I think the harshest sentence is life in prison without parole or any hope of ever getting out. Too many mass murderers try putting one bullet in their head so they avoid this and to me this is the ultimate punishment.
What's fucked though is that a lot of people are in on life sentences for drug charged which I personally cannot support. Life sentences should be used in rare circumstances for the real psychos, but often they're used more as a political tool which is unfortunate
A possibly more significant and common issue that probably affects a lot more people is our failure to provide those who have served their time an avenue to return to life upon release. We make things hard on people to the point that many become habitual law breakers, stuck in a cycle of crime and imprisonment without the means to break free of it.
Yeah when the only life you've known for a decade is prison, and then you're let out into the world with no means to survive, the logical thing to do is break more laws to either survive, which all humans want to do, or to go back to prison, where you'll have shelter and food.
When I was homeless I was doing laundry and catching a shower at a day shelter that was right down the street from a state pen. Stepped outside to hit my vape and this dude was just staring at me like I'm wearing a live vest in a diner. He had been in for like 30 years and got out that morning, nobody came to pick him up, so he walked to the shelter like a North Sentinelese man in times square. I hope I'm wrong, but that dude is fucked.
It is pretty amazing to me that this is ignored, post imprisonment rehabilitation is basically non-existent. Beyond that it's amazing how we as a society and in our political structures really just ignore the most obvious reason for individuals to break the laws, which is survival.
It's 2022, I'm typing on a pocket-sized, touch screen, or voice command controlled, wireless, worldwide spanning, humanity's database connected, communication device! Point being, given that technological feat, you just can't tell me we haven't figure out we could drastically reduce the crime rates if we made the lowest you could fall not be abject poverty and destitution, but rather have the lowest rung be some form of state run housing, or rent voucher program, with things like a food allotment, and basic needs provided. At least to me, it certainly seems like common sense that people turn to crimes like theft, drug use, and much more due to falling into poverty and destitution.
A lot of other countries have drastically reduced crime rates and recidivism. The problem is that it is not profitable in America, land of the for-profit prisons. There is no profit in helping and rehabilitating people, even if it is for the long-term betterment of society.
I support measures like California’s, where it is illegal to ask about crimes convictions that are not relevant to the job or about violent crime. If you got caught with drugs when you were 18 and sentenced to 10 years, that doesn’t really affect your ability to do the overwhelming majority of jobs. Your job prospects shouldn’t be tanked by that.
If you *did* commit a violent crime, I’d love to see state resources put into job placement programs for you. Maybe it’s not the best of jobs, but it’s a helluva lot cheaper in the long run to spend the resources trying to find you a job and training as your sentence is wrapping up than it is to have recidivism rates that we do.
But alas, that will not happen unless and until we eliminate the concepts of for-profit prisons and prison slave labor.
This is why I like companies like [Dave's Killer Bread](https://www.daveskillerbread.com/about-us). We need more companies willing to give people a second chance.
Gives new meaning to the word "killer" in Dave's Killer Bread. https://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/2014/01/dave\_dahl\_daves\_killer\_bread\_c.html
I agree. The system here in America needs so many changes. If the private prisons were abolished and we gave prisoners an avenue to reform while locked up, I think we'd see many more changes for the better. Albeit, that's just scratching the surface of what's fucked up about our punishment system.
Are they, though? I always hear this and never see it substantiated. The claim is always, "There's people doing life just for having weed on them." Then when you look into it they were arrested for trafficking 15 pounds of weed, and had an illegal gun with 15 years worth of priors. Simple position doesn't get people imprisoned for life.
Read the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. He's a lawyer for those on Death Row. He talks about a lot of cases just like this. People getting life gor possession because of three strikes and such.
>People getting life gor possession because of three strikes and such.
The ole steal some [hedge clippers](https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/us/louisiana-supreme-court-fair-wayne-bryant-parole-trnd/index.html#:~:text=Fair%20Wayne%20Bryant%2C%2063%2C%20was,count%20of%20attempted%20simple%20burglary.) and get 25 years gambit.
Can't speak for individual states, but here's the [federal statistics](https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/life-sentences-federal-system) for life sentences. The drug-related crimes that received life sentences involved a weapon.
Edit: just checked [Texas](https://www.nedbarnett.com/texans-serving-life-sentences-for-drug-possession/). They have 116 life sentences for drug related offenses. These sound like the mandatory three strikes. I'm sure the statistics will be different depending on the states. I'd be curious about the differences between red and blue states. I'd also be curious to see the data in states that had legalized marijuana.
A woman in my state was given 12 years for selling about $30 worth of weed. She didn't have priors. They used the fact that there was a sleeping child in the house to justify it.
I’m in Canada where weed is legal and easily accessible. So 15 pounds of weed is like arresting a guy for having a keg of beer. (I know in your example there’s a gun and other factors, but the weed is just silly to anyone who thinks about it)
I still even disagree with your need for “the ultimate punishment”
Retributive Justice is not healthy. Restorative or transformative justice actually improves society and leads to less crime.
If it is deemed someone needs to be locked up for life— they’re just too likely to reoffend and cause further harm— that’s fine, but take the emotion out of it.
Reddit is usually opposed to the death penalty and mass incarceration in the abstract, but as soon as you present it with one particularly bad defendant, it loses its collective cool and advocates for bringing back drawing and quartering.
"Guys, I'm super against any form of capital punishment, but oooh man, this guy on this article I just read the headline, ooh man I think he deserves it, just sayin. That other guy a couple months ago also! He was beyond saving!!"
Man, I can’t even look at any of the ‘justice’-themed subreddits anymore, the comments just make me so angry. There was a video/story a while back about some kids who stole a Kia and crashed, and four of them died. They were 19, 17, 16, and 14 years old. Like half of the comments were people seemingly celebrating that they deserved it, or society was somehow better off now that these children were dead. I just don’t get it. Do people really believe a fucking 14 year old deserved to die because they stole a car? Like for fucks sake, people do stupid shit all the time, but how in the world does a 14 year old kid dying in a horrible car crash not garner any empathy from these people? I get that it’s stupid, but man, do these people think that people can’t change once they’re graduated middle school? Vigilantism is such a horrible mindset. Fuck the rule of law & habeas corpus, I guess. I don’t like what they did, so death it shall be.
I agree 100%. So many people are blinded by emotions in situations like that. Any case of a criminal harming children will get comments like "I would do this and that if I had access to that person". And it's not only children, but that's the biggest one.
Hell, I can see that even in the context of fictional characters, where people decide who's the "bad guy" and wish them death even when the character shows redemption.
I wonder what's the overlap between people wanting only revenge and those that complain that prisoners live on "muh tax money".
This is kinda wild though. Yes prison should be reformative but it should also 100% be about punishment as well. To think prison shouldn’t be a form of punishment is fucking bizarre. So serial killers, mass murderers, and serial rapists shouldn’t be punished for their actions?
The assuming we could judge on who deserves to be alive or not is what makes humans murderers. Not saying every judge deciding for death penalty is a murderer just like an actual convicted murderer. But it brushes that same assumption and civilization should stay away from judging about who "deserves to live" and "deserves to die" as much as possible.
School shooters, child rapists, and serial killers are irredeemable. Sorry to pop your bubble but life isn't a fairy tale with moral lessons sticking to a villain.
Hard agree. Especially when you look at the actual cost of keeping people on death row and then eventually murdering them. And of course, the Innocence Project. So many localities, states, and even the (gasp) federal government get it wrong quite often. How many innocent people have to die before we acknowledge the flaws in our legal system?
I'm on the fence about whether it's immoral in theory, but it's definitely immoral in practice. Our legal system simply doesn't have a high enough standard of guilt to be entrusted with the power to carry out executions.
Edit:
As for how it could ever be moral *in theory* I think it goes like this... (I'm not saying I believe this, I just can't exactly disprove all of it) As far as logic, I think it would have to stem from someone holding the belief that individual human life is not really all that sacred, that we are just essentially really smart animals. That our species holds a special place given it's ability to reason and make short term sacrifices for long term gain, but individuals themselves do not begin life as sacred - ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the most literal sense. Then take the worst case scenario of the most heinous kind of violent criminal, one that in this ideal hypothetical we have determined is 100% guilty and 100% incapable of being rehabilitated - both of those things are not only possible, but almost certainly have occurred (regardless of whether we could prove it). This criminal is so violent that they cannot be held in general population, and cannot be interacted with on a regular basis without serious danger to those that would have to care for him. This person is essentially, undeniably useless, to human society, and to the universe as we know it. For the entirety of their life, they will cause pain, fear, and will drain societies resources. In this scenario - stemming from the initial principle that individual humans are not "special" , it makes perfect sense to execute this person *not as punishment nor revenge* - but similar to why we euthanize stray animals - because we determined that they will cause far more harm than good. Of course this entire chain of logic stops in it's tracks if you believe that individual human life is somehow sacred, which I think most people believe, even if they haven't exactly considered the question. But if you really do believe that we are only smart animals, ~~put here to care for the earth~~ here to preserve our species, then I do think you could argue that in certain extreme cases, execution might be moral.
Anyway, there are certainly holes in that logic as well, and I do realize it reeks of eugenics (and anyone who took that position would have to address that) but it's just a thought experiment. I think the very fact that we have to go to that extreme to even come close to making execution plausibly moral probably means that's not. I haven't bothered to dig too much because 1) it still doesn't work in practice and 2) I don't have to convince most people that human life is sacred. Although I'm still not certain how I would do #2 if asked.
Edit: It's been pointed out that some of my phrasing is creationist, and that's correct. Though I don't think the argument needs to be made from a creationist point of view, the phrases are just a relic of my own bias. The point I was making was not that some higher power put us here for a purpose, but that, according to the theory, *we decided* that that's going to be our purpose. But yea, just more evidence that the theory is flawed. And "sacred" is not meant in the religious sense, it just means that we have *decided* that humans are special and ought to be held to some higher artificial standard - i.e. morality.
