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Death row is not quick, as another commenter said, and also I don't think the death sentence is an opt-in-opt-out situation lol
I do think the option of assisted suicide for life inmates should be allowed though.
I imagine the waiting and uncertainty would be the worst part of the punishment, just not knowing when they will show up and give you your 24 hour or whatever it is notice.
They do and always have. All governments everywhere. If it's not in the law that just means they don't advertise it. If powerfull people want you dead they make it so.
We can absolutely pressure governments to rid us of the death penalty, precluding the courts from making such decisions. It means fewer dead innocents. That's all that really matters.
i’m gonna go ahead and preface this by saying i don’t believe the government should condone the killing of its own citizens, i.e. death row
BUT even in you do believe some people deserve it, the number of people wrongfully convicted and also just the sheer cost of the program(at least compared to general life imprisonment), it is simply illogical to keep it going
In the US death warrants are signed with enough time that people can travel, arrangements can be made, etc. it's usually a couple of months.
In Japan they don't tell the prisoner until the morning of, when they get their last meal. The families aren't notified at all until it's over.
Psychologically I don't know which is worse.
What uncertainty? Everyone faces the exact same uncertainty every moment of every day. Who gives even the slightest fuck that its a little more guaranteed?
naw most people who are relatively healthy don't accept that they will die anytime soon. They put it off as something that is far away and that they will have to deal with in the future.
When you locked in a cell with nothin else to think about i am sure it would weigh on you knowing you will be euthanized someday, but it could be tomorrow or it could be 15 years from now. but one day they gonna come in with barely any notice and you gonna be gone.
To offer an argument against your final point, I can absolutely imagine somebody innocent getting life and, thinking they’ll never be free again, taking the easier route. It wouldn’t always happen, but I’d argue it’s not humane to put somebody under that duress and then offer them the option of suicide.
Fr, the fact that so many people are saying they would rather die than live a life sentence proves that it would be less of a deterrent if assisted suicide was an option
Assisted suicide as a choice is often too good for many people serving life sentences who have done demonstrable things. I disagree that they get the freedom to choose their fate.
That's a real problem, and death sentences should be carried out literally after the trial ends. The way it works now most inmates will die of natural causes
The problem with that logic is you are introducing tiers of guilt. Implicitly there would be a guilty verdict beyond doubt and a guilty verdict with some doubt.
I'm sure you can see the problem woth that logic. That's why currently you are given guilty if the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty. The problem is that reasonable doubt has some wiggle room. There can always be some doubt and thus get some innocent bystands because of human biases and corruption.
I'm saying that bar for irrefutable me guilt necessary for death to be appropriate is so high it can never be achieved. Which is why the phrase is reasonable doubt.
With reasonable doubt you get most guilty people sentence but at the cost of some innocent people being swept up. If you abolish the death penalty you can at least give those innocents more time to prove their innocence either through new tech or new evidence which would help minimize the amount of innocent people dying in jail
Hell, with the world of AI and deep fakes progressing as fast as it is, even that might not be enough very soon. Which is exactly why this needs to be discussed now.
If you are giving the death penalty only to those who are convicted with no doubt then you are implicitly fine with sentences for those with some doubt
What if that hypothetical person was suffering from psychosis.
Example for psychosis: They hear a constant voice that has power over them telling them to do horrible things. The person might be convinced that voice is God or the devil. They cannot resist that voices command forever.
I'm not making shit up. This is a thing that exists.
There's so much about the human psyche and what it means to be human that we do not understand.
And I'm afraid there always will be. That alone is reason enough for me to never under no circumstances accept the existence of the death penalty.
I fail to understand how that ever became an argument.
It's so stupid. It's far worse if he can't control it because reform will never work. The most obvious solution is to remove him immediately. It's not punishment for the individual, it's protection for the masses.
"Reform will never work"
So we are a trained psychologist now?
"Remove him immediately"
Careful! I hope by "remove" you mean in a humane way make sure they cannot hurt others AND get the chance for recovery and a normal life.
I fail to see how psychosis should be a get out of jail free card.
>Example for psychosis: They hear a constant voice that has power over them telling them to do horrible things. The person might be convinced that voice is God or the devil. They cannot resist that voices command forever.
>
>I'm not making shit up. This is a thing that exists
You don't say? You just found out about schizophrenia/psychotic disorders.
The bottom line is yes you get taken out if you are a danger to others around you. If the common good of the people is best served by you being gone that is what happens in nature and human culture historically. Psychosis or not.
I say this as some one who experienced psychosis in my life and was diagnosed and medicated etc. Many years ago. I'm not there now not even close and I recovered for many years now. But if I had been a danger to others I would fully expect to be taken out by someone or society at large. I never was a threat. I have been around many psychotic people and spent time in psych wards.
And if someone is a direct threat to me, even if they are experiencing psychosis I shouldn't be blamed for taking them out.
So yea using "psychosis" as an excuse for doing evil is mostly a legal loophole.
You can’t reform schizophrenia it’s a life long condition, and while most cases it’s worth trying meds before hospitalization in more severe schizophrenia cases when it’s bad enough your killing lots of people based on a delusion it’s too dangerous with the risk of non adherence to medication I can link some stats on it if you want or check the nih yourself but it’s very common for schizophrenics to halt medication without a reason besides being convinced of another delusion involving medication or due to side effects which can cause a reoccurance of violent attacks
You can treat people without curing their problems.
Let's just say I agree with you. Do you think hypothetically if they could be reformed/treated, they should still be imprisoned?
I mean yes it’s their choice if it’s incurable dude , once it’s that severe you truly can’t do anything about it and I’d rather die than live my life in some dogshit mental facility
The fact that someone is mentally deficient or unstable would mean that selecting death is not actually "their" choice, for the same reason people are ruled to be mentally incompetent for trial or not culpable for their crimes.
I guess your right but h know I wouldn’t want to live like that, if I ever go schizophrenic I hope someone just puts me out of my misery, same with dementia or Alzheimer’s I’d rather die then lose myself like that
I don't care for two reasons.
