a "rebuttal" closing argument that the defense never gets. It's interesting the way courtrooms are laid out. It's interesting that the state in many circumstances cannot supply exculpatory testimony on your behalf, even if they have it. My point being, there are so many more worthy things to consider before presuming juries themselves are the problem. Those who have made these arrangements are happy that you see it this way, though. > rather than what evidence is actually presented and its rational meaning. Do you have some evidence that this occurred in this case? We are examining it more than 20 years after the fact. At the time the jury thought it had the best explanation, and it might have even been "common knowledge." I certainly remember the "shaken baby" period in the zeitgeist of the time. > So yeah of course the American judicial system is not willing to review past convictions based on scientific discoveries Quite the contrary. His first execution was halted and he was granted review under a Texas law commonly called the "junk science law." He quite literally got this exact review. All that being said capital punishment is amoral and especially irreconcilable with all the above facts. In no sense am I defending it, just our system of jury trials.
      • gambiting 3y ago
        >>Quite the contrary. His first execution was halted and he was granted review under a Texas law commonly called the "junk science law." He quite literally got this exact review. Ok, I didn't know that - should have read up more on this case before I commented. >>or is it good that the jury can declare someone not guilty anyways? Maybe. I find it much more troublesome that the jury can be presented with literally undeniable evidence that someone is innocent and still vote guilty anyway. Not that a judge couldn't do that of course - but like I said in my other comment, such a conviction would be a lot easier to appeal against, compared to a conviction made by a jury.
    • nvm0n2 3y ago
      Kinda the opposite, there are lots of cases where juries were swayed by apparently scientific or technical evidence that later turned out to be bunk. "Computer says so" is an incredibly powerful legal attack, second only to "expert says so". These routinely override passion and emotion, leading to innocent people pleading for their lives before a dispassionate jury sends them away on the strength of expert witness testimony alone. See the Post Office scandal in the UK for a terrible example of justice gone badly wrong, due entirely to juries allowing technical "evidence" (which turned out to be fraudulent) to overrule common sense everyday right-feelings. https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/08/post-office-2nd-sight-report-into.html https://becarefulwhatyouwishfornickwallis.blogspot.com/2013/... legally this has come to mean that "machines do not make mistakes" ie if a mechanical device has done the same thing hundreds or thousands of times in exactly the same way, it is not a defence to say it must have started doing something differently. This idea was conceived well before anyone started programming computer software, and was meant to represent basic mechanical devices (say, a cash register), rather than the interlinked electronic eco-systems we depend on nowadays. Thirdly, there is a widespread public perception that electronic evidence is infallible, hence the readiness of juries to convict on computer records alone.
    • bigbacaloa 3y ago
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    • Amezarak 3y ago
      > The core of the issue is somewhere else - it's the jury system. It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them. Every time this common opinion gets posted, it seems as though the people making this point are largely unaware the defendant always has the choice of a bench trial, which is decided only by a judge. In fact, the judicial system would much rather defendants choose a bench trial rather than a jury trial, because it's quicker and much cheaper, and the system is overloaded. Defendants and their defense lawyers are choosing jury trials because they think they have better odds than with a bench trial. That is, you're proposing taking away what defendants like this choosing jury trials perceive to be the better route.
      • satyrnein 3y ago
        So the commenters are non- expert regular folks just saying what feels right to them, just what they accuse juries of. I'm not sure if this helps or hurts their point!
    • StillBored 3y ago
      I remember reading many years ago about studies where they went back and asked jurors who were involved in cases where it turned out the person convicted was innocent about what they were thinking. And it seemed pretty clear that juries aren't really operating at 12 independent people with critical reasoning skills. Overwhelmingly there are always a few people with real reservations who vote to convict anyway. Those people always justify it to themselves with various reasons. And the reasoning they uncovered were things like "if he is innocent this will get overturned on appeal" or "everyone else on this jury is convinced of the evidence they cant all be wrong" or lots of other internal justifications people use to live with themselves.
      • rkuska 3y ago
        Basically a summary of 12 angry men.
        • BrandoElFollito 3y ago
          A reverse situation of sorts. On angry person, 11 try to make her think.
      • AniseAbyss 3y ago
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      • rootusrootus 3y ago
        In theory this is why unanimous verdicts are required. I was on a jury once for a murder case and we had the opposite problem. One juror kept repeatedly arguing that she thought the guy was guilty of one of the charges, but she couldn't explain why. Everyone else voted not guilty, because the evidence just wasn't there. We had to repeatedly explain to her that she was the textbook example of reasonable doubt. Eventually she decided to vote not guilty but it cost us several hours because it had to be unanimous in either direction.
