[HN Gopher] Gov. Inslee signs bill to remove death penalty from ...
___________________________________________________________________
Gov. Inslee signs bill to remove death penalty from Washington
state law
Author : runarberg
Score : 107 points
Date : 2023-04-20 19:57 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kptv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kptv.com)
| ccooffee wrote:
| Is the title here editorialized, or is Axios doing some weird AB
| testing? The article I'm seeing is about the bill passing the
| Washington House, and concludes with:
|
| > What's next: To become law, the bill must clear Inslee's desk.
| But a veto looks unlikely.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Or OP just put the wrong URL. A quick search of Google News
| indicates Inslee has indeed signed the bill now.
| blakesterz wrote:
| Maybe that's just the wrong link? Apparently it was really
| signed.
|
| https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/gov-inslee-signs-bill-repea...
| andsoitis wrote:
| Headline for me is: Washington Legislature votes to repeal
| death penalty
| Arrath wrote:
| And good riddance.
| ortusdux wrote:
| OP's link is a week old. Inslee singed the bill an hour or two
| ago.
|
| https://www.kptv.com/2023/04/20/gov-inslee-signs-bill-remove...
| runarberg wrote:
| I couldn't find a news source I liked, so I just posted the
| same link as Inslee did in a tweet after he signed[1], while
| borrowing the headline from a more current news source[2].
| Using the same headline would have been posting old news.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/GovInslee/status/1649115596465008645
|
| 2: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/gov-inslee-signs-bill-
| repea...
| dang wrote:
| By posting that article, you did post old news. The
| solution was not to rewrite the title, but to post an
| article that contained the significant new information.
|
| I realize that local TV news affiliate websites aren't
| always appetizing sources, but it's more important to have
| up-to-date information.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed the URL to that from
| https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2023/04/11/death-
| penalty... now. Thanks!
|
| If there's a better URL, we can change it again.
| runarberg wrote:
| The Death penalty has actually been abolished in Washington state
| since 2018 when the state's supreme court ruled it
| unconstitutional as a punishment. Reasons cited was that the
| punishment was issued arbitrarily and with racial bias. The
| court's decision was directly based off of a regression analysis
| study.
|
| https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/death-penalty-washin...
|
| https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/legacy/documents/WashRace...
| (PDF)
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| I feel like America's big prison problem is rooted on a deeper
| issue than mismanagement/corruption.
|
| The fundamental idea that "retribution" needs to be a component
| of the criminal justice system is erroneous and the big issue
| here. As long as the country legally recognizes that those who
| wronged others need to be wronged to "get their just desserts",
| the prison system will not reform to a sufficient degree as to
| stop the excessive incarceration and recidivism problem.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| There's a chunk of the population that should be warehoused for
| the safety of the vast majority. Consider the 327 people that
| commit 1/3rd of NYC theft
| (https://nypost.com/2023/01/05/327-crooks-made-up-30-of-
| shopl...) or pedophiles. You're never going to fix some people.
|
| The world is not as soft as people hope. If the system doesn't
| provide justice, people will - consider the enormous adoration
| for Jason Vukovich.
| babelfish wrote:
| The goals should be rehabilitation, and in the cases you
| mention, containment. Retribution should NEVER be a goal of
| the state.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Don't state an opinion as fact. There's many examples of
| the state letting people off, then the family taking
| matters into their own hands, with public approval.
| Retribution is important for those who hurt others.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > Don't state an opinion as fact.
|
| > Retribution is important for those who hurt others.
|
| Maybe try to be a little consistent? At least within the
| bounds of a single three sentence comment.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I'm not sure there is a justification for your point, but I
| hear the point.
|
| The counterpoint is that retribution MUST be a goal of the
| state, because if the state does not provide a sanitized
| replacement of what some surviving victims of crime will
| naturally want to do.
|
| Put it this way: if someone killed my son, I would quite
| naturally want them dead. But then I would be killing
| someone's son, and I'm sure you can detect the problem
| there.
|
| If the state provides an implicit contract to everyone that
| the result of citizen on citizen violence will contain some
| sanitized version of retribution that substitutes for eye-
| for-an-eye justice, then overall violence will be reduced
| by the severance of the cycle.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil
| authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by
| the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the
| guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power,
| far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount
| obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end
| of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human
| life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority,
| which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to
| this end, since they give security to life by repressing
| outrage and violence. Hence these words of David: "In the
| morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might
| cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord."
| (Ps 101:8)
|
| - Catechism of the Council of Trent, Part III, 5, n. 4 (1566)
|
| - http://j.mp/CatechismTrentDeathPenalty
|
| Even when it is a question of the execution of a condemned man,
| the State does not dispose of the individual's right to life.
| In this case it is reserved to the public power to deprive the
| condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his
| crime when, by his crime, he has already disposed himself of
| his right to live.
|
| - Pius XII, Address to the First International Congress of
| Histopathology of the Nervous System (14 Sep 1952)
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| [flagged]
| bestsolution wrote:
| [flagged]
| Buttons840 wrote:
| And do you acknowledge that sometimes people will be wrongly
| convicted of those crimes?
| bestsolution wrote:
| All you can ever do is the best that you can under the
| circumstances. Avoiding a wrongful execution is just one
| goal. Other goals include the ability of the innocent to
| enjoy life and the need for justice against wrongdoers.