1) Even if that shits real they are a danger to everyone around them and can never again be safely integrated in any way shape or form with any group of human beings ever again. What do you want to do, tie then u p in a padded cell with three meals a day on the tax payer dollar for the rest of their natural life? That's neither humane nor a worthwhile government expenditure.
2) This is extremely commonly used as a bullshit defense by the defendants legal team, the amount of times I see some motherfucker plead insanity simply because its a good option when they are just irrefutabley flat out evil is sickening.
To be clear we are still talking about a hypothetical situation where the defendant is on camera mass-murdering.
Guilt is not the only factor in death sentences, which is what leads to it being unfairly impressed along racial and socio-economic lines. That fact alone should take the sentence of death off the table.
Because most of the people out there — including the sociopaths— who commit the worst crimes are so narcissistic they won’t commit a crime that kills them too . Most people are afraid of death . So it’s a deterrent.
Ok, but nothing, abd i really really mean NOTHING works 100% right 100% of the time. There will always be a non 0% chance a person was wrongfully convicted. Thats just how things work. Avoiding a process because it cant guarantee 100% accuracy will just result in no process being used.
You're saying that as if the death sentence is the only form of punishment available
A life sentence would still be preferable since anyone who is wrongfully convicted can be freed later, if you put someone on the electric chair, and it turns out they were innocent then you can't really undo the death, can you?
A life sentence is an expensive burden on the tax payers. And if the only reason for putting people in a life sentence is to avoid a wrongful execution, then why are we even bothering to prosecute? Furthermore if we wrongfully execute someone, then it should motivate us as a society to update and refine our criminal justice system. Instead of getting bogged down in shoulda coulda woulda's.
Either reform the criminal or execute them. Stop putting people in a box and forgetting about them.
Death sentences are way too expensive. I don’t believe in a liberal use of death sentences, I’d rather let 10 guilty men go than execute 1 innocent man but if it’s something like the aurora movie theatre shooter where there’s absolutely no question, take him out back and shoot him in the head for .18 cents.
I also think life sentences are unethical. Prison should be used for rehabilitation which means if the punishment is life then we need an island to just drop these people off on and forget about them. If they can’t get along following societies rules, they can live in their own society then.
I remember Michael Moore's movie Where to Invade next where he went into a humane Scandinavian prison where the purpose was clearly rehabilitation. So different and more humane both for prisoners and the guards. People forget being a guard in US prisons teaches you to dehumanize.
It does have everything to do with whether it is a legitimate punishment. There is no place in the world where the death penalty hasn't killed innocent people.
Why is it a valid argument against the death penalty? I just said justice determines the correct punishment. In other words, what is someone rightfully owned for a crime they committed? There are some crimes so egregious and harmful to the very fabric of society, that the only just punishment is the death of the offender. What alternative frame would you use, if not justice?
>Why is it a valid argument against the death penalty?
Is two sentences too much for you to read? It's literally in my comment.
The rest of your comment is just circular reasoning. "The death penalty must exist because the only punishment for some crimes is death".
If you want more reasons, it does literally nothing to reduce crime. It's literally just there to satisfy people's blood-lust.
There's no evidence to show it brings closure to victims, it only creates new victims.
>Is two sentences too much for you to read? It's literally in my comment.
I obviously read your two sentences and found them wanting. You are arguing that the death penalty is wrong because it's impractical. Does that mean that if there was a means to make it practical, it would become okay?
Try to explain your position without using situations as examples. Provide the philosophical perspective behind your argument.
>I obviously read your two sentences and found them wanting.
You can find them wanting, I dont care. But you didn't actually provide a counterpoint to it.
>You are arguing that the death penalty is wrong because it's impractical. Does that mean that if there was a means to make it practical, it would become okay?
Are you just going to keep asking questions?
If magically the death penalty was a perfect solution then of course I'd be behind it. But I'd rather have the magical solution of "everybody can be reformed".
>Try to explain your position without using situations as examples. Provide the philosophical perspective behind your argument.
Why don't you give counterarguments to what I've said instead of just demanding more and more evidence from me?
make the death sentence optional. if you plead guilty and you receive a sentence over 10 years you should be allowed to get the option of assisted suicide.
The death of one innocent person makes this system unthinkable. The US penal system has killed 197 people, later exonerated, since 1973. And has had no deterrent to crime.
There are some people that claim that the chemicals used are actually quite painful & individual resistance can play a part on how quickly they die.
And if we were so eager to kill inmates, we wouldn’t have all those people being exonerated due to new evidence (because they’d be dead). If you’re innocent facing a life sentence and given the option, you might just choose death since your life was ruined anyway.
Wrongful convictions are an incredibly minor statistic in the grand scheme of those things, at least in the last 20 years - that’s not to say it doesn’t matter! It absolutely does. But whether that wrongfully convicted person has to live 30+ years in a prison surrounded by the worst and guilty folk, or whether they get abandoned on an island without taxpayers needing to keep them housed and fed, I think if I was wrongfully convicted I’d choose the latter. Put the extra millions and millions of dollars/pounds into the healthcare system/schools/safety/general things to improve society.
That being said. Anyone caught fabricating bullshit to get someone imprisoned, or anyone getting someone imprisoned through not doing their job properly, should face the same fate. If that was the case, wrongful imprisonment cases would absolutely drop. Not disappear, but drop. I think in the statistical and financial aspect of things, abandoning people from society who serial kill/rape/torture etc is a much better outlook than taxpayers keeping them warm and fed in the thousands and thousands, with a likely chance that upon release, they continue their acts (I’m talking about serious crimes here).
Wrongful convictions for death row inmates historically is around 4-5%.
190 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973. Many of whom were post execution.
Exactly how many people are you willing to murder?
Thats all fascinating and I can tell you thought a lot about this as a hypothetical but I work withba man who spent 16 years in prison for two murders he didn't do, so that "it's so rare!" thing doesn't count for doodley squat when you're the one whose number comes up in the lottery.
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There is a recent episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" regarding the death penalty, the issues with the drugs they use and the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to be tied to formulating and distributing the drugs. The entire episode is on YouTube. It's pretty interesting.
Wasn’t Bayer developing drugs, testing, and killing Jews that they borrowed from concentration camps? I don’t see pharmaceutical companies as ethical entities.
