The Death Penalty, Nearing Its End

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/opinion/the-death-penalty-nearing-its-end.html?emc=edit_th_20161024&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=72261283&_r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=0A9C9128E84D7F663F086244B72709C7&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion

by daredave • 10 years ago

58 84 10 years ago

nytimes.com

venomsnake• 10 years ago

Life without parole is way crueler and inhumane punishment. We either need penal colonies or the ability of the prisoners to request and be granted euthanasia.

xyzzy4• 10 years ago

So everyone's pet bird that lives in a cage and animals in zoos would be better off dead? Or does your logic only apply to humans and not other species?

palunon• 10 years ago

Or does your logic only apply to humans and not other species?

A lot of things apply to humans and not other species...

coldtea3• 10 years ago

Like McDonalds killing cows is OK, but killing a human is murder?

Like adopting a stray god and putting them on a leash is OK, but putting some bum on a leash is bad?

What kind of silly question is this? Not everything applies to humans and/or all species the same.

noonespecial2• 10 years ago

Or we could try, oh, you know, prisons that aren't torture to be in even for a few days.

It's kind of a radical new thing for humanity that we now have the means to provide lives, even meaningful ones, to people who prove themselves too dangerous to live in open society. We should at least give it a try.

euyyn6• 10 years ago

As have done many first world countries for a long time.

Broken_Hippo2• 10 years ago

So very much this! Not only that, but folks should have a chance at life when they get released. Most folks aren't serving life sentences - it is in the best interest of society that we release folks that can be a good neighbor and good member of society.

It definitely isn't impossible to have that as the average standard.

drakonandor2• 10 years ago

5 star hotel treatments for lifers seems a little bit silly. Why should they live as Kings after what they did to their victims?

VLM3• 10 years ago

The assumption is we haven't implemented both, resulting in failure. All the criminals are sent to segregated inner cities yet most of the residents are not criminals, leading to all kinds of injustice when the prison guard slash cops shoot to kill inappropriately. Meanwhile the war on drugs has done the usual ineffective civil war thing of making essentially infinite opiate supplies available to anyone who wants that way out. So yeah we're been trying those two ideas for a couple decades and its pretty much sucked for everyone involved.

bmh_ca2• 10 years ago

As a matter of interest, I wrote the most up-voted answer on Skeptics.SE, in response to the question of whether the death penalty is an effective deterrent, here: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6164/1792

tl;dr: there's no evidence to suggest it is effective, and much evidence to the contrary.

dvh• 10 years ago

I have never heard anyone arguing about whether the death penalty is an effective deterrent. It's about removing murderers from humankind as soon and as cheap as possible.

GnarfGnarf• 10 years ago

Exactly. Capital punishment is a deterrent in the sense that once you execute the murderer, (s)he will never kill again. How's that for prevention?

relistan• 10 years ago

All punishment is intended as a deterrent, including capital punishment. https://www.law.columbia.edu/law_school/communications/repor...

But, even if you don't agree, it's also in no way the cheapest or most effective way to handle this punishment. Google it. Here's one page for you: http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-d...

laichzeit02• 10 years ago

I suppose the assumption you make is that the death penalty is meant as a deterrent. My world-view is that the death penalty is a form of punishment for serious crime. It is not meant as a deterrent, not meant as some "lesson" for others. And I, personally, see no problem with it as a form of penalty to be payed by some. (I also reject Blackstone's formulation)

DonaldFisk• 10 years ago

Regardless of whether it's a deterrent, there have been people sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK who were later shown not to have committed the murders they were sentenced for. Those people would have been hanged if we'd kept the death penalty.

I presume there are also miscarriages of justice in the USA.

rimantas• 10 years ago

If you see no problem, how do you propose to revive those killed because trial went wrong and an innocent man was sentenced?

deelowe• 10 years ago

Amnesty international has done a good bit of research into this and found numerous cases of innocent people being convicted and executed. Why would you not research this before taking such a strong stance in favor of taking another's life? This is one of the things everyone should research before picking a side.

bmh_ca2• 10 years ago

I suppose the assumption you make is that the death penalty is meant as a deterrent.

