The Death Penalty is a Good Thing

[Don't Panic]

Once again, you fail to address a rational argument. You're one step away from creationist logic/ You might as well go the whole hog and clap your hands over your eyes and shout 'LALALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING!'.

I was going to but I couldn't find the smiley for that.

On a serious note, my belief is that if the death penalty were implemented efficiently it would work as a deterrent to crime, efficiently meaning carrying out the execution within a month of sentencing. So long as the guidelines regarding the level of evidence of guilt required for a capital sentence to be applicable were sensibly formulated there wouldn't be too many innocents mistakenly killed.

[Pappa]

The argument against the death penalty based on the incorrect conviction of innocent people is the deal-breaker for me on capital punishment. In this post, Gawd, you are clearly accepting that a certain number of innocent people will be executed, whatever the actual % might be. Like my wan, I would not quibble too much at the judicially ordered death of the perpetrator, particularly for crimes of real brutality , but the fundamental impossibility of being 100% accurate is the crux of the matter. You can always release someone from life imprisonment if they are subsequently proved innocent...

This is exactly my opinion on the matter. ^

A question for DP...

How would you feel if you, or someone you cared about was falsely convicted of murder and a date was set for their execution? Would you accept it as a fair price to pay for your stance?

[Don't Panic]

The argument against the death penalty based on the incorrect conviction of innocent people is the deal-breaker for me on capital punishment. In this post, Gawd, you are clearly accepting that a certain number of innocent people will be executed, whatever the actual % might be. Like my wan, I would not quibble too much at the judicially ordered death of the perpetrator, particularly for crimes of real brutality , but the fundamental impossibility of being 100% accurate is the crux of the matter. You can always release someone from life imprisonment if they are subsequently proved innocent...

This is exactly my opinion on the matter. ^

A question for DP...

How would you feel if you, or someone you cared about was falsely convicted of murder and a date was set for their execution? Would you accept it as a fair price to pay for your stance?

I was already asked that, and I answered yes, if it worked to deter crime then it is worth it. I'd still have a few days to find(or fabricate) evidence to change the outcome.

[Meekychuppet]

Once again, you fail to address a rational argument. You're one step away from creationist logic/ You might as well go the whole hog and clap your hands over your eyes and shout 'LALALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING!'.

I was going to but I couldn't find the smiley for that.

On a serious note, my belief is that if the death penalty were implemented efficiently it would work as a deterrent to crime, efficiently meaning carrying out the execution within a month of sentencing.

It doesn't matter what you believe. The evidence simply is not there. Unless you prefer China, where rapid executions haven't stopped people committing mass murder in schools for example. Are you sure you're not religious? You're promoting belief over reality and evidence. All the signs are there.

So long as the guidelines regarding the level of evidence of guilt required for a capital sentence to be applicable were sensibly formulated there wouldn't be too many innocents mistakenly killed.

That is a morally reprehensible thing to say and ought to be ashamed of saying it.

[Meekychuppet]

DP, just say what you're dying to say, 'collateral damage'.

[Don't Panic]

DP, just say what you're dying to say, 'collateral damage'.

I was thinking more 'incidental casualties' but whatever works for you.

[Pappa]

The argument against the death penalty based on the incorrect conviction of innocent people is the deal-breaker for me on capital punishment. In this post, Gawd, you are clearly accepting that a certain number of innocent people will be executed, whatever the actual % might be. Like my wan, I would not quibble too much at the judicially ordered death of the perpetrator, particularly for crimes of real brutality , but the fundamental impossibility of being 100% accurate is the crux of the matter. You can always release someone from life imprisonment if they are subsequently proved innocent...

This is exactly my opinion on the matter. ^

A question for DP...

How would you feel if you, or someone you cared about was falsely convicted of murder and a date was set for their execution? Would you accept it as a fair price to pay for your stance?

I was already asked that, and I answered yes, if it worked to deter crime then it is worth it. I'd still have a few days to find(or fabricate) evidence to change the outcome.

Well, I could never agree with that, but as long as you'd genuinely accept it as a possible consequence of your beliefs, fair enough.

[Don't Panic]

The argument against the death penalty based on the incorrect conviction of innocent people is the deal-breaker for me on capital punishment. In this post, Gawd, you are clearly accepting that a certain number of innocent people will be executed, whatever the actual % might be. Like my wan, I would not quibble too much at the judicially ordered death of the perpetrator, particularly for crimes of real brutality , but the fundamental impossibility of being 100% accurate is the crux of the matter. You can always release someone from life imprisonment if they are subsequently proved innocent...

This is exactly my opinion on the matter. ^

A question for DP...

How would you feel if you, or someone you cared about was falsely convicted of murder and a date was set for their execution? Would you accept it as a fair price to pay for your stance?

I was already asked that, and I answered yes, if it worked to deter crime then it is worth it. I'd still have a few days to find(or fabricate) evidence to change the outcome.

Well, I could never agree with that, but as long as you'd genuinely accept it as a possible consequence of your beliefs, fair enough.

I see it as a remote enough possibility to be worth the risk.

[Meekychuppet]

DP, just say what you're dying to say, 'collateral damage'.

