While I agree that death is an effective and just penalty in theory (for basically any non-victimless felony,) the chances of ever having a justice system accurate enough that the benefits brought by the death penalty will ever outweigh the chances of executing innocents is effectively zero. I don’t think it can be done.
For those who say that the chances of a murderer escaping are greater than the chances of executing an innocent person, I wonder how many people have escaped from supermaxes only to go on to murder people? :dubious:
Now, there may be others who would look at the conditions under which prisoners are held to be short and sweet with a swift death penalty, rather than supermax for life. The theory being that it would save the taxpayers money and would execute more guilty people rather than having them wallow on death row.
However, this does not compute, using my own utilitarian value on a life (using money as a shorthand for the ability to make other people happy) at $100,000,000. I doubt it costs that much to imprison a supermax inmate for life, and I doubt even that, given the appeals process, that it would cost that much versus the number of lives we would save, both in terms of released innocent convicts, and the OTHER inmates lives that would be saved because the murderers are in a supermax rather than in less-secure death row.
No: that is projecting a death based on probability, not observing a death which has definitely already happened.
Yes it is. The justification for the death penalty is a red herring here.
Yet again, I say: substitute speeding motorists, illegal firearm-possessors and suspected murderers your “common outcome” comes out with positive ‘innocent lives saved’. It is fallacious.
Then I must not understand your argument. How is saying “an innocent person has been killed” an observation about an past execution but a projection about a past murder? The 1.2% figure is an observation about past murders, which definitely already happened.
Not really.
For all I know, executing speeders might, overall, save lives. I don’t know this, but pretend it is so for the sake of the argument.
The argument “we could save lives if we execute speeders/murderers” is not fallacious, therefore; it has been established. We don’t choose to implement the death penalty for speeding, but not because it wouldn’t save lives, but because we feel as a society that the DP for speeders is disproportionate - i.e. unjust. I imagine this is primarily because speeders don’t intend to kill, and murderers do. But you haven’t disproven the contention “we could save lives overall if we execute those who do X” - that remains true. The outweighing factor is guilty intent, which we consider to be decisive in deciding whether or not to implement the death penalty for a given offense against human life.
If you are attempting an argument ad absurdum, it isn’t quite working. You are neglecting to include the notion of proportionate justice.
Correctly framed, the argument is as follows:
[ol][li]Murder is an intentional offense against life. It is therefore different from all other offenses. [/li][li]It is possible to consider that a murderer has forfeited his right to life.[/li][li]It is possible for a society to decide to execute murderers and still act morally if the benefits of executing murderers outweigh the drawbacks. [/li][li]There are two kinds of moral wrongs that could ensue from our decision to implement or to reject the death penalty. [/li]
One moral wrong is the chance that some executed convict might be found later to be factually innocent. This is a moral wrong against the convict (obviously), and against society in general.
The other possible moral wrong is that some convicted murderer might be found later to have repeated his crime. This is a moral wrong against the murder victim, and against society in general.
[li]We cannot compare murderers to other groups (speeders, gun owners, etc.,) because no other groups have the unique characteristics of murderers, of intentional offense against life. Only intentional offense against life makes it possible to consider a person to have forfeited his right to life, and be a candidate for execution.[/li][li]We can compare murderers to each other, therefore, but not to other groups. This is why the criteria for comparison are not arbitrary. They are our fundamental notions of proportionate justice.[/li][li]We divide murderers into two groups of a thousand each, therefore, and compare them to each other. The first group is murderers who are executed. The second group is murderers who are not executed. [/li][li]The recidivism rate for the first group is zero. Rate of moral wrongs committed = 0 + X where X = whatever number of innocents have been convicted. To date, no evidence has been found that X > 0.[/li][li]The recidivism rate for the second group is 1.2%, plus whatever murders they commit after escape, in prison, after being paroled, etc. Rate of moral wrongs = 12 + Y, where Y = other offenses as listed above.[/ol][/li]
We cannot apply the same logic to speeders, because it violates 5) above, not because it wouldn’t save lives.
Precisely: it is a different argument, a red herring, whether a given penalty is appropriate to whether it saves innocent lives, agreed?
And so we are arguing about whether the death penalty for murder is justified by appeal to the nature of the crime, not because of the ‘innocent lives saved’, agreed?
It boggles my mind to think that the chances of a murderer sent to a supermax for life getting out and then murdering someone is greater than the chances of an innocent person being executed.
As a matter of fact, I’d wager that the number of lives we’d save by eliminating the DP is greater than even the number of lives we’d lose by the consequent jailbreak/murders, given life without parole and no furloughs.