Yes, but the assumption is not mine. It is an axiom of our criminal legal-justice system, namely: punishment deters future crimes.

My world-view is that the death penalty is a form of punishment for serious crime. It is not meant as a deterrent, not meant as some "lesson" for others. And I, personally, see no problem with it as a form of penalty to be payed by some. (I also reject Blackstone's formulation)

Punishment without social purpose is sadism.

I suspect I misunderstand your position. The answers to the following may help me understand.

If you are advocating for punishment without a useful social purpose (like deterring future crimes):

1. Why limit the death penalty to serious crimes? 2. Why punish at all, if it achieves nothing? 3. What do you think the death penalty should achieve?

It's just a thought exercise – no real need to reply.

gedy3• 10 years ago

But it's a 100% deterrent for that one murderer.

ska• 10 years ago

And 100% irreversible for any mistakes - at this point there have unavoidably been many.

vidarh10• 10 years ago

But that one murderer is extremely unlikely to kill again even if released.

Broken_Hippo2• 10 years ago

No, not really. It didn't prevent the murder. It just is an absolute way of knowing they will never murder again.

The thing is that many don't ever re-murder. With the proper systems in place, the majority of folks don't even wind up back in prison. IE, Norway's recidivism rate is around 20-25% :: The US hosts something like 52% at least with more than that being re-arrested for things.

Heck, the death penalty hasn't even been shown to prevent other folks from murdering folks. Neither have absurdly long prison sentences, including life in prison.

helthanatos5• 10 years ago

You could argue that using it as a deterant doesn't work. But what if we did something like Shusterman's Unwind for criminals that have killed others? There are about 120,000 people needing lifesaving organ transplant and only about 12,000 donors (https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov) Lethal injection used to cost about 85$ per person(apparently that cost has seen exponential growth). Although, taking organs from people forcefully or from a prisoner in general may be considered wrong (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42667886/ns/health-health_care/t/k...). It can be reasoned that since they unjustly took the life of someone else that they should surrender their body to the state to make up their unfortunate deeds. Simply put: why let good people die when bad people can save them? Clearly there are moral delimas, as well as legal ones, that can be argued either direction. Possibly the biggest problem would be the people the organs saved having issues with having a murderer's organs save their lives. After all, who would really want a criminal's body parts? Would the only people doing this to and making feel better be vigilantes? Perhaps it could be looked at from an economical point then: is it more cost effective to set criminals free or to extinguish their life? How many more people would murders hurt if they were let free from prison? Does prison actually reform murderers?

vidarh10• 10 years ago

This creates a strong incentive to unfairly convict by lowering the perceived damage of wrongly convicting someone as someone else who may potentially be seemd as more likely to be good may be saved.

euyyn6• 10 years ago

Who was even talking about letting them free?

And do you also propose that organ recipients be ranked according to how good they are as a person?

VLM3• 10 years ago

When its gone I'll miss the justice it provided because of its controversy.

We already know that Y% of death penalty cases are overturned before the victim is killed due to judicial misconduct and Y% is ridiculously large. We can assume that whatever the percentage of justice system failure is for mere life or mere 20 yrs w/o parole, its much higher than Y% due to having less attention paid to it.

The end result of getting rid of the death penalty is we'll be stuck living with (100-Y)% of really bad people, which is an inherent bad for all of us, and we'll have far more than Y% serving life and 20 yrs and so on unjustly and unexamined because those aren't death penalty cases anymore.

You can't seriously claim the people overturning unjust death penalty cases are going to transition to overturning unjust 20 yr cases.

Obviously some fraction of the (100-Y)% of those deserving the death penalty today will find a way to cause more human suffering years after they'd be dead if the penalty existed.

The net result, paradoxically, of getting rid of state killing of people, will be more total human suffering due to massive increase in false imprisonment at lesser sentences and obvious increase in number of victims of the worst of the bad guys because the worst of the bad guys won't be dead.

There are also weird cultural double standards issues, where its great and patriotic to kill brown people on the other side of the planet, but not here. Why does the dirt they stand on matter more than the flesh they're made of?

euyyn6• 10 years ago

We already know that Y% is ridiculously large.

