Against abortion for any reason? What about the death penalty?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Why? Appeals process can exonerate an innocent person from death row, and innocent people can die serving a life sentence.

Why is a the death of an innocent lifer (or even an innocent someone who dies while serving a short term) less devastating and more acceptable than a wrongful execution?

It's not. You're not getting the point.

Here's how it works:

Let's say that, on average, death penalties are carried out several years after conviction, giving time for appeal. Life imprisonment sentences also allow appeals during the same period, so we can cancel this out as common to both options.

So... assuming the prisoner is innocent, what are the chances of exonoration and release beyond the point that the death sentence would be carried out?

Case 1 - death penalty: 0. The guy's already dead.
Case 2 - life imprisonment: some non-zero value. Let's call it 'X'.

This means that the cost in case 2 is as follows:

- D is the probability of death in prison
- L is the value of a life (or the cost of a wrongful death)
- X is the probability of exonoration before dying in prison (what I mentioned before)
- Y is the value of a year (or the cost of a year in prison)
- Z is the number of years from when execution would've occurred until release

The expected cost of a life sentence of an innocent person for the period beyond when an execution would've occurred is:

Ex(life) = DL + XYZ

D = 1 - X (since these are the only two options), therefore

Ex(life) = (1 - X) L + XYZ
= L - XL + XYZ
= L - X(L - YZ)

Compare this to the expected value of the death penalty:

Ex(death) = L

So...

The difference between them, i.e. the difference in cost of life imprisonment vs. the death penalty, is:

Ex(death) - Ex(life)
= L - [L - X(L - YZ)]
= X (L - YZ)

IOW, when a person is wrongfully convicted, we can expect less cost in human suffering as long as:

- there's any chance of exonoration and release whatsoever, and
- the time spent in prison presents less of a human cost than death.

I hope that even you can admit that the first point is true.

And since I've never once heard of a wrongfully convicted person complaining that he wishes he had been killed (including Steven Truscott, who spent nearly 50 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit), I'd say that the second point is true as well.

 

[Poisonshady313]

So you'd be okay with wrongly executing 99 people, if 100 lives were saved by executing 1 person?

okay isn't the word I'd use. But consider your question.

If executing 1 person saves 100 lives, and executing 99 people saves 9,900 lives... would you rather be responsible for the loss of 99 innocent lives, or 9,900?

It's a terrible choice to make, but getting rid of the death penalty doesn't guarantee that those 99 innocent peoples lives won't be lost to the state during the course of incarceration.

 

[Falvlun]

I am limited pro-choice (I am partial to the 12-week limit of Denmark), and against the death penalty for practical considerations (not because I am morally against killing someone for murder).

This sums up my position to a tee.

 

[Songbird]

And what I've been getting at is, while more innocent people will be exonerated from prison than death row, more innocent people will die in prison than on death row... because there are more innocent people in prison than there are on death row.

As long as a death row inmate is alive, there's a chance to reverse wrongful sentencing.

When you get rid of the death penalty, the risk of the state taking an innocent person's life doesn't decrease.



Permanence happens at the moment of death, regardless of whether it was by injection or by any other means. "But the situations vary" is meaningless once a wrongfully imprisoned person dies while wrongfully imprisoned.

I think you're conflating death with cause of death. Where a person is located at the time of death doesn't dictate calling it murder or execution. If someone dies of natural causes while in prison, it's not at the hands of another person. Of course some die at the hands of inmates. That's also tragic. And probably not nearly as common as any other possible outcome.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

okay isn't the word I'd use. But consider your question.

If executing 1 person saves 100 lives, and executing 99 people saves 9,900 lives... would you rather be responsible for the loss of 99 innocent lives, or 9,900?

It's a terrible choice to make, but getting rid of the death penalty doesn't guarantee that those 99 innocent peoples lives won't be lost to the state during the course of incarceration.

I'm not for the state-sanctioned murder of any innocent people. I hold society to a higher standard than a criminal. Call me crazy.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If all the risks inherent with the death penalty still remain in a system that operates without the death penalty, all you do when you take away the death penalty is take away the benefits, which is the protection of those innocent people who might otherwise die at the hands of murderers that escape or are released.

But the risks don't all remain. The risk that you've caused the death of an innocent person is 100% in the case of a wrongful execution, but much less than this in the case of wrongful imprisonment.