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| > Justice is not done unless people get what is due to them
|
| Even if it's momentarily rewarding, I don't think that's
| useful from a societal perspective. The justice system should
| focus on minimizing crime - if punishment does that, fine,
| but any kind of "getting even" just feeds our base instincts
| and doesn't accomplish anything.
|
| Emotion has no place in a justice system.
| least wrote:
| If someone murders someone but it seems really unlikely,
| due to the circumstances of that particular murder, that
| they would murder someone else again, should they simply go
| free?
|
| I personally don't think so, but that's what a Justice
| system without any retribution component would prescribe. I
| think punitive measures are a reasonable. I also think that
| the prison system in the US is needlessly punitive and
| often cruel.
| version_five wrote:
| Those kind of questions never occur in a vacuum, so
| there's no simple answer. What were the circumstances of
| this magic one-time murder? At least you'd expect a
| pretty thorough evaluation and monitoring of the person,
| probably while they were detained.
|
| But anyway, there's still the question of deterrence,
| which is not the same as retribution. If others see you
| can murder with no penalty, that may increase crime.
| least wrote:
| > What were the circumstances of this magic one-time
| murder?
|
| There's many cases of say, a father going out and
| murdering their daughter's rapist. It's unlikely that
| they would kill people that aren't raping their
| daughters, but if you simply let them go free, it really
| kind of signals that murder is okay as long as you can
| justify it well enough. Generally the only time we really
| condone killing someone is when he's defending himself...
| and sometimes not even then.
|
| I do think that putting said person in prison for a
| period of time is appropriate. No punishment whatsoever
| is condoning murder.
|
| It's just that it's tough to condemn decent people like
| that to a prison system that is so focused on being
| terrible for everyone in there. I think prisons need to
| be a better place to live for all prisoners and the
| current system simply isn't adequate or reasonable.
| bestsolution wrote:
| Human sentiments are the the primary driver of human
| behavior. You get better results out of harnessing those
| sentiments than by trying to treat people as purely
| rational machines.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that the system should
| leverage _people 's_ sentiments for the sake of
| minimizing crime, and not be designed _the way human
| sentiment would want it to be designed_ (in this case,
| yours).
|
| If retribution turns out not to minimize crime, then
| there's no place for it in the justice system. So the
| only question becomes whether or not retribution
| minimizes crime more than non-retribution methods.
| bestsolution wrote:
| It's not really possible to measure this over the long
| run. Short and medium term studies show that mass
| incarceration dramatically reduced crime in the US,
| mostly by literally removing violent young men from
| society, but that's not the main reason why I support
| strong punishment. The moral decay of a society can take
| a hundred years to set in, but once the consequences
| become apparent, it can be too late to do anything about
| it. There is a lot of wisdom encoded in the ways of the
| past. Retribution for crimes is a universal institution
| for a reason.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| There's also a lot of bullshit encoded in the ways of the
| past. Just because you like one of them doesn't make it
| good for the society.
|
| And talking about "moral decay" (as if morality was some
| objective set of rules that society can either follow or
| not follow, and not a huge continuum of various moral
| standards of both individuals and societies) makes me
| quite sure that you're speaking from sentiment, rather
| than from reason. "It feels right to me, therefore it is
| right" is not a good argument for convincing anyone of
| anything.
|
| I agree that it's very hard to measure this sort of
| thing. There are way too many (constantly changing)
| factors that affect the crime rate, that it's almost
| impossible to isolate a single cause and measure its
| effect. However, that should only motivate us to approach
| the problem even more rigorously, rather than to resort
| to subjective heuristics.
| enoch_r wrote:
| On the contrary, emotion is at the very core of any justice
| system. When we minimize crime, we are trying to minimize
| the psychological harm done by crime and criminals. It is
| "base instinct" for me to wish to avoid being punched,
| "base instinct" for me to wish to maintain control over my
| property, "base instinct" for me to want my children to
| grow to adulthood.
|
| To be rational, we want to choose our goals wisely, and
| then act rationally and without emotion when it comes to
| the pursuit of those goals. Personally, my goal for the
| criminal justice system is _not_ merely to minimize crime,
| but to ensure that justice is done.
