Why lethal injection for the death penalty and why not let prisoners move up their executions?

[Valjean]

I'd say the recent mass murderers we've seen in the news were an impulsive lot. Lot's of murders are impulsive crimes of passion.

 

[Poisonshady313]

I'd say the recent mass murderers we've seen in the news were an impulsive lot. Lot's of murders are impulsive crimes of passion.

I'll pick one at random. Las Vegas. There is nobody that could, with a straight face, suggest that the Las Vegas shooting was impulsive. The stockpile of weapons and ammo scream PREMEDITATION.

But here's a couple of fun facts:

1. Nevada has only executed 12 people since 1976. So while capital punishment is technically on the books, it's essentially/effectively a non-capital punishment state.
2. He couldn't possibly have been deterred by the consequences because there were no consequences. He killed himself. It kinda helps my point. When there are no consequences, there's no reason to avoid committing the crime.


Go ahead and pick one of the recent mass shootings that you believe actually was impulsive, and explain why.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

He killed himself.

Yet another good reason to dismiss the idea of capital punishment working as a crime deterrent.

I have very little reason to believe that 59 of the 1465 executions since 1976 were errors.

I do.

(you'd have to prove 15 wrongful executions)

That's not how the justice system works. It's
innocent until proven guilty not the other way around. Exoneration happen because the guilty convictions were thrown into strong enough doubt that the case is no longer worthy of a guilty convictions. It's not anyone's job to prove innocence to you, it is someone's job to prove guilt. And in the case of murder trials, we botch it. A lot.

In fact, Texas makes my point for me...

Not really. As Texas doesn't show any inverse higher deterrence as states with less execution. There's no magic 'we need to kill x number of people before deterrence starts working, that's just silly. (And disturbing.)


Until I'm shown otherwise, I'm quite comfortable stating: There is literally no reason to believe execution helps prevent crime, that people were and are convicted and sentenced to death when innocent, and that execution is something the civilized world is largely putting behind it and I'll be happy to see it go in my country as well.

 

[Poisonshady313]

Yet another good reason to dismiss the idea of capital punishment working as a crime deterrent.

I didn't say it was working. Only that it could work. We don't have enough data to say either way.

That's not how the justice system works. It's
innocent until proven guilty not the other way around.

When a jury unanimously votes "guilty", that means that the prosecution has proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, the guilt of the accused.
If you want anyone to take seriously the idea that the system has at least a 1% rate of executing innocent people, you need to be able to show who those 15 innocent people were and how you know.

Exoneration happen because the guilty convictions were thrown into strong enough doubt that the case is no longer worthy of a guilty convictions. It's not anyone's job to prove innocence to you, it is someone's job to prove guilt. And in the case of murder trials, we botch it. A lot.

And the fact that exoneration happens is a testament to the effectiveness of the appeals process, further decreasing the likelihood of executing innocent people.

Not really. As Texas doesn't show any inverse higher deterrence as states with less execution.

Saying things like that makes it seem like you didn't bother to read what I said beyond where you cut off the quote.
More directly, saying things like that makes it seem like you don't understand my point.

There's no magic 'we need to kill x number of people before deterrence starts working, that's just silly. (And disturbing.)

I'm not suggesting there is a magic number. But it's hard to deny that the sample size is entirely too small to make a determination with any significance.

If a year goes by where only 5 death penalty states execute inmates, averaged out at 4 apiece, there's nothing you can say about the death penalty's effect on anything in the other 26 death penalty states. And not a lot you can say about the death penalty in general when only two-thirds of 1% of death row inmates were executed that year. Except to say that it barely exists. Especially when the state with the largest death row hasn't executed anybody in over a decade.