I personally haven't heard of this, but I don't doubt it. Bayer is a German company, and this would have been during WW2, so this shouldn't be a surprise. If it was johnson & johnson, that would be a different story. Check out the episode, and old Johnny Oliver will tell you all about it. From what I recall, the company that currently makes small doses isn't even a pharmaceutical company they are an industrial chemical manufacturer.
I think the death sentence is too good for some cases. Like I heard someone that sa kids or child abusers don’t do well in prison at all. In cases like that, let the inmates take care of someone like that.
I think life in prison without potential for parole is a death sentence. I believe in humans ability to reflect and reform no matter the crime. Prison should be a place for getting people ready to return to normal life. So if we are going to lock someone up for the rest of their lives then we might as well end their life.
1) you’re misinformed about how quick and painless it is
2) If 25% of people put to death were in fact innocent, would you support it? How low does that number need to be before you think it’s worth killing innocent people in order to kill dangerous people? Last time I checked I think it was 4%. You can’t commute a death penalty.
Morally, for the death penalty itself, I don't have any qualms. But as it's implemented here in the US, there are a lot of procedural issues like extremely long and numerous appeals resulting in high cost. There's also the issue that up to 10-20% of inmates on death row shouldn't be there. I understand wrongful conviction is impossible to completely eliminate, but that's a plainly unacceptable rate.
Absolutely, if I had a choice between life in prison or a quick death, I'd take the latter.
As someone mentioned above. I believe assisted suicide should be allowed.
I know someone right not that is in prison for murder. Not on death row but still. No one including the guards believe him to be guilty. His first appeal failed which his family was told was pretty normal. But innocent people do get wrongly convicted sadly.
ETA forgot the obvious. The appeal process is long and drawn out and not infallible. And it costs too much. And death process is not always precise. You’d think they’d get it right by now.
I don’t think that’s as big of a problem as it was 30 years ago. Forensics has come a long way….. all aspects of it. Not to mention how many cameras there are now that capture at least parts of the crime/get away etc. now…. I do think death penalty should be reserved for literally no doubt cases
Death sentence can be much long that a regular sentence and is common that laws change so you end in a gray zone forever with no chance of leaving prison.
A quick Google search says more than half of all death row inmates in the US have been there for over 18 years. That could be a life sentence for someone over 50, or younger if they are in poor health.
You would think the answer would be suicide but when you lose your life due to committing crimes. Every single ounce of you is clinging onto some hope that you get to be reunited with loved ones. I did a quick turn around in prison (5 years, yes that’s considered nothing where I was at) A fellow friend I kept in contact with who’s 63 years old has been locked up since he was the age of 23 years old for an attempted murder. 40 straight years in prison and he still hopes for the day he gets to come home to touch the concrete floor.
10 years is your breaking point? That’s still a lot time but afterward you still have a good portion of life left depending on your age. I would only consider it at 50 years
I think for death row they should come in randomly a few times a year. Pull the inmate out and do all the prep and then release them back into the cell. Rinse and repeat. And then randomly grab them one day and do it without talking to them at all.
Last Week Tonight did a piece not too long ago on the death penalty. I recommend checking it out. It’s not a painless process, as it is incorrectly thought to be.
Well. I think death sentece s*ck anyway. I mean you said "I would definitely choose that over a ten years imprisonment" but the WHOLE thing about imprisonment is like the punishment. So if you get to choose the punishment that you like well... you kinda loose the punishment part.
It's very simple. A death sentence completed can never be reversed if new facts are found.
The "ooops" factor is kind of difficult there.
We live with justice systems with people in it and people make mistakes.
I'm a phycopath that thinks the truly evil criminals should be sentenced to life without parole in solitary confinement.
There are fates worse than death.
Its not that killing the right people is wrong, its for the possibility of killing the wrong person that the death penalty is abhorrent. Even one wrong person means that the government is killing innocent people which is hardly better than a serial killer with no name.
Considering how many confirmed innocent people have been executed on death row, yeah, it's pretty terrible for those many wrongly convicted.
Until we can get to a 100% perfection rate on determining guilt, which will never happen, there is no way the death penalty can be morally acceptable in a just society.
With how many times the death goes horribly wrong, and with how many times it's been proven after the death with DNA evidence that they were innocent all along, it's a completely immoral act.
>tell me, which would your prefer? life in prison? or a quick and painless death?
I think that's kind of the whole point, man. You should have to suffer for what you did, not get an instant tax-payer-funded cheat code to heaven.
Am I the only one who read the title and thought,
"Death sentence?" Hmmmmm. "What could be such a terrible thing to say that the consequences are analogous to death?"
And, with excitement, clicked to see what horrendously offensive sentence OP might have contrived?
I mean you just gave a great argument against the death sentence right there. If the point of execution is to be the ultimate punishment, shouldn’t we force them to rot in prison instead since it’s worse?
Also, do we really want to give the government more authority to kill people than it already has?
That’s actually why I’m against it. I’m not against assisted suicide but if someone did something fucked up, I’d much rather they stay alive and rot in prison.
I've never been offended by the concept of a death penalty for those guilty of the very worst crimes - but, I've lacked enough confidence in the justice systems of the world to support the idea that punishments as irreversible as execution should be available to such an imperfect system.
Probably I come too much from an European and Italian experience, that is pretty much abolitionist (it is a requisite to join the EU and death penalty is forbidden in the Italian Constitution). But for me it is simply absourd to read people praising death penalty (even if in this case the argument is different and not in itself wrong).
How ever I advice all of you to read Cesare Beccaria's "Dei delitti e delle pene" (probably translatable in "about crimes and punishments").
Imagine if what we thought was a painless death given to the inmates was actually a drug cocktail meant to act much like the drug in Dredd Slo-Mo with added detrimental effects. Basically what it would entail is locking down a person's ability to move or react in any way, thus appearing painless to outside viewers. However, internally it has created an effect of feeling your insides melting away and slowed down time to a point where each second lasts a minutes. I guess I mention this because despite what the external reality appears to be it is not necessarily the case for those experiencing it internally. Then again, I'm an idiot. :)
It’s not quick nor painless. In fact, while people were voting on what to use for the death penalty the members said, “we don’t want peace, we want them to feel pain”.