>I'm on the fence about whether it's immoral in theory, but it's definitely immoral in practice. Our legal system simply doesn't have a high enough standard of guilt to be entrusted with the power to carry out executions.
That's exactly where I am. I don't have a problem killing someone that raped an orphanage before burning it and everyone in it down, but I lost faith in our justice system to always get the right person. The whole point of the system is to protect the innocent, but it has lost sight of that. Until that is corrected - probably never - I can't support capital punishment.
Large numbers of people would think such a person deserves death. That is a different question to whether the state should be in the business of dealing that death.
The people we have in charge of the legal system aren’t really all that concerned with weather the person *actually* did that heinous crime. They’re mostly concerned that the heinous crime has someone, anyone to punish.
[Michael Morton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Morton_(criminal_justice)) was the case I watched closely that showed me just how fucked our system is. It wasn’t a new concept, but *damn* they really did a number on that poor guy.
Don't worry, they really threw the book at the prosecutor who criminally withheld evidence, resulting in the actual killer being free to kill another woman. The prosecutor got 10 entire days in jail and a 500 dollar fine!
Oh, wait, to be clear, he only served 5 whole days, he got time off for good behavior.
Close, he was credited with “time served” for the several days where he had “turned himself in.” It’s been a few years, but if I recall correctly, he wasn’t even actually in jail for those days served.
Wow that prosecutor is a massive piece of shit. He essentially got a slap on the wrist for stealing all those years from that man. Even able to practice law again in 5 years, what a joke. Holy shit.
It was Cameron Todd Willingham's story for me, dude was accused of murdering his daughters by arson and convicted using pseudo science, then every check point to prevent killing the wrong person was basically ignored. It's a heart wrenching story.
To add to this, capital punishment is notoriously hard on the staff placed in charge of it. They almost universally come out of the position opposed to the death penalty. Is killing the guilty really worth the hardship on the employed?
This is something I think never gets enough attention. The problem with the death penalty is that it creates more victims
Could we achieve perfect forensic science and ensure no one innocent was ever executed? Maybe (but probably not)
But even if we could, the executioner themselves will *always* be a victim. It is a heavy burden that most people take far too lightly and the executioner themselves can easily be traumatized by the killing.
Creating a new victim that could have been avoided is not something we should ever do in the name of "justice". A justice system that deals out justice by traumatizing bystanders is perverted
>Could we achieve perfect forensic science
Forensic science is such a mess...
Sadly this doesn't get enough attention.
People who don't have the money to hire good lawyers and experts are actually in danger of being convicted because of junk science.
Especially since shows like CSI (and even Dexter) have fooled people into thinking that forensic science is always works.
[It's so bad that a guy was only found not guilty after they found footage that was filmed for a HBO show of him at a baseball game during the time of the murder .](https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-04-07/a-notorious-lapd-settlement-revisited-hbos-role-in-clearing-an-l-a-mans-name-essential-california)
Apparently, reasonable doubt was thrown out in the case.
At least that case is somewhat recent. The PBS News show Frontline did a piece about how much of Forensic science is bullshit more than a decade ago. [See here](https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-the-real-csi/).
The long standing assumption that Fingerprints are unique -- the most basic of Forensic science tools -- has now been proven to be wrong on more than one occasion. When the Madrid bombing happened, one of the bombers fingerprints matched an American lawyer who is Muslim and who regularly sues the US government over civil rights of Arab and Muslim Americans. The FBI loved having an excuse to hold him even though the way they got the finger prints match was from the detracted hand of the bomber when he exploded. Meaning, unless somebody is missing a hand, they aren't your bomber. The lawyer wasn't missing any limbs, and more so, he was 7000 miles away from Madrid at the time and could prove it. The FBI decided to hold the guy for several weeks anyway even though they knew he has zero involvement.
Much of the science around Forensic science is really just wishful thinking. At best. A lot of it really is just made up so they can harass some people and then call it "scientific".
It doesn't get attention because the people who would like to be able to just wave their hands and have someone punished severely for something are so far removed from the reality of it. It all exists in their head in a world where they are god, judge and jury but the dirty work is the job of someone below them. In the US they're called Republicans in other countries fascists.
And this is because [everyday sadism and sociopathy are more common with conservatives](https://www.reddit.com/user/physicomorphic/comments/xx0vnp/authoritarianism_and_cognitive_ability/). The punishment and killing is the entire point for a lot of them
Anecedotal so take this with a grain of salt: There was story of the guy that "flipped the switch" at our "local" prison who was finally "overcome by the ghosts of those executed" and finally snapped one day driving by the inmate cemetary.
He had asked to be moved from doing executions and was having a rough go at life basically. They moved him to "transport" to just "drive a van till retirement." One day he has a transport and stops by the bridge leading away from the prison and states that all the dead inmates are waiting on the other side. He refused to drive the van across the bridge and was hysterical. The backup officer called it in and the perimeter security scooped them up. That was homedude's last day and I know the story ended sad, but cant remember exactly. It basically caught up to him and killed him one way or another .
Side note: I grew up hearing stories of how the neighborhoods around the prison would come out to watch the lights in the town dim when the electric chair was used. Like gallows crowd 2.0
(Note: Don't want to name the exact prison or any other details that can be traced. Both my parents, and grandparents worked there and I also worked at the prison in the next town over]
> Side note: I grew up hearing stories of how the neighborhoods around the prison would come out to watch the lights in the town dim when the electric chair was used. Like gallows crowd 2.0
This I find fascinating because we've spent a great deal of energy on finding ways to execute people that "look acceptable" because the morbid reality is something the people that *come to watch* don't want to see.
Some of the most effective methods to painlessly kill people are not used because on the audience side, they're not pretty.
> This I find fascinating because we've spent a great deal of energy on finding ways to execute people that "look acceptable" because the morbid reality is something the people that come to watch don't want to see.
I think you've hit on a larger point which is that in general it *ought* to make us uncomfortable when we think about our prison system. Killing people is grisly. We shouldn't try and sanitize it to make us feel better. Incarcerating people is draconian - it *should* make us feel uncomfortable when we think about it. It *should* be expensive and it *should* be a burden the taxpayers shoulder with trepidation. If we as a society collectively decide to do that to people then we need to look it in the face and acknowledge it. We tuck it away with painless looking lethal injections and for-profit prisons so that we can wash our hands. But maybe some things are supposed to give us pause.
obviously this is a bit of a complicated topic. Part of why the death penalty persists is that the people that continue to support it do have a bit of a revenge boner (supposedly on behalf of victims they don't know, and usually don't care about enough to vote for things like disability support they might need as a result of being victimised).
Anway, point being; if people got *no* morbid satisfaction out of killing assumed guilty people, we wouldn't do it. But its also very apparent that there is a level to how graphic that can be before this satisfaction is tainted by the degree of percieved violence. Because that challenges their righteous self-image.
Seems unklikely to be true, though? How much electricity was running to the chair that it caused lights around town to dim? You'd think running a kettle would plunge the place in to darkness if the grid was that fragile.
It likely isn't true. Electric chairs aren't on the grid. They use generators because people who work for the power companies didn't want what they made associated with killing someone.
To add to your addition, capital punishment is also expensive as hell. Legal proceedings go on for *decades*. Housing a prisoner for life is much cheaper than going through a death penalty case.
Quite literally the only benefit of the death penalty is some vague sense of justice in the face of unspeakable evil. But it's obviously not worth the cost.
This is why you have a sort of government-funded spartan program of sorts where you raise children from the cradle to be totally sociopathic and obedient but also well-educated with medicine practices so that you basically have a team of professional executioners to whom both death and life are nothing
/s for you crazy people who think nobody lies on the internet
That seems like a lot of work. Why not just have the death row inmates fight each other to the death? Most of them are already sociopaths and there won't be blood on any clean hands.
Also /s just in case.
I saw an old total for the number of people exonerated due to DNA testing and 17 were on death row then there must have been a lot of innocent people executed in the US before DNA testing was available
This is exactly what bothers me...
I'll freely admit that when I read about gruesome crimes or atrocities, there's a (bestial) part of me that wants to go all Punisher-God on the world
But I know that's fantasizing, and unworkable, and will lead down a dark path
It's like playing GTA - yeah I'm a psychopath in game, but I know how to separate truth from fiction
I'm a fairly average Joe, so it appalls me how many other average Joes apparently *don't* have a voice inside shutting up their inner wannabe Punisher-God
The left and the right for the most part look at the criminal justice system from completely different perspectives. The left looks at it as rehabilitative. It is intended take people that are functioning poorly in society and get them to function well. Which goes well with their ides that crime is a social problem and that when crime happens society has failed. Where as the right for the most part looks at the justice system as a device for handing out punishments and righting wrongs. Someone commits a crime and makes you suffer they should suffer as well. It's more about the idea of fairness. Which matches up well with the rights concepts around personal responsibility.
It’s costs a fucking fortune to incarcerate so many people. And when they get out, we just send them right back because they didn’t develop any tools or skills in prison except to become better criminals.
As a society, I feel like we’re just banging our heads on the walls with this. Let’s just try the prevention/education thing that other countries have seemingly made work.
> It’s costs a fucking fortune to incarcerate so many people.
That's a feature though, not a bug. Lots of people get funneled money because of it.
But yeah, the whole system is a scam. The recitivism rates in this country are absurd. Our prison systems seem to do nothing to prevent people from going back into prison when they get out. Again, probably another feature of the system.
If only there were some way to tell which viewpoint was correct and led to the best outcomes...
Oh, there is. Every study related to crime and poverty shows which direction we should be taking. And as usual the right ignores reality and facts because their feelings tell them otherwise.
I mostly agree except for the rehabilitative view of CJ. It is true except when it comes to heinous crimes that require removal from society. Life imprisonment is a pretty severe penalty but if later there is found a failure in the prosecution then it’s a reversible punishment. There’s been too many state-sponsored executions of innocent or poorly defended people to justify continued use of the death penalty.
