Nonsense. So imprisonment isn’t a deterrent unless we can imprison people before they commit crimes? How about fining drivers before they run red lights?
It should be equal to the total number of homicides, more or less. It’s cruel to lock a person in a box for all or most of their life. If you’re going to deprive a person of their life, at least don’t force them to experience it in real time.
How exactly do you determine factually innocent? The courts do not do that. They only determine “not guilty”. There is no official agency that grants ‘factually innocent’ status as far as I know. If no people can be determined to be factually innocent, then your claim follows by definition.
Other than “zero,” this is the best answer. Reserve it for the extremely awful criminals. Use it as a message: extremism can be met with extremism.
Using it for more ordinary murderers (if that is not an oxymoron) dilutes the effect too much. You end up with the Texas Effect, where the number of people executed reflects as badly upon the jurisdiction as upon the criminals.
Count me against the death penalty too. We’re human, we make mistakes, and it’s impossible to apologise - let alone make restitution - to a dead person.
We in the UK have not had death penalty for a long time.
Just as well, because if we have, then these would certainly have been executed
Here is case of an innocent man who was executed
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=19842730
Here’s one that is difficult to deal with, this chap was not exactly the sharpest knife in the block, being educationally sub normal, and despite being in custody at the time, and his conviction rests completely upon the intent and meaning of words that were interpreted by the killer,
Possibly one of the most egregious misuses and non-disclosures of evidence relates to Stefan Kiszko convicted of raping and murdering a young girl. It turns out that the prosecution was well aware the Kiszko was infertile and was not capable of producing sperm, and could not possibly have carried out the rape.Those responsible for the miscarriage of justice still do not apologise, indeed many of them state they did things correctly =one cannot but wonder if the original investigation focused on him merely because he was different, and had some learning difficulties.
My first thought after reading the OP was “what the hell kind of question is that?”
After reading through some of the thread, and skimming through the seemingly less interesting replies, my response is, no execution, imprison for life, escalating to the following steps depending of the severity of the crime no possibility of parole, in solitary confinement,
with a piquant hint of “what the hell kind of question is that?”