Just how many innocent people is it acceptable to execute?

catsmate

No longer the 1
catsmate
Joined
Apr 9, 2007
Messages
34,767
In the ongoing discussion over capital punishment, currently triggered by what the US administration has described as falling short of humane standards.
However this doesn't address the main reasons for opposition to the death penalty; moral and ethical. Neglecting for the moment whether or not it's morally acceptable for the state to kill people in this way, or whether execution is actually an effective deterrent, this still leaves the question of how often is an innocent person executed in the USA.

New research indicates that a significant proportion of those on death row in the USA are innocent.

The rate of erroneous conviction of innocent criminal defendants is often described as not merely unknown but unknowable. We use survival analysis to model this effect, and estimate that if all death-sentenced defendants remained under sentence of death indefinitely at least 4.1% would be exonerated. We conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.
Click to expand...
 
Q. Just how many innocent people is it acceptable to execute?

A. None.
 
Harpo said:
Q. Just how many innocent people is it acceptable to execute?

A. None.
Click to expand...

How many guilty people is it acceptable to execute?

How many guilty people is it necessary to execute?

If you see a necessity in capital punishment, I think you must accept that some innocents will die.
 
Last edited:
I'm pretty sure someone will come along in a little while with a complete misuderstanding of the meaining of the term 'beyond reasonable doubt',
 
Zero. None. Nix. Nada. Not a single last one.
 
Mudcat said:
I disagree.
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to know whether your disagreement would remain solid if your spouse or children were facing death for something they didn't do.
 
Last edited:
Sideroxylon said:
If you see a necessity in capital punishment, I think you must accept that some innocents will die.
Click to expand...

Nope, if they die, they weren't innocent. The only innocent ones that were on Death Row are the ones that get exonerated previous to execution, and half of them were really guilty too.
 
Sideroxylon said:
How many guilty people is it acceptable to execute?

How many guilty people is it necessary to execute?

If you see a necessity in capital punishment, I think you must accept that some innocents will die.
Click to expand...


Is there a good reason for so adroitly sidestepping one of the essential issues in this topic.

Why would it ever be "necessary" to execute someone? 'For the sake of argument' isn't going to be a good enough reason to offer your post. you want to force the debate about capital punishment to be predicated on the acceptance of "necessity". It is an argument which begs the question.

Without that assumption the entire subject takes on a completely different tenor.

Defend the assumption first.
 
DrDave said:
Because the system cannot be perfect
Click to expand...


That's a cop-out answer.

"The system" isn't an inexorable entity. It is something we choose to employ. If we cannot get satisfactory results from a system we are using then we need to quit using it.

Killing an innocent person is murder. Sanctioning a "system" which blithely assumes that such a result is both acceptable and inevitable is sanctioning murder.

Why are you okay with that?
 
Not much to add other then agreeing with the "None" response.

If a reasonable argument could be made for capital punishment's effectiveness or necessity... then sure there might maybe be a legit moral quandry there.

But as it stands... no.

And this isn't coming from some bleeding heart liberal here. I don't give two squirts whether the Dahmers and the Mansons and the Bundys of the world live or die. And this is coming from someone that actually thinks the American justice system makes the right call the vast majority of the time.

It's just a matter of irreversability. You can let someone out of jail. You can give back a fine. You can clear a record. You can't undead someone yet.

The possibility of an innocent person being jailed or fined is one thing. Our legal process is made up of human beings so perfection is not possible. Some risk of an innocent person being punished has to accepted or we can have no concept of legal reprisal.

Killing them is far beyond an acceptable risk however.
 
Last edited:
MikeG said:
It would be interesting to know whether your disagreement would remain solid if you spouse or children were facing death for something they didn't do.
Click to expand...

My disagreement rises from the fact that the original posts quotes a 4.1% estimate of innocent people on death row. I disagree with that estimate, but I'm sure that if you were to poll the people on death row you would get a much higher number of people claiming innocence.

People facing imminent demise insist they're innocent? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

And even if that estimate was right on the money that still isn't significant.
 
Last edited:
That looks like another neat side-step. Quibbling with the number of innocent people awaiting execution still doesn't answer the question of how many innocent people the state should be allowed to kill, and what your reaction would be if one of those people were a family member of yours.
 
quadraginta said:
Is there a good reason for so adroitly sidestepping one of the essential issues in this topic.

Why would it ever be "necessary" to execute someone? 'For the sake of argument' isn't going to be a good enough reason to offer your post. you want to force the debate about capital punishment to be predicated on the acceptance of "necessity". It is an argument which begs the question.

Without that assumption the entire subject takes on a completely different tenor.

Defend the assumption first.
Click to expand...

You seem to have read an awful lot into a couple of questions that allude only to the simple notion that the death of innocents come with the territory if you have a system of capital punishment.

It is an interesting question as to what level of error is acceptable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom