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  • Locked thread
The Ender
Aug 2, 2012

MY OPINIONS ARE NOT WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN SHIT

DoggPickle posted:

Has anyone here actually been to an American Jail? I realize that I'm opening myself up to an insane amount of criticism, but the jail "experience" is heartbreaking, difficult on your SOUL and just generally the worst thing that could possibly happen to you in your lifetime. I was only in jail for 5 days, and I almost killed myself.

It's not funny like Orange is the new Black. You're stripped of all your clothes, your dignity, and people with guns and badges treat you like garbage 24/7. Other inmates threaten you for dumb poo poo like changing the tv channel. Your next-door neighbor prisoner has a crazy nosebleed that leaves blood everywhere and you have to clean it up. Guards constantly use their power to make you feel small and make you feel like vermin.

How Is killing someone the RIGHT way, any worse than 40-60 years of that treatment?

I mean, the problem (partly) is that American prisons aren't prisons as such - they're torture chambers. It's just a stupid way to run the business end of a judicial system, and the results speak volumes about the strategy. The recidivism rate is appalling, and the states in the U.S. that double down on Tough On Crime are poo poo hole slums with no productivity and extremely high rates of crime / substance abuse.

Nations operating with decent criminal justice systems and (relatively) light sentencing have superior metrics, full stop. It is objectively a better way to operate a justice system, assuming you want to improve society rather than receive personal gratification about how you totally owned that crook or whatever (and even from that latter angle, your odds at actually getting that gratification are extremely small. Most rapists walk away from courtrooms scot free, most white collar criminals never even see the inside of a courtroom, etc).


As to whether or not it would be a good idea in abstract to kill serial murderers / sociopaths:

David Berkowitz, the 'Summer of Sam' killer, was given six consecutive life sentences instead of being killed - and American society has reaped tangible benefit from his work inside of prisons while he's been alive. It turns out that even someone who once was an unrepentant monster can, in fact, change their behavior and become a productive member of society within an appropriate environment. In Berkowitz's case, that proper environment is proper within a tightly controlled & supervised cell; nevertheless, both he & everyone else are better for him living there.

I can imagine an alternative reality where the same story may have been true for Ted Bundy. He was, afterall, a very brilliant lawyer & suicide hotline counsellor on top of being a maniac serial rapist & murderer. Instead we sent him to get electrocuted to death because heh gently caress THAT guy, I get a kick out of people being killed and this one's totally unsympathetic!

"They DESERVE to get hosed-up for what they did!" is a grade schooler's approach to morality. Imagine if most of life was like that. We'd have cashiers busting the noses of every other geezer who walked into their store & society applauding them for it. Politics would be a outright bloodsport. There are places where things are like that, but we tend to refer to such places a failed states & not wish to emulate them.

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Submarine Sandpaper
May 27, 2007


If we are going to assume a hypothetical super justice system that makes no mistakes you must also assume super murderers that don't get caught. Only passionate people would be murdered by the state.

T8R
Aug 9, 2005
Yes, I would like some tea!

hakimashou posted:

Maybe aliens were controlling his mind?

Consider that the deficiencies in evidence you bring up are satisfied. An even more "perfect storm" than the one I described.

At what point do we reach the wall where reasonable doubt, or even plausible doubt, crosses over into "there is no such thing as proof or truth?"
A society with an incorruptible justice system, that doesn't even make accidental mistakes, in a society without lies, where people are unable to game the system? If you wish to go that far, then surely such a perfect utopia wouldn't have murder either. A perfectly run society like that wouldn't even need the death penalty "just in case". This society isn't real, and never will be; it is pure imagination. It contradicts the nature of society itself. The steps you need to take in order for your supposed morality to be true will inevitably self annihilate. Morality cannot exist in a vacuum, it must be tested against reality. Your morality cannot exist, because it will never be true in reality. Killing murders will never be moral, because we will never eliminate the risk towards innocents.

quote:


You can't have a justice system where "nobody can really know anything" is a compelling defense in the face of extremely good evidence. It would be wrong to punish anyone for anything, since no guilt could ever be established under any circumstances. It's absurd.

It also undermines any utilitarian penal system. If we can never under any circumstances be made to believe a perpetrator actually committed a crime, but instead see all crimes as fundamentally unsolvable mysteries, we can't incarcerate him to protect others or to deter crime.