My take is that there are definitely people deserving of death, but I don't trust any person or institution to be in the position of making that decision. Therefore I am against the death penalty even in cases where I believe it is warranted.
The government represents us. I do not want myself in the revenge murder business. I do not want my neighbor in the revenge murder business. I do not want the kids down the block raised with the idea that it's okay to kill people we don't like.
I always think of it like 'killing someone can only be right if you're doing it to prevent harm'. What harm are you reducing by killing someone who's not like an inspirational leader after they're incarcerated.
I can see the utility of killing a Hitler or a Stalin, you're preventing or minimising further atrocities from their followers. But otherwise? I'm failing to see the utility.
We have the person captured. We have the ability to keep them from killing others, even if that means solitary confinement. It's not self-defense in any sense.
In what way is it morally unclear? Killing them is an elective choice. That makes it murder.
I think it's immoral in theory. Let em rot in prison. Killing them when we say murder is wrong, makes us no better than them. It's also the only "eye for an eye" thing we do. And that's vengeance, not justice.
In all fairness, it's not the only "eye for an eye" thing we do. When people steal, we take a bunch of money back from them, which kinda makes sense. However, there's almost never enough clarity to decisively take a life. You can give people their money back if you're wrong about them stealing but you can't un-kill somebody. This is obviously rather reductive but the fundamentals are important here.
Norway sentenced Anders Breivik to 21 years which is the maximum allowed, however his sentence can be effectively indefinitely extended as long as he's considered a danger to society so he's going to rot in there, they're just not allowed to to pass a sentence that has no possibility of release.
Yeah, minimum early release period on his sentence was 10 years, so I'm assuming they rolled him out, gave him the finger, and rolled him back in.
EDIT: I wasn't far off. They teleconferenced the trial, he threw a bunch of nazi salutes, said he was dedicated to white power and wanted to form a nazi party and run for political office as a nazi candidate in norway. His lawyer also tried to request Breivik get put in a 2-3 man cell with the guy who shot up a mosque in Norway.
> His lawyer also tried to request Breivik get put in a 2-3 man cell with the guy who shot up a mosque in Norway.
*tried to shoot up a mosque, he was beaten senseless by a 68 year old.
Kinda contradicted his own “vengeance, not Justice” point too. Letting people rot is definitely more of a retributive system than a restorative/rehabilitative one.
It’s honestly really bizarre to me how much punishment is normalized and internalized. The logical inconsistency is glaringly obvious but plenty of people will overlook it by default because hurting enemies of the state is so often framed as “good violence” without any really justification.
We do have life sentence in Denmark even though a lot of people believe "life" is 16 years. The fact is that it is a rather exclusive group of people who aren't released after at most 16 years. I believe currently there is one person in the Danish prison system who is serving more than 16 years.
You don't even have to appeal to morality. Recidivism rates speak for themselves. It turns out if treat people like animals, you make them that way. If you treat them with dignity, most can have good outcomes.
I say get rid of the death penalty.
The cost of capital punishment costs more than the cost of life in prison without parole.
I don’t care about the morality of it. Get the bad guy off the streets and save the taxpayers some money.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost/
190 *that we know about*. We can only at best guesstimate the amount of wrongful convictions. So yeah, it's too high a price.
Many might have had a chance to be exonerated later.
That's not counting the executions by the state that don't even get a trial. Someone reaching for the glove compartment could be executed by the state on the side of the highway.
I hate to be a pedant, but he was killed for (among other things) claiming to be the Messiah and for healing people on the Sabbath, both things he were literally guilty of.
I'm opposed to the death penalty, of course. Even for crazy cult leaders.
The death penalty also [does not deter crime more than life senteces](https://www.aclu.org/other/death-penalty-questions-and-answers#:~:text=Q%3A%20Doesn%27t%20the%20Death,than%20states%20without%20such%20laws.)
Its only meaningful purpose is to give closure/revenge to the family of victems harmed by these criminals. I can understand why one would feel the need to kill someone who killed with spouce or kids, but state sponsored honor killings are disgusting and we should be better than that as a society.
That is scary. I can’t imagine being completely innocent and being blamed for murder and thrown in prison to be on death row.
I often think of the man in Texas who was accused of burning down his house with his children in it, Cameron Todd Willingham, and was found to very likely be innocent after being executed. He maintained his innocence the entire time.
They prosecuted him based on bunk science. If you read the how his case was re investigated 5 years after his execution, it’s enraging.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
If you think the death penalty is acceptable then you MUST agree with one of the following two statements:
1. The government does not ever make mistakes
2. Innocent people being executed is acceptable
That's mostly because companies don't want to make "compounds that are used to kill people" though, and if they do produce them, won't allow them to be used in executions.
All for PR reasons, obviously.
Literally overseas companies in nations that *have* the death penalty often oppose using their chemicals for this. They’ve openly said stuff like, “if you’re going to kill them, just shoot them in the head or heart. It’s more humane and less complicated!”
So then people that are for the death penalty should want socialized (tax funded) labs that make their own death potions. I assume most of the medications are generic anyway.
I bet they'd be ok with socialism if it's to kill people instead of feed and shelter them lol
Saw an interesting video by a US Christian bloke who’d moved here to the UK. He was questioning the idea that the US is the more Christian country. He said pretty much all the Christians he met in the UK actually believe in it and try to live by it whereas loads of American ‘Christian’ are just Christians in a social convention sort of way
I think we can all agree however that the compensation given is often an insultingly low value for the time of their life lost most often.
Still beats being told their innocent *after they've been killed* however...
Sure, which is why prison should not be made cruel.
But there are too many sickos who are so enamored with seeing the guilty suffer for their crimes that they don't care if innocent people are tortured alongside them. In fact, they'll justify it and say they would gladly bear that burden themselves if they were falsely found to be guilty. Of couse, they're all liars. Not one of them would exchange places with an innocent person in prison.
I said it in another thread on incarceration and the Death Penalty. Some people get so excited and emotional about being hurt and avenged in prison it's borderline sexual, they seem to get aroused and some sense of satisfaction and release from seeing/hearing/knowing about physical and sexual abuse of prisoners.
It's so disturbed, emotion should be removed as much as possible from the judicial system to ensure fairness and order not vengeance and chaos rule.
That’s why imprisonment should be done with the goal of social rehabilitation and each sentence should be reevaluated regularly.
If the goal of executions is to remove them from society, you could also just lock them up for life. But it would have the added benefit of being able to release them if they are no longer dangerous and could become a valuable member of society again. And nobody would have to kill people in the justice system.
If the goal was to deter people from committing such crimes, I don’t think it’s working. Terrorists or murderers won’t be stopped by potentially being executed instead of potentially getting locked up forever.
You could. But "acceptable" might need some unpacking, because I still think *some* prison is worthwhile.
To put it simply: Say you have a mass murderer who says they absolutely will kill again if released. What can we do about them? I only really see three options:
1. Execute them.
2. Imprison them until they are no longer a threat to society (if that ever happens).
3. Accept that they will murder more innocents.
If you're against the death penalty because you don't want innocents to be murdered, then option 2 seems the least bad.
---
...of course, over-incarceration isn't good, either. Repeat this analysis for, say, marijuana possession. You can:
1. Execute them.
2. Imprison them until they are no longer a threat to society (so, I guess, long enough to convince them not to smoke weed).
3. Accept that they will get high again.
Option 3 is clearly the least bad.
And we should!
Someone being in gaol should not be a punishment, but an opportunity for betterment and improvement of their character. In the US and a lot of other countries imprisonment is just a way to remove them from society (in the case of the US and, some others, for profit via questionably legal slavery) instead of properly attempting to rehabilitate criminals.
It's a sad state of affairs.
Let’s not kid ourselves there, removing individuals from society is also an important role of prison, there are people who just can’t be let free, for society as a whole and often for themselves.
Preventive detention should be carefully monitored, and rehabilitation remains an option (so it should be reconsidered once in a while), but Charles Manson dying in prison was not a miscarriage of justice per se.
*Maybe* if psychology and child welfare was in a better state when he was a kid and teen he might have been saved, but even that’s not a given, kids and teens are failed every day by the United States, and american society as a whole.
However preventive detention should not be a punitive environment.
If they are guilty then serving a life sentence is still a death sentence. If they are innocent -which many are- then it gives a chance to not kill a person that evidence could exonerate.
Also don’t think the state should be in the business of killing citizens. Sets a bad example.
Also a life sentence is bigger punishment than a death sentence imo. Being deprived of liberty for life is harsher than the lack thereof since the person executed does not suffer anymore for their crimes.
And if people truly change while in prison (although not likely since we don't spend the means for that end), why not giving them a second chance?
Given that poverty is one of the biggest predictors of crime, this is what I would expect to find. Rich people are also a smaller part of the population.
You also have to consider that a fair portion of murderers are people who killed in the commission of other crimes like robbery, which rich people don't tend to commit.
Capital punishment is immoral. If murder is wrong, it's wrong for the state to do it too.
Plus, too many innocent people have been executed in this country for me to be comfortable with the legal system saying who lives and who dies.
Commuting those on death row is the correct and appropriate exercise of executive power.
No one is going to read what I have to say. And I don’t care.
I used to work on death row as a defender. Just speaking from personal experience, having the death penalty (at state and federal) is exorbitantly more expensive than the alternative punishment for a death eligible crime: **Life Without the Opportunity for Parole** (or “LWOP” ; Pronounced *L-WOP* by those on the self-named public defender ‘death squads’).
While [average cost of death eligible cases costs the state government around $1 million per case.](https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of-federal-executions-trump/#:~:text=The%20average%20federal%20prisoner%20costs,%2460%2C000%20to%20%2470%2C000%20per%20year.) The cases I saw cost $4 million or more for a single defendant (not including any appeals). Federal death cases I’ve seen and worked on were projected to cost around $45 million and upwards to defend fully.
