The Glade 4.0

I like living in a place where people aren't needlessly killing eachother as much. It's just a personal preference. I don't understand what's so difficult about this.

This deserves repeating...

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

So would I, and I will some day. I'm just not there yet. For today we have to deal with the reality of the situation: people are needlessly killing each other and we need to do what it takes as a nation to do that. You've already conceded that there are people out there who need killing. That's why we have a very careful and selective death penalty.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

And yet at least 1/10 people executed probably didn't do it. (More like 2 to 3 out of 10.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Yeah, I don't buy that. 20-30% is much too high I would think. For capital cases.

I think I'm in agreement on this. 10%, maybe 15% at the outside. But potentially better than 10%, too.

Now, here's a thought. Wikipedia lists 1,245 executions in the U.S. since 1976, with an additional 3,252 currently on death row. We'll assume that we suddenly crack down on appeals, and execute all the remaining death row inmates. That's a total of 4,497 executed people since 1976. Wiki reports the national murder rate over the last decade as 5.5 per 100,000 population. Given a population of 308 million (okay, that's probably high because it's the most recent census, but whatever, this is just back of the envelope stuff), that equates to just shy of 17,000 murders a year. Since our stats are for executions since '76, that's 25 years, for 423,500 murders in the time we've dished out 4,497 death sentences (or unresolved appeals that might still yield a death sentence that is carried out). Now, we'll take Taly's worst case estimate, and assume that 30% of them are innocent. That's roughly 1,500 innocent people we've killed, or might yet kill in the name of justice. So, if, over the last 25 years, 425,000 people were going to murder somebody, but only 1,500 of them had second thoughts due to a deterrent effect to capital punishment, we've broken even on "innocent lives capital punishment has taken vs. saved." 1,500 out of 425,000 isn't a big percentage. If around 1 in 300 murderers reconsider their actions, then the deterrent has netted lives saved, even by Taly's worst expectations of our justice system.

And that's not even trying to take into account other capital crimes. That's just straight murder, where the accounting is easy to deal with without making judgement calls about how many aborted kidnappings is worth an innocent life, etc.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This isn't a mathematical sum game. Killing one innocent person is a far worse option than letting 100 guilty ones live...or 1,000 guilty ones, or 10,000 guilty ones, it simply doesn't matter how many or guilty. That one guy who didn't do it overrides them all.

If there is any possibility that you will kill an innocent person with the death penalty, it shouldn't be an option, ever.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The same could be said about imprisonment, and I agree. However, at some point, you have to accept that you will have flaws in your system, work to minimize those flaws, and move forward.

You can't allow yourself to be paralyzed because everything's not perfect.

Imprisonment is not permanent. If someone is later found to be innocent, they can be released and compensated for their time. Sure, you might never find out, and nothing really compensates for time taken from your life, but its far more correctable than "dead."

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I never conceded that. I don't think people who have been captured need to be killed. Killing someone who is harmless and imprisoned is not a necessary kill.

It's all the same to me. Prison/execution/life altering fines. They are terrible, terrible things to do to innocent people. It's not acceptable just because they aren't dead. At some point, you have to accept that there will be mistakes and move on.

Killing is far worse because it destroys your brain matter, whereas false imprisonment just changes your sensory inputs.

I agree. However, my point is, if you later find out the verdict was wrong, you can usually correct all but one of those mistakes. If you didn't commit the crime, you still have hope.

That is, unless you're dead.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Exactly. And as for this not being a zero sum game, Taly -- by your logic, we shouldn't imprison anybody, and let murderers run around killing more people. But it's okay, because we haven't wrongfully punished anybody, and we're not killing anybody.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

To the best of my knowledge, there's never been any proof that anyone was wrongfully executed in the US. Several claims have been made, but not a single verified case has emerged.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I guess I forgot about that magical appeals process for dead people.

As I've always said, when someone supports a particular issue, I only wish that "issue" visited upon that person. It's the only way to force them to see from an opposite perspective...like watching your son or daughter being in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe with the influence of a corrupt cop, being convicted of a death penalty-worthy crime, and watch the otherwise evil state power that you would argue against in every other situation, snuff out the life of your child, but I guess it's okay this time.

(another post since I've written this) Just because a thing hasn't been proven to occur doesn't negate the common sense that it can.

Appeal to fear.