|
| In my opinion, if someone intentionally rapes and kills a
| child, for example, it is a _positive good_ to remove them
| from existence. You simply do not get to commit such an act
| and remain on earth with the rest of us. If we lock such a
| person up forever, that is good. If we kill them, that is
| even better. To me, that 's what justice means.
| least wrote:
| > If we kill them, that is even better.
|
| I take issue with killing them because it requires an
| infallible system that never kills anyone that doesn't
| deserve it and my conscious rests easier not killing
| someone that doesn't deserve to die than it does to kill
| someone that obviously does.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Do you believe most of western Europe's vision and
| implementation of justice is wrong?
| jaapbadlands wrote:
| If that system kills one innocent person, then it's not worth
| the dopamine hit that you're chasing in pursuit of "justice".
| bestsolution wrote:
| It's not the chase of a dopamine hit. It's the goodness and
| strength of a society that recognizes the power of properly
| ordered human sentiments.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| This is already continuously tried. All it creates is a lack of
| trust in the justice system. If you remove the ability of the
| justice system to make the people feel that justice has been
| served, people will revert to vigilante justice. You _need_
| confidence in the system.
|
| It's all well and good to say that that's irrational, and has
| no place in a logical society - but this isn't a logical,
| rational society. That's why we need a justice system in the
| first place.
|
| Ultimately, until you can change human nature, some amount of
| tangible consequences that make the victims, their family, and
| the public at large feel that justice has been served,
| perpetrators have received appropriate consequences, and
| vigilante justice is unnecessary.
|
| Finally, has the infinite-empathy approach been shown to work
| _anywhere_ where there is an existing, significant crime
| problem, and where it 's liable to being abused - that is, most
| of the world? And working is about more than empathy towards
| violent criminals and the reduction of crime statistics (though
| anecdotally I doubt it would achieve the latter).
|
| Ultimately the justice system's number one priority should be
| victims, their interests and welfare, and reducing the amount
| of new ones. Criminals have made their decision; victims are
| innocent.
|
| I'm not saying the American justice system doesn't have issues.
| I'm not American personally, but it appears to have a lot of
| problems. However, I don't think incurring consequences for
| people's actions is the root problem here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _fundamental idea that "retribution" needs to be a component
| of the criminal justice system is erroneous and the big issue
| here_
|
| It's irrational. But probably necessary for broader buy-in. The
| other purposes for prisons are reformation, incapacitation and
| deterrence. Deterrence and retribution are tightly linked.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Lots of countries don't have this, at least to the same
| extent. Americans are _exceptionally_ focused on retribution
| and the effects are deleterious. Also they really don 't like
| the messy reality of justice, hence not only modern shows
| like Law & Order, but even Columbo. If you can imagine real
| justice is always like Columbo, then when you hear that cops
| arrested a person on suspicion of murder, you know they're
| guilty - why else would cops arrest somebody?
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| They're only linked insofar as they both use prisons as
| "weapons", i.e, undesirable places to be in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _only linked insofar as they both use prisons as
| "weapons", i.e, undesirable places to be in_
|
| They're linked in that "a sense of morality transcend[s]
| immediate self-interest and fear of punishment" [1].
| Retribution links the justice system to our sense of
| morality. That deters crime.
|
| The research on punitive damages tends to be more clear-
| headed than anything I've read on criminal law in this
| matter [2]. (For example, punitive damages provide
| "aggrieved parties with an attractive substitute for
| revenge.")
|
| [1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/deterren...
|
| [2] https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=
| 1185&...
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Deterrence and retribution are tightly linked.
|
| This is very much not the case.
|
| "Deterrence" solely operates on future actors. "Retribution"
| on those who have already transgressed. We know that the vast
| vast vast majority of crimes are not committed with a cost-
| benefit analysis. So no matter how badly you punish the
| criminals will you prevent most crimes. No man willing to
| kill his cheating wife thinks "Well, I could 15, 17 tops,
| sure, but 25 is too much. Okay, I need a new plan".
| philipkglass wrote:
| There's a whole spectrum of behaviors in relation to future
| penalties. Some people are so far gone that they don't care
| about death. This includes people who livestream their
| murder sprees or are willing to commit suicide bombings,
| for example. There's no prospect of deterring them. At best
| you can permanently isolate surviving perpetrators from the
| rest of society. Until we invent slap-drones [1] I wouldn't
| trust them to roam free again.
|
| Other people won't violate minor rules even when there's
| nobody watching. Some people will come to a full stop at
| every stop sign, even when there's perfect visibility and
| no cross traffic, even when there's no cameras or police
| cars around.
|
| In between these two extremes you do have people who are
| deterred by enforcement. My sister didn't always come to a
| full stop at a certain intersection on the way to work
| until she was ticketed for it. She did stop fully every
| time afterward. For this in-between set of people who
| respond to deterrence, likelihood of facing a penalty is
| more important than the severity of a penalty [2].