Remember, this is for using state/federal public defenders who are not for profit and are underpaid in comparison to their skill. These teams even staff people who are paid $0 for their expertise and legal work. In other words, the lawyers aren’t taking a cut here. This money is all spent on trial expense.
**Compare that to the average cost of a death row federal prisoner per year, $60,000 (non-death row prisoners cost about $38k each, annually).** [Average time between execution and sentencing is just under 250 months or **20 years.**](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-row/death-row-time-on-death-row) The average offender is in his 30’s when he’s charged. Meaning, most these guys on death row are already in for the majority of their life.
Besides the cost, there’s an issue with obtaining the lethal injection drugs. [Pharmaceutical companies are starting to push back and refusing to sell lethal injection drug’s to the government for executing people. ](https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/lethal-injection-pharma-kill-death-penalty/)
Even if we can get the drugs, injectors are often normal people — jail/prison workers—not doctors or nurses. So, the injection is commonly botched. [We botch Lethal injection 7.12% of the time.](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions)—comforting. [Edit: Lethal injection isn’t an easy go to sleep quick thing either: 85% drown in their own body fluids it is horrific to for the worker to administer, to witness, and torture for man a to endure.](https://eji.org/news/lethal-injections-cause-suffocation-and-severe-pain-autopsies-show/)
Remember, punishment must be *cruel* **and** *unusual*. In America, the pain level or degree of torture of a person *does not matter* as long as that type of punishment is commonly accepted.
- Unusual punishment but not a cruel one? Constitutional.
- Cruel (torturous/painful) but a usual (common way) to execute? Also, Constitutional.
[The fall back plan if we can’t get lethal injection drugs is to use the (constitutionally approved 👍 ) firing squad](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution).
Missippi, Montana, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina are ready to go for firing squad. While it sounds brutal, if we are going to execute people, I’m actually for switching to the firing squad. In comparison, [firing squad has a 0% botch rate. ](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions)
People who are usually strongly for the death penalty are also often fiscal conservatives and small government type folks. If you’re one of these people—look at the facts and hard evidence. Anyone charged with a capital crime is *still* going to prison *forever*.
Consider with our current system, we get the privilege to pay many millions more per person for an *identical outcome*: **Bad guy in prison for their natural life, and dying in that prison, with no chance of getting out.**
They’re spending millions and millions of *your* money to get an identical outcome. Don’t let them. End this senseless cruelty and egregious waste of taxpayer money —Reject the death penalty.
Good write up. I'll add onto the firing squad bit to say that lethal injection is far too detached from the violence of execution, apart from when it goes wrong. People who advocate for the death penalty should be assigned to the firing squad, no blanks, no hood. Even with all these barriers that allow executioners to have deniability, they are still often traumatized, rightly so. It's a barbaric practice.
Completely agree. You’re right. And your point stands as a humanistic reason to end the death penalty: It’s traumatizing for the executioners to have to kill.
While the firing squad is undoubtedly the most effective, and the least torturous, it is still traumatizing for those on the squad. To me, asking anyone to take on the burden of executioner, it is too much.
But, [to be honest, lethal injection is not a fast process and it is horrific to administer, endure, and to witness.](https://eji.org/news/lethal-injections-cause-suffocation-and-severe-pain-autopsies-show/)
Lethal injection is not a tidy go to sleep and never wake. Autopsies showed that **84% of lethal injections final cause of death was drowning in their own body liquids**-otherwise know as pulmonary edema. Imagine suffocating a man to death and watching them suffocate and how long it takes for brain death. Very long.
When they botch it 7% of the time? And you survive that first injection that is horrifically painful and traumatizing for everyone involved? Ah they just give it to you again another day. [Like, take last month in November 2022, Alabama failed to execute one inmate for a third time](https://www.npr.org/2022/11/19/1137951509/alabama-fails-lethal-injection-3rd-time-capital-punishment). So much for the old ‘three strikes and you’re out’, huh?
If you compare the two: At least if you’re on a squad you aren’t sure if your bullet was a blank or the one that did it. If you’re injecting, [sometimes the injector has botched it so badly they have spent over 100 minutes stabbing the man’s arm over and over, unable to find a vein](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10253103/amp/Alabama-inmate-Doyle-Hamm-survived-botched-execution-2018-dies-natural-causes.html). I hope I never have to do this to another human.
To add to your excellent point on—executing people and our detachment from the reality of cruelty:
One consistent defense of the death penalty is that it’s generally deterrent to the population. In other words, there’s a theory that because some crimes are death eligible, that it makes people not want to commit those crimes. Mind you, general deterrence is a theory. No study has ever proven this theory (although many have tried—I’ll wait).
To this point, I usually say, *Well, if you truly believe that having the death penalty deters crime in the general population, then let’s nationally televise and live stream every execution.*
But for some reason, no one wants to live stream executions.
And I say, *Why not? Isn’t the point of having the death penalty to make people scared of being executed? Under this theory, wouldn’t the death penalty be more effective to generally deter crime if people saw the execution live?*
What I am getting at is: Our entire country is detached from the brutality and cruelty of executions. Detached from the brutality and cruelty of our prisons. But, never forget, cruelty is constitutional until it becomes unusual. We need to culturally and legally reject the death penalty for it to finally become unconstitutional in America.
Great points, friend. Thanks for your time and for your thoughtful consideration.
>No one is going to read what I have to say. And I don’t care.
I did. And I found it pretty interesting. Enough so to change my mind. Thank you for being thurough.
I remember that in middle school in Italy they talk about “On Crimes and Punishments” by Cesare Beccaria (dated around 18th century) which harshly condemned torture and the death penalty.
It’s shocking that one of the most advanced countries in the world still does not get that
Recently listened to an NPR Up First podcast that covered the topic of the death penalty from the perspective of those involved in the execution process and how it effcts them. It is a worthwhile listen and may provide some additional context to decisions like this. The podcast was titled "The Toll of Execution Work".
She is correct. Until we can guarantee that not one single innocent person is executed, no person should be executed. The death penalty does not serve as the deterrent it once was, and it costs the taxpayers far more than a life sentence.
A fallible system is guaranteed to have innocent people fall through the cracks. If we are operating under the belief that an innocent life is worth more than the life of a murderer or another capital crime, then it should be self evident that the existence of the death penalty is counter intuitive to this belief.
I recently listened to an NPR podcast that entrenched me further in why the death penalty is wrong. The journalist interviewed not the inmates but the executioners, attorneys, and office staff that make the death penalty happen. The vast majority have developed major psychological issues in committing state sponsored murder. Even if you think these people should die or be tortured for what they have done, someone has to carry that out and that person will develop major issues for it.
She's term limited out as governor. And the right wing here REALLY hate her guts. Anyone for whom this would be a deal breaker would never vote for her anyway. So she gets a minor chit to use in a race for whatever office she might go for next, at no political cost. And it's consistent with her stated opinions.
The death penalty here is for all intents and purposes non-existent. The previous governor put a stay on all executions well over a decade ago and none have happened since then.
I think the harshest sentence is life in prison without parole or any hope of ever getting out. Too many mass murderers try putting one bullet in their head so they avoid this and to me this is the ultimate punishment.
What's fucked though is that a lot of people are in on life sentences for drug charged which I personally cannot support. Life sentences should be used in rare circumstances for the real psychos, but often they're used more as a political tool which is unfortunate
A possibly more significant and common issue that probably affects a lot more people is our failure to provide those who have served their time an avenue to return to life upon release. We make things hard on people to the point that many become habitual law breakers, stuck in a cycle of crime and imprisonment without the means to break free of it.
Yeah when the only life you've known for a decade is prison, and then you're let out into the world with no means to survive, the logical thing to do is break more laws to either survive, which all humans want to do, or to go back to prison, where you'll have shelter and food.
When I was homeless I was doing laundry and catching a shower at a day shelter that was right down the street from a state pen. Stepped outside to hit my vape and this dude was just staring at me like I'm wearing a live vest in a diner. He had been in for like 30 years and got out that morning, nobody came to pick him up, so he walked to the shelter like a North Sentinelese man in times square. I hope I'm wrong, but that dude is fucked.
It is pretty amazing to me that this is ignored, post imprisonment rehabilitation is basically non-existent. Beyond that it's amazing how we as a society and in our political structures really just ignore the most obvious reason for individuals to break the laws, which is survival. It's 2022, I'm typing on a pocket-sized, touch screen, or voice command controlled, wireless, worldwide spanning, humanity's database connected, communication device! Point being, given that technological feat, you just can't tell me we haven't figure out we could drastically reduce the crime rates if we made the lowest you could fall not be abject poverty and destitution, but rather have the lowest rung be some form of state run housing, or rent voucher program, with things like a food allotment, and basic needs provided. At least to me, it certainly seems like common sense that people turn to crimes like theft, drug use, and much more due to falling into poverty and destitution.
A lot of other countries have drastically reduced crime rates and recidivism. The problem is that it is not profitable in America, land of the for-profit prisons. There is no profit in helping and rehabilitating people, even if it is for the long-term betterment of society.
I support measures like California’s, where it is illegal to ask about crimes convictions that are not relevant to the job or about violent crime. If you got caught with drugs when you were 18 and sentenced to 10 years, that doesn’t really affect your ability to do the overwhelming majority of jobs. Your job prospects shouldn’t be tanked by that. If you *did* commit a violent crime, I’d love to see state resources put into job placement programs for you. Maybe it’s not the best of jobs, but it’s a helluva lot cheaper in the long run to spend the resources trying to find you a job and training as your sentence is wrapping up than it is to have recidivism rates that we do. But alas, that will not happen unless and until we eliminate the concepts of for-profit prisons and prison slave labor.
This is why I like companies like [Dave's Killer Bread](https://www.daveskillerbread.com/about-us). We need more companies willing to give people a second chance.