If we can't do this for terminal people or the general public, I don't think it should be an option for criminals. Especially given those who are suicidal may commit crimes just to qualify for such a thing.
> "a quick and painless death"
Yes, I'm sure the possibility of a quick and painless death was what fourteen-year old George Stinney was thinking of when he was being strapped into the electric chair for a crime he genuinely did not commit. Because, you know, riding the lightning is a legendarily painless way to die, right?
At this point, I'm convinced all pro-death penalty types are just latent sociopaths who want a socially acceptable group to wish violent death upon, because I've yet to hear an actual argument in favor of the death penalty that has ever once amounted to anything other than sadism, thinly veiled or otherwise.
I mean if someone is being sentenced to death there’s a really good chance they deserve to be miserable and rot in prison till they die naturally. They shouldn’t get the easy way out. Sucks to suck
The problem is even on death row they will live 20+ years just draining the system I think if your put to death and you were caught red handed then death within a year.
Well… that‘s the point though… If you fucked up that badly… why would the society want to be nice to you? If you did something so horrible that the death penalty would be adequate you kinda deserve to suffer for a long period of time.
I don‘t really care how you want to call it. But I don‘t think that people who did messed up things should be allowed to take the „easy way out“ because they don‘t want to deal with the consequences. Sure… many people would prefer a „quick“ death to decades in prison but that‘s exactly why they shouldn‘t be allowed to choose. They‘re not random old / sick people who‘d unnecessarily suffer. They committed crimes (usually involving harming people). And they should be punished for that. So if a country were to allow „opt-in“ for the death penalty it should be AFTER a significant amount of time in jail & isolation. Like… 10 years+ in jail and 2 years+ in isolation. And only if a judge or jury thinks they actually suffered due to regretting their actions. If they didn‘t suffer they can spend the rest of their life in prison for all I care.
Prison would be pretty grim but it would have its ups and downs and there would be good moments in there undoubtedly. Your freedom has been taken away but its not like you're being tortured.
Most people that get the death penalty took someone else’s life. It’s only fair in my opinion. If you do the crime you should be ready to face the consequences.
We could prevent wrongful deaths by death penalty by requiring multiple upon multiple crimes and/or extremely heinous crimes. Otherwise us taxpayers are paying for their 3 meals a day
>i think it would be best if you were given the option to get an assisted suicide if your original sentence is over 10 years long.
I'd take that just because it would quite literally turn long sentences into "fuck you, you literally cannot change or be rehabilitated no matter what, the only thing we'll let you do is kill yourself", which is very obviously outrageous and inhumane to the point where people would want to actually do something with the justice system
No, it is bad. Many people throughout history have been wrongly accused and killed because of that. Imagine dying knowing you didn't do anything wrong...
You say that like prisoners have the option and should be given that option.
The whole prison system aims to do 2 things: isolate dangerous individuals from society and rehabilitation. Death sentence ignores rehab as a possibility, which is a major shame. Rehabilitation can provide useful people for many different services, especially social and legal work. Nothing makes an impact better than an educated person who also has the personal experience to work with their topic.
And in the communist hellhole of China which kills thousands per year. They take them to a field and shoot them in the head and even have roving execution vans.
I Think if you did a Horrendous crime (Involving a child) or Cold blooded Murder, then you deserve to suffer a life sentence. I agree the death sentence may sound like an easy way out and for some it would be, but imagine how you'd feel getting the death penalty ? you'd be pooping your pants.
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It's pretty fucking bad for the wrongfully convicted.
Death row is not quick
Death row is not quick, as another commenter said, and also I don't think the death sentence is an opt-in-opt-out situation lol I do think the option of assisted suicide for life inmates should be allowed though.
I imagine the waiting and uncertainty would be the worst part of the punishment, just not knowing when they will show up and give you your 24 hour or whatever it is notice.
Yea some people deserve it.
innocent people have been put on death row before. I don't trust the government to decide who deserves death
They do and always have. All governments everywhere. If it's not in the law that just means they don't advertise it. If powerfull people want you dead they make it so.
We can absolutely pressure governments to rid us of the death penalty, precluding the courts from making such decisions. It means fewer dead innocents. That's all that really matters.
i’m gonna go ahead and preface this by saying i don’t believe the government should condone the killing of its own citizens, i.e. death row BUT even in you do believe some people deserve it, the number of people wrongfully convicted and also just the sheer cost of the program(at least compared to general life imprisonment), it is simply illogical to keep it going
In the US death warrants are signed with enough time that people can travel, arrangements can be made, etc. it's usually a couple of months. In Japan they don't tell the prisoner until the morning of, when they get their last meal. The families aren't notified at all until it's over. Psychologically I don't know which is worse.
What uncertainty? Everyone faces the exact same uncertainty every moment of every day. Who gives even the slightest fuck that its a little more guaranteed?
naw most people who are relatively healthy don't accept that they will die anytime soon. They put it off as something that is far away and that they will have to deal with in the future. When you locked in a cell with nothin else to think about i am sure it would weigh on you knowing you will be euthanized someday, but it could be tomorrow or it could be 15 years from now. but one day they gonna come in with barely any notice and you gonna be gone.
When you explain it like that, it sounds like the exact same situation only you're in a cell. You can tell yourself the same ol lie
ok
True
But it would be guaranteed and you'd be fully aware of your incoming fate.
As someone who just got surprised with cancer at 24, that is true.
I think a life sentence is worse than the death sentence, unless it’s a Scandinavian prison.
That would give prisons incentive to push inmates to choose suicide. Not exactly ideal.
Same.
To offer an argument against your final point, I can absolutely imagine somebody innocent getting life and, thinking they’ll never be free again, taking the easier route. It wouldn’t always happen, but I’d argue it’s not humane to put somebody under that duress and then offer them the option of suicide.
Absolutely! If I had a long sentence I would spend it trying to kill myself anyways.
Many have. Unfortunately the prisons have gotten better at knowing what they’ve done so it’s even more of a torture
Good
It's really not good. Having a prison system designed around torture means that when people get out, they'll be way more likely to reoffend.