Agreed, but irrelevant in the context of the death penalty. Society can mete out punishment without executing criminals just fine. It must be proved that societies somehow need to execute criminals. Then that need must be proved to be greater than the risk of executing innocents. How could anyone argue it is moral to execute criminals, with a certain percentage of them innocent, when it could instead imprison them indeterminately. To advocate such a thing starts to sound a lot like the actual crime of first degree murder itself. You know someone will die who has done nothing wrong, you know that you could make a superior moral choice, and yet you would proceed anyway? This is pre-meditation with intent to kill.

Gazpacho
Jun 18, 2004

by Fluffdaddy
Slippery Tilde

stone cold posted:

S'ok, I'm sure it'll turn up one way or another :3:
And so it does (or at least an article about the same case, that starts out like the one I read before):
http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/new_abolitionist/march-2013-issue-58/kevin-cooper-innocent-californias-death-row

It would serve no purpose to have people pick the case apart here -- that's for the courts -- but if you already knew about it I might be interested in your take.

Gazpacho fucked around with this message at 08:17 on Mar 1, 2017

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

T8R posted:

A society with an incorruptible justice system, that doesn't even make accidental mistakes, in a society without lies, where people are unable to game the system? If you wish to go that far, then surely such a perfect utopia wouldn't have murder either. A perfectly run society like that wouldn't even need the death penalty "just in case". This society isn't real, and never will be; it is pure imagination. It contradicts the nature of society itself. The steps you need to take in order for your supposed morality to be true will inevitably self annihilate. Morality cannot exist in a vacuum, it must be tested against reality. Your morality cannot exist, because it will never be true in reality. Killing murders will never be moral, because we will never eliminate the risk towards innocents.


Agreed, but irrelevant in the context of the death penalty. Society can mete out punishment without executing criminals just fine. It must be proved that societies somehow need to execute criminals. Then that need must be proved to be greater than the risk of executing innocents. How could anyone argue it is moral to execute criminals, with a certain percentage of them innocent, when it could instead imprison them indeterminately. To advocate such a thing starts to sound a lot like the actual crime of first degree murder itself. You know someone will die who has done nothing wrong, you know that you could make a superior moral choice, and yet you would proceed anyway? This is pre-meditation with intent to kill.

It's just incoherent insanity to go down that road. The same twisted sophistry can be applied to any kind of decision. Suddenly we are all first degree murderers, and no one is.

The notion that because some people believe there is no truth and nothing can ever be proven, no crime can ever be solved and no punishment is ever justifiable is absurd. It means perspective has been lost.

It might, if that kind of insanity were ever relevant, be relevant to the question of whether we ought to have the death penalty imposed in our country, but it it has nothing to do with whether or not executing a guilty murderer is moral or immoral.

"Executing someone who is innocent is immoral" is something most people can agree on.

I believe if someone is guilty of murder, it is not immoral for him to be punished with execution.

"It's immoral to execute innocent people" is not an objection.

Someone else objected that it is immoral to force someone to execute a guilty criminal, but history has shown there has never been much trouble finding willing executioners.

He also objected that it might create "unrest" to execute a murderer, but decisions about whether someone lives or dies should not be based on whether it might create "unrest."

hakimashou fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Mar 1, 2017

End boss Of SGaG*
Aug 9, 2000
I REPORT EVERY POST I READ!
You're flipping out about some sort of universal haze of meaninglessness, but these arguments are based on the opposite of uncertainty: the fact that innocent people can be and are convicted, and the fact that the appeals process is more expensive than keeping someone in prison forever if necessary. What moral or practical reason overrides that? It's not like we have too little prison space, and there's much easier and better ways to reduce prison populations.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

End boss Of SGaG* posted:

You're flipping out about some sort of universal haze of meaninglessness, but these arguments are based on the opposite of uncertainty: the fact that innocent people can be and are convicted, and the fact that the appeals process is more expensive than keeping someone in prison forever if necessary. What moral or practical reason overrides that? It's not like we have too little prison space, and there's much easier and better ways to reduce prison populations.

I never said we should keep the death penalty in the US.

Someone said it was wrong to execute people who are guilty of murder, I don't think that's true.

Vindicator
Jul 23, 2007

hakimashou posted:

I never said we should keep the death penalty in the US.

Someone said it was wrong to execute people who are guilty of murder, I don't think that's true.

