Capital Punishment: Always an Error, or only Sometimes?

[theprestige]

This thread:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=277290

Leaves aside a couple basic questions that I would like to get to the bottom of. So here's a poll for that very purpose.

The question is, "how many innocents is it acceptable to execute?" in the context of capital punishment.

When responding to the poll question, consider the following:

Do you believe that execution is justice for some crimes?

Do you believe that collateral damage is ever acceptable when pursuing some good?

Do you believe that any system of justice can be sufficiently error-free as to admit capital punishment?

Do you live on Planet X?

 

[ProBonoShill]

I have no problem with removing people who commit horrific crimes (serial killers, child killers and rapists) from the gene pool, I jut don't trust the various justice systems to get it right all the time so I voted for the second option.

 

[Arcade22]

Is it acceptable to ever not execute someone?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

The poll is an elaborate false dichotomy fallacy.

 

[Loss Leader]

It's always wrong. Furthermore, it's always wrong.

 

[newyorkguy]

I understand people who believe the death penalty is appropriate in certain cases. I get it. However, I do not believe the state should have the right to kill someone as punishment. Period.

 

[arthwollipot]

Okay, my biggest problem with the death penalty is that there is a really, really thin line between justice and vengeance. We want justice, but having a justice system based on vengeance and retribution is a big backward step in the civilisation stakes.

Also, all the other reasons. It's never right to execute.

 

[Lensman]

Is it acceptable to ever not execute someone?

When they're innocent maybe?

 

[theprestige]

The poll is an elaborate false dichotomy fallacy.

Leaving out the joke options, it's at worst a false trichotomy.

But what missing option(s) would you like us to consider?

Better yet: What missing option best describes your opinion of capital punishment?

 

[Corsair 115]

Show me a Ted Bundy or Adolf Hitler and you've shown me a person for whom the death penalty is richly deserved given the magnitude of their crimes.

But there are few such cases, meaning capital punishment ought to be a rarely applied penalty, reserved only for the worst of the worst and those cases where the amount of evidence against the accused establishes their guilt not just beyond a reasonable doubt but instead establishes their guilt beyond almost any doubt.

 

[Kid Eager]

I understand people who believe the death penalty is appropriate in certain cases. I get it. However, I do not believe the state should have the right to kill someone as punishment. Period.

I don't view the death penalty as punishment, but rather a fairly blunt instrument of societal risk management.

As such, none of the options provided are suitable.

 

[Dessi]

I don't shed any tears over murderers being executed, but I sort of wish executions employed more poetic justice:

Murderer kills by strangling, then execution by strangling.
Murderer tortures victims for weeks on end before killing them, execution by torture for weeks on end.
Murderer buries victims alive, then execution by live burial.
Murderer gives victims their choice of last meal and a painless injection of sedatives and barbiturates, then execution by that method.

Its only a shame we can't bring them back and kill them once more for every victim.

But, I'm aware that innocent people can and have been executed, that black men are disproportionately more likely to receive death sentences than white men, black on white murders are more likely to result in death sentences than white on black murders, that even proponents of capital punishment do not believe its a deterrent to anything.

I don't necessarily oppose the death penalty in principle, but only because my country is truly terrible in its application. Maybe if the US could guarantee only guilty people are executed, that death sentences are applied without racial bias, and that the process could be expedient and cost effective, it would be easier to implement.

But, I have no particularly strong feelings one way or the other about capital punishment, I don't care if the practice is banned in entirety. Banning it might win some "more civilized country" brownie points too.

More than that, I'm well aware that the US criminal justice system is seriously broken beyond repair. The idiotic War on Drugs. Enormous racial bias in sentencing and convictions. Huge sections of the US population are imprisoned. Lengthy sentences that make no attempt to release people even after they've been rehabilitated. A felony convictions that become life sentences after release (as felons struggle to find to find employment, housing, and they are disqualified from government assistance programs such as WIC and TANF), resulting in huge recidivism rates.

Maybe capital punishment is one small aspect of our seriously broken criminal justice system?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Leaving out the joke options, it's at worst a false trichotomy.

