Thats it. The gist of my argument is “we shouldn’t execute people because it removes their ability to theoretically prove their innocence”. I’m not arguing that “reasonable doubt” is a poor standard (because, as stated, its unrealistic to reach “complete proof”.
nevermind
And, yes, in my opinion, capital punishment is entirely indefensible for the very reason above.
True, but it’s marginally easier to free a guy serving a wrongful 20 year sentence after X years should his innocence be proven down the road than it is to raise the dead.
I’m not disputing that. I just don’t understand the whole foundation of Recliner’s premise. Executing Timothy McVeigh was wrong because we don’t know for a fact that he was guilty and by default the real culprit of the Oklahoma City Bombing is still at large, unlooked for and getting away with the murder of 168 people.
However what happened to Charles Chatman (http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1098.php) was perfectly okay because after spending more than half his life in prison he was cleared of the charges?
Recliner’s argument is that our entire court system routinely convicts innocent people. In fact, he feels it’s impossible to not convict innocent people since there’s no way to prove guilt at all. He’s not only not upset with this, but feels it’s entirely justifiable given that “reality is complicated.”
So why are we only giving a pass to those on death row? Isn’t the guy with the speeding ticket just as innocent?
I’m not arguing against the need for appeals. Or that people get wrongfully convicted. Or even that maybe the State doesn’t have the right to take a person’s life in exchange for a crime they’ve committed. Executing the wrong guy is a massive failure on the legal system’s part and everything should be done to prevent that. If that means halting all executions then so be it. But the problem then is *the legal system *and that’s what we should be working to change. Our courts fail us with the conviction, not with the execution itself.
But to claim that it’s indefensible because I can never be 100% certain that a person is guilty? I don’t buy Recliner’s Criminal Uncertainty Principle in the least.
If I’ve served 20 years in prison my life has been shattered. It’s not like freeing me at this point makes everything all better. I may or may not be able to pick up the pieces of my broken life, but, I’ll grant you, I’d rather have the option of picking pieces of than to have been executed. So, great, you’ve freed me after 20 years. I missed out on the opportunity to have a career, a family, and all sorts of other neat things. In some ways I can see how the anti-DP arguments could be applied to long term sentencing.
I had the same discussion with a (internet) friend who had come home as a teenager to find his mom laying in a pool of blood, shot in the back of the head by someone who broke into their home. The person who so coldly and callously shot her was captured, tried and convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. For the rest of his life, he will be notified of parole hearings and relive those painful events as he travels to the hearing to speaks against the animals release.
Prior to our discussion, I was totally anti-death penalty. Now, I believe there are circumstances when it’s not only justified, but quite fair.
Edited for spjelling.
No system relying on human input (or, for that matter, designed by humans at all, even if it’s a computer doing the judgment) is ever going to be 100% perfect. That much is a certainty - the only variable in a given legal system is the percentage of innocents vs. guilty people it’s going to axe, and even that is complicated by the fact that a man innocent of crime A might be guilty of crime B, which hasn’t been discovered and/or proven by the time he’s convicted for crime A.
I believe the operative statement of US (and British) justice is “beyond reasonable doubt”. But “reasonable” doesn’t mean “any”. If we were to convict on guilt “beyond any doubt”, then you’re right, and we wouldn’t convict anyone. Since logic and rationality only goes so far before it breaks the system down, we don’t. But the point is, that very argument (that the justice system as a whole is short of perfection) argues against a permanent and irreversible punishment.
When all is said and done, it’s true that you won’t give an innocent man his 20 years back. But more importantly, he will have spent these 20 years being alive, and he’ll still alive after that. There’s no contest to the fact that his last 20 years will have sucked, and his next 20 will probably suck too. But he’s still there to choose whether or not they’re worth living.
It’s an obvious position, really. If I am to assume the justice system is imperfect (which it always will), then I must consider the remote possibility that I might be convicted for a crime I never even dreamed of commiting. In that case, would I accept the death penalty ? Well, in layman’s terms, fuck that with a chainsaw, sideways. I’d choose imprisonment for my entire life before I’d choose death. Were I given a choice between death and X, I don’t care whether X is being pounded in the ass by a burly convict, fellating a Smurf, eating my own feces or raping a fetus : I’m doing it. My life is worth that much to me.
And if yours isn’t to you, I really suggest you reconsider what you’re doing with it.
The only time killing is justifiable in my books is under direct peril of life and limb. Shackled and imprisoned for life takes that direct aspect out of the equation and so renders Capitol Punishment unjustifiable.
There are realistically only two arguments in favor of the death penalty:
- It is good for society so even if mistakes are made, it is worth doing.
I reject that argument. I also reject the similar utilitarian argument against the death penalty. Since I’m generally against most utilitarian thought processes I don’t buy into it for the death penalty, either.
- The death penalty is sometimes necessary as it is the only equitable punishment for certain crimes.