I was thinking more 'incidental casualties' but whatever works for you.

Still no argument. I think I'm done with you.

[my_wan]

The argument against the death penalty based on the incorrect conviction of innocent people is the deal-breaker for me on capital punishment. In this post, Gawd, you are clearly accepting that a certain number of innocent people will be executed, whatever the actual % might be. Like my wan, I would not quibble too much at the judicially ordered death of the perpetrator, particularly for crimes of real brutality , but the fundamental impossibility of being 100% accurate is the crux of the matter. You can always release someone from life imprisonment if they are subsequently proved innocent...

This is exactly my opinion on the matter. ^

A question for DP...

How would you feel if you, or someone you cared about was falsely convicted of murder and a date was set for their execution? Would you accept it as a fair price to pay for your stance?

I was already asked that, and I answered yes, if it worked to deter crime then it is worth it. I'd still have a few days to find(or fabricate) evidence to change the outcome.

Well, I could never agree with that, but as long as you'd genuinely accept it as a possible consequence of your beliefs, fair enough.

I see it as a remote enough possibility to be worth the risk.

For a proper comparison of risk you have to consider more than just your risk of false conviction. You also have to compare that risk to the risk of being a victim of that crime. The US (2008 US figures) puts the murder rate at 5.4 per 100,000. That's a 0.000054% chance of getting murdered without any adjustments for age, behavior, gang involvement, etc. Previously I estimated a 5% false conviction rate, but let's drop false confessions and such and put it closer to 0.5% (1/2 of 1%). Now, at this 0.5% rate, if you are convicted of murder, your odds of being innocent is about 10,000 times more likely than your odds of getting murdered.

Now obviously, this is not your odds of being convicted of murder prior to arrest, conviction, or even suspicion, which is a tiny percent of the murder rate itself. However, each person you sentence to death is 10,000 times more likely to be innocent than the odds of any given person picked at random being murdered that year. Even if you extend that over a 68 year life span the odds of killing innocent people still far exceeds the odds of any given innocent person getting murdered. Once you factor in age related behaviors, associations, etc., then that 10,000 swells into the hundreds of thousands.

So which "risk" are you actually protecting yourself from? Are you really willing to take the chance of killing innocent people that is 10,000 times greater than your chance of getting killed by any of the murderers on Earth? That is in fact what we are doing with the death penalty, because it is those that are convicted, and have that 1/2 of 1% chance of being innocent (disregarding false confessions), that we are imposing the penalty on, irrespective of your actual "risk".

[Chuck Jones]

Flawed premise, flawed conclusion, it's all flawed, mate.

[Coito ergo sum]

[

You could BE the US justice system incarnate.

I don't think you can indict the whole US justice system because of the death penalty. The US justice system is among the best in the world. The US provides very real protections to the accused, and the US was groundbreaking in providing many of those protections which only later were followed in Europe and elsewhere. I'm not sure where it can be concluded that the US justice system is bad in comparison to most others.

[my_wan]

Flawed premise, flawed conclusion, it's all flawed, mate.

Cool
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Wait, that's no argument, that's just a claim
How

The most obvious argument you can make was considered in paragraph two. You could rightly argue that any individuals chance of a false conviction (murder in this case) is much much smaller than the actual murder rate. At a 0.5% false conviction rate it must be about 200 times less than the actual rate of murder (disregarding false convictions for accidental deaths). However, these numbers ONLY apply to convicted individuals, not random individuals of which you consider yourself a part of. Yet when passing a sentence on a convict it is NOT a random individual, but a convict for which the 0.5% false positive rate applies to. In fact, all such sentences can ONLY be passed on this non-random group, as you don't sentence non-convicts.

So the only real argument you can possibly make is that a 10,000 fold increase in the odds of killing an innocent person, when passing sentence, compared to your odds of being murdered, is worth it because the number of innocent people that will be subject to this death penalty is small compared to the number of innocent people subject to being murdered. That would be like saying it's ok to increase the odds of an innocent Indian getting killed to 0.5% because there such a small part of the population that if it reduces your odds of being killed by less than 0.000054% it makes you feel safer. Only you and your neighbors safety is statistically increased about as much if that person was simply sitting in jail the rest of their life.

In fact the only reason that the state can't accidentally kill more innocent people than get murdered is because the number of innocent people convicted is limited to some percent of murders that take place (disregarding false convictions for accidental deaths). If you think you can parlay that into a "flaw" in the argument, go for it.

[Gawd]

My_wan, your statistics are really contrived.

[my_wan]

Flawed premise, flawed conclusion, it's all flawed, mate.

Your right, it is quiet good, and getting better. Just look at the number of people the innocence project got released. Eyewitness misidentification played a role about 75% of all false convictions, 15% was from jail house witnesses, while about 25% is self incrimination. The cases involving fraud or misconduct by prosecutors or police departments is quiet small, but varies greatly by region. West Dallas Texas has historically been really bad in this respect.

Yet, so long as you take presentence convicts as a group, the false conviction rate would have to be well below 0.0001% to even come anywhere close to the risk of any given death sentence killing an innocent person matching the average risk of the population in general of being murdered.