As I noted yesterday, Biden has commuted the sentences of all but three federal prisoners on death row; they’ll now be serving life behind bars without parole instead. I insisted that this was an excellent decision, as I have never seen the sense of the government killing a prisoner. Here are the pros and cons of capital punishment as I see them.
Pro: People feel that somebody who does a bad crime deserves to be killed for it. The idea is that because the criminal made the victims suffer, he, too, should suffer as retribution for what was inflicted on his victims. It’s retribution, Jake!
Cons: Because of litigation fees and the length of time before execution, as well as execution costs, it actually costs more to execute a prisoner than to keep him in prison until he dies.
If exculpating evidence surfaces, you can retry or free a living prisoner, but not one who’s been executed.
Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
Capital punishment is purely retributive and, in the end, seems selfish as it satisfies the wishes of people to see other people dead.
The state should not be in the business of killing people. That is reserved for one’s opponents in wartime.
Prisoners sentenced to death have no opportunity to be rehabilitated. And surely some of them could be released eventually and become productive citizens, and enjoy the rest of their lives in freedom.
To a determinist, prisoners who commit capital crimes had no choice in the matter, and you don’t execute people for “making the wrong choice” if they didn’t have one.
Anyone who wants retribution should be able to find it in the idea that someone will spend the rest of his life in prison, which is a harsh punishment in itself.
Note that the cons heavily outweigh the pros. And that is surely why the U.S, is the only Western country to have the death penalty (Japan also has it, though it’s not really “Western”).
My question: is there ANY benefit to society in having the death penalty? It seems to hang around because it to afford a ghoulish kind of closure to those who feel strongly about what should happen to someone who commits a horrible crime. One of the most barbaric things I have seen is the crowd of people massed outside a prison on the eve of an execution, baying for blood.
I’ll toss a few thoughts on the “slaughter-bench” (Hegel) of ideas :
Con :
• Using State power as a means to kill or intimidate citizens/residents. Dangerously close to using the State as a God. Note that the State need not forgive such criminals as a god might.
• Artificial selection of even worse criminals – the ones willing to die for their causes because they know there’s a death penalty and accept it as their motivation.
(Need to think about “pro”).
When my dad was younger than I am now he worked with a guy who witnessed one of the last, if not the last hanging we had.
It messed him up for life. Sure, that guy was a real deal murderer and even I have no issue expressing my indifference to such people, but regardless, it’s going to their level.
And the last Weston executioners for the most part openly admitted it never deterred murder and the like.
Though, I’d say this, if it were to be done, I expect it to be done in the quickest, cleanest and emotionless way possible.
Remember Ted Bundy? He went to Florida for his next victim because that state had reinstated the death penalty.
Why do people ride motorcycles? Why do they jump out of airplanes? It’s because those things can kill you. To thrill seekers there is a positive rush involved in risking your own life. The death penalty is an incentive to murder, not a deterrent.
Interesting. I’d never heard that (and I’m not being sarcastic).
My position is that the death penalty should not be used freely, but only for special cases.
For the small number of special cases (killers who have killed on more than one occasion perhaps) the benefit is that once executed they can kill no more people.
The UK’s most dangerous prisoner, Robert Maudsley, 71, is the UK’s longest-serving prisoner and has spent 46 years in solitary confinement. He was committed to a secure hospital after he murdered a man, where he killed again. He was transferred to a prison where he killed two more inmates.
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/uk-world-news/inside-uks-most-dangerous-prisoners-9812144
So the case is that had he been executed after the first killing 3 more people would not have been killed.
+1 Many killers continue to kill even after they are incarcerated.
Well, since we cannot predict who will kill, let us just execute everybody guilty of murder, right? Have you thought that some murders in prison are the price we have to pay to allow prisoners to stay out of the cruel punishment of solitary?
I am against the death penalty ever since I read Reflections on the Guillotine, but preventing killers from continuing to kill is the one argument in favor of the death penalty that carries weight with me.
Yes, we can agree that some murders in prison are the price we have to pay to allow prisoners to stay out of the cruel punishment of solitary. After all, we make such tradeoffs in other areas.