|
| The problem I have seen repeatedly is that catching more
| violators is more expensive/difficult than increasing the
| severity of punishment, so lawmakers are tempted to
| increase penalties to "make up" for rare enforcement.
| Fining $1 for littering and catching half of litterers
| seems mathematically equivalent to fining $5000 for
| littering and catching 1 in 10000 litterers. It's also a
| lot cheaper to catch only a handful of people. But the
| rare-enforcement, high-penalty approach actually has a much
| weaker deterrent effect because most people are not
| rational agents in that sense. The deterrent effect of
| extreme penalties is even weaker for murder, because most
| people are not interested in murdering anyone even in
| circumstances where they would get away with it. The
| remaining subset of people with a non-negligible propensity
| to murder is enriched in people who behave erratically and
| cannot be deterred by rational means.
|
| [1] https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Slap-drone
|
| [2] "Frequency of enforcement is more important than the
| severity of punishment in reducing violation behaviors"
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108507118
| lumb63 wrote:
| Do you have any references to support that "no matter how
| badly you punish the criminals will you prevent most
| crimes"?
|
| I would expect that more strict sentencing has diminishing
| returns. The difference between no crime, versus a crime
| and a fine, versus a crime and jail or prison time, are
| steep escalations, but the difference between 15 and 25
| years in prison seems much smaller. I agree you probably
| won't prevent many murders by raising the minimum sentence
| on murder, but other less severe crimes/sentences don't
| present the same obvious conclusion to me.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Good. Capital punishment is an embarrassment to the USA, both for
| morality and because our legal system has proved to be sometimes
| inaccurate in convictions. Too high of an error rate.
| causality0 wrote:
| Right. It's also outrageously expensive.
| notch898c wrote:
| The expensive part is largely the (comparatively) exhaustive
| appeals process, which means counterintuitively the innocent
| may be even worse off now that they won't be on death row.
| scottyah wrote:
| Though I'm not advocating for the death penalty, it's high
| cost was created by the opponents of death penalty. I don't
| think "unfair" is the right word, but it sure is dirty.
| pavlov wrote:
| Doesn't high cost just mean there's an extensive process in
| place to try to prevent killing innocent people (and yet it
| still happens). Not sure why that qualifies as "dirty" --
| wouldn't killing without the process to save money be
| dirtier?
| tialaramex wrote:
| > Some argued that if the death penalty is eliminated,
| prosecutors will lose what little leverage they have to get
| murder suspects to cooperate with police.
|
| This seems like a trivially testable hypothesis. Civilized
| countries outlawed the death penalty for murder a long time ago,
| do their murder suspects in fact simply refuse to cooperate with
| police since death isn't a possible penalty? I would assume the
| answer is "No".
|
| Many European countries don't even have life-without-parole as a
| possible sentence. All criminals in those countries can in
| principle be paroled, it's just that if you're an unrepentant
| murdering nazi, the parole decision is really easy, "Hmm, do we
| want this nazi to kill a bunch more people as he's repeatedly
| insisted he will if given a chance? No".
| [deleted]
| notch898c wrote:
| In civilized European countries you just set up convicted mass
| killers* of children with 21 year sentences to serve out while
| they play Playstation 2 games.
|
| * Brevik
| rcme wrote:
| They have fewer children killers so maybe that's working.
| zamalek wrote:
| It also has a lot to do with avoiding lusting for revenge,
| instead focusing on rehabilitation.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway
|
| I have been met with so many blank stares when explaining
| this concept to Americans, "but they killed children!"
| Sure, if it's revenge you want then help them understand
| and regret their actions; death is the easy way out.
| abeppu wrote:
| Even if it does remove a bit of leverage ... IIUC generally
| this kind of deal hinges on the state's discretion over whether
| to pursue a greater or lesser charge or ask for a greater or
| lesser sentence, and so we're talking about the state's ability
| to threaten and coerce someone who has not yet been convicted
| of anything through discretionary prosecution. Maybe that's
| leverage they shouldn't have?
| nivenkos wrote:
| It seems like a mistake, the role of the justice system should be
| to protect the public first and foremost. For serious cases this
| means they should never be released - the potential risk vs.
| reward just isn't worth it.
|
| Also the death penalty can allow some reimbursement of victims
| (via blood and plasma donation, etc.), without forced prison
| labour that causes issues by undercutting normal workers.
| klyrs wrote:
| > without forced prison labour that causes issues by
| undercutting normal workers.
|
| I agree, we should abolish slavery and pay a fair wage for
| prison labor.