Then why are you making arguments about whether we're sure some hypothetical defendant is guilty or not? That's entirely irrelevant to the argument at hand, and all I've seen from you is an assertion that you think it's better that innocent people be executed rather than spend life in prison.

My response would be that it's preferable that an innocent person, after being released, expresses that they'd have preferred to have been executed, than it would be for a no longer alive innocent prisoner to not be able to make that judgment for themselves after being found innocent.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Vindicator posted:

Then why are you making arguments about whether we're sure some hypothetical defendant is guilty or not? That's entirely irrelevant to the argument at hand, and all I've seen from you is an assertion that you think it's better that innocent people be executed rather than spend life in prison.

My response would be that it's preferable that an innocent person, after being released, expresses that they'd have preferred to have been executed, than it would be for a no longer alive innocent prisoner to not be able to make that judgment for themselves after being found innocent.

Someone wanted to discuss it, and it's interesting.

Fruit Smoothies
Mar 28, 2004

The bat with a ZING

twodot posted:

Why the double standard? There's a bunch of activities the government does which definitely kill innocent people sometimes. I've never heard anyone argue that the government either needs to acquire perfect knowledge, or Ultra Proof, whatever we call it, that what it's doing won't kill an innocent or not perform the activity for anything else. There's trade offs certainly. The fact that the police occasionally murder innocent people doesn't mean we should throw out the concept of patrols. And very arguably the innocent person murder rate of the death penalty is high enough to not justify whatever benefit people think it has (very arguably it actually has no benefit, but if you thought that you wouldn't need to argue about standards of proof). But I don't see why the government needs to meet an impossible standard in whether an innocent person dies as a result of the death penalty versus any other activity that can foreseeably kill innocent people.

I think the difference here, is there isn't really a better system of doing police patrols; accidents and mistakes will happen. However, there is a better way of handling justice, and that is to not use the death penalty.

fantastic in plastic
Jun 15, 2007

The Socialist Workers Party's newspaper proved to be a tough sell to downtown businessmen.
The central symbol in the dominant religion in the United States of America is the blood sacrifice of an innocent man for the purposes of cleansing the sins of the guilty. I doubt the death penalty will be going anywhere any time soon.

Fruit Smoothies
Mar 28, 2004

The bat with a ZING

fantastic in plastic posted:

The central symbol in the dominant religion in the United States of America is the blood sacrifice of an innocent man for the purposes of cleansing the sins of the guilty. I doubt the death penalty will be going anywhere any time soon.

Although the whole point of this was to remove the need for any further loss of human / animal life. Not that the right have any grasp of the true message of the bible.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

fantastic in plastic posted:

The central symbol in the dominant religion in the United States of America is the blood sacrifice of an innocent man for the purposes of cleansing the sins of the guilty. I doubt the death penalty will be going anywhere any time soon.

That's true of plenty of places though to be fair, and the gruesome crucifix iconography is pretty big in Catholicism, which abhors the death penalty.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

edit: You might notice that in the below post I'm never addressing the morality of the death penalty itself. This is because "is it okay to kill people who commit terrible crimes" is ultimately a moral judgement and you can't really prove that it's immoral. So I think it's more useful to focus on the inevitable cost of innocent people dying and weighing that against the "benefits" of the death penalty (which pretty much just amount to "revenge").

hakimashou posted:

Consider:

Closed circuit television recordings show John enter George's office building. They show him get into an elevator and go up to the floor where George's office is. Recordings which show his face show him walk into George's office and confront him, then shoot him to death. George is seen to say "John! No! Please don't kill me! I have a family!"

Recordings show John leave and get into his car, traffic cameras show his car drive to an alley, and surveillance footage shows him put a bundle into a dumpster. The bundle is later found to contain clothing with George's blood on it, and the gun used to shoot George, which records indicate John purchased a couple days before. His fingerprints are on the gun and on the rounds and shell casings inside.

There is no evidence that the surveillance footage from any of the unconnected sources has been tampered with.

John's wife tells investigators that she had an affair with George and that John swore he would hunt George down and kill him in retribution.

When confronted with the evidence, John admits shooting George.

Are we sure enough that John is guilty of murder that we can punish him for his crime?