Ahhh, but you say, not only is there the chance of human fallibility in releasing them legally, but also of them committing murders within prison! My counter to the crime within prison is that most felons deserve to die, despite our legal system: if you want to be cold-blooded about the calculation you must estimate the percentage of innocent convicts that will die if the prison is naive enough to put lifer murderers in with the GP even in a maximum security prison.
[quote]
[li]The recidivism rate for the second group is 1.2%, plus whatever murders they commit after escape, in prison, after being paroled, etc. Rate of moral wrongs = 12 + Y, where Y = other offenses as listed above.[/li][/quote]
Say what? In your cite the 1.2% includes the ones being paroled. Choosing to implement the DP is not an either/or proposition: it’s not either implement the DP, or release convict after 5-10 years of good behavior. It shouldn’t be more expensive to implement life without parole in lieu of death row, since most death row inmates are there for a long while anyway.
Almost. It is appropriate if it saves lives, and if it is proportionate. In this case, “proportionate” and “saves lives” are both necessary, but not sufficient conditions for the death penalty to be just.
Again, not either/or, both. The death penalty is justified both because of the unique nature of murder (which makes it possible to consider executions), and by the fact that it is likely to save innocent lives overall, which is why we should choose it over prison. In my opinion.
If you abandon the part about proportionate justice, then the saving lives part is arbitrary, as you point out. If you abandon the part about saving lives, you have not justified choosing execution over prison.
I wouldn’t expect you to argue that we should put people in prison for life with no parole for lesser crimes, such as speeding or gun ownership. Therefore, I expect that you would agree that murder is a unique class of crime. Correct me if I am wrong.
Wouldn’t you say that the statement, “lock 'em up forever, because they might kill again” is just as subject to your objection about Bayes’ theorem as the assertion “kill them all and let God sort them out”?
You are correct - my mistake. The 1.2% figure includes only those who were paroled, or otherwise officially released. It does not, to my knowledge, include murders committed in prison, or while escaped. That number, however, can be anecdotally established to be > 0.
No, only this if at all, not both: it is a prior condition to which you are attaching an arbitrary addenum.
Thank you. It is a non sequitur: it does not follow. “The death penalty saves ‘innocent’ lives, therefore the death penalty is justified” is logically equivalent to “The death penalty has initials D and P, therefore the death penalty is justified”.
And since it is so utterly arbitrary, not abandoning it strengthens the case not one jot.
Not in the sense that it is Ockhamly necessary to propose any more punitive entities than deprivation of property or liberty, as I said in the OP and throughout the thread.
Of course, but the point is that any innocent victim of Bayes-violation can be freed.
Since the death penalty costs more than life imprisonment, couldn’t we save extra money by abolishing it that could be used to prevent more crime, thus throwing a monkey wrench in Shodan’s speculations about saving innocent lives? For every person we execute, that’s X less number of cops we have out on the streets.
To play devil’s advocate, I did consider that line of argument, but determined it is a dead end. Why? Because part of the cost of the DP is the lengthy appeals process.
Why shouldn’t we have a lengthy appeals process for all who are given true life without parole? After all it is as likely that they also did not do the crime which they are accused of.*
And if anything, they would be less likely to be exonerated, *given the same length of time *(granted, they would get more time to exonerate themselves,) as the state AND third party advocates/researchers will see less reason to put the effort into proving their innocence, since their life is not on the line, “merely” their liberty.
So I decided not to pursue that particular economic reasoning.
*well, actually, I’d say that it is likely that those sentenced to die are more likely to have not commited the crime they are accused of. First of all, evidence of contrition is allowed to assuage a harsh sentence: innocent persons are obviously less likely to pledge sorrow for the crimes they “committed”, and all else being equal, murderers are more likely to lie and say they are sorry when they really aren’t.
Furthermore, those sentenced to death are more likely to be accused of heinous crimes that both increase the likelihood of a death sentence, AND make the jury more blind with rage and more likely to overlook inconvenient facts in their urge to find a scapegoat.
I might be wrong about this but that’s the way I suspect it actually works.
The purpose of the criminal justice system is justice. Proportionality is part of justice. Thus, proportionality must be considered to determine if a given choice of action in the criminal justice system is just.
In the sense that “if you deny a premise, you deny a conclusion”.
It would be identical in principle to saying, “The death penalty may execute an innocent, therefore the death penalty is not justified”. If I am allowed to classify concern for the wrongfully executed as “arbitrary”, then I can equally easily deny your argument.
Sorry, but we have seen that deprivation of liberty is not as effective in bringing about justice as is execution.
Not if they have been executed. Nor if they have been murdered.
Agreed, this being a different argument to your ‘innocent lives’ fallacy.
I did not argue any such thing. I argued that the justification is based on deterrence and punishment, and that wrongful execution is a practical issue. It is you who are conflating the two.