The cost stems from the number of appeals that are available to someone sentenced to death, not corruption. The purpose of these appeals is to minimize the risk of error. Get rid of the "bureaucratic nightmare" to make it easier to convict and execute, and you will have more innocent people executed. Simple as that.
Again, every single person who is convicted and sentenced to death in the US is convicted based on evidence that convinced a unanimous jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Every. One. Still, mistakes happen, even when everyone involved is honest and trying their best to do right. Mistakes are inevitable. If you have the death penalty, killing innocent people will be inevitable. Period. How many innocent people are you comfortable executing compared to the truly guilty so that you can satisfy your desire for vengeance? 1 in 100? 1 in 20?
I don't get why this kind of reasoning is so popular when it comes to the death penalty, but not when it comes to making new people. Why is creating a shitty life less of a horrifying consequence than snuffing out a good life? The good/bad outcome ratios seem in the same ball-park at the very least. Anyway, that's not really on topic. Just an unsolicited outburst of antinatalism.
Why not just raise the standards for death penalty to be higher than "beyond reasonable doubt" then. Take out the word reasonable or something. There's people that are clearly guilty beyond any doubt.
That's because you still have to account the innocent people who are wrongfully convicted. There are many reasons why they're wrongfully convicted. There might be corrupt police, tampered evidence, influential families, terrible defense lawyers, unreasonable judges, racially-charged accusations, emotional juries, and many more. Those may end up having innocent man behind the bars, or worse, inside the noose. Even if they pleaded guilty, there are factors that they did that. Maybe financial constraints, early societal judgment from social media, peer pressure from estranged family members, etc.
the evidence should be damning beyond doubt to qualify for death penalty. What does that even mean to account for innocence if it can not be a possibility?
Here are the list of names who are in death row, only to be exonerated when DNA testing has been used.
Thats not damning evidence and rape is bad example. I am talking about a murder fully unprovoked, first degree, witnessed, well documented with video, confessed to, history and motive. How could a solid case like this qualify for possibility of innocence at all?
This site is many things other than a pro choice forum. Discussions are open and off topic stuff does not have to reflect a certain value system. My mind is boggled by many people who think so many things are beyond discussion and re-examining. I dont think it is moot either. Just like the world can go forward on issues it can also go backward. We dont have some universal guarantee that things will just keep on progressing indefinitely towards a specific outlook. The world goes cyclical as much as it goes linear
In those cases, life imprisonment still works. Why kill a person if prison can prevent it. Yes, he can still kill inside the prison, but he could be isolated if he is on the verge of killing spree. If he clearly didn't rehabilitate even after his life sentence, they could still extend his sentence until death.
| Race | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Black | 1018 | 41% |
| Latinx | 335 | 14% |
| White | 1050 | 42% |
| Other | 71 | 3% |
If I misunderstood then I apologize.
I think definition whats barbaric is highly relative to the times. When the prison system implode or social/economical/political structure starts failing to sustain such methods of punishment, death penalty will be most likely the only other alternative to preserve society. So death penalty can never be inherently barbaric even when society today could afford to see it as such
Unfortunately I've seen evidence and cases to the contrary, but yes genes and environment are basically the driving force behind every human's life trajectory, where other people and society make up part of the 'environment' aspect.
I was just making the point that the barbaric aspect to death penalty is relative to the times. It is easy for is to take for granted our position today as compared to the past. There are no insurances we wont be moving backwards someday. What we have now is a luxury rather than a sustainable way of being. We could be one world war from what I am talking about
Humans are weird, they're constantly trying to separate themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom as some superior and self-controlled being, yet are quick to fall back onto the the excuse of "nature" every time they commit a more animalistic act or lean into more animalistic tendencies.
I think seeing the way that the prison system functions has nothing to do with rehabilitation what so ever and if some indivisuals could turn their life around is because of their own choice and not because of the prison system itself. Same analogy is good for mental health interventions. You cant fix most people and they may not be fixed even if they tried to
Without possibility of prisons like today in the past then you think advocating for killers to be let free is a better idea? I am open to suggestions
Good point. But, why anyone would want the state to have the power to vengefully kill people for committing crimes kind of blows my mind. Why would you want to live in a society where you could very realistically be wrongly convicted and the state just locks you in a box to kill you? If there's even a chance that could happen to anybody then I'd want my government's sole focus to be to help people become better, not this "eye for an eye we make you suffer because you're bad" thing. It's just strange.
Hmm. Nature can act on things that aren't animals, though. Even if I thought we weren't animals (i do, of course, i just think we're fundamentally very different from them) I could still argue that nature has a massive effect on us. Rocks aren't animals but they're affected by nature. Tectonic plates, planetary movements. Huge things that aren't animals but still natural. Humans could be that, hypothetically, just in a different way.
But if the system were rehabilitative then even more people's lives could be turned around. And Better environments allow more people to make better choices. Maybe some wouldn't want to be fixed, that's always a possibility.
Thats ok. When the state could afford to rehabilitate individuals like in today. I want someone to tell me when the prison system is no longer sustainable because of whatever reason in future. What is a good way of tackling this type of problem with cold blooded thirsty murders who want to kill who ever they could? prison systems are gone. What do we do?
Well prison systems being gone would probably be very bad. If you commit those crimes its pretty reasonable that you'd get locked up, but what happens inside of the prisons is the thing that needs to change. No prisons would probably be a big problem I imagine.
Regression of our species is inevitable. Death penalty will not be barbaric when it is the only way to keep social stability when the prison system fails and no longer is sustainable. Anybody who argued that is delusional
I don't know if regression is necessarily inevitable. If the death penalty were the only way to keep social stability then it might be better to have it than to not. But I don't think it's needed today in America at least, and I think we'd be better off without it + a rehabilitative justice system, which we don't really have.
You make some solid points and I understand your reasoning. I'm not in favor of every death sentence, but there are some extreme cases that escape both of our arguments either in favor or pro-death sentence.
Looks like black people get executed less than white people, when you take the murder rate into account. 4,800 (W) vs 6,500 (B) homicides in 2019. The issue isn't that black people are being executed more for murders, it's that the murder rate itself is higher (poverty, history, etc).