It isn’t random what type of person will continue to commit murders while they’re in prison. They’re usually people who had a history of violence before they went to prison, such as serial killers, or people who had multiple earlier convictions for violent crimes. So it wouldn’t really be necessary to “execute everybody guilty of murder” in order to prevent that.
I’m ambivalent about whether the death penalty should exist. In principle, I think there are some crimes for which death is an appropriate punishment, but I also don’t approve of the particular way capital punishment is applied in the United States. If the process can’t be reformed, ending it altogether might be preferable over allowing it to continue existing in its current form.
My father (born in 1913) was a lawyer. He said that although the death penalty may not deter potential killers it stops at least the one convicted of murder.
In those days (here in Canada) there was no special long appeal process.
It was abolished across the country in 1976.
Premeditated murder is a severe crime and I don’t shed any tears for them if they’re executed.
One insurmountable problem: As long as we have the death penalty, some innocent people will be executed. Simply not possible for a system to be perfect: A signal detection analysis.
https://carolinacurmudgeon.substack.com/p/the-morality-of-the-death-penalty
The original advantage of the death penalty was that taking a convicted prisoner out on the morrow and hanging them was far cheaper than paying for their board, lodging and health care, plus security costs, for the rest of their natural life.
So, for example, after British serial killer John Christie was convicted on the 27th June 1953, he was then hanged on the 15th July, less than three weeks later. (He was clearly guilty, having confessed, and did not appeal.)
Americans being Americans, however, deem it appropriate to have two decades or more of endless appeals and legal process between conviction and execution, which negates any cost saving. This does, of course, have the benefit of giving time for mistakes to be discovered and rectified.
If I had a magic wand that told us infallibly whether someone was guilty then I would see no problem with the death sentence (since one could indeed then just hang them on the morrow). Lacking that magic wand, however, I’m not going to argue for it.
This is an important variable. We aren’t just comparing “with/without hanging”, we’re comparing “hanged next week / decades of appeals & then lethal injection / eternal solitary confinement”.
To me, decades locked in solitary confinement seems like a form of torture that may well be worse than death.
This is why a lot of people in solitary in max security prisons like Florence kill themselves. They go nuts without human contact. An alternative, which I still do not favor, is letting prisoners ASK to be executed.
An addendum:
Another British serial killer was Ian Brady, guilty of the worst of crimes. By then the death penalty had been abolished. But he would have prefered to die; indeed he repeatedly tried to commit suicide and the authorities put a lot of effort into making sure that didn’t happen. He died after 51 years in jail. I don’t see what that achieved. I think he should have been allowed “assisted suicide” as an alternative to the rest of his life in jail.
The corollary to Christie is Timothy Evans, who was tried for murder in January 1950 and hanged on 9 March. This was a gross miscarriage of justice: Christie was the real murderer, but gave evidence against Evans at his trial, and evidence favourable to Evans was suppressed. The truth came out after Christie’s own conviction three years later, which was three years too late for Evans. Without the death penalty, Evans’ conviction could eventually have been overturned and his life saved.
I would want the magic wand to tell me whether the miscreant could be rehabilitated.
We are seeing this issue play out right now in America in the case of Luigi Mangione. Lots of people seem to be delighted that New York and the Federal DOJ have come up with charges that carry the death penalty.
Why? He seems to be an ideal candidate for rehabilitation.
Looking at his happy face caught by a camera after he killed his victim, I don’t see much potential for rehabilitation.
Wealthy? Handsome? Physically fit? Beloved by countless for his act of premeditated murder, or despite it? What is your metric for “rehabilitation”?
@Sue Gould: It doesn’t seem unreasonable that he could be convinced that murdering CEO’s is not a effective way to change the system. I strongly doubt that he would ever commit another crime after spending a few years in prison.
Do you think he’s such a hardened criminal that he can never be rehabilitated and the only solution is to execute him or keep him locked up for life?
You could be entirely right.
As to “the only solution is to execute him or keep him locked up for life?”
No. There has to be something more than these binary choices to complex matters.
The growing trend in to view murder and attempted assassinations an acceptable solution is what I’m against. (And I’m reading these from left-wing friends.)