| eropple wrote:
| _> It seems like a mistake, the role of the justice system
| should be to protect the public first and foremost._
|
| No. The role of the justice system is to _find truth and render
| equitable punishment_. State-sponsored killing is a one-way
| door and no court can rule with such complete surety of
| sufficient guilt and motive to make walking through that one-
| way door something that can be on the table.
|
| I would support capital punishment for elected politicians and
| law enforcement, to represent the higher stakes of their breach
| of the public trust, but that's because those jobs should not
| be aspirational and the retributive framework for them
| necessarily differs. But the cases that go to death row in
| America? It's nonsense.
|
| _> Also the death penalty can allow some reimbursement of
| victims (via blood and plasma donation, etc.), without forced
| prison labour that causes issues by undercutting normal
| workers._
|
| This is a deeply ghastly sentiment and deserves no further
| address.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _without forced prison labour that causes issues by
| undercutting normal workers_
|
| Isn't the solution to charge prison labour employers the
| federal minimum wage?
| clcaev wrote:
| why not market wage? Prison inmates often have spouses,
| children, elders, and also need to save for their own
| retirement
|
| If we want to rehabilitate people, we have to consider their
| financial wellbeing so they can reenter society when they are
| released, otherwise, we are just setting them up for
| continued failures
| tstrimple wrote:
| And would almost completely kill the profit motive of
| prisons that we know for a fact has been used to put
| innocent people behind bars.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287286626/kids-for-cash-
| captu...
|
| It seems prudent to remove perverse incentives when
| possible.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _why not market wage_
|
| There would be zero public support for giving prisoners
| free food and housing for building up a nest egg. Market
| rate is fine, but I imagine a deduction for prison costs
| would be assessed.
| maximilianroos wrote:
| > Also the death penalty can allow some reimbursement of
| victims (via blood and plasma donation, etc.), without forced
| prison labour that causes issues by undercutting normal
| workers.
|
| One of the craziest takes on here, really saying something
| Arrath wrote:
| Yeah, no kidding.
|
| Might as well start harvesting organs, why not? /s
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Also the death penalty can allow some reimbursement of
| victims (via blood and plasma donation, etc.), without forced
| prison labour that causes issues by undercutting normal
| workers.
|
| Among the more minor reasons this is an insane take is that you
| can steal and sell body fluids from prisoners (and more of
| them, because they regenerate) as well as people you murder
| without forced prison labor, too (of course, if you are willing
| to steal and sell body parts, you probably are also willing to
| steal and sell labor, but doing one doesn't require the other.)
| Veliladon wrote:
| It sort of does. If something truly heinous pops up the DoJ will
| be more than happy to throw the petite policy into the trash and
| drag the suspect into federal court under the most tenuous of
| circumstances where they will be executed on behalf of that state
| that abolished the barbaric practice.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| maxwell wrote:
| pg's reason for ending the death penalty is conclusive to me.
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/real.html
| exclusiv wrote:
| I agree and it's also cheaper to house them in prison for life
| without parole than to do a murder trial, get them convicted
| and executed.
|
| So the system might be wrong about the conviction which is just
| an absolutely terrible thought and it's cheaper to skip the
| death penalty.
|
| So the only real possible benefit is that it could be 1) a
| deterrent and 2) closure for the family.
|
| But it seems life without parole is a pretty strong deterrent
| in itself. And part of the closure that the family perceives in
| an execution is, just a guess on my part, the fact that it
| takes so long and is emotionally draining that the family is
| also going through the long laborious process of a capital
| punishment conviction and execution.
|
| If you don't have a death penalty, what's the sense of closure
| a family gets knowing they got life without parole?
|
| I don't like death penalty because humans err and innocent
| people get killed, but I'm curious if the closure aspect of the
| death penalty is actually related to that process and not the
| closure they might get if they know they got the best possible
| conviction in a life without parole situation.
|
| In other words - if the death penalty is removed, it seems
| plausible that a family could get the same or more closure with
| a life without parole sentencing as they avoid the emotional
| and mentally draining death penalty case and process.
| kristjansson wrote:
| I have to imagine that any closure from the execution is
| theoretical at best. To sit and watch the life drain from
| someone, at your behast, with your input, and for your
| benefit?
| koolba wrote:
| At least you don't have to go to parole hearings every
| couple of years in fear that they're going to be released
| again.
| klyrs wrote:
| A family can get closure watching an innocent man die. How
| does this moral calculus work out?
