No, innocent people are going to die unjustly whether we have the death penalty or not. Either some tiny number is going to be executed when factually innocent, or some are going to be murdered or otherwise brutalized by those who should have been executed, but weren’t.
So the proposition that even one innocent death is enough to put the death penalty off limits is mistaken. There have already been many innocent deaths that could have been prevented by the death penalty.
If we execute a thousand people, and one of them is innocent, that is a terrible thing. If we don’t execute the thousand, and one escapes or gets furloughed and kills someone else, that is equally terrible. And if he kills more than one, then it is worse than if we executed them all.
Since the reinstitution of the death penalty in the US during the mid-70s, no one has been found to be factually innocent after being executed. There have been several cases of repeat murder during the same period.
I am sure that eventually someone will be executed wrongfully. But those who want to use such a case to argue against the death penalty are starting at a huge disadvantage. If you want to keep score on innocent deaths, those who argue against the DP are already way behind. We would have to execute a whole bunch of innocent people before wrongful execution can catch up with repeat murder.
While I agree with the OP, the fact that mostly (or only) unsavory regimes have done this is not a logical argument against it. It may be reason to look at the death penalty more closely, but it is irrelevant as far as the argument against it goes.
Until and unless we have solid evidence that the death penalty acts a significant deterent, then I don’t see a justification for it. I would not include prison murders in that discussion. The social climate of prison is completely different from the outside world.
Which is worse - lethal injection, or being stabbed to death by some mugger? Which is more likely - that you are going to be executed after months of trial at which sufficient evidence is produced to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and after years of appeals to every court in the land, or that some junkie is going to shoot you to get your wallet?
And, as I pointed out, there have already been many instances of murders committed by those who escaped, or were furloughed, or paroled (even when it was promised that they never would be). So to date, murders by citizens are far, far worse than “state-sanctioned” executions, in that there are many more murders than wrongful executions.
Which is worse - one wrongful death, committed even after the most scrupulous care is taken to avoid it, or twenty committed because we are too squeamish to act for the best?
No country except the USA in the western industrialized world kills people as a form of punishment. The USA is in bed with such great societies as Iraq, China, Russia, Iran, to name but a few, when it comes to killing people for punishment. Americans should hang their heads in shame…
As far as I know Russia stopped (at least the actually killing if not sentencing part). Your message implies only nations in the western industrialized part of the world are truly civilized – and yet you claim the moral high ground, how ironic. Anyway what difference does it make what kind of penal systems other nations choose to follow? That’s hardly a way to make political decisions. America was the only democracy back in the day. By your logic they should have immediately chosen a king.
I’m sensing major whooshage here. My point was that a lot on the rhetorical list did commit their crimes out of prison. We could take the higher cost of keeping death-sentenced criminals in bars and put that money toward longer jail times and stricter security. I would guess that if we had to choose between monitoring a convict within a prison versus outside a prison, they would commit fewer crimes within.
Plus, to answer the question, yes I do believe that violent prisoners do have fewer rights, since most of them have forfeited the supposed natural rights of man due to violating them themselves (talking about the factually guilty ones, of course,) but not to the extent that death penalty advocates apparent do, obviously. So that argument cannot be used against me, since while I merely state that a factually guilty violent convict does not deserve the same security as you or I, the death penalty advocates claim not all of them even deserve the right to not die!
Does anyone have a cite on how many murders take place due to convicted murderers escaping? I’d hazard a guess that it’s a lot lower than the number of executed people, and even significantly lower than the estimated number of wrongfully executed prisoners. After all, between furloughs, escape, and inter-prison crime, escape is the only one we cannot reasonably prevent. (Can anyone say “supermax”?)
By “prevent”, I mean something that cannot reasonably be foreseen in the normal course of events: no administrator plans for there to be an escape. Whereas, it’s entirely foreseeable that there will be crimes committed in prison or on furloughs.
Of course they have fewer rights, they’re in prison! However as for protection, I’d say they are even more entitled to protection, since they’re unable to protect themselves. The judge or jury should decide what punishments is appropriate (even to death), not some random events behind bars.
Of course, I would agree that we should give more resources to prevent intraprison violence. But the amount of it that will be prevented by execution is minimal, IMHO. Especially since those that would have been executed, we could simply send to a supermax instead since those numbers are small.