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Going to be contrarian here. I see in other comments > costs millions of tax payer dollars because of the long appeals processes Well... yes, but the alterna

Going to be contrarian here. I see in other comments > costs millions of tax payer dollars because of the long appeals processes Well... yes, but the alternative is that you throw someone in prison for life (likely without parole). And since there is no upcoming "event" to force an appeals process (aka execution), it will just never happen. Is that really a better fate for someone wrongfully accused? If you are sentencing them to life in a cage, be honest and call it a death penalty. So sure you can save some money by getting rid of the death penalty, but it is not likely to make Justice any better served, it will just make you feel better and leave people in prison forever without a guaranteed appeals process.

Karunamon 11y ago
it will just never happen Interested third parties (say, the Innocence Project[1]) have gotten these cases overturned in the past. In any case, this chance existing is still better than the state executing its citizens. [1]: http://www.innocenceproject.org http://www.innocenceproject.org
yummyfajitas 11y ago
But now we get to pretend that we don't have hundreds of thousands of people rotting away in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Some years back I pointed out that the percentage of people exonerated for capital crimes is > 2x the number of people exonerated for life imprisonment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3025718#up_3026567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3025718#up_3026567 Having that moment of execution seems to force us to check for errors in a way that life imprisonment doesn't.
- tptacek 11y ago
  That would be reassuring if it wasn't so likely that we've executed innocent people within the last few decades.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    The recent revelations about the FBI and fiber analysis [0] are particularly disturbing in that regard. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair-mass-disaster-false-conviction http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair...
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    We've imprisoned innocent people until they died as well. And as a % of convictions, the latter number is far larger than the former. But I guess since there is a tiny probability that we might exonerate someone sitting in jail until they die, we get to ignore that fact (even though the number of falsely convicted people rotting away is probably higher).
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I think you would find very few life sentence inmates willing to convert themselves to death row inmates for the chance at an Innocence Project exoneration.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        While there might not be as much effort on it, I wouldn't be surprised if the Innocence Project (or groups similar to it) focused more attention on life prisoners if the death penalty were abandoned. Certainly, outside groups have focused on particular questionable cases of people imprisoned on non-capital offenses and produced evidence leading to release before.
        tptacek 11y ago
        That is indeed what the founder of the Innocence Project said when asked about this exact topic on the NPR IQ2 debate I linked to downthread. :)
      - yummyfajitas 11y ago
        I suspect the reason for that is the same flawed, non-probabilistic reasoning that most death penalty opponents are making - "if I'm alive there is always a chance..." For the record, as a person who does understand probability, I'd much rather be wrongly convicted of a capital crime than a life imprisonment one. I also don't believe for a moment that left wing anger at wrongful executions by electric chair will transfer to false execution by old age.
- bruceb 11y ago
  Hundreds of thousands? There are about 2.6 million in prison. Say 260,000 innocent? You think 10% of people are wrongfully convicted? Seems a little high.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    It does not seem crazy to me to suggest that our flawed, underfunded criminal justice system is 90% effective.
mikeash 11y ago
I don't know that life in prison is better than being executed, but it doesn't seem substantially worse. There doesn't seem to be any decent argument for the death penalty, since the only two possible reasons, cost and deterrence, don't hold up. In the absence of a decisive factor, I vote for not killing people.
- michaelsbradley 11y ago
  There is the retributive argument, in which condign punishments play an important role in maintaining the balance of justice. As summarized by the Catechism of Trent, a Christian religious text of historical importance: "Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment [against killing] which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence." – Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, 5, n. 4 (1566) http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty
  - mikeash 11y ago
    True, but that argument is so bad that it hardly bears mentioning.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      You say that, but the retributive argument played a very important role in the recent NPR IQ2 debate on capital punishment. It clearly has some weight.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        It's popular but it's still a bad argument. Cost, for example, is a good argument in itself, but just doesn't hold up against the facts in the real world. This contrasts argents which fall apart even before being presented with facts, like this.
nickbauman 11y ago
Being separated from most of society isn't the same as a death sentence. There are a lot of problems with our criminal justice system, not least of which is representation and due process. Eliminating the death penalty is one check that ameliorates (albeit does not solve) many other problems with the system.
justinator 11y ago
I think the point is having an execution over your head is a form of torture - as if waiting for the execution in a maximum security prison cell isn't torture itself. The appeals process doesn't always work. So - people who were on Death Row that were then freed: The West Memphis Three [0]. In this case, it's been widely credited that the legal system was incredibly corrupt and a retrial just never could be done, since so many people made their careers off of it. It was a witch hunt. They sentenced teenagers to death. I don't see how that could ever be a good idea. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three
- slg 11y ago
  >The appeals process doesn't always work. >So - people who were on Death Row that were then freed: The West Memphis Three [0]. In this case, it's been widely credited that the legal system was incredibly corrupt and a retrial just never could be done, since so many people made their careers off of it. It was a witch hunt. They sentenced teenagers to death. I don't see how that could ever be a good idea. Isn't this addressing the symptom and not the cause? It sounds like the real issue is a potentially corrupt justice system. The death penalty if obviously worse, but you can't exactly give those kids the 15+ years of their life back either.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Isn't this addressing the symptom and not the cause? If you can propose an adequate remedy for the cause that negates the need to mitigate the symptoms, please do so. Otherwise, yes, and so what? > It sounds like the real issue is a potentially corrupt justice system. Sure, one of the root problems is the fallibility of the criminal justice system (whether failures are do to corruption or other sources.) This is exacerbated when failures result in executions. > The death penalty if obviously worse, but you can't exactly give those kids the 15+ years of their life back either. Well, no, you can't give them the time they spent in prison back. You can give them the rest of their life that would have been taken away had the wrongful sentence been fully executed, and you can potentially give them some, even if imperfect, compensation for the part you can't undo.
rossng 11y ago
From the other side of the pond, it seems like a good solution would be to a) fix the appeals process and b) stop jailing people for life without parole. Advocating the death penalty because it 'force[s] an appeals process' appears to approach completely the wrong end of the problem.
- tptacek 11y ago
  People imprisoned for life tend to be convicted of murder. The problem isn't that their sentences are too long; it's that for some of them, they shouldn't have been sentenced at all. Eliminating life without parole doesn't logically address the problem.