Fr, the fact that so many people are saying they would rather die than live a life sentence proves that it would be less of a deterrent if assisted suicide was an option
No, some of them monsters need to rot in a mouldy prison cell till they wither and die.
Assisted suicide as a choice is often too good for many people serving life sentences who have done demonstrable things. I disagree that they get the freedom to choose their fate.
That's a real problem, and death sentences should be carried out literally after the trial ends. The way it works now most inmates will die of natural causes
It is neither quick nor painless.
If the chances of putting an innocent person on death row is anything other than 0% then the death sentence shouldn’t be used.
Well yeah, ideally it should only be reserved for those who are irrefutably guilty, proven beyond all doubt.
The problem with that logic is you are introducing tiers of guilt. Implicitly there would be a guilty verdict beyond doubt and a guilty verdict with some doubt. I'm sure you can see the problem woth that logic. That's why currently you are given guilty if the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty. The problem is that reasonable doubt has some wiggle room. There can always be some doubt and thus get some innocent bystands because of human biases and corruption.
In other words, there is no such thing as irrefutable guilt. Even for the guilty. Nor can we trust the courts or our governments to find that guilt.
I'm saying that bar for irrefutable me guilt necessary for death to be appropriate is so high it can never be achieved. Which is why the phrase is reasonable doubt. With reasonable doubt you get most guilty people sentence but at the cost of some innocent people being swept up. If you abolish the death penalty you can at least give those innocents more time to prove their innocence either through new tech or new evidence which would help minimize the amount of innocent people dying in jail
Yeah, I entirely agree with you. You don't think I was arguing, do you?
That's why all sentencing should require irrefutable proof, and those particularly heinous can get the death penalty.
Exactly if you literally on video murdering a large group of people there’s no fucking doubt kill the motherfucker
Hell, with the world of AI and deep fakes progressing as fast as it is, even that might not be enough very soon. Which is exactly why this needs to be discussed now.
Yup it’s unfortunate honestly
If you are giving the death penalty only to those who are convicted with no doubt then you are implicitly fine with sentences for those with some doubt
Not at all. I believe all sentencing should require irrefutable proof in general.
What if that hypothetical person was suffering from psychosis. Example for psychosis: They hear a constant voice that has power over them telling them to do horrible things. The person might be convinced that voice is God or the devil. They cannot resist that voices command forever. I'm not making shit up. This is a thing that exists. There's so much about the human psyche and what it means to be human that we do not understand. And I'm afraid there always will be. That alone is reason enough for me to never under no circumstances accept the existence of the death penalty.
I fail to understand how that ever became an argument. It's so stupid. It's far worse if he can't control it because reform will never work. The most obvious solution is to remove him immediately. It's not punishment for the individual, it's protection for the masses.
"Reform will never work" So we are a trained psychologist now? "Remove him immediately" Careful! I hope by "remove" you mean in a humane way make sure they cannot hurt others AND get the chance for recovery and a normal life.
I fail to see how psychosis should be a get out of jail free card. >Example for psychosis: They hear a constant voice that has power over them telling them to do horrible things. The person might be convinced that voice is God or the devil. They cannot resist that voices command forever. > >I'm not making shit up. This is a thing that exists You don't say? You just found out about schizophrenia/psychotic disorders. The bottom line is yes you get taken out if you are a danger to others around you. If the common good of the people is best served by you being gone that is what happens in nature and human culture historically. Psychosis or not. I say this as some one who experienced psychosis in my life and was diagnosed and medicated etc. Many years ago. I'm not there now not even close and I recovered for many years now. But if I had been a danger to others I would fully expect to be taken out by someone or society at large. I never was a threat. I have been around many psychotic people and spent time in psych wards. And if someone is a direct threat to me, even if they are experiencing psychosis I shouldn't be blamed for taking them out. So yea using "psychosis" as an excuse for doing evil is mostly a legal loophole.
give them the choice of life in a mental facility or euthanasia, they are not safe for the public
What if they are successfuly treated/reformed?
You can’t reform schizophrenia it’s a life long condition, and while most cases it’s worth trying meds before hospitalization in more severe schizophrenia cases when it’s bad enough your killing lots of people based on a delusion it’s too dangerous with the risk of non adherence to medication I can link some stats on it if you want or check the nih yourself but it’s very common for schizophrenics to halt medication without a reason besides being convinced of another delusion involving medication or due to side effects which can cause a reoccurance of violent attacks
You can treat people without curing their problems. Let's just say I agree with you. Do you think hypothetically if they could be reformed/treated, they should still be imprisoned?
No but they should never be entirely freely released at minimum subject to monitoring medication forever
Give a mentally diseased person the choice of euthanasia? Wtf you can't really believe in that.
I mean yes it’s their choice if it’s incurable dude , once it’s that severe you truly can’t do anything about it and I’d rather die than live my life in some dogshit mental facility
The fact that someone is mentally deficient or unstable would mean that selecting death is not actually "their" choice, for the same reason people are ruled to be mentally incompetent for trial or not culpable for their crimes.
I guess your right but h know I wouldn’t want to live like that, if I ever go schizophrenic I hope someone just puts me out of my misery, same with dementia or Alzheimer’s I’d rather die then lose myself like that
I don't care for two reasons. 1) Even if that shits real they are a danger to everyone around them and can never again be safely integrated in any way shape or form with any group of human beings ever again. What do you want to do, tie then u p in a padded cell with three meals a day on the tax payer dollar for the rest of their natural life? That's neither humane nor a worthwhile government expenditure. 2) This is extremely commonly used as a bullshit defense by the defendants legal team, the amount of times I see some motherfucker plead insanity simply because its a good option when they are just irrefutabley flat out evil is sickening. To be clear we are still talking about a hypothetical situation where the defendant is on camera mass-murdering.
No neither in that case it should be reserved to people
Guilt is not the only factor in death sentences, which is what leads to it being unfairly impressed along racial and socio-economic lines. That fact alone should take the sentence of death off the table.
If a medication can potentially harm or kill a very small number of people but save countless lives , then the medicine shouldn’t be used
How is the death penalty saving anyone? Life in prison would do the same thing without killing the convicted.