That premise for the rest of the argument warrants more evidence than a non-backed vox populi.

Apart from that, it also failed to consider the percentage of executed people that were indeed innocent.

icebraining2• 10 years ago

It's an easily findable number: "Those sentenced to death are almost three times as likely to see their death sentence overturned on appeal and to be resentenced to a lesser penalty than they are to be executed."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/1...

d0mine• 10 years ago

Have you considered that US government shouldn't kill brown people whether their US citizens or not?

VLM3• 10 years ago

Yeah that's kinda my point that deciding who lives and dies based on a line on a map seems kinda silly.

There is a peculiar similarity between foreign and domestic policy right now, in that at this time most of the minorities killed by the USA are being killed unjustly regardless of where they are on a map. Seems unfair to stop killing the locals and keep slaughtering innocent foreigners unless you invoke really weird doctrines like our folks have souls but theirs don't so they're not human, or that crossing a magic line in the dirt is the most important criteria of human rights rather than say, being human being the most important criteria of human rights.

We consistently treat life as cheap now. It'll be interesting to see what happens if we change to treat some life as separate but more equal than others or whatever ends up happening.

I suspect rather than a decline in globalist neoconservative warmongering we'll get a big dose of cognitive dissonance.

m12k• 10 years ago

Article 3 of the universal declaration of human rights from 1948 (which the US voted for):

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Now, obviously we as a society cannot always guarantee these three things for all people, since criminals infringe on the rights of others and thus human rights are violated daily. In order to prevent this we choose to infringe on the liberty of criminals (by imprisoning them), in order to prevent their (greater) infringement on others. But since it is possible this way to prevent their infringement, by limiting only their liberty, there is no way to justify killing them instead, taking away not just some, but all of their liberty along with their life and their security. Yes, in order to enforce the human rights we must (somewhat ironically) infringe on them ourselves, but we cannot justify performing a bigger infringement than is absolutely necessary.

zanny• 10 years ago

The problem is America in particular views prison as punishment, because of its puritan roots and culture a large part of the country sees punishment as both an effective correctional technique and a deterrent when the evidence for decades has consistently shown neither hold.

Which is part of the problem with the "abolish the death penalty" movement. The opposition was raised and impressed upon how prison is not for the security of society as a whole but for the punishment of the criminal. Except the later never works, and if you frame your law enforcement around that you end up violating a gross amount of human rights just like parents who think punishments are the optimal way to raise children most of the time end up abusing their kids.

vlehto6• 10 years ago

What would you suggest as punishment for murder then?

saiya-jin• 10 years ago

abusing kids is one extreme, opposite of it are spoiled kids who are allowed to do anything without consequences. I've seen quite a few kids where parents are clueless about proper parenting, and will do/grant/provide anything just to stop kid from annoying them and leave them alone. not surprisingly, those kids end up as proper aholes in school, not sure what comes after school years (but probably rarely something good).

I personally believe in middle ground (well, not exactly in the middle) - accidents/mistakes should be explained and discussed, lessons learned etc.

Intentional evil doing should be punished, ie by taking away phone/laptop/extra house chores/whatever, consequence adequate the action.

In this kind of logic it makes sense to punish criminals, since it's believed some sort of pavlovian reflex would kick in (do bad -> go to jail). it ignores the complexity of reality, ie jail creates criminals even from good people, and practically never the opposite.

But then again, you have serial killers, pedophiles, rapists etc in all kinds of horrible combinations. i don't believe these can be 'repaired', only made 'dormant'. What to do with these... people kill other people for no good reason all the time. I guess I somehow ceased to care in order to not go crazy from daily news

aplomb• 10 years ago

How do you reconcile this view with a life or death situation where you must kill or be killed?

porsupah• 10 years ago

Polling in California's Proposition 62, which would end the death penalty, is, perhaps unsurprisingly, uncertain, though offering some hope for its abolition:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/21/polls-voters-favor-leg...