I think you’re right about the primary reason why people support the death penalty being a desire for retribution and not concern about deterrence. Most of the criminals who people most want to execute (terrorists who do not fear death or, if they are Islamic extremists, explicitly desire it, or mass shooters who risk death in the commission of their crime) are people who clearly would not be deterred by capital punishment even if it was a deterrent to homicide in general (and I don’t think it is.) It’s also notable that US states with the death penalty to everything in their power to conceal executions from the general public, instead of publicizing them.
Good point. If we want executions to be a deterrent, we should put them on television!
It’s bad policy on balance. Most importantly, to me, is that it can’t be undone if a mistake was made.
The only “positive” that comes to mind readily is that having a criminal—Charles Manson, for example—live in infamy in prison can sometimes help keep a cult of followers intact, followers who can themselves commit more mayhem on the original criminal’s behalf. Execution might prevent such an occurrence. But it’s a stretch.
Spending 30 years of your life in solitary also cannot be undone. Besides the time, I think we should weigh this as some kind of torture. I don’t exactly know how this compares to death but we should not dismiss it as nothing, even from the point of view of the prisoner.
From the outside point of view, as you say there’s a cult angle. I’d like to add that there’s a grief angle, for the family or friends of the prisoner. Death is in the past but decades of confinement are a long present. We would certainly regard the family as monsters if they voted for death so that they could get on with their lives. But we do not regard as monsters those who choose abortion over caring for a child with Down’s syndrome, for decades. I wonder if there are serious studies comparing lifelong disability vs death from (say) car accidents, I mean in its effect on family members / close friends?
It’s always fascinating that Christians who insist life is a gift from God and human life is sacred (read anti-abortion) are all in for the death penalty.
Not really, since it was God who instituted capital punishment in the old testament.
A primary con imo is that the death penalty is mostly given to poor, minority, or other disadvantaged individuals. Those who can afford the best legal representation are almost never put to death. If it were applied fairly and uniformly across the board it would be easier to justify.
I just feel there are some people who commit actions so heinous that we shouldn’t have to suffer their existence. That fellow who set the woman on fire in the NYC subway comes to mind. And is retribution necessarily bad?
Yes, some exercise must be done in this area :
How about those two guys in Connecticut who bludgeoned-not-to-death a father as he napped on the porch, then dealt with the rest of his family? It is so sick I can’t write it, nor want to look it up – I think what I wrote is roughly correct. The criminals might have been in prison, but I can’t recall exactly.
How does that father feel, replaying the events in his head? We cannot know.
How might that father feel if he found out that they were released, by mistake, judged not to be a further threat, whatever and went on to kill somebody else’s family? I think we plausibly could know.
Yes, I think retribution is bad; it is something that society has tried to avoid in punishment (e.g., no lynching, no vigilante justice), and a legal system based on what we know about why people do bad stuff is not a legal system that kills them
I would recommend the essay by Albert Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine. Also Orwell’s, A Hanging.
Devastating! It’s nothing I could stand to have anything to do with. The man vomiting in his bed says it all.
Your description of the benefits of retribution is coloured by your opposition to it, akin to begging the question. The best reason I can come up with for the death penalty is that it just feels right. If it just feels wrong you must oppose it but you will never convince those who feel the opposite. If they form a majority they ought to get their way if they press hard enough. Retribution should always be moderated. Only an eye for an eye. Never a life for an eye. Treason in war and murder with malice aforethought, say. And judges should have discretion in sentencing.
The objections to the death penalty are all cogent but ultimately pragmatic. These objections may well convince individual legislatures to abolish the death penalty but if the zeal for retribution (and permanent incapacitation against recidivism) is strong enough, all can be overcome. If all else fails, the proponents can just say they don’t accept determinism in matters of life and death (or at all.)
In some ways, considered from the point of view of the state (which is us, ultimately), it’s better to execute the wrong guy than to send the wrong guy away for a long prison sentence. In the latter case, there is more incentive to family and activists to find exculpatory evidence in hopes of freeing a live inmate, and then there’s the nuisance of having to make the taxpayers pay compensation to the exonerated prisoner. And someone who’s been in prison for a long time will have difficulty staying out of trouble, no matter whose fault that was. If the wrong guy was executed, we may never know. He’ll have been forgotten about in a year and life goes on as if he had never existed.