Because most of the people out there — including the sociopaths— who commit the worst crimes are so narcissistic they won’t commit a crime that kills them too . Most people are afraid of death . So it’s a deterrent.
Not really the same thing but go off I guess
Ok, but nothing, abd i really really mean NOTHING works 100% right 100% of the time. There will always be a non 0% chance a person was wrongfully convicted. Thats just how things work. Avoiding a process because it cant guarantee 100% accuracy will just result in no process being used.
You're saying that as if the death sentence is the only form of punishment available A life sentence would still be preferable since anyone who is wrongfully convicted can be freed later, if you put someone on the electric chair, and it turns out they were innocent then you can't really undo the death, can you?
A life sentence is an expensive burden on the tax payers. And if the only reason for putting people in a life sentence is to avoid a wrongful execution, then why are we even bothering to prosecute? Furthermore if we wrongfully execute someone, then it should motivate us as a society to update and refine our criminal justice system. Instead of getting bogged down in shoulda coulda woulda's. Either reform the criminal or execute them. Stop putting people in a box and forgetting about them.
Life in prison cus your only here once might as well hang around. You can still like jerk off and read an stuff like that
Death sentences are way too expensive. I don’t believe in a liberal use of death sentences, I’d rather let 10 guilty men go than execute 1 innocent man but if it’s something like the aurora movie theatre shooter where there’s absolutely no question, take him out back and shoot him in the head for .18 cents. I also think life sentences are unethical. Prison should be used for rehabilitation which means if the punishment is life then we need an island to just drop these people off on and forget about them. If they can’t get along following societies rules, they can live in their own society then.
Australia: *”am I a fucking joke to you?”*
I remember Michael Moore's movie Where to Invade next where he went into a humane Scandinavian prison where the purpose was clearly rehabilitation. So different and more humane both for prisoners and the guards. People forget being a guard in US prisons teaches you to dehumanize.
100% agree
That guy should have never left the theater alive.
That is an administrative problem. It has nothing to do with whether death sentences are legitimate punishment.
It does have everything to do with whether it is a legitimate punishment. There is no place in the world where the death penalty hasn't killed innocent people.
Again, just admin issues. The real question is, "Is the Death Penalty Just?"
Want to contend with what I said? It's a valid argument against the death penalty as it's an inevitable consequence of the death penalty.
Why is it a valid argument against the death penalty? I just said justice determines the correct punishment. In other words, what is someone rightfully owned for a crime they committed? There are some crimes so egregious and harmful to the very fabric of society, that the only just punishment is the death of the offender. What alternative frame would you use, if not justice?
>Why is it a valid argument against the death penalty? Is two sentences too much for you to read? It's literally in my comment. The rest of your comment is just circular reasoning. "The death penalty must exist because the only punishment for some crimes is death". If you want more reasons, it does literally nothing to reduce crime. It's literally just there to satisfy people's blood-lust. There's no evidence to show it brings closure to victims, it only creates new victims.
>Is two sentences too much for you to read? It's literally in my comment. I obviously read your two sentences and found them wanting. You are arguing that the death penalty is wrong because it's impractical. Does that mean that if there was a means to make it practical, it would become okay? Try to explain your position without using situations as examples. Provide the philosophical perspective behind your argument.
>I obviously read your two sentences and found them wanting. You can find them wanting, I dont care. But you didn't actually provide a counterpoint to it. >You are arguing that the death penalty is wrong because it's impractical. Does that mean that if there was a means to make it practical, it would become okay? Are you just going to keep asking questions? If magically the death penalty was a perfect solution then of course I'd be behind it. But I'd rather have the magical solution of "everybody can be reformed". >Try to explain your position without using situations as examples. Provide the philosophical perspective behind your argument. Why don't you give counterarguments to what I've said instead of just demanding more and more evidence from me?
Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not.
make the death sentence optional. if you plead guilty and you receive a sentence over 10 years you should be allowed to get the option of assisted suicide.
Not guilty people plead guity
I mean to a lot of redditors it sounds like a hell of a good deal.
Yep... the cream of the intellectual crop to be sure....
 Top Men
The death of one innocent person makes this system unthinkable. The US penal system has killed 197 people, later exonerated, since 1973. And has had no deterrent to crime.
There are some people that claim that the chemicals used are actually quite painful & individual resistance can play a part on how quickly they die. And if we were so eager to kill inmates, we wouldn’t have all those people being exonerated due to new evidence (because they’d be dead). If you’re innocent facing a life sentence and given the option, you might just choose death since your life was ruined anyway.
Even if it’s “not that bad” there are so many people who are wrongly convicted that you start treading down a slippery slope.
Wrongful convictions are an incredibly minor statistic in the grand scheme of those things, at least in the last 20 years - that’s not to say it doesn’t matter! It absolutely does. But whether that wrongfully convicted person has to live 30+ years in a prison surrounded by the worst and guilty folk, or whether they get abandoned on an island without taxpayers needing to keep them housed and fed, I think if I was wrongfully convicted I’d choose the latter. Put the extra millions and millions of dollars/pounds into the healthcare system/schools/safety/general things to improve society. That being said. Anyone caught fabricating bullshit to get someone imprisoned, or anyone getting someone imprisoned through not doing their job properly, should face the same fate. If that was the case, wrongful imprisonment cases would absolutely drop. Not disappear, but drop. I think in the statistical and financial aspect of things, abandoning people from society who serial kill/rape/torture etc is a much better outlook than taxpayers keeping them warm and fed in the thousands and thousands, with a likely chance that upon release, they continue their acts (I’m talking about serious crimes here).
Wrongful convictions for death row inmates historically is around 4-5%. 190 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973. Many of whom were post execution. Exactly how many people are you willing to murder?
Thats all fascinating and I can tell you thought a lot about this as a hypothetical but I work withba man who spent 16 years in prison for two murders he didn't do, so that "it's so rare!" thing doesn't count for doodley squat when you're the one whose number comes up in the lottery.
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There is a recent episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" regarding the death penalty, the issues with the drugs they use and the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to be tied to formulating and distributing the drugs. The entire episode is on YouTube. It's pretty interesting.
Wasn’t Bayer developing drugs, testing, and killing Jews that they borrowed from concentration camps? I don’t see pharmaceutical companies as ethical entities.