The risk of error in a system without the death penalty is just as horrible and irreversible as is the risk of error with the death penalty.

No, it's not, because after the moment when a person would be executed, only one approach still remains reversible.

Facts are facts. I'm not relying on the webpage to interpret those facts. It just conveniently already has them written down.

No; it seems you're relying on innumeracy.

Many of those listed weren't even sentenced to death. I'm saying that for what they were initially convicted for, they should have been. And for the ones that had been sentenced to death, they should have been put to death. Had death sentences been imposed and carried out in these cases, the whole page worth of victims would not have been victims.

And as long as that number is higher than the number of people wrongly executed, the risk of not having the death penalty is greater and more troubling than the risk of having the death penalty.

From 2000 to today, there have been 206 exonorations of death row inmated based on DNA evidence (source). This represents, on average, about 20 exonorations per year.

Over the same period, the average death row population of the US has been 3332. This means that, on average, every year, about 0.6% of the people on death row have been actually found out to be innocent. This has to be taken as a lower limit of people who were actually innocent.

Over the same period, how many murders were committed by people either on death row or released from death row?

 

[Badran]

Would you agree that a death caused by the existence of the police force meets the same criteria?

Anyone feel free to address my question in post # 141, its aimed at anyone in general.

I think its fair for me at this point to take the lack of answers as a resounding yes (even if temporarily).

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

okay isn't the word I'd use. But consider your question.

If executing 1 person saves 100 lives, and executing 99 people saves 9,900 lives... would you rather be responsible for the loss of 99 innocent lives, or 9,900?

It's a terrible choice to make, but getting rid of the death penalty doesn't guarantee that those 99 innocent peoples lives won't be lost to the state during the course of incarceration.

Have you actually thought through what you're saying? Do you think that anyone on death row - even the most psychopathic mass murderer - would ever kill 100 people in prison?

 

[Songbird]

I think its fair for me at this point to take the lack of answers as a resounding yes (even if temporarily).

It looks like you mean any wrongful death related to police? I think we'd have to narrow it down to something specific to compare to the death penalty. Unless I misunderstand?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Over the same period, the average death row population of the US has been 3332.

Forgot to give my source for this. Here it is: Death Row Inmates by State and Size of Death Row by Year | Death Penalty Information Center

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I think its fair for me at this point to take the lack of answers as a resounding yes (even if temporarily).

If a police officer wrongly kills someone, they should be prosecuted according to the law. What's your argument?

 

[Acim]

Pro-Choice as I feel everyone has a right to choose.

Pro death penalty as some acts deserve it.

Hence the reason some abortionists may deserve the death penalty

(by this faulty logic)

 

[Acim]

There is a difference between a clump of cells and a potentially innocent human being.

And what would that difference be? Are the clump of cells guilty of something? Or is the human being not a clump of cells?

 

[Badran]

It looks like you mean any wrongful death related to police? I think we'd have to narrow it down to something specific to compare to the death penalty. Unless I misunderstand?

If a police officer wrongly kills someone, they should be prosecuted according to the law. What's your argument?

Basically what is the difference between our acceptance of the existence of the police force which causes in some exceptional cases death to innocent people meeting the same criteria that occurs (and to which you object) when a person is killed because of the existence of the death sentence?

And note that i clarified that i do agree that the system as it is right now should be improved in regards to what cases on which we can apply a death penalty. The difference that point makes is that i'm clarifying that i'm not okay at all with the current mistakes, since they most can be avoided by producing a better system, or at the very least some of them.

(Just clarifying that i'm wondering mainly about why not seek a better system rather than oppose death penalty altogether due to the sloppiness of the current one).

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The DPIC, an anti death penalty organization, can't come up with more than 9 names of possibly innocent people who have been executed since 1976.

Do you think that just might be because in an organization with limited resources, they devote more energy to saving lives than clearing the names of the dead?

I haven't seen any evidence that at least 60 of the last 1270 executed people were innocent.

Have you?

Sure. Take a look at the factors at play in the cases of exonoration. You'll find the same ones at play in many executions.

The Innocence Project gives four main causes of wrongful convictions:

- eyewitness misidentification testimony
- unvalidated or improper forensic science
- false confessions and incriminating statements
- informants

The Innocence Project - Facts on Post-Conviction DNA Exonerations

Knowing that these factors happen often enough that we can be certain that they led to wrongful convictions at least about 1 case in 160 that we know of, you'd have to be a complete fool to think that none of them were present and everything had happened perfectly the rest of the time.