There is also the risk that a jury may be less willing to convict if it’s nagging in the backs of their minds that the man they’ll be sending to the gallows could just conceivably be innocent. (I call this the “Twelve Angry Men” argument.) This could be a net plus or a net minus for society. It’s just an unintended consequence.
“There is also the risk that a jury may be less willing to convict if it’s nagging in the backs of their minds that the man they’ll be sending to the gallows could just conceivably be innocent.”
ISTM, this is why reasonable doubt is a fundamental requirement of “justice”, no matter how aspirational that notion actually is.
An aside: The Russian remake of that film has long been one of my favorite movies.
Sorry but I look at the judicial system as a means to an end–a smoothly working and, yes, just society in the face of determinism. Lots of things FEEL right, but that does not mean that they are right. And I dont care if people are not satisfied if the state does not kill somebody. We have a judicial system.
Do you think that every other Western country has made a huge error in abolishing capital punishment?
Your first sentence is unnecessarily rude.
And thanks for the insult. You do not seem to know what begging the question is, because I did not do it. I did not assume what I wanted to prove; I looked for any good reason for society to adopt retribution as a reason for punishment. I do not see any, nor do I consider soothing enraged people a good enough reason.
@Leslie MacMillan, Why do you think there are so many countries that have abolished the death penalty (e.g. Canada, Australia, all countries in Western Europe, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand)?
Good question, @Laurence Moran. Presumably it’s because the governments of those countries and American states that have done so found one or all the many arguments against the death penalty compelling. Those that have not done so presumably find the retribution argument or the permanent prevention of recidivism compelling. As representative democracies they make those choices as they see fit.
More deeply,… Unless the electorate feels strongly about it — it mostly doesn’t — the Government in Parliaments can pretty much ignore the polls and do whatever the party leaders agree not to fight over. Backbenchers have no power to defeat bills that are supported by the Government and/or the leader of their (opposition) party but opposed by the constituents they represent, or to pass bills off their own bats that the Government opposes. It’s therefore a political calculation among elites, not a populist one. Most Canadian policy is made this way, with little input from the electorate.
American legislatures under separation of powers are not captured by party leaders who hope to become the chief executive officer of the government and then control utterly what the legislature may discuss. The legislators are free to bring their constituents’ views, however antediluvian, to the chamber and pass (or defeat) laws based on those views. During and after Canada’s debate on capital punishment between 1962 (the last hanging) and 1976 (legal abolition), consistently more Canadians told pollsters they supported hanging than opposed it* but the Government was able to pass abolition anyway because the party leaders all agreed, leaving retentionists among the public with no one to vote for, which persists to this day.
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/bdp-lop/YM32-1-79-36-eng.pdf
@Leslie MacMillan: That’s an interesting take on the difference between governments of other countries and the government of the United States. You seem to believe that the Canadian government passes legislation based on “political calculation among elites” and not the wishes of the people. I guess that explains why Americans have so much more confidence in their government than the citizens of other countries.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/trust-in-government-by-country
I have another view. It may not explain everything about why so many other countries have abolished the death penalty but I think it is a better explanation than the one you offer.
Beginning about half-a-century ago, many people in other countries started to see state executions as barbaric. The consensus view was that having the state hire people to kill their own citizens was not something that modern countries should do. That practice is a remnant of the past and the death penalty should be abolished.
It’s true that there were still lots of people who wanted to preserve some exceptions such as treason, serial killers, and killing police officers but the default position came to be that capital punishment was bad and you needed good reasons to keep some exceptions. Most governments decided that they did not want to be in the barbaric business of executing citizens and none of the exceptions were sufficiently convincing. That’s why those countries abolished the death penalty 50 years ago and that’s why the citizens of those countries generally support that policy.
The situation in the United States seems different. There seems to be general agreement that executing criminals is not necessarily a bad thing and most citizens do not see it as a barbaric practice that needs to be abandoned. They like the idea of retribution and an eye-for-an-eye or a-tooth-for-a tooth. The default position is to keep the death penalty unless you can come up with rational reasons to abolish it.
That’s why Americans tend to advance arguments about cost, false convictions, and lack of deterrence. These arguments often don’t work because there’s an underlying assumption among Americans that state executions are ethically justifiable whereas in other countries the default assumption is that state executions are ethically (morally) wrong.
