Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

one time i was googling my dad and found a website dedicated to an attempt to exonerate a man on death row who was quite possibly innocent (it didn't work; the state murdered him a few years later). my dad was a part of the proceedings on the side of law enforcement, which did many questionable things during the investigation and trial. at first i was horrified at the thought that he did something to put an innocent man on death row, but he played a minor role in the entire affair. but in general it made me think of the inevitable mistakes that humans make, "human error", and what that can lead to for people caught on the inconvenient side of the power equation. so many innocent people put to death, either accidentally or otherwise. it's sickening.

In my 20s I was not only pro-death penalty, I was in favor of bringing back public executions. I was pretty right-wing back in those days. Learning more about the shitty representation most death penalty defendants get, and then the rate of wrongful convictions, started to move the needle for me and by the time I read John Grisham's The Innocent Man that pretty much sealed the deal.

I think it should be reserved for war criminals.

Cheney or Kissinger’s heads on spikes? Yes

Sorry that’s gross. Just not feeling charitable towards people with power.

Obviously that’s just a fantasy that would never happen in real life. But the death penalty as part of a regular justice system? 100% against.

Ok, let me amend that to “War Criminals and people who double park

I'd be OK with permanent exile to really inhospitable places. Henry Kissinger living out his life on Bouvet Island would be A-OK with me.

the thing is we obviously allow public executions and mete out death to our own citizens on a frighteningly regular basis, so until we disarm the populace, so that we can disarm the police, completely eradicating the death sentence in judicial contexts seems a little like putting the cart before the horse (see "evolving definitions of 'civilised society'" perhaps).

another thing is how to implement a death penalty in a manner that is not cruel and unusual - currently performed, lawful executions are quite unusual and are apparently often bungled in ways that render them quite cruel, in part because no trained medical professionals will carry them out (see "evolving expectations in a 'civilised society'").

a last thing is that as long as the state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence, killing is one of the activities the state should reserve for itself, albeit in extreme circumstances with extremely rigorous standards applied to proof and argument. I dunno if war crimes even fit the bill, but I'm not sure if I can come up with anything else.

in my 20s I used to buy the argument that the death penalty was okay for criminals who were so dangerous and recidivist that they needed to be euthanized like you would a wild animal that had chosen to prey on humans, but now I think that line of reasoning just gets abused to justify the existing paradigm in the US, with all of its disastrous systemic flaws.

Executing former public officials like Henry Kissinger for crimes in which they weren’t solely complicit—he had help—sounds like banana republic type stuff to me.

You could theoretically try every president for war crimes. There isn’t a good legal standard for this—I don’t know what kind of accountability would work instead though.

“You could theoretically try every president for war crimes.“

It’d be a good place to start

On what authority though? Would these be international tribunals?

i might be ok with the death penalty if someone could figure out how to reanimate the many executed people who are later discovered to be innocent. until that happens, it seems wrong to have a system that ends the lives of innocent people 1 out of 25 times (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-study-4-percent-defendants-innocent)

does it seem fair that you can commit every other kind of atrocity possible and still live, as long as you never wave anything resembling a weapon in the general direction of a police officer?

Jesus that is insanely high

Xp

exactly

i can't believe capital punishment is even a debate

Where's Mordy when you need him.

On what authority though? Would these be international tribunals?

― 🦅 (Trϵϵship), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 4:21 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://youtu.be/3H3kiCbq2DY

love too execute violent ppl

i'm the annoying equivalent of a single-issue voter with this. all of the other arguments mean nothing to me when i think about the 4 innocent people out of 100 who are murdered by the state - and the innocent person's family, and the families of the victim of the original crime who went through a capital punishment trial and conviction only to find out that all it led to was an innocent person dying.

whenever a state executes someone, they should load up a 25-bullet russian roulette gun and make someone in the room pull the trigger

“You could theoretically try every president for war crimes.“

It’d be a good place to start

― Perverse Mortgage (latebloomer), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 12:20 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Morbs it's really fucked up that u logged into someone else's account 2 post this

I can't remember ever not being against the death penalty. I don't claim to have been a particularly smart or well-informed adolescent; it just always seemed barbaric to me. Also, whenever I would enter into a debate on the issue with anyone starting with this premise (and I do feel that, even now, I probably know more pro-dp people than anti-), the only thing anyone would ever hit me back with was "why should the state pay to keep these people alive?"

you should hit them back with 'it ends costing more to put people to death than keeping them alive'

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29552692/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/execute-or-not-question-cost/
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/which-is-cheaper-execution-or-life-in-prison-without-parole-31614
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty

problem with using that argument as a counter is that pro-death penalty people have no problem imaging cheaper solutions

yeah, and some of those cheaper solutions - like cutting down some of the legal options that death row inmates have, opportunities to appeal - would lead to even MORE innocent people being executed. not that people who support the death penalty gaf about that

I generally don't trust arguments about the death penalty other than whether you believe it is or isn't morally permissible. arguments around economics and even maybe deterrence feel bad faith mostly.

^ yet another reason not to trust utilitarians

Yes, it's like when people say how much money the Royal Family generates in fucking stupid fucking tourists and whatever - I don't care.