The problem is that we are not talking about individual hypothetical situations. We are talking about having the death penalty as a potential punishment on the books, and there isn't really any way to write "Only give the death penalty when it's super obvious they did it!" as a law because it's impossible to really define "super obvious" in a generalizable way. And even if you could write the laws like this, people are fallible. No matter how good you make the laws people will sometimes make mistakes and innocent people will always be convicted and punished, so if you have the death penalty as an option innocent people will die.

How is this for a compromise? We take the death penalty off the books, and if at some point in the future the courts reach the point where they're 100% accurate at convicting murderers (or other terrible crimes) we can add it back in.

I think this compromise works well, because those of us with common sense realize that the courts will never become perfectly accurate, but the option is still technically available if we reach the point that they are.

hakimashou posted:

You can't have a justice system where "nobody can really know anything" is a compelling defense in the face of extremely good evidence. It would be wrong to punish anyone for anything, since no guilt could ever be established under any circumstances. It's absurd.

But this is actually basically the case, and that is why we should try to compromise by not giving punishments that are either inhumane or that can't be undone (such as death). Our system is set up under the assumption that being found guilty isn't necessarily proof that someone did the crime. This is why the appeals process exists.

Ultimately we have to find a trade-off between deterring/preventing crimes and minimizing the level of wrongful punishment administered. Part of the reason the death penalty is a bad idea is that it does not actually deter/reduce crime. If it had a significant effect on crime rates, then it might be worth the downside of occasionally executing innocent people, but it doesn't.

Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Mar 1, 2017

bitterandtwisted
Sep 4, 2006




You're leaving morality aside and the death penalty serves no practical purpose so what's the point of that compromise?

FlapYoJacks
Feb 12, 2009
The death penalty is lovely just because we as a society should be better than a murderer.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

bitterandtwisted posted:

You're leaving morality aside and the death penalty serves no practical purpose so what's the point of that compromise?

It is not a serious compromise, I was just trying to find some sort of excuse to effectively ban the death penalty within the confines of hakimashou's argument.

stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

Ytlaya posted:

It is not a serious compromise, I was just trying to find some sort of excuse to effectively ban the death penalty within the confines of hakimashou's argument.

Hakimashou believes in a world where cops aren't pigs and where absolute guilt is a certainty, there's no point in arguing with them beyond a problem pithy dismissal because they see the world in black and white terms.

Gazpacho posted:

And so it does (or at least an article about the same case, that starts out like the one I read before):
http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/new_abolitionist/march-2013-issue-58/kevin-cooper-innocent-californias-death-row

It would serve no purpose to have people pick the case apart here -- that's for the courts -- but if you already knew about it I might be interested in your take.

Ooh, I did hear about this and I think he absolutely should have gotten a hearing by the ninth circuit because I simply think there are too many doubts about police tampering and destruction of evidence, not to mention the (white) suspect that was tossed aside to arrest a black man and the poor quality of defense counsel he had received.

It's a stellar example of how, even when you might think he's guilty and deserve the death penalty, due process was not really carried out, and it's kind of hosed up that he's sitting on death row.

twodot
Aug 7, 2005

You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Mr Toes posted:

That was a bit rambly, but the tl;dr is that the difference between those cases and someone in court is that people are (supposedly) having to act immediately to prevent further harm -stopping a gunman / terrorist / what have you. Once someone is caught and in prison, that immediate threat is gone, so why kill them?
This is true some of the time, but not all of the time (or even most of the time). Driving a car has inherent risk to it. Anytime the government directs someone to drive from point A to point B it knows for a fact that there is some risk an innocent person will die as a result of that action. Government employees routinely drive cars without an immediate need to prevent further harm. I'd argue that, in general, the benefit of that car trips outweighs the risk of innocent loss of life, but we're still accepting the fact that the government does engage in a risk analysis that innocents might die with imperfect information.

Fruit Smoothies posted:

I think the difference here, is there isn't really a better system of doing police patrols; accidents and mistakes will happen. However, there is a better way of handling justice, and that is to not use the death penalty.
I've been saying all along that it's pretty easy to argue that the death penalty is bad policy compared to alternatives. I've been arguing that the "We can only have the death penalty if we have impossibly perfect information, because any amount of innocent deaths is intolerable" argument sucks because it doesn't map to any other policy.