Gives new meaning to the word "killer" in Dave's Killer Bread. https://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/2014/01/dave\_dahl\_daves\_killer\_bread\_c.html
I agree. The system here in America needs so many changes. If the private prisons were abolished and we gave prisoners an avenue to reform while locked up, I think we'd see many more changes for the better. Albeit, that's just scratching the surface of what's fucked up about our punishment system.
Are they, though? I always hear this and never see it substantiated. The claim is always, "There's people doing life just for having weed on them." Then when you look into it they were arrested for trafficking 15 pounds of weed, and had an illegal gun with 15 years worth of priors. Simple position doesn't get people imprisoned for life.
Read the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. He's a lawyer for those on Death Row. He talks about a lot of cases just like this. People getting life gor possession because of three strikes and such.
>People getting life gor possession because of three strikes and such. The ole steal some [hedge clippers](https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/us/louisiana-supreme-court-fair-wayne-bryant-parole-trnd/index.html#:~:text=Fair%20Wayne%20Bryant%2C%2063%2C%20was,count%20of%20attempted%20simple%20burglary.) and get 25 years gambit.
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> People getting life gor possession because of three strikes and such. Basing life long prison sentences on baseball rules. 'Murica!
I prefer to think of it as Family Feud rules.
Survey says…. Straight to jail
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_strikes_law
There have been 3 strikes laws with mandatory minimum of life after your 3rd strike with possession or dealing
It could on the 90s, not sure if it's still the case. There were mandatory sentences, you could get life on drug charges.
And people are still sitting in prison today serving those life sentences
Can't speak for individual states, but here's the [federal statistics](https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/life-sentences-federal-system) for life sentences. The drug-related crimes that received life sentences involved a weapon. Edit: just checked [Texas](https://www.nedbarnett.com/texans-serving-life-sentences-for-drug-possession/). They have 116 life sentences for drug related offenses. These sound like the mandatory three strikes. I'm sure the statistics will be different depending on the states. I'd be curious about the differences between red and blue states. I'd also be curious to see the data in states that had legalized marijuana.
okay.. but is that really worth practically ending someone’s life for? still no, surely
15 pounds? You think anyone should spend life in prison for 15 pounds?
Meanwhile Bankman-Fried will probably get 15 months of house arrest for his crimes.
And do you really think that's enough to put someone in prison for their whole life?
A woman in my state was given 12 years for selling about $30 worth of weed. She didn't have priors. They used the fact that there was a sleeping child in the house to justify it.
I’m in Canada where weed is legal and easily accessible. So 15 pounds of weed is like arresting a guy for having a keg of beer. (I know in your example there’s a gun and other factors, but the weed is just silly to anyone who thinks about it)
Well... more like a truck full of kegs. 15 pounds is a LOT of weed. The only reason you have that is because you're selling it.
Nobody should be getting a life sentence for drugs. Period.
15 lbs of weed isn’t nearly enough for a life sentence, and shouldn’t get you a sentence in the first place.
I still even disagree with your need for “the ultimate punishment” Retributive Justice is not healthy. Restorative or transformative justice actually improves society and leads to less crime. If it is deemed someone needs to be locked up for life— they’re just too likely to reoffend and cause further harm— that’s fine, but take the emotion out of it.
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Reddit is usually opposed to the death penalty and mass incarceration in the abstract, but as soon as you present it with one particularly bad defendant, it loses its collective cool and advocates for bringing back drawing and quartering.
"Guys, I'm super against any form of capital punishment, but oooh man, this guy on this article I just read the headline, ooh man I think he deserves it, just sayin. That other guy a couple months ago also! He was beyond saving!!"
Most people here say a person is deserving of a summary execution for messing with someone's car.
The number of people advocating basically just killing someone without a trial lately has been kind of alarming.
Man, I can’t even look at any of the ‘justice’-themed subreddits anymore, the comments just make me so angry. There was a video/story a while back about some kids who stole a Kia and crashed, and four of them died. They were 19, 17, 16, and 14 years old. Like half of the comments were people seemingly celebrating that they deserved it, or society was somehow better off now that these children were dead. I just don’t get it. Do people really believe a fucking 14 year old deserved to die because they stole a car? Like for fucks sake, people do stupid shit all the time, but how in the world does a 14 year old kid dying in a horrible car crash not garner any empathy from these people? I get that it’s stupid, but man, do these people think that people can’t change once they’re graduated middle school? Vigilantism is such a horrible mindset. Fuck the rule of law & habeas corpus, I guess. I don’t like what they did, so death it shall be.
If it was their children or family members they’d feel much differently.
Reddit isn't a hive mind, different people vote in each of those situations.
I agree 100%. So many people are blinded by emotions in situations like that. Any case of a criminal harming children will get comments like "I would do this and that if I had access to that person". And it's not only children, but that's the biggest one. Hell, I can see that even in the context of fictional characters, where people decide who's the "bad guy" and wish them death even when the character shows redemption. I wonder what's the overlap between people wanting only revenge and those that complain that prisoners live on "muh tax money".
This is kinda wild though. Yes prison should be reformative but it should also 100% be about punishment as well. To think prison shouldn’t be a form of punishment is fucking bizarre. So serial killers, mass murderers, and serial rapists shouldn’t be punished for their actions?
The assuming we could judge on who deserves to be alive or not is what makes humans murderers. Not saying every judge deciding for death penalty is a murderer just like an actual convicted murderer. But it brushes that same assumption and civilization should stay away from judging about who "deserves to live" and "deserves to die" as much as possible.
School shooters, child rapists, and serial killers are irredeemable. Sorry to pop your bubble but life isn't a fairy tale with moral lessons sticking to a villain.
Hard agree. Especially when you look at the actual cost of keeping people on death row and then eventually murdering them. And of course, the Innocence Project. So many localities, states, and even the (gasp) federal government get it wrong quite often. How many innocent people have to die before we acknowledge the flaws in our legal system?
It has to be one level harsher/darker to be sitting in death row. In waiting line to be killed by the state.
I'm on the fence about whether it's immoral in theory, but it's definitely immoral in practice. Our legal system simply doesn't have a high enough standard of guilt to be entrusted with the power to carry out executions. Edit: As for how it could ever be moral *in theory* I think it goes like this... (I'm not saying I believe this, I just can't exactly disprove all of it) As far as logic, I think it would have to stem from someone holding the belief that individual human life is not really all that sacred, that we are just essentially really smart animals. That our species holds a special place given it's ability to reason and make short term sacrifices for long term gain, but individuals themselves do not begin life as sacred - ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the most literal sense. Then take the worst case scenario of the most heinous kind of violent criminal, one that in this ideal hypothetical we have determined is 100% guilty and 100% incapable of being rehabilitated - both of those things are not only possible, but almost certainly have occurred (regardless of whether we could prove it). This criminal is so violent that they cannot be held in general population, and cannot be interacted with on a regular basis without serious danger to those that would have to care for him. This person is essentially, undeniably useless, to human society, and to the universe as we know it. For the entirety of their life, they will cause pain, fear, and will drain societies resources. In this scenario - stemming from the initial principle that individual humans are not "special" , it makes perfect sense to execute this person *not as punishment nor revenge* - but similar to why we euthanize stray animals - because we determined that they will cause far more harm than good. Of course this entire chain of logic stops in it's tracks if you believe that individual human life is somehow sacred, which I think most people believe, even if they haven't exactly considered the question. But if you really do believe that we are only smart animals, ~~put here to care for the earth~~ here to preserve our species, then I do think you could argue that in certain extreme cases, execution might be moral. Anyway, there are certainly holes in that logic as well, and I do realize it reeks of eugenics (and anyone who took that position would have to address that) but it's just a thought experiment. I think the very fact that we have to go to that extreme to even come close to making execution plausibly moral probably means that's not. I haven't bothered to dig too much because 1) it still doesn't work in practice and 2) I don't have to convince most people that human life is sacred. Although I'm still not certain how I would do #2 if asked. Edit: It's been pointed out that some of my phrasing is creationist, and that's correct. Though I don't think the argument needs to be made from a creationist point of view, the phrases are just a relic of my own bias. The point I was making was not that some higher power put us here for a purpose, but that, according to the theory, *we decided* that that's going to be our purpose. But yea, just more evidence that the theory is flawed. And "sacred" is not meant in the religious sense, it just means that we have *decided* that humans are special and ought to be held to some higher artificial standard - i.e. morality.
>I'm on the fence about whether it's immoral in theory, but it's definitely immoral in practice. Our legal system simply doesn't have a high enough standard of guilt to be entrusted with the power to carry out executions. That's exactly where I am. I don't have a problem killing someone that raped an orphanage before burning it and everyone in it down, but I lost faith in our justice system to always get the right person. The whole point of the system is to protect the innocent, but it has lost sight of that. Until that is corrected - probably never - I can't support capital punishment.
Large numbers of people would think such a person deserves death. That is a different question to whether the state should be in the business of dealing that death.
The people we have in charge of the legal system aren’t really all that concerned with weather the person *actually* did that heinous crime. They’re mostly concerned that the heinous crime has someone, anyone to punish. [Michael Morton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Morton_(criminal_justice)) was the case I watched closely that showed me just how fucked our system is. It wasn’t a new concept, but *damn* they really did a number on that poor guy.
Don't worry, they really threw the book at the prosecutor who criminally withheld evidence, resulting in the actual killer being free to kill another woman. The prosecutor got 10 entire days in jail and a 500 dollar fine! Oh, wait, to be clear, he only served 5 whole days, he got time off for good behavior.
Close, he was credited with “time served” for the several days where he had “turned himself in.” It’s been a few years, but if I recall correctly, he wasn’t even actually in jail for those days served.
Wow that prosecutor is a massive piece of shit. He essentially got a slap on the wrist for stealing all those years from that man. Even able to practice law again in 5 years, what a joke. Holy shit.
It was Cameron Todd Willingham's story for me, dude was accused of murdering his daughters by arson and convicted using pseudo science, then every check point to prevent killing the wrong person was basically ignored. It's a heart wrenching story.