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's a compelling rationale _for the US_ certainly, but I 'd
| argue that it's orthogonal to the important reforms to _stop
| convicting innocent people of crimes_.
|
| Examples of things America could do to improve on that,
| unrelated to executing people:
|
| - Forbid cops from lying when interviewing suspects. A fraction
| of people when confronted with bullshit accusations will shrug
| in resignation and let it wash over them. But many more get
| confused. If the cops seem sure I threatened a farm owner with
| a gun, then I guess maybe I did? They have CCTV footage after
| all, they say the tyre tracks are like fingerprints, nobody
| else in the world could have left those tracks...
|
| - Abolish cash bail. Either people are too dangerous to let
| loose, too likely to flee, or they're not. If anything being
| rich makes you _more_ able to flee than poor people. But cash
| bail makes people choose false confessions because it 's
| cheaper, which is not only unjust it creates a perverse
| incentive to accuse poor people of crimes they didn't do.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's orthogonal to the important reforms to stop
| convicting innocent people of crimes_
|
| This is a good ideal. But in practice unachievable.
|
| Realizing that, we should have mechanisms for double checking
| our work, correcting mistakes when found, implementing
| procedures to prevent it from happening again and minimizing
| the degree to which irreversible consequences are dealt.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I don't think this really iimplicates the death penalty
| specifically. Those 4% would still spend their lives in prison,
| and prison is a terrible place to be.
|
| I think the argument he's making is a good one, specifically
| for changing the way things are done with regard to
| prosecutions. Punishing innocent people is unjust, regardless
| what the punishment is.
|
| First and foremost, I think prosecutors who can be definitively
| proven to have lied or withheld evidence to get a conviction
| should be handed the same sentence they _attempted to get_ in
| the prosecution. Same goes for police, investigators and non-
| coerced witnesses. This would eliminate a good degree of the
| perverse incentive in the system, death penalty or no.
|
| Beyond that, I think we have too much faith in forensics and
| expert witnesses.
|
| I believe in the death penalty, and generally speaking corporal
| punishment. But I don't believe in using the death penalty as
| punishment, only as a way to remove otherwise uncorrectable
| violent people from society. So I'd support rules that only
| allow it on a second or later offense. But I do believe it
| should apply potentially to all haenous violent crimes,
| including rape, unlawful detention, armed robbery and the like,
| given repeated violations by the same individual. I also happen
| to believe that prison is barbaric and should be abolished.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Yeah, what I always try to bring up when people point out the
| possibility of executing innocent people is that the people
| on death row get the best shot at proving their innocence
| that society is willing to give them. No one else in prison
| gets more legal representation made available to them, both
| from the state and various non-profit groups.
|
| If somebody can't get off death row, it's not a matter of
| could, it's that they would have spent the rest of their life
| behind bars. So while, yes, convicting innocent people of
| crimes is evil, and absolutely must be avoided at all cost,
| it's not really a compelling argument against the death
| penalty, unless you have a really sunshine-and-roses view on
| rotting in a jail cell.
|
| My personal view is that the death penalty should mostly be
| reserved for cases where the question of a trial isn't so
| much "did this person commit this act" as much as it is "did
| the act this person commit constitute a capital offense". War
| criminals are the quintessential example. It's public
| knowledge that the suspect was in charge of a group of
| soldiers, and those soldiers took certain actions. The war
| crime tribunal isn't trying to figure out if you did it,
| they're trying to figure out if they should kill you for it.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Why can't we just admit we don't need any war tribunal? We
| won we get to kill your King and anyone else we like. Right
| by conquest.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| > Those 4% would still spend their lives in prison, and
| prison is a terrible place to be.
|
| You're missing the point. If someone is incarcerated and
| later found to be innocent, they can be released. If someone
| is executed and later found to be innocent, nothing can be
| done.
| notch898c wrote:
| Don't death row inmates get the most exhaustive appeals
| process of practically any class of prisoners? Honestly if
| I were innocent I think I'd prefer to be on death row which
| has the most costly (to the state) and exhaustive of all
| the appeals processes.
|
| This change could counterintuitively condemn more innocent
| people.
| clcaev wrote:
| nothing brings back their lost years, family, health, or
| occupation
| chmod775 wrote:
| > I don't think this really iimplicates the death penalty
| specifically. Those 4% would still spend their lives in
| prison, and prison is a terrible place to be.
|
| You can set a prisoner free and try to compensate them for
| being wrongfully imprisoned. You can't un-kill someone.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yeah, the whole "death is the only irreversible punishment"
| is pretty weak. 60 years in prison starting at age 18 is
| pretty darn irreversible too.
| paxys wrote:
| Solid argument, but it's funny to call it "pg's reason" when it
| has been at the forefront of the capital punishment debate for
| literally hundreds of years.
| javawizard wrote:
| I mean I call plenty of things "so-and-so's reason" for
| something, even if they're not the originator of the idea but
| just the person I and whomever I'm talking with happen to
| know about it from.
|
| This seems like a silly linguistic nitpick to die on.
| skadamou wrote:
| The crux of PG's argument
|
| "This circus of incompetence and dishonesty is the real issue
| with the death penalty. We don't even reach the point where
| theoretical questions about the moral justification or
| effectiveness of capital punishment start to matter, because so
| many of the people sentenced to death are actually innocent.
| Whatever it means in theory, in practice capital punishment
| means killing innocent people."