Ytlaya posted:

But this is actually basically the case, and that is why we should try to compromise by not giving punishments that are either inhumane or that can't be undone (such as death). Our system is set up under the assumption that being found guilty isn't necessarily proof that someone did the crime. This is why the appeals process exists.
This doesn't make any sense to me. You can't undo prison time. You can't undo missing your kid's birthday. I can let you out of prison, I can give you money, but in no sense is the punishment undone. You can't even really undo fines. You can't get reimbursed with interest, but who knows what opportunities you've missed between being fined and being reimbursed. The arrow of time only points in one way, and committing to punishments that can be undone is committing to no punishments.

WampaLord
Jan 14, 2010

twodot posted:

This doesn't make any sense to me. You can't undo prison time. You can't undo missing your kid's birthday. I can let you out of prison, I can give you money, but in no sense is the punishment undone.

Yea but that person is now alive and free, wouldn't it be nice to be able to offer that instead of a "oops, we killed ya."

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

twodot posted:

This doesn't make any sense to me. You can't undo prison time. You can't undo missing your kid's birthday. I can let you out of prison, I can give you money, but in no sense is the punishment undone. You can't even really undo fines. You can't get reimbursed with interest, but who knows what opportunities you've missed between being fined and being reimbursed. The arrow of time only points in one way, and committing to punishments that can be undone is committing to no punishments.

That's why I said it's a compromise. There are downsides no matter what, but at least you can make some sort of attempt to compensate someone for time lost if they're imprisoned and later found innocent.

edit: And there are actual tangible downsides to never imprisoning people, whereas the same isn't true for never giving them the death penalty, so the "pros" side of the equation doesn't really exist with the death penalty in the same way it does with imprisonment/fines/whatever.

twodot
Aug 7, 2005

You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WampaLord posted:

Yea but that person is now alive and free, wouldn't it be nice to be able to offer that instead of a "oops, we killed ya."
I've said many time it's easy to argue the death penalty has outcomes worse than other options, it just doesn't have a property of non-undoableness that other punishments lack.

Ytlaya posted:

That's why I said it's a compromise. There are downsides no matter what, but at least you can make some sort of attempt to compensate someone for time lost if they're imprisoned and later found innocent.

edit: And there are actual tangible downsides to never imprisoning people, whereas the same isn't true for never giving them the death penalty, so the "pros" side of the equation doesn't really exist with the death penalty in the same way it does with imprisonment/fines/whatever.
Eh, "some sort of attempt to compensate someone for time lost" looks pretty squishy to me. Giving money to a dead person's family looks like some sort of attempt to compensate someone to me, and it's a thing our legal system does already. I think you need a rigorous definition of compensate if you want to rule out the death penalty based on our ability to compensate wrongly killed innocents.

That said, if you think the death penalty is strictly worse than other options than why bother to argue about burden of proof or undoableness? You can just say that it's a worse option. I think it's really silly people talk about abstract properties of the death penalty instead of what it actually does.

WampaLord
Jan 14, 2010

twodot posted:

I think it's really silly people talk about abstract properties of the death penalty instead of what it actually does.

I do as well, so why is there so much emphasis on the "justice" of it from its proponents?

twodot
Aug 7, 2005

You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

WampaLord posted:

I do as well, so why is there so much emphasis on the "justice" of it from its proponents?
Presumably because they believe in retributive justice systems, but I don't know why you're asking me.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

twodot posted:

I've said many time it's easy to argue the death penalty has outcomes worse than other options, it just doesn't have a property of non-undoableness that other punishments lack.

Eh, "some sort of attempt to compensate someone for time lost" looks pretty squishy to me. Giving money to a dead person's family looks like some sort of attempt to compensate someone to me, and it's a thing our legal system does already. I think you need a rigorous definition of compensate if you want to rule out the death penalty based on our ability to compensate wrongly killed innocents.

That said, if you think the death penalty is strictly worse than other options than why bother to argue about burden of proof or undoableness? You can just say that it's a worse option. I think it's really silly people talk about abstract properties of the death penalty instead of what it actually does.

Well, it's not a simple issue regardless, but there's still a clear difference when comparing the death penalty with other punishments. The situation is something like this:

Imprisonment/Fines
Pros: Work to some extent as a deterrant and/or prevent dangerous people from continuing to commit crimes (in the case of imprisonment anyways)
Cons: Can't give back lost time, and prison sentences/fines are sometimes ineffective or counterproductive

Death Penalty
Pros: Uhh...revenge/"justice" I guess. Literally 0 chance of recidivism upon potential release.
Cons: Can do literally nothing to compensate someone for being killed. Does not have any positive impact as a deterrant.