Karunamon 11y ago

it will just never happen Interested third parties (say, the Innocence Project[1]) have gotten these cases overturned in the past. In any case, this chance existing is still better than the state executing its citizens. [1]: http://www.innocenceproject.org http://www.innocenceproject.org

yummyfajitas 11y ago

But now we get to pretend that we don't have hundreds of thousands of people rotting away in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Some years back I pointed out that the percentage of people exonerated for capital crimes is > 2x the number of people exonerated for life imprisonment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3025718#up_3026567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3025718#up_3026567 Having that moment of execution seems to force us to check for errors in a way that life imprisonment doesn't.

tptacek 11y ago
That would be reassuring if it wasn't so likely that we've executed innocent people within the last few decades.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  The recent revelations about the FBI and fiber analysis [0] are particularly disturbing in that regard. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair-mass-disaster-false-conviction http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair...
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  We've imprisoned innocent people until they died as well. And as a % of convictions, the latter number is far larger than the former. But I guess since there is a tiny probability that we might exonerate someone sitting in jail until they die, we get to ignore that fact (even though the number of falsely convicted people rotting away is probably higher).
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I think you would find very few life sentence inmates willing to convert themselves to death row inmates for the chance at an Innocence Project exoneration.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      While there might not be as much effort on it, I wouldn't be surprised if the Innocence Project (or groups similar to it) focused more attention on life prisoners if the death penalty were abandoned. Certainly, outside groups have focused on particular questionable cases of people imprisoned on non-capital offenses and produced evidence leading to release before.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        That is indeed what the founder of the Innocence Project said when asked about this exact topic on the NPR IQ2 debate I linked to downthread. :)
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      I suspect the reason for that is the same flawed, non-probabilistic reasoning that most death penalty opponents are making - "if I'm alive there is always a chance..." For the record, as a person who does understand probability, I'd much rather be wrongly convicted of a capital crime than a life imprisonment one. I also don't believe for a moment that left wing anger at wrongful executions by electric chair will transfer to false execution by old age.
bruceb 11y ago
Hundreds of thousands? There are about 2.6 million in prison. Say 260,000 innocent? You think 10% of people are wrongfully convicted? Seems a little high.
- tptacek 11y ago
  It does not seem crazy to me to suggest that our flawed, underfunded criminal justice system is 90% effective.

