That's my biggest issue with capital punishment. You can't take it back, if you're wrong you just killed someone's child, parent, sibling, or combination thereof.
While being sentenced to years of prison for a crime you didn't commit is also horrible, you can at the very least be released if you're found innocent.
AND the search for the real perpetrator can begin again. If an innocent is executed for a crime they didn't commit what are the odds that anyone will be bothered to look for any more evidence ever again? It effectively ends the search for justice.
The current process is a middle ground. Stay on death row for decades to ultimately be executed (after likelihood of being found innocent is extremely small).
I like the idea of capital punishment because I don't want to pay to keep murderers alive for decades. I feel like the bigger issue is, and what pushes me to think twice on the issue, people get found guilty of murder "without a reasonable doubt" on purely circumstantial evidence and on crappy "eye witness" testimony (people can feel certain they saw something they absolutely did not.)
If I were a juror, that wouldn't cut it for me. I'd need pretty hard evidence to give someone the death sentence. If that hard evidence was there, why give them room and board for 20 years before the execution? It's a total waste of money and further drag on society beyond the crime committed.
> I don't want to pay to keep murderers alive for decades
According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice[0], “The additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California’s current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually.”
This, to me, is a profoundly disturbing comment that presumes a level of competence and positive intent within the American criminal justice system that is provably absent.
Should the Boston bombers [1] receive the death penalty? A lot of arguments against the death penalty are that for many cases you can't actually be sure the person who committed the crime is actually the one convicted. So in those situations I don't think its appropriate it (i.e almost every death penalty case). However, something like the Boston bombing it's really beyond any reasonable doubt.
What? No, why do you like this example? There is nothing special about this case that makes his guilt any more "certain" than any other case. Confessions have been proven to be shit, physical evidence is disturbingly often faked, eyewitnesses are among the least reliable sources of information possible, etc.
The American criminal justice system is designed to reach conclusions, and explicitly not designed to be accurate. That is no system upon which a capital punishment should ever be applied.
I would argue the Boston bombing is a great example of why we shouldn't execute people. He is clearly a disturbed person who needs help, not death.
I think that's my point. I like the idea of it but most times I'm not even comfortable with agreeing the person is guilty to begin with. In certain cases, say Jeffrey Dahmer, it's pretty clear cut and I see no use to delay the punishment.
If you read past that you'd have seen why I was actually arguing against it and due to the bigger issue I see in our justice system. But yes, there are people out there like me that do support capital punishment for various reasons/conditions; sorry to upset you about that news.
No this is good. Part of the villainy of this place is that as long as it's "just discussion" and you keep a controlled tone, you can call for whatever viciousness and violence you want.
And you can! I can't stop you. But I can also point out that you can be seen when you do this, and my assessment isn't less valid because the idea of stomping out human lives is abhorrent to me.
It ceases to be just discussion when you call me evil and vicious and sick world view. It's fine if you disagree in a more productive manner. I wasn't even trying to take a stance; I stated my stance and you attacked. /end
The social norms of HN create an environment where you can endorse or advocate for atrocities as long as you do it in a certain detached, academic-lite tone. Things like eugenics, sweatshop labor, colonialism, retributive actions towards homeless people, are all things I've seen argued for and upvoted on this site in the last six months.
Being upset by these things, or admitting a personal stake in not seeing them continue or come to pass in the world, is seen as the moral transgression instead.
This could arguably be a valuable norm in a place specifically set aside for people to practice opposing each other's positions, like a debate club, say. But that's not the purpose here, and routinely acting in this way, maintaining this environment as a value distances us from our humanity and that of other people.
You can't take any punishment back. If you sentence a man to 20 years but overturn it and release him after 10, that's still 10 years of his life you took. Being against capital punishment does not absolve you of the injustices of the justice system.
You can't take back prison either, so you have reason to reconsider that as well, considering it steals years from someone's life and is torture in many (most?) places.
Agreed - the American prison industrial complex is ghastly. But if it's down to being in prison or being executed as an innocent person, only one offers a way for conditions to improve.
While being sentenced to years of prison for a crime you didn't commit is also horrible, you can at the very least be released if you're found innocent.