So basically there's at least an argument to be had for the former. There are major problems that need to be dealt with, but at least there's some sort of reasonable pros/cons debate and you can always change things like sentence length, prison quality, fine amount, etc. But for the death penalty it's pretty much all cons (which are worse than the ones for imprisonment/fines in most cases) with no almost no pros.

T8R
Aug 9, 2005
Yes, I would like some tea!

hakimashou posted:

It's just incoherent insanity to go down that road. The same twisted sophistry can be applied to any kind of decision. Suddenly we are all first degree murderers, and no one is.

The notion that because some people believe there is no truth and nothing can ever be proven, no crime can ever be solved and no punishment is ever justifiable is absurd. It means perspective has been lost.

It might, if that kind of insanity were ever relevant, be relevant to the question of whether we ought to have the death penalty imposed in our country, but it it has nothing to do with whether or not executing a guilty murderer is moral or immoral.


Of course society must accept the limits of truth and evidence in order to form a fair and equitable justice system. I was arguing against capital punishment specifically. The requirements for capital punishment to be acceptable are logically impossible and morally unsound.

hakimashou posted:


"Executing someone who is innocent is immoral" is something most people can agree on.

I believe if someone is guilty of murder, it is not immoral for him to be punished with execution.

"It's immoral to execute innocent people" is not an objection.


The objection is "All executions carry a risk of executing innocent people, executing someone who is innocent is immoral, therefore all executions are immoral."

" I can imagine a perfect universe with a perfect court system that only executes guilty people" isn't an acceptable moral argument; and it certainly isn't a logical one. If you're fine with believing in morality that can only function in our imaginations, I'm not sure what to say.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Ytlaya posted:

edit: You might notice that in the below post I'm never addressing the morality of the death penalty itself. This is because "is it okay to kill people who commit terrible crimes" is ultimately a moral judgement and you can't really prove that it's immoral. So I think it's more useful to focus on the inevitable cost of innocent people dying and weighing that against the "benefits" of the death penalty (which pretty much just amount to "revenge").


The problem is that we are not talking about individual hypothetical situations. We are talking about having the death penalty as a potential punishment on the books, and there isn't really any way to write "Only give the death penalty when it's super obvious they did it!" as a law because it's impossible to really define "super obvious" in a generalizable way. And even if you could write the laws like this, people are fallible. No matter how good you make the laws people will sometimes make mistakes and innocent people will always be convicted and punished, so if you have the death penalty as an option innocent people will die.

How is this for a compromise? We take the death penalty off the books, and if at some point in the future the courts reach the point where they're 100% accurate at convicting murderers (or other terrible crimes) we can add it back in.

I think this compromise works well, because those of us with common sense realize that the courts will never become perfectly accurate, but the option is still technically available if we reach the point that they are.


But this is actually basically the case, and that is why we should try to compromise by not giving punishments that are either inhumane or that can't be undone (such as death). Our system is set up under the assumption that being found guilty isn't necessarily proof that someone did the crime. This is why the appeals process exists.

Ultimately we have to find a trade-off between deterring/preventing crimes and minimizing the level of wrongful punishment administered. Part of the reason the death penalty is a bad idea is that it does not actually deter/reduce crime. If it had a significant effect on crime rates, then it might be worth the downside of occasionally executing innocent people, but it doesn't.

I don't know that it is impossible, I think it might just be very difficult.

It doesnt have to be perfect in order to prove someone is guilty of murder.

I'm not sure that you and I could hash out how to make a system that only gave the death penalty to people who were actually guilty, but I think if enough time and effort and brainpower was put into it, it wouldn't be impossible.

And when guilty people were given the death penalty for committing murder, it wouldn't be morally wrong.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

ratbert90 posted:

The death penalty is lovely just because we as a society should be better than a murderer.

It isn't murder to execute someone who is guilty of murder.

We are better than a murderer, much better in fact, since we are giving someone their just desserts, instead of wrongfully depriving them of their life.

Doing a good thing instead of a bad thing.

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

WampaLord posted:

I do as well, so why is there so much emphasis on the "justice" of it from its proponents?

Some people believe in justice.

Phantom Star
Feb 16, 2005

Ytlaya posted:

Death Penalty
Pros: ...Literally 0 chance of recidivism upon potential release...