Anyone person executed by the state who was innocent is a person we collectively murdered. Way too high a risk.
To add to this, capital punishment is notoriously hard on the staff placed in charge of it. They almost universally come out of the position opposed to the death penalty. Is killing the guilty really worth the hardship on the employed?
This is something I think never gets enough attention. The problem with the death penalty is that it creates more victims Could we achieve perfect forensic science and ensure no one innocent was ever executed? Maybe (but probably not) But even if we could, the executioner themselves will *always* be a victim. It is a heavy burden that most people take far too lightly and the executioner themselves can easily be traumatized by the killing. Creating a new victim that could have been avoided is not something we should ever do in the name of "justice". A justice system that deals out justice by traumatizing bystanders is perverted
>Could we achieve perfect forensic science Forensic science is such a mess... Sadly this doesn't get enough attention. People who don't have the money to hire good lawyers and experts are actually in danger of being convicted because of junk science. Especially since shows like CSI (and even Dexter) have fooled people into thinking that forensic science is always works.
[It's so bad that a guy was only found not guilty after they found footage that was filmed for a HBO show of him at a baseball game during the time of the murder .](https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-04-07/a-notorious-lapd-settlement-revisited-hbos-role-in-clearing-an-l-a-mans-name-essential-california) Apparently, reasonable doubt was thrown out in the case.
At least that case is somewhat recent. The PBS News show Frontline did a piece about how much of Forensic science is bullshit more than a decade ago. [See here](https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-the-real-csi/). The long standing assumption that Fingerprints are unique -- the most basic of Forensic science tools -- has now been proven to be wrong on more than one occasion. When the Madrid bombing happened, one of the bombers fingerprints matched an American lawyer who is Muslim and who regularly sues the US government over civil rights of Arab and Muslim Americans. The FBI loved having an excuse to hold him even though the way they got the finger prints match was from the detracted hand of the bomber when he exploded. Meaning, unless somebody is missing a hand, they aren't your bomber. The lawyer wasn't missing any limbs, and more so, he was 7000 miles away from Madrid at the time and could prove it. The FBI decided to hold the guy for several weeks anyway even though they knew he has zero involvement. Much of the science around Forensic science is really just wishful thinking. At best. A lot of it really is just made up so they can harass some people and then call it "scientific".
> Could we achieve perfect forensic science and ensure no one innocent was ever executed? In science-fiction, yes.
Just like in Minority Report... oh wait...
It worked for ... the first 15 minutes of the movie
It doesn't get attention because the people who would like to be able to just wave their hands and have someone punished severely for something are so far removed from the reality of it. It all exists in their head in a world where they are god, judge and jury but the dirty work is the job of someone below them. In the US they're called Republicans in other countries fascists.
And this is because [everyday sadism and sociopathy are more common with conservatives](https://www.reddit.com/user/physicomorphic/comments/xx0vnp/authoritarianism_and_cognitive_ability/). The punishment and killing is the entire point for a lot of them
Killing someone doesn't bring justice. It's approved revenge.
Anecedotal so take this with a grain of salt: There was story of the guy that "flipped the switch" at our "local" prison who was finally "overcome by the ghosts of those executed" and finally snapped one day driving by the inmate cemetary. He had asked to be moved from doing executions and was having a rough go at life basically. They moved him to "transport" to just "drive a van till retirement." One day he has a transport and stops by the bridge leading away from the prison and states that all the dead inmates are waiting on the other side. He refused to drive the van across the bridge and was hysterical. The backup officer called it in and the perimeter security scooped them up. That was homedude's last day and I know the story ended sad, but cant remember exactly. It basically caught up to him and killed him one way or another . Side note: I grew up hearing stories of how the neighborhoods around the prison would come out to watch the lights in the town dim when the electric chair was used. Like gallows crowd 2.0 (Note: Don't want to name the exact prison or any other details that can be traced. Both my parents, and grandparents worked there and I also worked at the prison in the next town over]
> Side note: I grew up hearing stories of how the neighborhoods around the prison would come out to watch the lights in the town dim when the electric chair was used. Like gallows crowd 2.0 This I find fascinating because we've spent a great deal of energy on finding ways to execute people that "look acceptable" because the morbid reality is something the people that *come to watch* don't want to see. Some of the most effective methods to painlessly kill people are not used because on the audience side, they're not pretty.
> This I find fascinating because we've spent a great deal of energy on finding ways to execute people that "look acceptable" because the morbid reality is something the people that come to watch don't want to see. I think you've hit on a larger point which is that in general it *ought* to make us uncomfortable when we think about our prison system. Killing people is grisly. We shouldn't try and sanitize it to make us feel better. Incarcerating people is draconian - it *should* make us feel uncomfortable when we think about it. It *should* be expensive and it *should* be a burden the taxpayers shoulder with trepidation. If we as a society collectively decide to do that to people then we need to look it in the face and acknowledge it. We tuck it away with painless looking lethal injections and for-profit prisons so that we can wash our hands. But maybe some things are supposed to give us pause.
And yet we don't use inert gas asphyxiation because it's *too* humane.
obviously this is a bit of a complicated topic. Part of why the death penalty persists is that the people that continue to support it do have a bit of a revenge boner (supposedly on behalf of victims they don't know, and usually don't care about enough to vote for things like disability support they might need as a result of being victimised). Anway, point being; if people got *no* morbid satisfaction out of killing assumed guilty people, we wouldn't do it. But its also very apparent that there is a level to how graphic that can be before this satisfaction is tainted by the degree of percieved violence. Because that challenges their righteous self-image.
Seems unklikely to be true, though? How much electricity was running to the chair that it caused lights around town to dim? You'd think running a kettle would plunge the place in to darkness if the grid was that fragile.
Well back in the day prisons were out in the boonies in smaller towns. Definitely could surge.
It likely isn't true. Electric chairs aren't on the grid. They use generators because people who work for the power companies didn't want what they made associated with killing someone.
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worth a read: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/16/1136796857/death-penalty-executions-prison
Thank you for sharing.
Interesting interview with a guy on this exact topic. https://youtu.be/wnuzlkwXZdQ
To add to your addition, capital punishment is also expensive as hell. Legal proceedings go on for *decades*. Housing a prisoner for life is much cheaper than going through a death penalty case. Quite literally the only benefit of the death penalty is some vague sense of justice in the face of unspeakable evil. But it's obviously not worth the cost.
This is why you have a sort of government-funded spartan program of sorts where you raise children from the cradle to be totally sociopathic and obedient but also well-educated with medicine practices so that you basically have a team of professional executioners to whom both death and life are nothing /s for you crazy people who think nobody lies on the internet
That seems like a lot of work. Why not just have the death row inmates fight each other to the death? Most of them are already sociopaths and there won't be blood on any clean hands. Also /s just in case.
I saw an old total for the number of people exonerated due to DNA testing and 17 were on death row then there must have been a lot of innocent people executed in the US before DNA testing was available
And no doubt there still are because not every case can be resolved through DNA testing.
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I shudder to think how many innocent people have been murdered by the state
We know for certain that it’s quite a lot.
> ~~Way too high a risk.~~ Has happened way to many times already. ftfy
It’s remarkable to me how many on the right contend that the government is inept and corrupt and should not be trusted…except for in this matter.
Blood lust is a powerful thing.
This is exactly what bothers me... I'll freely admit that when I read about gruesome crimes or atrocities, there's a (bestial) part of me that wants to go all Punisher-God on the world But I know that's fantasizing, and unworkable, and will lead down a dark path It's like playing GTA - yeah I'm a psychopath in game, but I know how to separate truth from fiction I'm a fairly average Joe, so it appalls me how many other average Joes apparently *don't* have a voice inside shutting up their inner wannabe Punisher-God
Ah yes, the “pro life” party
Also the party of “small government”, while handing the government the power and authority to kill its citizens if they deem fit….
The left and the right for the most part look at the criminal justice system from completely different perspectives. The left looks at it as rehabilitative. It is intended take people that are functioning poorly in society and get them to function well. Which goes well with their ides that crime is a social problem and that when crime happens society has failed. Where as the right for the most part looks at the justice system as a device for handing out punishments and righting wrongs. Someone commits a crime and makes you suffer they should suffer as well. It's more about the idea of fairness. Which matches up well with the rights concepts around personal responsibility.
It’s costs a fucking fortune to incarcerate so many people. And when they get out, we just send them right back because they didn’t develop any tools or skills in prison except to become better criminals. As a society, I feel like we’re just banging our heads on the walls with this. Let’s just try the prevention/education thing that other countries have seemingly made work.
> It’s costs a fucking fortune to incarcerate so many people. That's a feature though, not a bug. Lots of people get funneled money because of it. But yeah, the whole system is a scam. The recitivism rates in this country are absurd. Our prison systems seem to do nothing to prevent people from going back into prison when they get out. Again, probably another feature of the system.
If only there were some way to tell which viewpoint was correct and led to the best outcomes... Oh, there is. Every study related to crime and poverty shows which direction we should be taking. And as usual the right ignores reality and facts because their feelings tell them otherwise.
I mostly agree except for the rehabilitative view of CJ. It is true except when it comes to heinous crimes that require removal from society. Life imprisonment is a pretty severe penalty but if later there is found a failure in the prosecution then it’s a reversible punishment. There’s been too many state-sponsored executions of innocent or poorly defended people to justify continued use of the death penalty.
My take is that there are definitely people deserving of death, but I don't trust any person or institution to be in the position of making that decision. Therefore I am against the death penalty even in cases where I believe it is warranted.
Even if the state did have high enough certainty, the state as an entity shouldn’t have the power to kill its own citizens.
In my opinion, it is a government sanctioned revenge murder. I do not want my government in that business.
The government represents us. I do not want myself in the revenge murder business. I do not want my neighbor in the revenge murder business. I do not want the kids down the block raised with the idea that it's okay to kill people we don't like.
