You’re going to have to define what you mean by “exoneration” and “false conviction”.
There is no tradeoff. It’s worse in every way. If there were tradeoffs you would have to balance this against the plus side of executions, but there aren’t any.
So, in order to feel better about ourselves, we say that it’s okay to kill innocent people?
Strangely, that makes me feel worse about us, not better.
The plus side, as previously stated, is gaining closure for the victims’ families. It also prevents that criminal from breaking the law again, with 100% certainty. Supposedly it also acts as a deterrence, and saves billions of taxpayer dollars from having to provide room & board for life (in theory, anyway.)
Who said it’s okay? Of course it’s not okay. But the $64 million question is, what are you going to do about it?
Face it, the only way to prevent any innocent person from being punished for a crime he didn’t commit is to rescind all laws and empty all the jails. Are you willing to take all those people into your home, just in case one or two of them may be innocent and deserve a helping hand? I didn’t think so.
The way not to kill innocent people is not to kill people.
There have been 18 DNA-based exonerations in the US for prisoners on death row.
Physical evidence to test exists in less than 10% of crimes.
I think we can say the number is higher than 18.
A whole lot of death row inmates are in there based solely on eyewitness testimony, which is not nearly reliable enough to meet the reasonable doubt standard.
[QUOTE=buddha david]
Face it, the only way to prevent any innocent person from being punished for a crime he didn’t commit is to rescind all laws and empty all the jails. Are you willing to take all those people into your home, just in case one or two of them may be innocent and deserve a helping hand? I didn’t think so.
[/quote]
He’s got you, jsgoddess. The only choices are to execute prisoners, or let them stay in your house. That scalpel-sharp mind has beat us again.
As I said before: "there is a world of difference between “we shouldn’t have the death penalty because it’s possible an innocent has been executed” and “we shouldn’t have the death penalty because an innocent has been executed”. If you want to argue that “I calculate that the odds are that an innocent person has been executed”, fine. Have at it. Knock yourself out. I don’t find it nearly as persuasive as “an innocent has been executed”. Just don’t conflate the two, and we’ll be fine.
I think we can too. Which doesn’t change my point whatsoever.
How do you propose we test whether an innocent person has been executed?
Why?
A major problem here is that, post execution, there’s no reason for the State to keep evidence on file to be used in exonerating someone who was executed. In fact, in the case of Joseph Roger O’Dell, the state won their argument and destroyed the case evidence, despite a request to do post-execution DNA testing.
The same way we test innocence, with evidence.
You don’t think it would be more compelling to some people to show the death penalty was wrongly inflicted on a real, innocent person than to say “we might have”? I think have a tangible, provable instance would be more persuasive to some people than just relying on “well, we think so” or “odds are”. I think people would be more likely to have an emotional reaction to a real instance than a hypothetical one. YMMV.
See the post above yours, and read this.
I will if you read this. In there, I discuss O’Dell and Tafero cases. I certainly hope you don’t expect me to go over every raised case of “actual innocence” in wikipedia.
The problem with that is twofold: One, getting the evidence, and two, it seems like you just end up in a situation where someone argues about that particular case. I think Cameron Todd Willingham was almost certainly innocent. You might or might not. How do we prove innocence? That’s really hard, and I’m not sure it can ever be done.
You said there’s a “world of difference” between the two. I find there is a smidgeon of difference between the two in actual persuasive force because of the problem of proof. Just as it would be hard to prove to me that someone deserved to die (because I am opposed to the death penalty), it will be hard to prove to someone who believes and trusts in the death penalty that it was wrongly used. We all have our biases.
But I think the most biased among us can still imagine a hypothetical which can challenge our beliefs. We may not agree that someone WAS killed who was innocent, we may not agree that someone DOES deserve the death penalty or the death penalty is necessary, but we can imagine a world in which these things are true.
(Then we see people saying so what if innocent people are killed and, frankly, I think that does my side of the argument a world of good. It only helps to make the pro-DP side look like they don’t actually care about guilt.)
Don’t mistake my biases. I don’t support the death penalty.
And I think that the difference between something happening and imagining something happening is persuasive to many people.
I don’t think such a case exists and, frankly, I don’t think such a case can exist that could convince most people that it has happened.
OK, I read it. In two cases, the executed a guy that was almost certainly the correct culprit.
There’s a world of difference between that and claiming that we’ve tested already-executed people in a statistically meaningful way.
One problem is that after the person is executed, his further efforts to exonerate himself are severely weakened.