Agree to disagree.

falcon2424
May 2, 2005

T8R posted:

The objection is "All executions carry a risk of executing innocent people, executing someone who is innocent is immoral, therefore all executions are immoral."

" I can imagine a perfect universe with a perfect court system that only executes guilty people" isn't an acceptable moral argument; and it certainly isn't a logical one. If you're fine with believing in morality that can only function in our imaginations, I'm not sure what to say.

Like twodot, I think there are good arguments against the death penalty.

But I find this one, in particular, to be pretty unconvincing.

Yes, it's immoral to execute innocent people. But it's also immoral to imprison them.

falcon2424
May 2, 2005

ratbert90 posted:

The death penalty is lovely just because we as a society should be better than a murderer.

This also seems like a kind of weak argument. It only 'works' because people apply it selectively.

We should be better than murderers. But we should also be better than thieves. Or kidnappers.

The judicial process makes executions not-murder. Just like it makes fines into not-theft. And imprisonment into not-kidnapping.

(Again: There are good arguments. This one just seems weak; we wouldn't accept it if someone applied it to any other punishment. So it can't be our true reason for rejecting the death penalty)

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

falcon2424 posted:

This also seems like a kind of weak argument. It only 'works' because people apply it selectively.

We should be better than murderers. But we should also be better than thieves. Or kidnappers.

The judicial process makes executions not-murder. Just like it makes fines into not-theft. And imprisonment into not-kidnapping.

(Again: There are good arguments. This one just seems weak; we wouldn't accept it if someone applied it to any other punishment. So it can't be our true reason for rejecting the death penalty)

Exactly right. Arresting a criminal isn't the same as kidnapping him. Collecting taxes or imposing a fine isn't the same as robbing someone, executing a murderer isn't the same as murdering somone.

The essence of punishment is depriving somone of his rights, whether to life, liberty, or property.

Submarine Sandpaper
May 27, 2007


hakimashou posted:

Exactly right. Arresting a criminal isn't the same as kidnapping him. Collecting taxes or imposing a fine isn't the same as robbing someone, executing a murderer isn't the same as murdering somone.

The essence of punishment is depriving somone of his rights, whether to life, liberty, or property.

Have you read the story of the 15 year old boy who was indefinitely detained at riker's and eventually offed himself, for having what amounted to his own backpack? That is kidnapping and torture, there are systematic unjust fines levied at the poor and PoC. The state murders people unjustly as well. I'm so happy cops ignore you and would probably be punished for killing your children in cold blood, but don't pretend that is universal even within your local municipality.

stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

hakimashou posted:

It isn't murder to execute someone who is guilty of murder.

Why?

How does this distinction work?

Moreover, if you're doing it with revenge in mind, does that not count as malice?

How is murder not murder? You're gonna need to substantiate that assumption some more before you lay down what you think are absolutes.

got any sevens
Feb 9, 2013

by Cyrano4747
Can a prisoner ask for the death penalty? And if so can they ask for a firing squad or guillotine? I'd rather do that than rot in jail for 50 years or w/e.

WampaLord
Jan 14, 2010

got any sevens posted:

Can a prisoner ask for the death penalty? And if so can they ask for a firing squad or guillotine? I'd rather do that than rot in jail for 50 years or w/e.

Just go piss off the toughest gang, someone will kill you.

stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

got any sevens posted:

Can a prisoner ask for the death penalty? And if so can they ask for a firing squad or guillotine? I'd rather do that than rot in jail for 50 years or w/e.

How about don't kill anybody, do you think you could restrain yourself from killing another living human being?

hakimashou
Jul 15, 2002
Upset Trowel

Submarine Sandpaper posted:

Have you read the story of the 15 year old boy who was indefinitely detained at riker's and eventually offed himself, for having what amounted to his own backpack? That is kidnapping and torture, there are systematic unjust fines levied at the poor and PoC. The state murders people unjustly as well. I'm so happy cops ignore you and would probably be punished for killing your children in cold blood, but don't pretend that is universal even within your local municipality.

Did you hallucinate about me typing something suggesting it was universal, or that the US justice system was good?

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stone cold
Feb 15, 2014

hakimashou posted:

Did you hallucinate about me typing something suggesting it was universal, or that the US justice system was good?

This entire thread you've been talking in absolutes, so this is some major :irony:

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