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| If you've ever seen some of the background info when death
| penalty cases are overturned, it is _extremely_ clear that a
| lot of people have a very scary definition of "beyond a
| reasonable doubt". I was in jury duty once and one of the
| attorneys went around and asked "What do you think about the
| statement that 'It's better to let 5 guilty men go free than
| put 1 innocent man in prison.'" The _majority_ of people said
| they disagreed, that was too many guilty people going free. I
| 'm thinking to myself "So these people are all OK with ~16%
| of prisoners being innocent? Are they all sadists?" I realize
| a lot of it is that people are just bad at math, but it
| general it's clear to me that, in a lot of trials the jury
| doesn't really differentiate between the "beyond a reasonable
| doubt" and "preponderance of the evidence" standards.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Took me five seconds even as a young college student to realize
| why the death penalty was absolutely ludicrous. You can reverse
| a life sentence in the event that new evidence comes to light
| exonerating the defendant, you can't reverse death.
| mynameishere wrote:
| [flagged]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life.
| Can you give it to them?"
| eropple wrote:
| _> It 's wildly rare for the innocent to get wronged here._
|
| This is objectively false.
|
| https://innocenceproject.org/the-death-penalty/
|
| And even if it weren't? One is too many.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Man, there are people in this world who just need taken out
| and shot.
|
| >But then I've always been evil.
|
| Yeah, that tracks.
| runarberg wrote:
| The main problem with this thinking--aside from any moral
| values, and the permanence of wrongful convictions--is who gets
| to decide on who "deserves" death. This was the reason WA's
| supreme court struck down the death penalty in 2018 (read, this
| bill only reinforced a ban already in place via the justice
| system), as it ruled that the death penalty--as executed prior
| to 2018--was inherently a racist penalty. That is the rule in
| which it was applied, did so seemingly arbitrarily for equal
| crimes, while still following racial lines.
|
| Your second argument holds no water. CA, which still has the
| death penalty, is spending way more money on death row
| prisoners than on prisoners sentenced to life without the
| possibility of parole.
|
| EDIT: Since this is HN, the court decision in 2018 was directly
| based of a regression analysis by researchers in UW, the study
| is available here
| https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/legacy/documents/WashRace...
| (PDF)
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| > Man, there are people in this world who just need taken out
| and shot.
|
| Why do they _need_ to be shot? Is there something that would
| prevent society from imprisoning them for as long as needed?
| mynameishere wrote:
| _Is there something that would prevent society from
| imprisoning them for as long as needed_
|
| Yes, political change could prevent that.
|
| As a more practical matter, remember that you have a wild
| spectrum of crimes called "murder". At one end, you have some
| clueless cop restraining an OD while waiting for the
| ambulance he himself ordered. On the other end, you have the
| "hi fi murderers" who forced their victims to drink Drano in
| order to eliminate witnesses of their rape and robbery. To
| me, a public policy of keeping the same punishment for both
| crimes will effect the cost-benefit analysis that even flunky
| criminals are capable of performing. (Sometimes.)
|
| And partly, it's just a matter of vindictiveness. Someone who
| kills people by forcing them to drink Drano just needs
| removed from the species.
|
| That's an irrational evil feeling, but then everyone else
| seems motivated by irrational kumbaya feelings.
| shanecleveland wrote:
| A take I recently heard:
|
| You either have to believe ...
|
| The state doesn't make mistakes.
|
| OR
|
| The state sometimes kills innocent people.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| This can be addressed by simply raising the bar for delivering
| such a sentence however. "Reasonable doubt" is a moderately
| high precision bar. It's intentionally not higher.
| paxys wrote:
| People want the bar to be raised to a point where there is a
| 0% error rate. This effectively means abolishing the death
| penalty.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| I disagree. There's a difference between basically never
| used and not actually possible.
| LiquidInsect wrote:
| Raise that bar however high you want; you cannot completely
| eliminate the possibility of a mistake.
| sadhorse wrote:
| The defendant has been recognized by no less than 15
| people. His DNA was found all over the crime scene . The
| victim's blood was found at his clothes. A video recording
| made by a surveillance camera depicts the whole murder. He
| himself confessed.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Since we're on completely unrealistic scenarios anyway:
| that could still be a set up with a false confession.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| Yep. That's what I'm saying. Starting with a required
| confession is a good start. You could make it as hard as
| requiring the jury to fail to come up with any other
| believable narrative.
|
| It's ok if a criminal can avoid the death penalty by
| blatantly refusing to confess in light of obviously
| incriminating evidence.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| The real murderer was his long-lost twin, who had
| previously kidnapped him in a cell, performed the murders
| and the confession, then snuck out and swapped them!