    • nkrisc 3y ago
      There is no perfect system of justice. I think the jury system is better than many of the alternatives, despite its obvious flaws.
    • dsab 3y ago
      > It's crazy to me that so much of the American "justice" relies on juries where they are free to ignore any scientific evidence and just vote the way that seems right to them. Actually this is great news, those juries can stand against big companies.
      • sxg 3y ago
        Those juries can also be manipulated and are laden with human biases that can undermine justice.
    • Retric 3y ago
      You aren’t forced to use a jury. If you feel a judge is less likely to convict you then you can use a bench trial.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • dwighttk 3y ago
      You don’t have to have a jury trial, you just have the right to a jury trial.
    • edgyquant 3y ago
      It’s terrifying watching Europeans attack the jury system. I’ve no idea why anyone would trust government officials to have your best interest at heart. They already are backed by the monopoly on violence, such a system is just putting you at their mercy. A jury of twelve is democratic and those people can put themselves in your shoes.
      • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
        > A jury of twelve is democratic Is it? One obstinate person can upend the whole process. > and those people can put themselves in your shoes Unless you happen to not be of the same demographic as the majority of pool the jury is drawing from. I know, I know, "Well, what do you suggest?". I'm not sure, but I don't think that the jury system is democratic, nor do I think it guarantees that you're going to have people who are empathetic.
        • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
          > One obstinate person can upend the whole process Sure. We’re dealing with life and fundamental freedoms. This fundamentally comes down to the value of innocence.
          • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
            But democracy has absolutely nothing to do with the value of innocence, otherwise angry mobs would be effective systems for justice.
            • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
              > democracy has absolutely nothing to do with the value of innocence, otherwise angry mobs would be effective systems for justice Juries are democratic in that they devolve power to a body of citizens, not the government. The unanimity requirement is a check on the mob, alongside various court procedures and the appeals process.
    • rossant 3y ago
      In France, criminal trials typically involve juries. Many judges tend to be overly and blindly reliant on expert testimony (often biased and unscientific in specific cases such as suspicions of child abuse) whereas juries can be more open minded in general. Acquittals in criminal cases where the evidence was very weak have been mostly obtained with juries. However, the French government is now increasingly pushing for the replacement of juries by judges ("cours criminelles"), in some criminal cases, particularly child abuse ones. Acquittals are becoming harder to obtain in these cases.
    • autoexec 3y ago
      > The core of the issue is somewhere else - it's the jury system. Juries can declare you guilty, but it's the judge that sentences someone to death
  • pimlottc 3y ago
    The point is that at least there’s always a chance to set a wrongly-jailed person free. You can’t unexecute someone.
  • ReactiveJelly 3y ago
    There can be two problems
  • addicted 3y ago
    The death penalty isn’t THE problem here, but it definitely is A problem here. The problem with the death penalty is masked slightly because of the US’s lengthy appeals process and the Innocence project which delays a lot of these death penalties from being carried out which has meant that in many instances they have succeeded in delaying the death penalty long enough for the science that could acquit the innocent to be established. And in states which care about justice, as opposed to bloodlust, it’s saved innocent lives (and equally importantly, in some cases, helped nab the actual guilty party). But these stories are becoming increasingly rare because the states that care about justice as opposed to bloodlust have increasingly joined the first world by abandoning the death penalty altogether. Imprisonment for life still allows for innocence to be proven. The death penalty eliminates that option and it’s impossible to know at the time of sentencing whether new evidence would turn up.
  • Yeul 3y ago
    Is it any surprise? What if someone made their political career on this conviction. That would be embarrassing.
  • e12e 3y ago
    > The death penalty isn't the problem here. We arguably still have an innocent person wasting away in prison, which is hardly much better than death. There are a number of recourses to rectify wrongful imprisonment - none for death. For example, there's elections every two(?) years - a new president or governor could commute the remaining sentence? Given the choice between death and two years in prison - I know what I would prefer...
  • rocqua 3y ago
    > The problem is a judicial review system that's extremely hesitant to consider exculpatory evidence following a conviction... and here we have an edge case where the conviction was gained by discredited scientific means. Science adapts quickly to new evidence and new methods, and quickly discards old ones; the courts don't work that way. To expand on that, appeals are not intended to re-litigate the facts. They are there to fix procedural mistakes during trial, or wrong argumentation of how the law should be applied. The question of 'what happened' is generally not up for debate during appeal, and is generally not grounds for lodging an appeal. Instead, appeals are meant for when the law was applied wrong. Or when a trial was unfair due to a judge's mistake. Effectively, it is meant to protect you against judge's mistakes and unscrupulous prosecutors. There is much less protection against experts that happen to be wrong. It seems to me that a system like that is fundamentally incompatible with a death-penalty, since it leaves a decent amount of space for mistakes that go uncorrected.