The death penalty should exist because there are some people who have committed some crimes whom the state should spend no money and no time housing. Not punishment. Not retribution (though the victim’s families may want that). Removal. The fact that there are such lengthy appeals processes for some criminals merely highlights that perhaps those crimes should not be on the death penalty list, but is not an argument against the punishment itself. There are plenty of people, like the recent subway immolator, for whom there is zero doubt about their guilt, zero chance of rehabilitation, zero reason for keeping them around.
If a determinist would argue that we should not execute someone for committing a crime for which they had no choice in committing, then that same determinist should also either say the same for all crimes, and that no punishment should occur ever, or say that of course the death penalty should exist because it was always meant to exist and has no choice but to exist. So the determinist reasoning is on its face off the table, as it negates itself.
The appeal process is long even for those who have committed the most obvious capital crimes, like first-degree murder. If you have read my writings on free will, which I guess you haven’t, you’ll know that there are several reasons to punish people even under determinism. And your reasoning that we can’t change the death penalty because it’s determined is nonsense: we can change it through argumentation, though of course that argumentation is itself determined. But your reasoning implies that what exists can never be changed under determinism.
Then we should remove the appeals process for those obvious capital crimes. We can fix the time consumption problem right there and get back to the business of removing from the population those who grotesquely butcher their fellow man.
Sorry but the appeals process is in place, and not just for capital crimes. Why are you so eager to have the state kill people, even at the cost of getting rid of an essential aspect of our legal system: the appeal.
I do not wish to discuss any more your disire to have the government engage in murder. You have had your say.
I agree with the comments as well as the points made by Jerry Coyne that on balance the cons outway the pros, and for me the issue of ensuring there is no error in executing an innocent person is high on the list.
A PRO not listed by others is that for a known guilty party (like, I believe, the three “uncommuted” by Biden), execution ensures that some future president loonier than Biden does not completely pardon criminals who are completely guilty. Biden changed the sentence to life without parole but it’s doubtful Mr. Smart-as-a-Tack had a detailed review with aides. I don’t know if his pardoning power allows him to change life without parole to 50 years or age 90, which ever comes first (for example). A similar point — if you didn’t have death penalty, some folks would look to undermine life without parole (for which there ARE also arguments).
A greater risk that is that we may hear of future crimes of some of the 1000+ folks that Biden completely pardoned.
Again, I agree that commuting to guaranteed life without parole is preferable to death penalty.
We are assuming the prisoner with life without parole is humanely treated, while this is not true in all countries. Finally, in science fiction, for example a novel by Ian M. Banks, one can imagine a far future where people’s minds could be uploaded as software to a program where they would be ill-treated for “eternity”. This might be worse than anything.
Someone whom I loved was murdered. The murderer was never indicted, though there is an idea who he is likely to have been. I would surely have some closure if he had been caught, sentenced and executed. Of course, life without parole would also seem right, but there is always the danger that parole will appear down the road (it usually does; I remember a discussion on this site about an accomplice of Manson).
When capital punishment is discussed, relatives of murder victims who want retribution are chastised, while murderers are not. This feels unfair to me.
I could also be in the very near future that an implanted chip “could be uploaded as software to a program where they would get…” a calming mechanism, or something similar to a shock collar for dogs.
“Retribution” is not an answer for me, only actual deterrence . (I would actually find it insulting to equate a murder’s life as equal to that of a beloved family/friend’s murder.) And I think we should be able to find a better way than the binary kill/don’t kill arguments.
On balance, I am against the death penalty. But there should be more pros in the list for the sake of thoroughness.
It is often very important to victims’ families for the state to carry out the execution. They commonly feel and express deeper sorrow that the murderer keeps on living, with room and board and even medical care, while their loved ones are rotting in a cold grave. At a visceral level it does not seem fair to them.
The state committing to and carrying out a death penalty (after a lengthy and evidence-based trial) for the most heinous of our crimes provides a kind of societal glue, where law abiding citizens can see and believe that our laws are ultimately enforced by a government that is looking out for its citizens.
Is there any social benefit from the death penalty?
Well, as a determinist I guess I’d start by pointing out that anything that does happen MUST happen and, therefore, we don’t really have much choice whether to have a death penalty or not.