I can buy into this argument. I do believe there are certain crimes for which the only equitable punishment is death. Life in prison is, to me, not worse than losing your life entirely.
When someone takes a human life, they aren’t just destroying a person. They are also destroying everything that person could be, everything that person might have ever done. That’s not something that can be equitably punished by any method other than death, at least in my opinion.
However, ultimately I’m still against the death penalty. Why? Even though I think it is the only equitable punishment for many crimes, I do not believe it is possible to execute someone morally. Even if it is the only possible equitable punishment, it is still an immoral act to kill the person.
I think the only morally justifiable killing is self-defense.
The death penalty is entirely defensible, especially when a likely alternative is imprisonment for life with no chance of parole. The former is humane whereas ‘life without’ is hideously cruel. Life behind bars is torture without end; the ultimate torment to the mind and spirit. Fifty or sixty years, a lifetime, confined to a space the size of a typical bathroom; no matter what you do, think, plead, or pray, you will never leave; never do the things you want, that you love, or need. The things that constitute what was once you. You will spend 23 hours of every day locked in a cage with nothing to do except what others allow you. It is not just life without parole, it is life without hope. It is cruelty applied to cruelty.
And life without parole is also unusual, at least from the historical perspective. The death penalty is not. In 1791, I am sure that it was applied many, many more times than was a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole. To call it unusual is disingenuous.
As an alternative to the endless torture of life with no chance of parole, the death penalty becomes humane. It is hardly an act of cruelty to prevent a human being from having to endure a life, and lifetime, of suffocation. A life bereft of hope, a life where the spirit is broken and the soul has been strangled.
Phrased differently and more concisely, I know that I would rather be executed than rot in a cell, day after day, year after year, until I die.
The death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment. It is eminently defensible as a humane sentence for capital crimes
So when I tell you that McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City do you just say probably? After all, he’s human, the court was human, and therefore he only likely did it? At what point are you going to move from reasonable doubt (the evidence is shaky) to unreasonable doubt (aliens did it and framed McVeigh) to just openly ignoring facts?
I know Recliner will tell me I can’t ever know the truth about who actually did it. Do you feel the same way? Are you this skeptical about everything else too?
Being guilty of undiscovered crime B has jack all to do with being innocent of crime A. I have no idea what you were going with there, unless you mean that everyone is guilty so screw 'em.
I was going to write about how I’d rather be dead than spend the next 60 years of my life fellating smurfs, but KarlGauss beat me to it.
If you want to talk about a need to reform the court system, the appeal system, or prisons, fine. If you want to talk about how we need a third (or fourth or fifth or hundreth) choice besides life imprisonment and execution, fine. But if you’re going to try and convince me that forcing someone into spending decades going insane is the humane choice, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.
Personally, I think it could be done judiciously, rarely, accurately and justifiably, but it won’t.
I don’t go as far as Recliner–I think there are plenty of cases where we can (for all practical purposes) be sure we have the guilty person. That isn’t enough to me to justify the death penalty–I would argue no number of individual examples is. The issue to me is systemic–if we have a system that allows the execution of those convicted at trial, and if we have the court system we have today, it will at some point execute an innocent person.
Most of those convicted by the criminal justice system did it. Some did not. Of those people who didn’t do it, some were sentenced to death. (we definitively know innocent people have been sentenced to death because quite a few have been fully exonerated.—List of exonerated death row inmates - Wikipedia).
In many cases, the system works. The innocent guy goes free, the guilty party is convicted. To the extent mistakes are made, in many cases, appeal fixes those mistakes (see above).
But where I think Recliner has a point is that these systems are run by fallible humans. They get it wrong sometimes, and sometimes the systems they set up to fix their errors fail. While I disagree with him that there are no cases in which we can be “certain” of guilt—I think it is equally obvious that there are plenty of cases where we have a conviction, but where there is substantial doubt about guilt.
The fact that there are examples of the system getting it right is, to me, irrelevant–since my opposition to the death penalty is practical-- the only way to be certain not to execute an innocent person is to execute no-one at all.
I can buy Martin Hyde’s argument for theoretical justification of the death penalty.
However, that justification obviously only applies to punishment–to penalties applied to those who actually committed the crimes in question. Executions of the innocent cannot be justified under this rationale–and, I believe, the death penalty cannot be moral if it will lead to the entirely unjustified execution of even one innocent person.
I just don’t get this argument. Firstly, states with the death penalty see death as more severe than life without parole–since LWOP is the punishment for (comparatively) less serious crimes, and death is the punishment for (comparatively) more serious crimes.
So whatever your belief is, it just doesn’t reflect the commonsense understanding embodied in every single state law that death is not a “kinder” penalty than LWOP–that more culpable . I know of no state (and challenge you to identify any) that treats LWOP as a “harsher” punishment than death— giving LWOP for more culpable, severe, or “wrong” conduct than is necessary to impose the death penalty. You may think that way, but society as a whole disagrees, to the extent we can understand the views of society as a whole by looking to the laws their representatives make (a blunt tool, but it serves in this instance).
