I want to preface what I'm about to say with: I'm against the death penalty. However, innocent people die every day, they're hit by cars, they're shot by police, they commit suicide. If your argument is that you want to save the lives of innocent poeple then you should be having a discussion about reducing the use of cars.
If your argument isn't about the state's role, then what is the distinction between these things. 4% doesn't actually seem like a high rate to me and it's not a high percentage of a relatively small number in the first place.
We have discussions about how to reduce the number of deaths by cars every day. Don't pretend we don't. We have discussions about suicide prevention. Cancer prevention and treatment. Healthy living, blah blah blah.
Yes, the number of people who die from those things are still non-zero.
But what you're suggesting is that we need to get those to zero before we address the death penalty. That's a false dichotomy.
The death penalty is one are where we are making the deliberate choice to end someone's life. We can prevent that 4% rate simply by not making that choice. We can make that number zero and it would cost us practically nothing to do so.
I am not impressed by your faux-concern for automobile deaths.
I'm not suggesting that we need to get those things to zero. I'm suggesting that's what PG is making the argument for. You can't have it both ways, you can't argue that the death penalty is a unique harm because of the innocent deaths whilst ignoring other innocent deaths. The death penalty is all about the state's role -that is the thing that distinguishes it from traffic deaths. If you really do subcribe to PG's argument then the answer is "Well, if that's the priority, the death penalty isn't bad compared to 1000 other things". We're literally talking about more innocent people dying from car deaths in a day that from being sentenced to death in a year.
What PG is doing here is making the argument for the death penalty weaker by arguing for it on the weakest possible basis.
Oh and also, it's not 0 cost. It's probably a hugely expensive long and drawn out politial process to get rid of. For the pay off that's similar in scope to a moderate sized town lowering its speed limit. Not to mention the fact that these people who are sentenced to death incorrectly aren't being set free, they're likely still spending decades in prison.
You're ignoring our active participation in it. It's not about the state's role in it per se, so much as, like I've said previously, the fact that we are choosing to directly end someone's life.
And innocent people don't die in car accidents, unfortunate people do. People who get executed are deliberately executed.
It's as 0 cost as you can get. It's not a hugely expensive process, courts can just not sentence people to death. It's not like we're sticking these people on a huge conveyor belt that's impossible to remove them from.
> Not to mention the fact that these people who are sentenced to death incorrectly aren't being set free, they're likely still spending decades in prison.
And? Because we've wronged them somewhat, it's ok that we wrong them further? What sort of logic is that?
If your argument isn't about the state's role, then what is the distinction between these things. 4% doesn't actually seem like a high rate to me and it's not a high percentage of a relatively small number in the first place.