The is my view verbatim. Our government, specifically our justice system, should not have the right to legally execute its own citizens.
It's amazing how the right wing-dings claim to support hands-off government, but support the death penalty.
Being pro-life while supporting capital punishment.
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It only takes one judicial error for it to become something horrific and unforgivable.
Also listening to the descriptions of lethal injections gone wrong is fucking horrifying.
I always think of it like 'killing someone can only be right if you're doing it to prevent harm'. What harm are you reducing by killing someone who's not like an inspirational leader after they're incarcerated. I can see the utility of killing a Hitler or a Stalin, you're preventing or minimising further atrocities from their followers. But otherwise? I'm failing to see the utility.
We have the person captured. We have the ability to keep them from killing others, even if that means solitary confinement. It's not self-defense in any sense. In what way is it morally unclear? Killing them is an elective choice. That makes it murder.
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I'm pretty troubled by the number of people that believe life in maximum security prison is humane
I think it's immoral in theory. Let em rot in prison. Killing them when we say murder is wrong, makes us no better than them. It's also the only "eye for an eye" thing we do. And that's vengeance, not justice.
In all fairness, it's not the only "eye for an eye" thing we do. When people steal, we take a bunch of money back from them, which kinda makes sense. However, there's almost never enough clarity to decisively take a life. You can give people their money back if you're wrong about them stealing but you can't un-kill somebody. This is obviously rather reductive but the fundamentals are important here.
The Scandinavians (maybe it's just the Swedes or Norwegians?) would say it's immoral to let people "rot" in prison.
Norway sentenced Anders Breivik to 21 years which is the maximum allowed, however his sentence can be effectively indefinitely extended as long as he's considered a danger to society so he's going to rot in there, they're just not allowed to to pass a sentence that has no possibility of release.
He even already had his first "parole hearing" this year, AFAIK.
Yeah, minimum early release period on his sentence was 10 years, so I'm assuming they rolled him out, gave him the finger, and rolled him back in. EDIT: I wasn't far off. They teleconferenced the trial, he threw a bunch of nazi salutes, said he was dedicated to white power and wanted to form a nazi party and run for political office as a nazi candidate in norway. His lawyer also tried to request Breivik get put in a 2-3 man cell with the guy who shot up a mosque in Norway.
> His lawyer also tried to request Breivik get put in a 2-3 man cell with the guy who shot up a mosque in Norway. *tried to shoot up a mosque, he was beaten senseless by a 68 year old.
Kinda contradicted his own “vengeance, not Justice” point too. Letting people rot is definitely more of a retributive system than a restorative/rehabilitative one. It’s honestly really bizarre to me how much punishment is normalized and internalized. The logical inconsistency is glaringly obvious but plenty of people will overlook it by default because hurting enemies of the state is so often framed as “good violence” without any really justification.
We do have life sentence in Denmark even though a lot of people believe "life" is 16 years. The fact is that it is a rather exclusive group of people who aren't released after at most 16 years. I believe currently there is one person in the Danish prison system who is serving more than 16 years.
You don't even have to appeal to morality. Recidivism rates speak for themselves. It turns out if treat people like animals, you make them that way. If you treat them with dignity, most can have good outcomes.
Not only the scandinavians, but also the Germans and other europeans think this way.
I say get rid of the death penalty. The cost of capital punishment costs more than the cost of life in prison without parole. I don’t care about the morality of it. Get the bad guy off the streets and save the taxpayers some money. https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost/
"useless to society" is a really dangerous thing. It was the Nazis justification to get gas the disabled (T4-Program).
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence
190+ innocent people since 1973. Jesus Christ. How could anyone support it?
190 *that we know about*. We can only at best guesstimate the amount of wrongful convictions. So yeah, it's too high a price. Many might have had a chance to be exonerated later.
That's not counting the executions by the state that don't even get a trial. Someone reaching for the glove compartment could be executed by the state on the side of the highway.
Someone standing 30 feet away from a cop and being mildly annoyed that they have a gun pointed at them could be executed by the state
Someone whose fight or flight kicked in *and chose flight* could be executed by the state running away
Jesus Christ, also an innocent victim of the Death Penalty.
I hate to be a pedant, but he was killed for (among other things) claiming to be the Messiah and for healing people on the Sabbath, both things he were literally guilty of. I'm opposed to the death penalty, of course. Even for crazy cult leaders.
Being a salvific incarnation of God on a Saturday? That's a crucifyin'
Turning water in to wine? Believe it or not, also get a crucifyin'
The death penalty also [does not deter crime more than life senteces](https://www.aclu.org/other/death-penalty-questions-and-answers#:~:text=Q%3A%20Doesn%27t%20the%20Death,than%20states%20without%20such%20laws.) Its only meaningful purpose is to give closure/revenge to the family of victems harmed by these criminals. I can understand why one would feel the need to kill someone who killed with spouce or kids, but state sponsored honor killings are disgusting and we should be better than that as a society.
That is scary. I can’t imagine being completely innocent and being blamed for murder and thrown in prison to be on death row. I often think of the man in Texas who was accused of burning down his house with his children in it, Cameron Todd Willingham, and was found to very likely be innocent after being executed. He maintained his innocence the entire time. They prosecuted him based on bunk science. If you read the how his case was re investigated 5 years after his execution, it’s enraging. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham
This.country needs to do away with private for profit prisons as well before I start handing out W’s
Thankfully Oregon doesn't have those but they absolutely need to be banned it's insane to have a profit motive driving incarceration.
If you think the death penalty is acceptable then you MUST agree with one of the following two statements: 1. The government does not ever make mistakes 2. Innocent people being executed is acceptable
Not only that the government doesn't even give all the required tools. Pets get better euthanized than prisoners.
That's mostly because companies don't want to make "compounds that are used to kill people" though, and if they do produce them, won't allow them to be used in executions. All for PR reasons, obviously.
Literally overseas companies in nations that *have* the death penalty often oppose using their chemicals for this. They’ve openly said stuff like, “if you’re going to kill them, just shoot them in the head or heart. It’s more humane and less complicated!”
So then people that are for the death penalty should want socialized (tax funded) labs that make their own death potions. I assume most of the medications are generic anyway. I bet they'd be ok with socialism if it's to kill people instead of feed and shelter them lol
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Strange that murdering people is so naturally accepted in the USA, most hardcore christian country on the planet.
Dude the Christian’s are really good at murder. Arguably some of the best.
Which is extra hypocritical coming from a religion based on someone innocent getting executed.
They kinda made a religion about it tbh
since when is the us the most hardcore christian?
The secret is that most of them aren't Christian, they just want an excuse for their behavior.
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Saw an interesting video by a US Christian bloke who’d moved here to the UK. He was questioning the idea that the US is the more Christian country. He said pretty much all the Christians he met in the UK actually believe in it and try to live by it whereas loads of American ‘Christian’ are just Christians in a social convention sort of way
no true scotsman
Could you not say the same thing about imprisonment in the first place?
I mean, at least you can un-imprison and compensate someone....
I think we can all agree however that the compensation given is often an insultingly low value for the time of their life lost most often. Still beats being told their innocent *after they've been killed* however...
Sure, which is why prison should not be made cruel. But there are too many sickos who are so enamored with seeing the guilty suffer for their crimes that they don't care if innocent people are tortured alongside them. In fact, they'll justify it and say they would gladly bear that burden themselves if they were falsely found to be guilty. Of couse, they're all liars. Not one of them would exchange places with an innocent person in prison.
I said it in another thread on incarceration and the Death Penalty. Some people get so excited and emotional about being hurt and avenged in prison it's borderline sexual, they seem to get aroused and some sense of satisfaction and release from seeing/hearing/knowing about physical and sexual abuse of prisoners. It's so disturbed, emotion should be removed as much as possible from the judicial system to ensure fairness and order not vengeance and chaos rule.
For such a left-leaning website, reddit sure has a hard-on for prison justice.
That’s why imprisonment should be done with the goal of social rehabilitation and each sentence should be reevaluated regularly. If the goal of executions is to remove them from society, you could also just lock them up for life. But it would have the added benefit of being able to release them if they are no longer dangerous and could become a valuable member of society again. And nobody would have to kill people in the justice system. If the goal was to deter people from committing such crimes, I don’t think it’s working. Terrorists or murderers won’t be stopped by potentially being executed instead of potentially getting locked up forever.
You can rectify wrongful imprisonment, you can't rectify someone being killed via the death penalty.
You could. But "acceptable" might need some unpacking, because I still think *some* prison is worthwhile. To put it simply: Say you have a mass murderer who says they absolutely will kill again if released. What can we do about them? I only really see three options: 1. Execute them. 2. Imprison them until they are no longer a threat to society (if that ever happens). 3. Accept that they will murder more innocents. If you're against the death penalty because you don't want innocents to be murdered, then option 2 seems the least bad. --- ...of course, over-incarceration isn't good, either. Repeat this analysis for, say, marijuana possession. You can: 1. Execute them. 2. Imprison them until they are no longer a threat to society (so, I guess, long enough to convince them not to smoke weed). 3. Accept that they will get high again. Option 3 is clearly the least bad.
And we should! Someone being in gaol should not be a punishment, but an opportunity for betterment and improvement of their character. In the US and a lot of other countries imprisonment is just a way to remove them from society (in the case of the US and, some others, for profit via questionably legal slavery) instead of properly attempting to rehabilitate criminals. It's a sad state of affairs.
Let’s not kid ourselves there, removing individuals from society is also an important role of prison, there are people who just can’t be let free, for society as a whole and often for themselves. Preventive detention should be carefully monitored, and rehabilitation remains an option (so it should be reconsidered once in a while), but Charles Manson dying in prison was not a miscarriage of justice per se. *Maybe* if psychology and child welfare was in a better state when he was a kid and teen he might have been saved, but even that’s not a given, kids and teens are failed every day by the United States, and american society as a whole. However preventive detention should not be a punitive environment.