| f1refly wrote:
| The murder has been staged. Organized crime found a
| doppelganger, made him wear the victims clothes and kill
| the other guy on cctv. They contacted the victim and told
| him to either confess or they will kill his children and
| parents.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The death penalty isn't common at all. I'm seeing 18
| individuals for 2022 and also that 2022 was the eighth
| consecutive year with less than 30 individuals served the death
| penalty. I'm finding it hard to believe that many mistakes were
| made with that few number of individuals (the data was kinda
| tough to find so I welcome better data if anyone has it).
|
| [0]https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/2021
| shanecleveland wrote:
| >> "I'm finding it hard to believe that many mistakes wee
| made ..."
|
| So you are OK with a a few mistakes, as opposed to many?
|
| Point is also that it is possible that a mistake will be
| made. We know wrongful convictions have occurred, including
| for those on death row.
| tialaramex wrote:
| What is "many" here? How many times is it OK for us to
| execute you for a crime you didn't commit? Is it alright so
| long as we only kill you once?
|
| It took a matter of minutes to find that Toforest Johnson was
| successfully convicted of murder based on somebody claiming
| they overheard him confessing. The prosecution had concealed
| from the defence the fact that they _paid_ this witness a
| substantial sum of money. That sort of bullshit shouldn 't
| work to give somebody a traffic ticket, never mind a _death
| sentence_ and yet sure enough US courts thought that was good
| enough.
| roblabla wrote:
| The very website you link has data about exonerations[0].
| From a quick look, it looks like this is about people who are
| still alive, not dead people found innocent after the death
| penalty was carried through (I'm having a hard time finding
| that specific datapoint). Given the exoneration data though,
| I'd have a hard time believing that number is 0.
|
| [0]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence
|
| EDIT: Oh boy that rabbit hole is deep. So here's some
| _potentially_ innocent people who have been put to death[1].
| None of those are actually proven to be innocent, but there
| is at least some amount of evidence that spells reasonable
| doubt on their conviction.
|
| [1]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-
| issues/innocence/execute...
| lumb63 wrote:
| This is a straw man designed to appeal to people who are
| distrusting of government. Almost all states which have the
| death penalty deliver it by jury sentencing, and all but one
| require it be unanimous. In most cases this issue has nothing
| to do with the state.
| shanecleveland wrote:
| I believe "state" is ambiguous here. The "state" brings the
| charges and recommends the penalty.
| gdoug wrote:
| Replace "state" with "legal process" and the point still
| stands.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| It isn't even a hypothetical. There is a long list of people
| who were proven to be innocent after they were executed, using
| DNA testing, someone else confessing or however else.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Lots of people here who are against the dealth penalty. Why is it
| so hard to empathize with the victims yet so easy for them to
| empathize with the murderers? Murderers go on death row, not
| petty criminals. What's the margin for error? How many of these
| murderers do you think are innocent? "One is too many" is not
| enough to justify a complete abolition of the death penalty. Life
| in prison sentencing ought to be used more, in consideration of
| those in the margin of error.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Why is it so hard to empathize with the victims yet so easy
| for them to empathize with the murderers?
|
| Because it's not a zero-sum game. You can feel bad for _both_.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Because biasing in favor of false negatives over false
| positives is a fundamental tenet of our system of justice?
| paxys wrote:
| > Why is it so hard to empathize with the victims
|
| How is a tit-for-tat killing "empathizing with the victims" in
| any way?
| crockeo wrote:
| I don't believe in the death penalty because I believe taking a
| human life, no matter the context, is amoral. A murderer may
| have already committed that injustice, but it does not mean
| they deserve the same. To me there is no imbalance in empathy
| just an alignment with that core belief.
| least wrote:
| > Why is it so hard to empathize with the victims yet so easy
| for them to empathize with the murderers?
|
| It's not hard. It's in fact very easy to empathize with victims
| and difficult to empathize with criminals. I just find it very
| much worthwhile to be empathetic towards all humans, even the
| ones that do terrible things because doing so allows us to
| understand humanity better and in turn may help prevent people
| from doing terrible things in the future.
|
| > "One is too many" is not enough to justify a complete
| abolition of the death penalty.
|
| Actually, it does in fact, do just that. Why do you think it
| doesn't? You're basically saying the value of a person who
| deserves to die's death (or many of their deaths) is more
| valuable than an innocent person's life. To me it's quite clear
| that's not the case.
| klyrs wrote:
| I don't empathize with victims' desire for blood sacrifice,
| knowing that the accused may be innocent, and the real murderer
| may still walk free. I absolutely empathize with them for their
| trauma and their loss, but killing people is not an acceptable
| response to grief.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-20 23:02 UTC)