Speaking for myself, here: My own opposition to the death penalty is on grounds independent of how effective it is. I believe that it is always wrong for one person or group of persons to decide to kill another person. Because of this belief, I wish to see the law changed to eliminate the death penalty.
But I am only one person, with very little power on my own to change the law. Therefore, it behooves me to convince others to change the law, as well. And I know that not everyone shares my inherent philosophical opposition to the death penalty, so arguments along those lines are likely to be ineffective. And so I offer other arguments as well, along lines that I believe others are more likely to agree with.
You have yet to show any stats that compare rates between convicted murderers and other ex-cons.
Your second “statistic” is based on your almost religious belief that the state is incapable of executing someone that has been wrongly convicted. It seems unlikely that this governmental system is the only one incapable of making mistakes, so this “stat” is imaginary.
The number of murders that can be committed any dead arbitrary group of people is zero. Until you show that released ex-murderers are more likely to commit murder than any other group, then there is no reason to single them out for execution…at least for this particular reason. From a link in post #93:
LWOP is what liberals want instead of the DP, and the idea is that LWOP is just as good as the death penalty in protecting the public. The example cited shows that it is not. LWOP prisoners have the rest of their lives to plot escape, and sometimes they bring it off, and sometimes they kill innocent people. Eventually, those on death row are executed - at that point, they can no longer threaten the public.
Although, to be fair, some people have escaped from death row and killed again. They just have a smaller window of opportunity to do so, because eventually the threat they present ends.
I suppose that’s a principled stance, but it cuts both ways. If it is wrong for one person or a group to decide to kill another, and the death penalty saves lives, then it is more wrong to eliminate the death penalty than to implement it.
You are arguing ultimately that the life of one murderer is more important than the lives of two innocent people. How is it better to kill three people, two of whom are innocent, than to kill one who isn’t?
The chances that a released ex-murderer will kill someone is pretty freakin’ low, whereas the chances that the state will kill someone when they attempt to execute her/him is almost 100%.
I’m not sure why you wrote “liberals” there. Bricker would not be considered liberal and is pretty anti-DP. The Clintons are fine with the DP – do you not consider them liberals? That is, why take a partisan swipe there?
When did the government get so well-run that it could manage the death penalty and never execute an innocent person? I thought the conservative position was that government doesn’t do anything right.
What are the statistics for how often released murderers succeed when they attempt murder vs. how often the state successfully executes someone?
Failing that, did you have a point?
Because opposition to the death penalty is generally a liberal position, with some exceptions. Bricker is a Roman Catholic, and the semi-official position of the Roman church is anti-DP.
He is also anti-abortion - so he’s liberal, right?
If this is a math problem to see what saves the most lives, there are these factors:
X innocent people are executed by mistake
Y people are killed (in prison or after/during an escape) by convicted killers
These are the ones that have been the focus of the most discussion in this thread. I think there’s at least one additional factor:
Z people are killed due to a level of societal acceptance of retributive violence that is increased by the existence of the death penalty
I think that’s an important factor, even if it’s nigh-impossible to measure. I think the US is a particularly violent society, as first-world nations go. I think there are a lot of reasons for this, but I think one of them is that violence by law enforcement and the justice system is largely accepted and acceptable in US society to a far greater degree than most other first-world nations. Rehabilitation is not emphasized to nearly the degree it is in many other countries, even when some of them have a higher rate of successfully rehabilitating criminals. The justice system is seen as primarily for deterrence and retribution over rehabilitation. I think the existence of the death penalty is a big part of this (and it probably works both ways).
So in the long run I think eliminating the death penalty (along with many other reforms) could help lower the overall level of acceptance of violence in society, which I think would lower the rate of violence in society.
Yeah-you cannot show that released murderers are any more likely to murder again than any other ex-con, so there is no reason to single them out for execution if that is what you are trying to prevent. Your first sentence might just as well read “What are the statistics for how often released burglars succeed when they attempt to murder…”.
Further, efforts to drive down Y by having far more executions, each as close to the conviction date as possible, will cause X to skyrocket. This has been remarked upon in the thread, but remains unaddressed by Shodan.
You are incorrect. There **is **a reason to single them out for execution - they committed murder. It is therefore morally acceptable to execute them, whereas it is not morally acceptable to execute burglars.
What you said before was incoherent. Now that you have explained it, you are just wrong. Progress!
I assume you would be willing to include other factors also difficult or impossible to measure, like deterrence. Or are you going to insist that only factors that can be proven need to be considered? If so, please explain the basis for the distinction.
Then what is all this crap about protecting society from the chance of them murdering again? Was that just shit thrown at the wall to buttress your desire to see them dead?
Well, you may be right, as the number of innocents killed by murderers is a useless statistic to use in arguing about the death penalty, so it is quite likely that whatever number you happen to come up with, it will still be irrelevant. But, that’s still not how statistics work.
I don’t have the stats, but I suspect that you would save more innocents by executing first time drunk drivers than you could by executing more murderers. You would definitely save more innocents by executing CEOs of companies that have poor safety records. You could save millions of innocents if you executed lobbyists and executives for the coal industry. You could save at least hundreds of thousands, and as many as a few billion by executing politicians who advocate for war.
If saving innocents is the only metric you are looking at, not only is it irrelevant to the debate about the DP, it also opens up the fact that there are much more effective ways of saving many more innocents.