    • wizerdrobe 3y ago
      What type of appeal would one need to file in order to re-litigate facts? There exists charities involved in, say, DNA-based exoneration. Is there less room for non-DNA based appeals?
      • throwaway17_17 3y ago
        These types of ‘appeals’ are usually not appeals. They often come in the form of clemency requests and, in some jurisdictions, Post Conviction Relief. Several State’s have legislation in place allowing for a proceeding in the court of conviction to be opened (within some specified period of time) when ‘factual innocence’ is being alleged. The burden for the relief is pretty high to get the proceeding going however.
    • tivert 3y ago
      > Or when a trial was unfair due to a judge's mistake. Effectively, it is meant to protect you against judge's mistakes and unscrupulous prosecutors. There is much less protection against experts that happen to be wrong. IANAL, but I understand certain kind of "evidence" are inadmissible in court due to unreliability/being junk science (e.g. lie detector results). I think it should be possible to classify the admission of unreliable evidence as the judge's mistake, even if that evidence (or type of evidence) was found to be unreliable after conviction. Basically, the standard should be that judges are supposed to be perfectly reliable when evaluating evidence, and should have been expected to catch any issue that was later discovered, so a later standard of inadmissibility is retroactive. If it isn't the, the rules ought to be changed (and this change seems narrow enough to me that it shouldn't cause any problems).
  • jjulius 3y ago
    It's both, easily both.
  • nelox 3y ago
    It absolutely is the problem precisely because no system of justice is infallible.
  • jncfhnb 3y ago
    In my opinion one of the biggest but under appreciated problems is that at every trial there is a prosecutor whose job is try to get you convicted whether they think you did it or not, and who will try their hardest to do so with every tool available, which is largely not even factual claims but emotional rhetoric to make you seem evil.
    • cplusplusfellow 3y ago
      Don’t forget they have essentially unlimited budget and you’re spending personal resources. Which they can of course confiscate and imprison you for a year before trial unless you’re wealthy and can afford bail.
      • blagie 3y ago
        I think this is a central issue. The justice system should work as follows: Any money that either side spends on legal resources, 50% goes to your lawyer and 50% to opposing counsel. You can spend $1,000,000, or go pro se, but the other side gets the same resources. Another way to make this work is to cap expenses for both sides (I believe Germany does this for many types of cases). The deeper issue is that there have been no serious efforts at reform. The system basically needs to be re-invented from the ground up. A lot of disputes which should not be adversarial (such as family law) are made into such, and there are misaligned incentives all over the place.
        • autoexec 3y ago
          It's not just money, but time. All that money won't help if your public defender only has 15 minutes to spend on your entire case.
          • blagie 3y ago
            That's money. Lawyers are $300/hour in the US. Money and time are completely interchangeable.
    • PopAlongKid 3y ago
  • scarface_74 3y ago
    The death penalty is very much the problem when the entire justice system is corrupt. Statistically, minorities are much more likely to be sent to death once convicted. The state has unlimited resources to convict someone and the defendant usually only has an overworked underpaid public defender.
  • bratgpttamer 3y ago
    Another key problem is that the subject of Scientific investigation (The Truth) is only of secondary concern to our j̶u̶s̶t̶i̶c̶e̶ legal system.
  • safety1st 3y ago
    Since this article is about specifically the Supreme Court not taking the case, it bears mentioning that the SC usually only takes cases where there is an important or controversial legal principle at stake, particularly when multiple appellate courts have interpreted the law differently. It might be an entirely meritorious case but they get over 7,000 petitions each year and only have time to accept about 2% of them. By necessity they have to take cases where the facts and the judicial process are such that a ruling from the SC will have an impact on the entire justice system and how lower courts interpret the law.
    • Someone 3y ago
      > they get over 7,000 petitions each year and only have time to accept about 2% of them Only? That’s 140 cases a year, or one every two working days. Sounds like an extremely high number to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_U.S._Supreme_Court_cases_decided_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_U.S._Supreme_Court_c... says it’s ≈70 per year. That’s less, but IMO still very high.
      • autoexec 3y ago
        I wish I only had to work on 70 things in an entire year! Even better if I got to pick and choose which things I'd be working on. Now imagine if a whole chain of other people had already worked on all of those things before they even got to me, leaving me with all their notes and conclusions. I'd have all the time in the world to accept bribes from billionaires and take fancy trips on their private jets and yachts too!
  • slothtrop 3y ago
    > hardly much better than death. Innocent people can be freed once errors are discovered. Dead people can't.