That said, I think it’s fair to observe that many people evidently find a certain satisfaction in the fact that the death penalty is on the books and that prisoners are, from time to time, permanently put away. This widespread satisfaction is a benefit provided by the death penalty, at least to the many who enjoy it. What is more, I do not think this is an appetite that can be whittled down by rational argument and, so, I tend to see the death penalty as simply a regrettable fact of life, like earthquakes and global warming.
If I could remake the world, it would be different in many ways, including as regards the death penalty. But I cannot.
Better to focus on the happier aspects of life, which are many.
“The state should not be in the business of killing people. That is reserved for one’s opponents in wartime.”
An innocent teenager conscripted into an enemy army is fair game to kill. (As are innocent civilians who happen to be in the way.) But a man who ruthlessly rapes and slaughters children should be under state care for life. And the difference is that you have one in custody and one who isn’t? Because one MIGHT do us harm but the other is only a small-but-potential threat to fellow prisoners and guards?
And as to retribution, should we not sentence nonviolent felons to prison? If someone commits securities fraud, for instance, simply ban them from the industry, make it impossible for them to do it again, and then why bother with a prison sentence at all? It is simply retribution. Then we can leave prison for people who would steal my lawnmower and might easily do it again if left free.
You forgot about reformation, which need not always be done in prison.
I imagine the family and close friends of the victim feel better knowing the perp is dead. Given life, he’s supposed to be in prison–if he doesn’t escape, get released or commuted or the like. The loved one is dead; prisoner is alive, making art, receiving visitors, having girlfriends; living. Rankles. (That’s some reason, answer to is there ANY.)
What’s the matter with retribution? It is an evolved response to those who violate the most important norms of a social species. It is even more “natural” (spare me the fallacy argument) that the urge for vengeance is strongest among those who are related to the victim. Such proclivities existed long before there were any laws, and inevitably emerge when law enforcement fails. Such was the case with Daniel Penny who, in my opinion, was justly acquitted. The only real question is whether or not a third party such as the government should have that prerogative. Ask yourself, if a loved one was brutally raped and murdered would you not be willing to exact terrible vengeance upon the transgressor? I certainly would be, and I say this as someone who supports Pinker’s contention that Leviathan must prevail.
I agree that long imprisonment is cruel and unusual, and feel that the world is full of useless and redundant people, so as a practical measure I would support the death penalty as an option for anyone sentenced for twenty years or more for whatever reason. Life imprisonment should be reserved for those who commit heinous crimes in the hope that they will die. Now that’s vengeance!
Nope, I would never favor anyone being killed, even if they killed a relative of mine.And, by the way, what is evolved is not neessarily right. Why not just have lynching, like they used to? After all, that is a manifestation of vengeance?
You do know how many people were found guilty who were later released, often after long prison terms, because they were exculpated. How often eyewitness testimony was false? The next thing I will hear is yes, let us do away with the death penalty EXCEPT IN THOSE CASES WHERE WE ARE SURE THAT THE PERP DID THE DEED. But that is the job of juries: to find someone guilty only if they are beyond reasonable doubt. And yet even beyond reasonable doubt, a fair number of innocent people are found guilty.
Some people have committed such heinous crimes that I have no sorrow if they get the death penalty. McVeigh is a famous example. However, I have concluded that the inevitability of injustice makes the death penalty intolerable. The Tribune did an in-depth analysis of the death penalty in Illinois a couple of decades ago. It was not a rare occurance that an innocent man was given the death penalty. It was also not always an honest mistake on the part of prosecutors. And as Dale #11 points out, the death penalty is not remotely applied equally to all offenders. Even as I believe it can be justified it for the worst criminals, it is so unjustly applied in practice I believe it should be abolished.
I am not saying I agree with this rationale for the death penalty. I don’t. But it has some force and we should acknowledge it. The rationale is that the death penalty expresses the justified anger of the political community. As Lord Denning (a British lawyer) put it: ‘The ultimate justification of any punishment is not that it is a deterrent but that it is the emphatic denunciation by the community of a crime; and from this point of view, there are some murders which, in the… public opinion, demand the most emphatic denunciation of all, namely the death penalty.’
Just putting it out there.