“You could theoretically try every president for war crimes.“

It’d be a good place to start

― Perverse Mortgage (latebloomer), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 12:20 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Morbs it's really fucked up that u logged into someone else's account 2 post this

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 4:57 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You either log off a hero or post long enough to see yourself become a Morbs

problem with using that argument as a counter is that pro-death penalty people have no problem imaging cheaper solutions

― fuck giving a bear beer (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 17:22 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tick.jpg

the thing is we obviously allow public executions and mete out death to our own citizens on a frighteningly regular basis, so until we disarm the populace, so that we can disarm the police, completely eradicating the death sentence in judicial contexts seems a little like putting the cart before the horse (see "evolving definitions of 'civilised society'" perhaps).

another thing is how to implement a death penalty in a manner that is not cruel and unusual - currently performed, lawful executions are quite unusual and are apparently often bungled in ways that render them quite cruel, in part because no trained medical professionals will carry them out (see "evolving expectations in a 'civilised society'").

a last thing is that as long as the state is supposed to have a monopoly on violence, killing is one of the activities the state should reserve for itself, albeit in extreme circumstances with extremely rigorous standards applied to proof and argument. I dunno if war crimes even fit the bill, but I'm not sure if I can come up with anything else.

in my 20s I used to buy the argument that the death penalty was okay for criminals who were so dangerous and recidivist that they needed to be euthanized like you would a wild animal that had chosen to prey on humans, but now I think that line of reasoning just gets abused to justify the existing paradigm in the US, with all of its disastrous systemic flaws.

― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 12:09 PM (yesterday)

disagree with pretty much all of this post but unfortunately medical professionals do take part in executions afaik

does it seem fair that you can commit every other kind of atrocity possible and still live, as long as you never wave anything resembling a weapon in the general direction of a police officer?

― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 12:23 PM (yesterday)

sure

disagree with pretty much all of this post but unfortunately medical professionals do take part in executions afaik

― k3vin k., Wednesday, September 5, 2018 4:37 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree -- it was a very bad post! the first point in particular is just astonishingly bad, since "abolishing the death penalty" is, as a potential policy maneuver, just about as simple as it gets. as opposed to, say, "banning the further sale of guns and confiscating every gun that currently exists, and then also taking them away from police so that they can't kill people anymore." like, it's even simpler than "medicare for all."

idk maybe some states have the death penalty enshrined in their constitutions, but if not, a top-down ban on capital punishment could end a despicable practice in one fell swoop

i can't believe capital punishment is even a debate

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, September 4, 2018 11:24 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

post was intended as a thought experiment because otherwise this thread is just a loop of everybody vs. deems, but OK, dialectic is hard to read, won't do that again

Capital punishment’s bad but so are most other forms of punishment. The only punishment in our society should be to subject criminals to a panopticon of surveillance and electric shocks

^^^^ knows how to get away with it

Really tho why punish people for doing crimes when you come down to it, it’s kind of an absurd thing to do.

god demands it iirc

having trouble digging up the quote but there's a good one where somebody (calvin, maybe?) argues for capital punishment along the lines of it being a worse injustice to fail to punish the guilty than to unfairly punish the innocent (since they will be resurrected in glory in heaven anyway)

did a double take there before I realized you meant John Calvin and not Calvin the cartoon six year old

anyway the death penalty is commanded but the rabbis did a lot of legwork to essentially circumscribe it out of existence, presumably in part because they believed that whatever the torah seemed to say it would be unjust to actually execute anyone

have any of you ever changed your mind about the death penalty? why?

i changed my mind about it when i was in college. i was pro-death penalty before, anti afterward

fwiw this broadly describes my own experience. tbh i still believe that some people deserve to die for their actions -- anders breivik pops to mind -- but i don't think any government or court or jury or person should have the authority to kill them, even without going into the absurdity and unfairness of the american system

that said, i do kind of wonder why these various bloodthirsty states go to such lengths with the drugs and the gas pellets and the electrocution. the guillotine seems like a much quicker and simpler method, and if you can't handle spurting blood and rolling heads, maybe you shouldn't be executing anyone in the first place

xp good for the rabbis imo

while i am more or less against the death penalty i am kind of apathetic on the issue because i agree w/ tombot that state power will find ways to execute people w/ or w/o a formal death penalty and besides it's applied pretty rarely ...

but i have tried to figure out why a lot of americans seems to be all for it, and the best i can figure is that - and this is my answer to a lot of "why are we so stupid as a nation" questions - people in this country tend to think qualitatively in terms of parables, not quantitatively in terms of generalized outcomes for public health

maybe i'm off the mark - i say this despite only having a few very conservative friends and family, but whenever we get into it about death penalty or gun control or taxation or whatever they tend to argue from thought experiment (like constructing some incredibly heinous and rather unlikely crime that "demands" a death penalty) rather than arguing from any sort of evidence-based framework

the bernard shaw method of analysis

what do you mean by that?

oh, this:

they tend to argue from thought experiment (like constructing some incredibly heinous and rather unlikely crime that "demands" a death penalty)

that's what bernard shaw did to dukakis in the 1988 debate i mentioned a bit upthread: he asked dukakis about whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped his wife