My children are way more likely to be killed in a car accident but I'm still pro-car.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

No, death is far worse than imprisonment by a long shot. That is not what she is saying. The willingness to let innocent people you don't know die is... The chances of it happening to you and your loved ones is statistically improbable, so it's cool. There's no benefit from killing them, why risk killing innocents!? Vengeance? You're accepting a risk on behalf of other people. That's just **** heartless imo. Arathain thinks life in prison is just as bad as the DP. Well, not everyone would agree and I don't think you should make that choice for others. I would rather live, even in prison, than have someone take the only life I have. There's no evidence that the DP reduces murder rates, so we get no benefit from having the DP.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder- ... -and-state

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocen ... th-penalty

They don't generally investigate anymore after an innocent person has already been killed, Task.


Life is full of injustices that we have no control over. This is one we do. There is no reason innocent people need to be put on death row, ever.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One of the problems with the death penalty, or rather with the opposition to it, is maximum security prisons. The culture inside a maximum security prison is dehumanizing, and takes inmates who could have otherwise been rehabilitated and turns them into savages. Someone who is serving a life sentence with the hopes that he's innocent and may get out one day is spending time alongside other life inmates who will never get out, and place no value on human life. Moreover, lots of the life inmates are trying to end their sentence early - that means starting fights and killing another inmate, forcing the guards to put him down like a dog. One day, your innocent man stops receiving contact from outside as friends and family either give up, or believe he's guilty.

While he's in jail, he either kills his assailant, gets raped, or becomes a rapist himself. It doesn't matter that he's innocent. The other inmates don't care. They're not innocent, and they're not getting out. Until our innocent man is released, he has to deal with the other inmates every single day. This is an environment in which, if you report being raped to one of the guards, you have a good chance of being told, "So what? You're gay. You enjoy it." (Incidentally, in maximum security prison, once you're raped for the first time, you've just become gay). Life in a maximum security prison dehumanizes the guards.

If someone is wrongly convicted of a capital crime, and doesn't get the death penalty, they're going to maximum security. When that person comes out, his time in prison has made him a hardened criminal even if he went in as an innocent man. As I said before, if he doesn't end up getting raped, he's coming out as either a rapist or a killer. You can not undo that. Opposition to the death penalty on the grounds that a life sentence can always be undone by simply setting the man free fails to recognize the damage that such an environment does to a person. Now, that failure is not entirely the fault of opponents of capital punishment. Maximum security prison is a place where we stick people to forget about them. We don't want to think about them. We just want to get them out of the way, and pretend they're someplace where they have rights but aren't upsetting society.

Until a society is willing to address that its prison system turns both inmates and guards into animals, just letting the wrongfully convicted go free doesn't cut it. He's lived for twenty years among savages who place no value on human life. You can't just say, "Oops!" and let him out. It's also the height of hubris to act like it was better than killing him. The man who got sentenced twenty years prior is dead either way.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Coro, this sounds like a whole heaping helping of pontification without much more than a drop of surface subject knowledge, or understanding. Does it happen? Absolutely. Is it the norn? Maybe. Is it without exception? Certainly not. But most importantly, does it give you the right to deny an innocent man his freedom simply by declaring him emotionally and socially dead from the moment of incarceration?

I'll let you answer the last for yourself.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Coro, that's insane. If he's been turned into an animal, that's not his fault, and I'm not living in such fear of others that I'll deny him his liberty unjustly because he might be scary.

Furthermore, you're making quite a few pretty bold statements there, that should be easily backed up. I don't buy alot of your assumptions, there.

Cool isn't the word I'd use. I was going more for acceptable risk or even necessary ill.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

What makes it necessary? What makes it acceptable to risk others lives?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As I outlined above, since we're talking about crimes that would merit capital punishment, we are already risking lives even if the defendant does not receive the death penalty. When we send an innocent man to maximum security prison, we are getting back a hardened criminal. He's going to become one while he's in jail. Even the guards have their humanity eroded inside those facilities.

If you wrongfully convict an innocent man and send him to one of those facilities, you have destroyed a human being just as surely as if you execute him. If you later exonerate the man, he doesn't come back out again. An entirely different man, wearing his skin, comes out.

The fact that there is still a body that's breathing doesn't lend any moral superiority to opponents of the death penalty.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

You're looking lazy because you're spounting an unsupported opinion in a discussion forum. We call people who hold opinions that they have no articulable reason for either "lazy" (because they can't be bothered to explore the issue enough to form an opinion they can at least try to support) or "Stupid" (becuase they are unable to do so)

Generally part of the reason to state an opinion is that you think others should agree with it; it's rather silly to hold an opinion you don't think others should adopt. If you can't give them any good reason to, then why would they?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."