Well, except for the years spent in prison, perhaps in solitary confinement on death row. Oops! Sorry! :rolleyes:
What other option do you recommend? Never incarcerate anyone because they might be guilty? Having a “it is impossible for this person NOT to have committed this crime” standard instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt”? Never allow convictions without DNA evidence?
It’s simply reality that innocent people are going to convicted of crimes. It’s inevitable in this imperfect world. The criminal justice system should work to try and keep those to an absolute minimum, but it’s not going to be perfect. You’re arguing against reality.
That’s my point. Tell it to the people who are saying the system works “as a whole.”
The release of an innocent person some time after a conviction does not represent a return to even. The stolen years cannot be given back. Granted, executing the innocent person is worse still, but contrary to Laudenum’s rationale, any wrongful conviction is still a system failure.
When Laudenum said: “an innocent person is convicted, and then their conviction is overturned , then the system as a whole has worked”, I did not take it as “there are no possible negative consequences to the system.” I took “works” not as “works perfectly”.
And I pointed out that I don’t believe lacking perfection is a “system failure”. We’re probably just batting around semantics and rhetoric, but it seems to me that insisting on perfection from any human system and describing anything less than perfection as “system failure” is unrealistic.
… which means that the consequences of inevitable failures of the system have to be considered very, very carefully against any possible benefits of the times when the system does not fail. It shouldn’t be as easy as it seems for some to accept any instances of We-The-People-sponsored murder.
You can set free an innocent person, but you can’t give them back the 5, 10, 15, 20 or whatever years of their life that were taken from them. And you can’t simply wave away the psychological damage that transpired.
To me, it’s merely a matter of degree. In our justice system, as in life, we KNOW that innocents are going to be ground under the wheels of the system. So, you have to make the call…do the benefits outweigh the risks and damage? It’s like releasing a powerful new drug on the market…does the benefit of saving 10’s of thousands or millions outweigh the harm done to a handful that will invariably die, through no fault of their own, because they have a bad reaction?
To me, the benefits to society of capital punishment don’t outweigh the costs, risks OR potential harm. If they did, then I’d have no problem with some percentage of people falling through the cracks and being wrongfully killed (though I would do everything to try and ensure that such failures of the system were rare, and when they DID happen, that lessons were learned and that whatever the failure was it wasn’t repeated in the future…and if someone deliberately misused the system to cause the fault that those involved paid the full penalty of the law as well).
-XT
That’s about where I stand. I’m against the death penalty, but not because it can’t be perfect. We give cops guns knowing that some innocent people will end up being killed. But I still want the cops to have guns, because the net result is better than them not having guns.
No, but I can live with having them had to spend some time in jail, whereas to have killed them unjustly is intolerable to me. Hence my comment that you have to find a level of punishment where you can accept its being given to the wrong people, because the justice system will never be perfect.
Seemingly small and subtle changes in the law can cause people to die…how do you live with that? Whenever a new drug is put on the market, some non-zero number of innocent people will die as a result. To produce the energy you use to drive your car or power your house, some non-zero (though fairly large) number of innocent people will die for no worse reason than that it’s their job.
According to Wiki, since 1975 there have been 1,221 executions in the US. That’s 35 years, or about 35 people per year, on average. Even if every single one of them were innocent (which we know they weren’t), that figure is minuscule next to the deaths from some of the above (IIRC, it’s over a hundred thousand for adverse effects due to medication alone).
I suppose if it helps you sleep at night. Personally, I think that locking someone in a cage for decades if they are innocent and then turning them loose again to try and piece back together their lives is a worse punishment than executing them, but I guess it’s relative. Myself, I simply take it as a given that shit will happen, that mistakes will be made, and that the price we all pay for the benefits we get out of society far outweigh the risks and deaths.
To me, the trouble with Capital Punishment, as I’ve said, is that it doesn’t work very well, and it costs a LOT of money. It’s simply not worth the effort or resources. That innocents will invariably get killed is certainly a factor, but to me it’s a secondary factor. The primary factor is cost, both in terms of money, time, resources, etc etc.
-XT
Many people state that lengthy imprisonment is worse than being executed, yet when people are actually in a position where they might be executed, the vast majority fight tooth and nail to be imprisoned instead.
I am not sure that we have any fundamental disagreement then. All the other situations you mentioned (and I unwittingly deleted) are ones where there is “collateral damage” but the overall situation is worthwhile. The death penalty has no merit, IMO, and therefore is not worth the life of a single innocent.
Would that be a comfort if it was you on the slab waiting for a lethal injection for a crime you didn’t commit?
It only costs more money because of your convoluted legal system.
Executionees (Shakespeare made up words, so why can’t I?) in the UK were normally hanged within 4-6 weeks of their conviction.
Then you probably wouldn’t get Charles Manson, as he didn’t actually kill anybody.
Making up words is something we should all refudiate.
Oh yes, we pro-death penalty people are never at all concerned about the innocent dying. So…which do you think happens more often: an innocent person is executed OR a killer who doesn’t get executed breaks out of prison and kills again? The latter has happened within the last two weeks, and it’s hard to argue that their victims deserved it.
I’d expect the former, by a large margin.
And yes; I do think that the majority of pro-death penalty people care little to nothing about the innocence or guilt of those they have killed. They’re just looking for an excuse to kill someone, anyone.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the UK hasn’t executed anyone for 45 years or so. Kinda like comparing apples to really old oranges.
I’d imagine that the execution of Caryl_Chessman cost a few bob more than that of Hanratty…
Show me three in the last decade. :dubious:
Yes, Australia has a lower murder rate than America. Oops that’s right we don’t have state sanctioned murder and thank God we don’t. It is barbarious and downright evil for a state to kill one it’s own citizens. Lock 'em up for ever in crap conditions but who made YOU God?
Fair enough, but you get what I mean. (And I certainly would not have been mourning if the death sentence he was handed actually had actually been carried out.)