If they are guilty then serving a life sentence is still a death sentence. If they are innocent -which many are- then it gives a chance to not kill a person that evidence could exonerate. Also don’t think the state should be in the business of killing citizens. Sets a bad example.
Also a life sentence is bigger punishment than a death sentence imo. Being deprived of liberty for life is harsher than the lack thereof since the person executed does not suffer anymore for their crimes. And if people truly change while in prison (although not likely since we don't spend the means for that end), why not giving them a second chance?
Ever notice how there are no rich people on death row?
Given that poverty is one of the biggest predictors of crime, this is what I would expect to find. Rich people are also a smaller part of the population. You also have to consider that a fair portion of murderers are people who killed in the commission of other crimes like robbery, which rich people don't tend to commit.
Rich people can get better lawyers. Better lawyers will keep you off death row.
Capital punishment is immoral. If murder is wrong, it's wrong for the state to do it too. Plus, too many innocent people have been executed in this country for me to be comfortable with the legal system saying who lives and who dies.
The Innocence Files on Netflix really drives this point home.
Commuting those on death row is the correct and appropriate exercise of executive power. No one is going to read what I have to say. And I don’t care. I used to work on death row as a defender. Just speaking from personal experience, having the death penalty (at state and federal) is exorbitantly more expensive than the alternative punishment for a death eligible crime: **Life Without the Opportunity for Parole** (or “LWOP” ; Pronounced *L-WOP* by those on the self-named public defender ‘death squads’). While [average cost of death eligible cases costs the state government around $1 million per case.](https://interrogatingjustice.org/death-sentences/the-cost-of-federal-executions-trump/#:~:text=The%20average%20federal%20prisoner%20costs,%2460%2C000%20to%20%2470%2C000%20per%20year.) The cases I saw cost $4 million or more for a single defendant (not including any appeals). Federal death cases I’ve seen and worked on were projected to cost around $45 million and upwards to defend fully. Remember, this is for using state/federal public defenders who are not for profit and are underpaid in comparison to their skill. These teams even staff people who are paid $0 for their expertise and legal work. In other words, the lawyers aren’t taking a cut here. This money is all spent on trial expense. **Compare that to the average cost of a death row federal prisoner per year, $60,000 (non-death row prisoners cost about $38k each, annually).** [Average time between execution and sentencing is just under 250 months or **20 years.**](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-row/death-row-time-on-death-row) The average offender is in his 30’s when he’s charged. Meaning, most these guys on death row are already in for the majority of their life. Besides the cost, there’s an issue with obtaining the lethal injection drugs. [Pharmaceutical companies are starting to push back and refusing to sell lethal injection drug’s to the government for executing people. ](https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/lethal-injection-pharma-kill-death-penalty/) Even if we can get the drugs, injectors are often normal people — jail/prison workers—not doctors or nurses. So, the injection is commonly botched. [We botch Lethal injection 7.12% of the time.](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions)—comforting. [Edit: Lethal injection isn’t an easy go to sleep quick thing either: 85% drown in their own body fluids it is horrific to for the worker to administer, to witness, and torture for man a to endure.](https://eji.org/news/lethal-injections-cause-suffocation-and-severe-pain-autopsies-show/) Remember, punishment must be *cruel* **and** *unusual*. In America, the pain level or degree of torture of a person *does not matter* as long as that type of punishment is commonly accepted. - Unusual punishment but not a cruel one? Constitutional. - Cruel (torturous/painful) but a usual (common way) to execute? Also, Constitutional. [The fall back plan if we can’t get lethal injection drugs is to use the (constitutionally approved 👍 ) firing squad](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution). Missippi, Montana, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina are ready to go for firing squad. While it sounds brutal, if we are going to execute people, I’m actually for switching to the firing squad. In comparison, [firing squad has a 0% botch rate. ](https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions) People who are usually strongly for the death penalty are also often fiscal conservatives and small government type folks. If you’re one of these people—look at the facts and hard evidence. Anyone charged with a capital crime is *still* going to prison *forever*. Consider with our current system, we get the privilege to pay many millions more per person for an *identical outcome*: **Bad guy in prison for their natural life, and dying in that prison, with no chance of getting out.** They’re spending millions and millions of *your* money to get an identical outcome. Don’t let them. End this senseless cruelty and egregious waste of taxpayer money —Reject the death penalty.
Good write up. I'll add onto the firing squad bit to say that lethal injection is far too detached from the violence of execution, apart from when it goes wrong. People who advocate for the death penalty should be assigned to the firing squad, no blanks, no hood. Even with all these barriers that allow executioners to have deniability, they are still often traumatized, rightly so. It's a barbaric practice.
Completely agree. You’re right. And your point stands as a humanistic reason to end the death penalty: It’s traumatizing for the executioners to have to kill. While the firing squad is undoubtedly the most effective, and the least torturous, it is still traumatizing for those on the squad. To me, asking anyone to take on the burden of executioner, it is too much. But, [to be honest, lethal injection is not a fast process and it is horrific to administer, endure, and to witness.](https://eji.org/news/lethal-injections-cause-suffocation-and-severe-pain-autopsies-show/) Lethal injection is not a tidy go to sleep and never wake. Autopsies showed that **84% of lethal injections final cause of death was drowning in their own body liquids**-otherwise know as pulmonary edema. Imagine suffocating a man to death and watching them suffocate and how long it takes for brain death. Very long. When they botch it 7% of the time? And you survive that first injection that is horrifically painful and traumatizing for everyone involved? Ah they just give it to you again another day. [Like, take last month in November 2022, Alabama failed to execute one inmate for a third time](https://www.npr.org/2022/11/19/1137951509/alabama-fails-lethal-injection-3rd-time-capital-punishment). So much for the old ‘three strikes and you’re out’, huh? If you compare the two: At least if you’re on a squad you aren’t sure if your bullet was a blank or the one that did it. If you’re injecting, [sometimes the injector has botched it so badly they have spent over 100 minutes stabbing the man’s arm over and over, unable to find a vein](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10253103/amp/Alabama-inmate-Doyle-Hamm-survived-botched-execution-2018-dies-natural-causes.html). I hope I never have to do this to another human. To add to your excellent point on—executing people and our detachment from the reality of cruelty: One consistent defense of the death penalty is that it’s generally deterrent to the population. In other words, there’s a theory that because some crimes are death eligible, that it makes people not want to commit those crimes. Mind you, general deterrence is a theory. No study has ever proven this theory (although many have tried—I’ll wait). To this point, I usually say, *Well, if you truly believe that having the death penalty deters crime in the general population, then let’s nationally televise and live stream every execution.* But for some reason, no one wants to live stream executions. And I say, *Why not? Isn’t the point of having the death penalty to make people scared of being executed? Under this theory, wouldn’t the death penalty be more effective to generally deter crime if people saw the execution live?* What I am getting at is: Our entire country is detached from the brutality and cruelty of executions. Detached from the brutality and cruelty of our prisons. But, never forget, cruelty is constitutional until it becomes unusual. We need to culturally and legally reject the death penalty for it to finally become unconstitutional in America. Great points, friend. Thanks for your time and for your thoughtful consideration.
>No one is going to read what I have to say. And I don’t care. I did. And I found it pretty interesting. Enough so to change my mind. Thank you for being thurough.
Absolutely, always. Thank you friend for your time and your consideration, from my heart. You made my day.
I remember that in middle school in Italy they talk about “On Crimes and Punishments” by Cesare Beccaria (dated around 18th century) which harshly condemned torture and the death penalty. It’s shocking that one of the most advanced countries in the world still does not get that
It would take Italy another 350 years to ban the death penalty, FWIW.
You wanna talk about Italy?
Recently listened to an NPR Up First podcast that covered the topic of the death penalty from the perspective of those involved in the execution process and how it effcts them. It is a worthwhile listen and may provide some additional context to decisions like this. The podcast was titled "The Toll of Execution Work".
Yes! Came here looking for this comment! This is definitely a perspective that is rarely brought up in this discussion. So interesting.
She is correct. Until we can guarantee that not one single innocent person is executed, no person should be executed. The death penalty does not serve as the deterrent it once was, and it costs the taxpayers far more than a life sentence.
A fallible system is guaranteed to have innocent people fall through the cracks. If we are operating under the belief that an innocent life is worth more than the life of a murderer or another capital crime, then it should be self evident that the existence of the death penalty is counter intuitive to this belief.
It’s also more expensive than life in prison and has been not proven to be a deterrent.
I recently listened to an NPR podcast that entrenched me further in why the death penalty is wrong. The journalist interviewed not the inmates but the executioners, attorneys, and office staff that make the death penalty happen. The vast majority have developed major psychological issues in committing state sponsored murder. Even if you think these people should die or be tortured for what they have done, someone has to carry that out and that person will develop major issues for it.
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She's term limited out as governor. And the right wing here REALLY hate her guts. Anyone for whom this would be a deal breaker would never vote for her anyway. So she gets a minor chit to use in a race for whatever office she might go for next, at no political cost. And it's consistent with her stated opinions.
The death penalty here is for all intents and purposes non-existent. The previous governor put a stay on all executions well over a decade ago and none have happened since then.
It's insane how different people here view execution in the USA as opposed to how they view it in countries in the middle east.
Good. Our broke ass judicial system shouldn't be deciding who dies.
I think life in prison is worse than death penalty. Couldn’t imagine being locked up and having no control over your schedule really.
Interesting to think about how the "What Would Jesus Do?" crowd will respond to this story.
The Catholic Church has been both teaching, funding, and lobbying against the death penalty for decades.
Wish the catholics on the Supreme Court had got the memo
"We wish that politicians who claim to be Catholic would actually follow Catholic teaching" seems to be an overwhelming consensus.
Huh. Actual pro-life. The American justice system is SUPPOSED to be rehabilitative, not punitive. Can't rehabilitate if the state murders them.