 

[Acim]

Those of you against the death penalty let me ask you something.

How do you afford life for a convicted criminal when he/she didn't give that option to their victim?

By standing by principle that if it wasn't right when first done, it probably isn't right the 2nd time it is done. I am yet to find an exception to this principle.

 

[Poisonshady313]

It's not. You're not getting the point.

Here's how it works:

Let's say that, on average, death penalties are carried out several years after conviction, giving time for appeal. Life imprisonment sentences also allow appeals during the same period, so we can cancel this out as common to both options.

So... assuming the prisoner is innocent, what are the chances of exonoration and release beyond the point that the death sentence would be carried out?

Case 1 - death penalty: 0. The guy's already dead.
Case 2 - life imprisonment: some non-zero value. Let's call it 'X'.

There's already a fault in here. If you're measuring at the point that the sentence is carried out, a life sentence isn't fully served until death. You canceled out appeals for death sentences and therefore didn't consider it in the chances of being exonerated. Yet you also canceled out the appeals for life sentences, but included it in the chances of being exonerated.

There's a double standard here. Which is kinda the main point I've been trying to make. The death of a wrongly incarcerated person is just as irreversible and just as intolerable as the death of a wrongly executed person, yet only the death penalty is spoken of as if it's the only option with irreversible consequences.

IOW, when a person is wrongfully convicted, we can expect less cost in human suffering as long as:

- there's any chance of exonoration and release whatsoever, and

No, we can't. You say we can because you're employing a double standard. You wrongly canceled out consideration of appeals for the death penalty without similarly doing so for a life sentence.

An inmate who isn't exonerated before the completion of a life sentence cannot be released.

And because the population of death row is so much smaller than the prison system in general, the same rate of exoneration is still going to result in a greater cost in innocent life for the non-death row population because there are more innocent people incarcerated than are sentenced to death.

 

[Poisonshady313]

I'll come back to this thread later tonight. I got stuff to do.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Basically what is the difference between our acceptance of the existence of the police force which causes in some exceptional cases death to innocent people meeting the same criteria that occurs (and to which you object) when a person is killed because of the existence of the death sentence?

The death penalty is applied by the system. A police officer wrongly killing someone is an individual committing a crime.

(Just clarifying that i'm wondering mainly about why not seek a better system rather than oppose death penalty altogether due to the sloppiness of the current one).

I'm all for improving pretty much every aspect of our system. I did say that I was theoretically for executing criminals who commit severe crimes and who are not able to be rehabilitated. The problem is that a death penalty system is too easy to be misused because of things such as bias and people with political agendas. I don't know if I'd ever be comfortable trusting that the state was not putting innocent people to death.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Basically what is the difference between our acceptance of the existence of the police force which causes in some exceptional cases death to innocent people meeting the same criteria that occurs (and to which you object) when a person is killed because of the existence of the death sentence?

Both have benefits and costs. In the case of the police, the benefit of having them is overwhelming compared to the cost associated with them. Also, many of the benefits of police couldn't be had any other way.

In the case of the death penalty, the opposite is true: the cost overwhelms any potential benefit, and the few benefits that it does provide can be obtained at much lower cost.

For instance, Poisonshady talked about the benefit in terms of prevention of further murders. Well, we can compare this to other options to acheive the same ends: segregation of dangerous offenders from others, for instance. Or maybe improving guard-to-prisoner ratios in prisons.

If the problem we're trying to address is how to prevent prisoners from killing other prisoners (which I do agree is a problem), then it's not just a matter of saying "oh... the death penalty will reduce the number of prison murders"; it's a matter of comparing the cost and effectiveness of ALL the options to acheive that goal and seeing which one is best.

And I don't think for a second that executing convicted murderers is the best option to acheive this goal.

And note that i clarified that i do agree that the system as it is right now should be improved in regards to what cases on which we can apply a death penalty. The difference that point makes is that i'm clarifying that i'm not okay at all with the current mistakes, since they most can be avoided by producing a better system, or at the very least some of them.

(Just clarifying that i'm wondering mainly about why not seek a better system rather than oppose death penalty altogether due to the sloppiness of the current one).

But why keep the death penalty? That's the other question in all this. It's only worth preserving if it's something of value. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that it is of value.