  • didntknowya 3y ago
    new evidence "coming to light" is grounds for appeals or rehearings, I'd have thought evidence of debunked science would have applied too
• oldbbsnickname 3y ago
  Illinois had to abolish its death penalty after they discovered that they likely executed a dozen innocent people. Arkansas executed an innocent person. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/ledell-lee-dna-testing-arkansas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/ledell-lee-dna-testing... By contrast, someone innocent where DNA evidence was available but untested for 21 years and was left to languish in prison. If the death penalty had been applied, there's no "undo" button. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/l-man-wrongly-imprisoned-decades-declared-innocent-dna-evidence-points-rcna72843 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/l-man-wrongly-imprisone...
  • throwaway447 3y ago
    "LOS ANGELES — A man who spent more than 38 years behind bars for a 1983 murder he did not commit was declared innocent by a judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday." "“I am not standing up here a bitter man, but I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it,” Hastings said." As an American citizen, who has spent time in prison (abroad) and just came out recently, I tell you I have no idea how this guy survived this. He seems to be an incredibly strong person and his smile shows kindness.
    • komali2 3y ago
      > The DNA profile was put into a state database and matched to a person who was convicted of an armed kidnapping and forced copulation of a female victim who was placed in a vehicle’s trunk. The suspect, Kenneth Packnett, died in prison in 2020, prosecutors said. I wonder if Kenneth Packnett knew someone else was serving time for his crime, and if so, why he didn't fess up. If he did and it was to avoid a few extra years tacked onto his sentence, truly scumbag behavior.
      • Clent 3y ago
        It should come as no surprise that someone who doesn't value others, someone who value power over others, would relish in the idea that an other is being incarcerated because of their actions and all it takes is their silence.
• INTPenis 3y ago
  The problem is where do you draw the line? Because I am for the death penalty in extreme cases, like when that neo-nazi in Norway murdered dozens of children and there was no doubt he did it. But when something happens in a home, with just one surviving witness being the suspect, I don't think they should be so quick to sentence someone to the death penalty. It should exist as a deterrent, but only in extreme and very clear cut cases.
  • pas 3y ago
    "life without parole" is quite the deterrent.
  • Eisenstein 3y ago
    The death penalty does not deter people from committing crimes -- that neo-Nazi would have killed those kids regardless. Murdering him doesn't bring the kids back. The death penalty was enacted initially because there were no long term prisons -- the way to keep someone from committing more crimes was to kill them. Now we have other options.
  • throwaway447 3y ago
    What makes a case extreme? When Breivik was aged 4, and living in Oslo's Frogner borough, two reports were filed expressing concern about his mental health.[47] A psychologist in one report made a note of the boy's peculiar smile, suggesting it was not anchored in his emotions but was rather a deliberate response to his environment.[48] In another report from Norway's National Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (SSBU), concerns were raised about how Breivik was treated by his mother: "[s]he 'sexualised' the young Breivik, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished that he were dead." See also https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/9592433/Anders-Behring-Breiviks-mother-sexualised-him-when-he-was-four.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/959... See also his Psychiatric evaluation under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik Whatever he did, I have doubts that he was sane. But the question is, which problem does the death penalty really solve? Deterrence? Most death penalty countries have very high crime rates. Prevent another crime from the same individual? Life without parole has the same effect. PS: Reading about Breivik, he was probably insane or at least on the border of insanity during his crimes. Judging by his actions in prison, he is at least insane by now. I doubt that he well get released after 21 years served and will get preventive detention. So basically, since he is mentally sick now he can't get released from prison, a place where he likely should not have been held in the first place.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• za3faran 3y ago
  The issue is not the death penalty itself, but the application and the system around it in the US. For an alternative approach, in Islam we have a rule that Ḥadd punishments are to be averted by rejecting doubtful evidence. The point is to deter people from crime, and have a stable society, not to apply the punishment for the sake of the punishment as some seem to think. As such, practically all cases that are brought up in these discussions would not have had the penalty applied.
  • emptyfile 3y ago
    [dead]
• rgrieselhuber 3y ago
  Indeed. And also why I'm against the use of science as a rhetorical weapon when by definition it is neither fixed nor "settled."
• lost_tourist 3y ago
  Same here. It's overly expensive, and if even 1 innocent dies to satisfy a society's barbarity that proves that it's cruel and unusual punishment and a completely flawed premise. While there are cases where the felon is caught on camera doing it with no doubt possible, however most are convicted under "reasonable doubt" as a guideline, thus there is leeway in the vast majority of cases that something was missed, and we should leave the possibility that an incorrect conviction was given. Maybe we could add a new level of "absolute certainty" where the perp was caught on camera, seen by 10 eyewitnesses with zero doubt, etc, in order to satisfy the most bloodthirsty of society for execution.