But what missing option(s) would you like us to consider?

Better yet: What missing option best describes your opinion of capital punishment?

The problem is not that you've left something out but thrown too many things in. Options 2 and 3 are leading "have you stopped beating your wife" logical trap questions based on a priori conclusions.

Better would be a decision tree -

1 - is executing an innocent but falsely convicted person acceptable?
a) yes: Go sit on the Group W bench. We'll get to you later.
b) no: Ok, How can we prevent it?

and then we discuss 1b in a rational, fact based manner.

Instead you've kluged a complex argument into question 2, then apparently reversed it for question 3. But option 2 is self contradictory and option 3 is both foolish and psychotic.

 

[Belz...]

I'm of several minds on this issue. I don't like the idea of killing people, one way or another, in addition to the problem of cost, errors, and suffering.

On the other hand, if one accepts those risks and costs, I can see why the death penalty, in some cases, can be seen as beneficial by some.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Show me a Ted Bundy or Adolf Hitler and you've shown me a person for whom the death penalty is richly deserved given the magnitude of their crimes.

But there are few such cases, meaning capital punishment ought to be a rarely applied penalty, reserved only for the worst of the worst and those cases where the amount of evidence against the accused establishes their guilt not just beyond a reasonable doubt but instead establishes their guilt beyond almost any doubt.

We have a guy here in Colorado (Nathan Dunlap) who has been on death row since '96, for killing 4 people in an angry fit of revenge. He could have been sentenced to life, with or without option of parole. His appeals have cost the state an enormous amount of time and money that could have been better used for other cases. Had he been given life with option, he'd be 18 years in now and probably looking at getting out in a few years.

 

[Belz...]

I don't shed any tears over murderers being executed, but I sort of wish executions employed more poetic justice

Why ? Other than making you feel smug and satisfied by subjecting the badguy to the same sort of thing he or she inflicted upon others, it can't possibly serve any purpose, since you're killing them anyway. During the execution, they will be too busy panicking to care about the irony, and any irony that sinks in before the execution will be for naught since you're, again, killing them anyway.

That's why I keep saying that capital punishment is mostly revenge and feel-good reactionary policy rather than actual justice and social benefit.

 

[I Am The Scum]

The problem is not that you've left something out but thrown too many things in. Options 2 and 3 are leading "have you stopped beating your wife" logical trap questions based on a priori conclusions.

Better would be a decision tree -

1 - is executing an innocent but falsely convicted person acceptable?
a) yes: Go sit on the Group W bench. We'll get to you later.
b) no: Ok, How can we prevent it?

and then we discuss 1b in a rational, fact based manner.

Instead you've kluged a complex argument into question 2, then apparently reversed it for question 3. But option 2 is self contradictory and option 3 is both foolish and psychotic.

Granted, option 2 is poorly worded. It would make more sense to say that capital punishment is fine in theory, but not in practice.

But I don't see the issue with the overall question being posed. If there is any assumption being made, it is that, given enough executions, someone innocent is going to be on the receiving end, and that this is something we don't want to happen. I think pretty much everyone agrees with this, so I don't see what the big deal is.

The rest is really just an analysis of how one feels about the cost-benefit analysis.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

If one accepts that capital punishment is within the bounds of gov't authority (that would be question 0 on my tree above, implied) then the problem is not execution of innocent people but CONVICTING INNOCENT PEOPLE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

"Some dogs bite, so get rid of all dogs" is not particularly sensible.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Is it acceptable to ever not execute someone?

It has to be, otherwise we wouldn't keep coming up with and enjoying fiction in which the hero spares the villain's life.

Take Batman, for example. He's arguably the least goodly hero, yet one of the most popular heroes in the DC universe. He's constantly letting these terrible villains live. Hell, they come back and wreak havoc again and again, but he rarely just kills them if he can help it.

This theme exists throughout our culture.

 

[BenBurch]

It would only be acceptable to execute anybody if you could be 100% certain that they did the crime.

And we almost never can be.

In fact we have shown that there were people on Death Row here in Illinois who should never have been convicted as somebody else did the crime.