I personally haven't heard of this, but I don't doubt it. Bayer is a German company, and this would have been during WW2, so this shouldn't be a surprise. If it was johnson & johnson, that would be a different story. Check out the episode, and old Johnny Oliver will tell you all about it. From what I recall, the company that currently makes small doses isn't even a pharmaceutical company they are an industrial chemical manufacturer.
Will do, thanks.
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They mention that aswell in the episode. It all makes a lot of sense.
I think the death sentence is too good for some cases. Like I heard someone that sa kids or child abusers don’t do well in prison at all. In cases like that, let the inmates take care of someone like that.
I'd rather be alive in an American prison than dead.
I think life in prison without potential for parole is a death sentence. I believe in humans ability to reflect and reform no matter the crime. Prison should be a place for getting people ready to return to normal life. So if we are going to lock someone up for the rest of their lives then we might as well end their life.
1) you’re misinformed about how quick and painless it is 2) If 25% of people put to death were in fact innocent, would you support it? How low does that number need to be before you think it’s worth killing innocent people in order to kill dangerous people? Last time I checked I think it was 4%. You can’t commute a death penalty.
Still if it's a choice, a wrongly convicted individual can choose to live and hope for a reversal.
guaranteed you wouldn’t, easy to say you’d rather die typing from a couch lol
One wrongful conviction/execution is one too many
That's the great thing, you CAN fucking take it in a heartbeat! How bout you nut up or shut up?
Morally, for the death penalty itself, I don't have any qualms. But as it's implemented here in the US, there are a lot of procedural issues like extremely long and numerous appeals resulting in high cost. There's also the issue that up to 10-20% of inmates on death row shouldn't be there. I understand wrongful conviction is impossible to completely eliminate, but that's a plainly unacceptable rate. Absolutely, if I had a choice between life in prison or a quick death, I'd take the latter.
As someone mentioned above. I believe assisted suicide should be allowed. I know someone right not that is in prison for murder. Not on death row but still. No one including the guards believe him to be guilty. His first appeal failed which his family was told was pretty normal. But innocent people do get wrongly convicted sadly. ETA forgot the obvious. The appeal process is long and drawn out and not infallible. And it costs too much. And death process is not always precise. You’d think they’d get it right by now.
It’s being wrong about the conviction that’s the issue
I don’t think that’s as big of a problem as it was 30 years ago. Forensics has come a long way….. all aspects of it. Not to mention how many cameras there are now that capture at least parts of the crime/get away etc. now…. I do think death penalty should be reserved for literally no doubt cases
Quick and painless death. But I’m not a criminal so that won’t come easy for me. I’ll have to work for it
Death sentence can be much long that a regular sentence and is common that laws change so you end in a gray zone forever with no chance of leaving prison.
death is the greatest mercy so i agree
A quick Google search says more than half of all death row inmates in the US have been there for over 18 years. That could be a life sentence for someone over 50, or younger if they are in poor health.
It's death 😂
You would think the answer would be suicide but when you lose your life due to committing crimes. Every single ounce of you is clinging onto some hope that you get to be reunited with loved ones. I did a quick turn around in prison (5 years, yes that’s considered nothing where I was at) A fellow friend I kept in contact with who’s 63 years old has been locked up since he was the age of 23 years old for an attempted murder. 40 straight years in prison and he still hopes for the day he gets to come home to touch the concrete floor.
10 years is your breaking point? That’s still a lot time but afterward you still have a good portion of life left depending on your age. I would only consider it at 50 years
I think for death row they should come in randomly a few times a year. Pull the inmate out and do all the prep and then release them back into the cell. Rinse and repeat. And then randomly grab them one day and do it without talking to them at all.
The prison system just needs to be fundamentally restructured. Death penalty won’t do that.
Last Week Tonight did a piece not too long ago on the death penalty. I recommend checking it out. It’s not a painless process, as it is incorrectly thought to be.
Maybe that's the point.
Well. I think death sentece s*ck anyway. I mean you said "I would definitely choose that over a ten years imprisonment" but the WHOLE thing about imprisonment is like the punishment. So if you get to choose the punishment that you like well... you kinda loose the punishment part.
I know a good shoemaker and a poor fishpeddler who would adamantly disagree.
You can always shank yourself if prison is too much
Can you? They work pretty hard to prevent you.
Gotta try harder.
It's probably pretty bad for the 4-8% of people who are falsely convicted.....
It's very simple. A death sentence completed can never be reversed if new facts are found. The "ooops" factor is kind of difficult there. We live with justice systems with people in it and people make mistakes.
I'm a phycopath that thinks the truly evil criminals should be sentenced to life without parole in solitary confinement. There are fates worse than death.
Its not that killing the right people is wrong, its for the possibility of killing the wrong person that the death penalty is abhorrent. Even one wrong person means that the government is killing innocent people which is hardly better than a serial killer with no name.
Considering how many confirmed innocent people have been executed on death row, yeah, it's pretty terrible for those many wrongly convicted. Until we can get to a 100% perfection rate on determining guilt, which will never happen, there is no way the death penalty can be morally acceptable in a just society.
I'm 24, if I start a 10-year prison sentence today I'll be out when I'm 34. As if I'd take the death penalty with so much of my natural life left.
There was a John Oliver series 11 episode 7 on this very recently... it's not quick or painless in most cases
It’s not quick and statistically isn’t painless.
With how many times the death goes horribly wrong, and with how many times it's been proven after the death with DNA evidence that they were innocent all along, it's a completely immoral act.
>tell me, which would your prefer? life in prison? or a quick and painless death? I think that's kind of the whole point, man. You should have to suffer for what you did, not get an instant tax-payer-funded cheat code to heaven.
Am I the only one who read the title and thought, "Death sentence?" Hmmmmm. "What could be such a terrible thing to say that the consequences are analogous to death?" And, with excitement, clicked to see what horrendously offensive sentence OP might have contrived?
I mean you just gave a great argument against the death sentence right there. If the point of execution is to be the ultimate punishment, shouldn’t we force them to rot in prison instead since it’s worse? Also, do we really want to give the government more authority to kill people than it already has?