For me the issue is uncomplicated. An individual is entitled to kill another individual only in a community sanctioned war under clear rules or in self defense. That’s it. Full stop. The same rules apply to individuals collectively, thus to the state. Another full stop. Taking a life outside of those parameters is murder and murder cannot be justified under any circumstances. Next challenge? Hope Santa is good to everyone here when he scrambles down the chimney tonight.
Without arguing further the (de-)merits of the death penalty on Christmas Eve, I think it’s an error to say the state is bound by the same rules as the individuals who comprise it. (For one thing, in monarchies the power of the state resides in the Crown, not with the community of individuals at all.) War itself is an activity that states may wage but individuals, as individuals, may not. (Then it would be banditry or piracy.) Killing in war (by individuals of course) is lawful only when directed by a state. A vaguer “community” of individuals can’t sanction a war that guarantees to combatants the (imperfect) protection of the Geneva Convention.
So a state may punish with death the crime of murder, or any other crime it chooses, without running into a logical contradiction. It can also, and nearly always does, prohibit individuals from carrying out violent acts of vengeance. That’s just in the nature of states: when the state seeks, and obtains, a monopoly on the use of violence, the power to use violence shifts to the discretion of the state.
”Because of litigation fees and the length of time before execution, as well as execution costs, it actually costs more to execute a prisoner than to keep him in prison until he dies.”
Is there anyone who makes this argument who would then be in favour of the death penalty if that were cheaper than life imprisonment?
It’s similar to the argument “we must have immigration because it is good for the economy”. I doubt that there is anyone who makes that argument who would be opposed to immigration if it isn’t good for the economy.
I favor keeping the appeals process as it is.
If a large dog, through some combination of bad genes or mistreatment were to repeatedly attack, maim, and kill children, would anyone argue that the State had an obligation to maintain in confinement all such dogs for life? Or would we simply euthanize such dogs? So, if a man is so evil—forgive me that antiquated word—that he repeatedly attacks, rapes, and kills children, why should we not euthanize him rather than burden the public with his lifelong care?
Yes, a man is not a dog, but so what? Is he different only in being an animal of our species? Or are we smuggling in, as I did with evil, some equally antiquated notion that a man has dignity by the simple fact of being a human being? (I know nobody here is smuggling in the notion that keeping him alive leaves open a door to repentance and eternal life.) A bad and vicious animal is a bad and vicious animal—whether he walks on four legs or two. Why is the one deserving of life and the other not? Or does opposition to the death penalty derive from some notion that it makes us—its performers and supporters—somehow more callous? I’m not sure why killing a rogue man is any different than killing a rogue dog, but I’m open to explanations. After all, we kill innocent men, women, and children during war all the time. How would one form of killing diminish us when the other supposedly does not?
I share concerns with others that the death penalty might not be enacted in a fair and impartial manner, but I have no opposition in principle when we are confident of guilt of certain crimes.
By confident, do you mean when a jury convicts someone beyond reasonable doubt. Because that is the standard for conviction. And plenty of people accused of participating in murders have been convicted on that standard but were innocent.
This is precisely my hesitation and why I do not support it in practice (as opposed to in theory). To be more clear, I should have said, “. . . if we could be confident . . .” But I am curious about those who oppose it EVEN IF we could know with certainty that a man is guilty of heinous crimes.
I concur. The government ought not be executing anyone.
Yep. The best arguments against the death penalties are 1: There is no way to correct a mistakenly applied death penalty and 2: There but for fortune go you or I. Given a similar life trajectory, any one of us could end up doing something which attracts a death penalty. Far from being a deterrent to crime, it allows a clever murderer to get a twofer by framing an innocent third party for his crime. (And yes, a murderer is overwhelmingly likely to be a male).
https://x.com/Evolutionistrue/status/1871584160852402368
https://x.com/BBCWorld/status/1870229136565739970 🇬🇧
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24nrr0mv4go
BBC News reports on false accusations in Japan. 🇯🇵
Japan’s judicial system is really outdated. 😔😮💨
Japan has big problems with the police, prosecutors, and courts. 👮♂👨💼👨⚖
I am against the death penalty. 🆖🙅🙅
I’m reading that some of the pardoned from death row killed while serving their life sentence in prison.