"Proposition 62, which would replace the death penalty with lifetime imprisonment without parole, has a tougher road to passage, according to the Field Poll, done in conjunction with UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies.

The measure, which faces a competing state initiative, has the support of 48 percent of likely voters, while 37 percent oppose it and 15 percent are undecided. The pollsters cautioned, however, that a nearly identical proposition four years ago enjoyed a similar lead before being defeated by an electorate that wasn’t ready to soften sentences for some of the state’s most violent criminals."

vlehto6• 10 years ago

One thing to remember when talking about criminal punishment. It's not for the criminal and its not for the victim. It's society acting for its own sake.

What matters is that crime is not profitable in any situation. Punishment is there to reap away any profitability, but nothing more.

Murder gets you life in prison and I think that is justified. But it opens a problem here. Once you do one murder, second, third and fourth only increase your risk of getting caught. The punishment stays the same. There is specific case where death penalty would make some sense. If you are caught on the act. Killing witnesses should get you worse punishment than the original murder. But this gets tricky very quickly on many occasions.

e40• 10 years ago

Caught in the act isn't a clear cut thing. Witnesses have been known to be wrong. In fact, identification of people you don't know is a very tricky thing. I read an article recently about a man in AZ that was identified twice as the perp in robberies, and even though he had an alibi for both, the prosecutor ruined his life (lost job, drained bank account, divorce). The problem was, he looked amazingly like the perp (there was video).

Had he not had a job with video showing he was there, he would most certainly have been convicted of those to robberies.

If this had been a capital murder case, he could have been convicted on eyewitness testimony. Wrongly.

vlehto6• 10 years ago

Yes it's tricky.

But it's also quite nasty that in some police sieges the perpetrator has absolutely nothing to lose anymore, except his life. So if he kills several policemen and manages to escape, it's still good deal. If that doesn't look likely, surrender and get the exact same life in prison you would have gotten anyhow.

Knowing this dynamic, the police is incentive to use sharpshooters early in the situation. Which is essentially death penalty without due process.

vidarh10• 10 years ago

I wrote this in response to a comment that was deleted, but I'll leave it here as it's my favourite criticism of the death penalty:

I like to give this as a counter [1] (from Franquins "Idées Noires", which shamefully I still don't think have been translated to English).

The text reads roughly (my French is rusty):

"The law is clear: Anyone who intentionally kills another loses his head. Let the executioner do his job."

"Over here my friend."

"And so a good deed is done."

"Sorry, but the law is clear: Anyone who intentionally kills another ..."

[1] http://www.funeraire-info.fr/journee-contre-la-peine-de-mort...

umanwizard2• 10 years ago

I don't get why that's a great argument rather than a silly word game. It's legal for the State to do plenty of stuff that it's not legal for private citizens to do.

This is at best an argument against having poorly-thought-out laws like "Anyone who intentionally kills another loses his head", not one against the death penalty in general.

jerf2• 10 years ago

I agree. Humanity has been distinguishing between "murder" and "killing" for millennia. It is sophistry to obtain a pre-concluded end result to pretend otherwise.

I say this not because I'm pro-death-penalty; I say it because it's a terrible anti-death-penalty argument. There's much better arguments than such word play so simple a child can see through it.

(Cards on the table: My personal position is that, actually, I'm OK with the death penalty in situations where a society can not afford to keep the murderer alive, or the society does not have a reasonably expectation of being able to keep the murderer from murdering again. But I do not merely mean "the society would be inconvenienced", I mean, the normal state through history is that the society literally can not afford to feed a murderer or have a realistic expectation of holding them; a tribe 5,000 years ago of 100 people literally can not afford it. However, in the 21st century, every major civilized society in which we might even be having this debate is very far away from that problem, having both abundant resources to feed and house them, and very realistic expectations that they can indeed keep them away from innocents. Prison breaks today are big news, and still don't happen all that often.)

vidarh10• 10 years ago

It's not a legal argument. It is an argument about the morality of giving the state the right to kill.

And it is one I agree with. Personally I consider juries that convict in capital cases, and prosecutors that seek the death penalty, to be no better than murderers.

The Death Penalty, Nearing Its End

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