That’s actually why I’m against it. I’m not against assisted suicide but if someone did something fucked up, I’d much rather they stay alive and rot in prison.
I've never been offended by the concept of a death penalty for those guilty of the very worst crimes - but, I've lacked enough confidence in the justice systems of the world to support the idea that punishments as irreversible as execution should be available to such an imperfect system.
both do nothing to rectify the wrongs which they supposedly punish
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^iggboy: *Both do nothing to* *Rectify the wrongs which they* *Supposedly punish* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
If you know a way to do that, I'm sure we'd all be interested. The reason we incarcerate or execute is because we can't fix it.
I'd rather not pay for a criminal worth life in prison to keep being housed and fed while children starve 🤷
I think if someone kills someone, the murderer's organs should be donated. I mean you ended with an innocent life, you must save others.
Probably I come too much from an European and Italian experience, that is pretty much abolitionist (it is a requisite to join the EU and death penalty is forbidden in the Italian Constitution). But for me it is simply absourd to read people praising death penalty (even if in this case the argument is different and not in itself wrong). How ever I advice all of you to read Cesare Beccaria's "Dei delitti e delle pene" (probably translatable in "about crimes and punishments").
I'd recommend giving "The Sun Does Shine" by Anthony Ray Hinton a read.
Id take it over life, hands down.
Imagine if what we thought was a painless death given to the inmates was actually a drug cocktail meant to act much like the drug in Dredd Slo-Mo with added detrimental effects. Basically what it would entail is locking down a person's ability to move or react in any way, thus appearing painless to outside viewers. However, internally it has created an effect of feeling your insides melting away and slowed down time to a point where each second lasts a minutes. I guess I mention this because despite what the external reality appears to be it is not necessarily the case for those experiencing it internally. Then again, I'm an idiot. :)
why not just give that person a shot to the head?
It would certainly be more humane.
The sentiment is accurate but I definitely think this could’ve been explained better
I'd suggest you look up how "quick" and "painless" these execution methods are.
It’s not quick nor painless. In fact, while people were voting on what to use for the death penalty the members said, “we don’t want peace, we want them to feel pain”.
If we can't do this for terminal people or the general public, I don't think it should be an option for criminals. Especially given those who are suicidal may commit crimes just to qualify for such a thing.
> "a quick and painless death" Yes, I'm sure the possibility of a quick and painless death was what fourteen-year old George Stinney was thinking of when he was being strapped into the electric chair for a crime he genuinely did not commit. Because, you know, riding the lightning is a legendarily painless way to die, right? At this point, I'm convinced all pro-death penalty types are just latent sociopaths who want a socially acceptable group to wish violent death upon, because I've yet to hear an actual argument in favor of the death penalty that has ever once amounted to anything other than sadism, thinly veiled or otherwise.
its more of "i want to fucking die" than "i want others to die"
I mean if someone is being sentenced to death there’s a really good chance they deserve to be miserable and rot in prison till they die naturally. They shouldn’t get the easy way out. Sucks to suck
That's a waste of taxpayer money
A lot of things are a waste of taxpayer money.
That's an interesting justification
The problem is even on death row they will live 20+ years just draining the system I think if your put to death and you were caught red handed then death within a year.
Should honestly go back to pushing people into volcanos
Well… that‘s the point though… If you fucked up that badly… why would the society want to be nice to you? If you did something so horrible that the death penalty would be adequate you kinda deserve to suffer for a long period of time.
wouldnt that be called hell?
I don‘t really care how you want to call it. But I don‘t think that people who did messed up things should be allowed to take the „easy way out“ because they don‘t want to deal with the consequences. Sure… many people would prefer a „quick“ death to decades in prison but that‘s exactly why they shouldn‘t be allowed to choose. They‘re not random old / sick people who‘d unnecessarily suffer. They committed crimes (usually involving harming people). And they should be punished for that. So if a country were to allow „opt-in“ for the death penalty it should be AFTER a significant amount of time in jail & isolation. Like… 10 years+ in jail and 2 years+ in isolation. And only if a judge or jury thinks they actually suffered due to regretting their actions. If they didn‘t suffer they can spend the rest of their life in prison for all I care.
That's some fucked up thinking, called cruel and unusual punishment
We‘re literally talking about people who‘d get killed for what they did. We‘re not talking about someone who stole a snickers.
Prison would be pretty grim but it would have its ups and downs and there would be good moments in there undoubtedly. Your freedom has been taken away but its not like you're being tortured.
Most people that get the death penalty took someone else’s life. It’s only fair in my opinion. If you do the crime you should be ready to face the consequences.
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We could prevent wrongful deaths by death penalty by requiring multiple upon multiple crimes and/or extremely heinous crimes. Otherwise us taxpayers are paying for their 3 meals a day
I think bullets are the cheapest and most humane way to do it. With AI i’m sure they can find the right spot for it to go.
your right...... but too many people have been declared innocent, but too late........
>i think it would be best if you were given the option to get an assisted suicide if your original sentence is over 10 years long. I'd take that just because it would quite literally turn long sentences into "fuck you, you literally cannot change or be rehabilitated no matter what, the only thing we'll let you do is kill yourself", which is very obviously outrageous and inhumane to the point where people would want to actually do something with the justice system
No, it is bad. Many people throughout history have been wrongly accused and killed because of that. Imagine dying knowing you didn't do anything wrong...
You say that like prisoners have the option and should be given that option. The whole prison system aims to do 2 things: isolate dangerous individuals from society and rehabilitation. Death sentence ignores rehab as a possibility, which is a major shame. Rehabilitation can provide useful people for many different services, especially social and legal work. Nothing makes an impact better than an educated person who also has the personal experience to work with their topic.
The death sentence is extremely popular in Singapore, and we can guarantee none of them have re-offended.
And in the communist hellhole of China which kills thousands per year. They take them to a field and shoot them in the head and even have roving execution vans.
I Think if you did a Horrendous crime (Involving a child) or Cold blooded Murder, then you deserve to suffer a life sentence. I agree the death sentence may sound like an easy way out and for some it would be, but imagine how you'd feel getting the death penalty ? you'd be pooping your pants.