mikeash 11y ago

I don't know that life in prison is better than being executed, but it doesn't seem substantially worse. There doesn't seem to be any decent argument for the death penalty, since the only two possible reasons, cost and deterrence, don't hold up. In the absence of a decisive factor, I vote for not killing people.

michaelsbradley 11y ago
There is the retributive argument, in which condign punishments play an important role in maintaining the balance of justice. As summarized by the Catechism of Trent, a Christian religious text of historical importance: "Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment [against killing] which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence." – Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, 5, n. 4 (1566) http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty
- mikeash 11y ago
  True, but that argument is so bad that it hardly bears mentioning.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    You say that, but the retributive argument played a very important role in the recent NPR IQ2 debate on capital punishment. It clearly has some weight.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      It's popular but it's still a bad argument. Cost, for example, is a good argument in itself, but just doesn't hold up against the facts in the real world. This contrasts argents which fall apart even before being presented with facts, like this.

nickbauman 11y ago

Being separated from most of society isn't the same as a death sentence. There are a lot of problems with our criminal justice system, not least of which is representation and due process. Eliminating the death penalty is one check that ameliorates (albeit does not solve) many other problems with the system.

justinator 11y ago

I think the point is having an execution over your head is a form of torture - as if waiting for the execution in a maximum security prison cell isn't torture itself. The appeals process doesn't always work. So - people who were on Death Row that were then freed: The West Memphis Three [0]. In this case, it's been widely credited that the legal system was incredibly corrupt and a retrial just never could be done, since so many people made their careers off of it. It was a witch hunt. They sentenced teenagers to death. I don't see how that could ever be a good idea. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three

slg 11y ago
>The appeals process doesn't always work. >So - people who were on Death Row that were then freed: The West Memphis Three [0]. In this case, it's been widely credited that the legal system was incredibly corrupt and a retrial just never could be done, since so many people made their careers off of it. It was a witch hunt. They sentenced teenagers to death. I don't see how that could ever be a good idea. Isn't this addressing the symptom and not the cause? It sounds like the real issue is a potentially corrupt justice system. The death penalty if obviously worse, but you can't exactly give those kids the 15+ years of their life back either.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Isn't this addressing the symptom and not the cause? If you can propose an adequate remedy for the cause that negates the need to mitigate the symptoms, please do so. Otherwise, yes, and so what? > It sounds like the real issue is a potentially corrupt justice system. Sure, one of the root problems is the fallibility of the criminal justice system (whether failures are do to corruption or other sources.) This is exacerbated when failures result in executions. > The death penalty if obviously worse, but you can't exactly give those kids the 15+ years of their life back either. Well, no, you can't give them the time they spent in prison back. You can give them the rest of their life that would have been taken away had the wrongful sentence been fully executed, and you can potentially give them some, even if imperfect, compensation for the part you can't undo.

rossng 11y ago

From the other side of the pond, it seems like a good solution would be to a) fix the appeals process and b) stop jailing people for life without parole. Advocating the death penalty because it 'force[s] an appeals process' appears to approach completely the wrong end of the problem.

tptacek 11y ago
People imprisoned for life tend to be convicted of murder. The problem isn't that their sentences are too long; it's that for some of them, they shouldn't have been sentenced at all. Eliminating life without parole doesn't logically address the problem.