First, some people believe they are innocent–they don’t want to be executed because they hope society will come to its senses (and some of those people are, in fact, innocent).
But my better response to this need do no more than make your own argument back to you.
“But if you’re going to try and convince me that forcing someone into being killed by the state is the humane choice, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”
Others simply don’t share your belief of which punishment is “kinder.” Some have posted here. I have argued that the way every state makes its law suggests that state legislatures (and the people they represent) also view death as a harsher penalty. So if it is unjustified to force a person who believes death is kinder to accept LWOP, how can you justify forcing a person who thinks LWOP is kinder to accept death?
But beyond all that–defendants don’t get a choice. It’s not up to the person being punished as to whether they get the “kinder” punishment or not. So I just don’t get the point of your argument–it is phrased in terms of “forcing” you to accept one penalty over another. Are you seriously trying to argue that the view of the guilty party (which was how your point was phrased) should in any way determine their punishment? That’s not how punishment works.
Absolutely not. There is no more heinous act a government can commit in my name than executing an innocent person. One is too many.
I agree completely. In an execution, the state intends to kill, premeditates with a perfectly clear ability to reason and with full understanding of right and wrong, and** acts on that intention and premeditation** to cause the death of another in a situation where no emergency exists and where he poses no imminent threat.
If that framing sounds familiar, there’s a good reason—if someone was on trial on those facts, he would be convicted of the most serious form of murder, with no possible excuse or justification.
The only difference in an execution is that the defendant was actually guilty of such a heinous crime. From a moral perspective (alebeit not from a legal perspective), I see no way to distinguish the execution of an innocent person from the worst kind of murder. The kind, as a matter of fact, that those in favor of the death penalty would point to as exactly the kind of crime that justifies execution. I contend that there is simply no moral way to justify the state committing (or even creating the possibility of committing) such a moral wrong to punish others who committed such a wrong.
I’m fine with that. I’m not the OP. I don’t feel I have to change your mind. I just take issue with the premise of the OP.
If it had been the same as your last post I doubt I would have responded. I disagree that execution = murder, but I don’t know what I’d use to convince you. Appeal to history? The first code of law includes capital punishment. We’ve had it for over 4 millennia now. But it’s not like I think that just because someone did it in the past its okay now. Claim that it’s morally better? But that’s the same as your opinion, so we’re unlikely to change on that. Point out that we grant the State rights/powers we don’t give to individuals? I’m not sure how far I want to take that.
What I don’t like about Recliner’s OP is that its indefensible because I can never prove anyone’s guilt. I don’t buy that.
I don’t have a problem with this. To quote myself:
And
I feel that Charles Chatman got screwed over as badly as if he had be executed. You think he can pick up his life where he left off? Or that he has a chance of starting over somewhere with all this behind him? I don’t see how its somehow okay because he wasn’t executed.
And yes, the last part of my previous post was indeed from my view as if I was the convicted party. It was in response to Kobal2’s comment.
My response is, yes, I would. There are very few pardons in the US. If I’m being executed we can assume I’ve exhausted all my appeals, a process that averages nearly ten years. Locking me in a 6x8 cell for the remainder of my life with no parole, no real social contact, and no hope is killing me. The only difference is that execution at least doesn’t take decades.
There’s probably a reason that the suicide rate for inmates in 9 times higher than that of the general population. In fact, it’s the second most common cause of death in prison.
(http://www.lawofficer.com/news-and-articles/columns/Kulbarsh/in_custody_suicides.html)
You should reread my post before you make a statement like that. I don’t contend execution=murder. I contend wrongful execution (i.e. execution of an innocent person) is morally equivalent to murder. And on that, you won’t convince me, because I am correct. It is the premeditated killing of an innocent person–albeit a killing caused by a mistake (which is why the prison warden isn’t legally culpable).
Or do you have a way to justify the killing of an innocent person by the state? I contend that you do not–as you yourself seem to concede.
Um, what?
This
sounds an awful lot like you are equating all executions with murder. If you want to say you only meant for cases of wrongful conviction, that’s fine. But then you probably should have left off the last part.
(Bolding mine)
If they did it, they aren’t innocent. Sort of by definition.
Er… I’m glad I can’t justify it? I have no idea why I’d even want to. But I don’t think that a wrongful conviction is any less horrible just because the guy wasn’t executed. I really would rather that a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man go to jail.
Which only means that some people can not take life in prison - however, since not all, not even most of them do commit suicide, one must deduce that life without parole is good enough for some.
Besides, again it’s a simple dilemma : if the choice is between immediate, certain death at the hand of the state, or incarceration during which I may, at any time, choose to kill myself should it prove too unbearable, or even hatch one of those daring escape capers, the choice is easy to make : I’ll take the door that leads to more options. And even if pardons are rare, being absolutely innocent of my crime sure gives me a higher chance of scoring one, so there’s that glimmer of hope to latch onto.