13 ms·

If only one, just ONE, innocent was put on the death row, that's one mistake too many. Irreversible punishment is the height of arrogance.

• baddox 11y ago
  Are other mistaken sentences, like life in prison, acceptable?
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Are other mistaken sentences, like life in prison, acceptable? Clearly, they are undesirable and, if detected, the remedies may be imperfect, but nowhere near as imperfect as the remedies for a mistaken death sentence once it has been executed.
    • baddox 11y ago
      Then this argument against capital punishment isn't simply that mistaken application of capital punishment is bad, because all mistaken legal sentencing is bad.
      • dragonwriter 11y ago
        No, the argument against capital punishment is that its existences increases the harms resulting from mistaken legal sentencing without offering any concrete, demonstrable benefit to society to weigh against that increased harm. (While "any mistaken legal sentencing is bad" is perhaps part of the foundation on which that argument rests, it is not the whole, or even the important part, of the argument.)
  • Florin_Andrei 11y ago
    No mistaken sentences are "acceptable" in a naive sense. But a death sentence, after it's been executed, is 100% irreversible. A prison sentence is reversible in the sense that the individual could be released; sure, the time lost cannot be retrieved, but the individual is still alive.