Alonzo Fyfe

First, we must recognize that what I would want is of little relevance to what should be done on the whole, and that I think capital punishment is a bad idea for the reason specified . . .

Given my personality and the type of treatment I can expect to receive from others in a prison environment, that even if found innocent I would leave with no money and no real opportunity to save for retirement, that the prison time would deprive me of job experience that would leave me competitive in the market, that the world is filled with people who will always wonder, 'was he really innocent, or did they make a mistake? After all, if they can make a mistake in imprisoning an innocent person, they can make a mistake in releasing a guilty one."

Given that, even though I would be alive, I would be denied of virtually everything of value that I have sought to accomplish with that life, I would prefer death.

The relevant general principle is that all forms of punishment takes away something of value from the innocent person subject to that punishment. Some forms of punishment deprive people of more things of value than others, yet the difference is a difference in degree, not in kind.

An innocent person executed may be deprived of MORE things of value than the person wrongfully imprisoned for X years, but both have been deprived of things of value -- both have been deprived of things that they can never get back. Both are perminant in some effects -- even if they are not perminant in the same effects.

Mike Rosoft

A nitpick: I don't think you would leave the prison with no money. To the contrary, if you were wrongfully imprisoned for several years, you could expect receiving a rather large sum of money from government in compensation.

I believe that we have agreed that wrongful imprisonment does less damage than wrongful execution, and even that damage can be - partially at least - fixed. Combined with the fact that there is no evidence that capital punishment defers crime any more effectively than life imprisonment, and that it may even brutalize the society - Amnesty International has more than enough examples - I see no reason to keep it.


Mike Rosoft

Bill Snedden

I think that's an excellent point. Execution deprives the victim, his relatives, and even, in a sense, society itself of any possibility of a future. Regardless of what losses are suffered by the innocent wrongly imprisoned, they, their families, and society may at the very least struggle and hope for justice. At least they have the possibility of a future.

Granting for the moment that wrongful convictions are few and far between (no small concession), how much more acceptable should it be to society to know that we have the possibility of attempting reparations (regardless of how feeble) for our errors than it is to know that our only atonement would be a meaningless, "oh, sorry, my bad."

Regards,

Bill Snedden

fundamental spawn

I can support the Death Penalty for murderous acts but not under the current system. Much of the power of state funded prosecution must end .... It should be much more difficult to gain convictions and government prosecutors must not profit from guilty verdicts. Also, the jury of "peers" must end ..... "Peers" has come to mean the masses and the masses aren't qualified to render judgement. Juries should be professional and trained .... the best pro jurors should convene on the most serious cases, and becoming a career juror should be tough - one must prove himself in education and in experience. If judges can be appointed, thus can the jury side of the equation.

The current system is just not free enough of gaping holes to take a life.

NHGH

Actually, they are shared by some others, including a significant number of those facing execution. About 1 in 8 people executed over the last 25 years has been a so-called "volunteer", choosing to drop their appeals and take the death penalty.

Personally, I concur with your sentiments. I doubt there'd be much left to live for after serving a significant prison sentence. Given the probability of financial ruin, the complete disruption of personal life, and the lingering stigma to be faced even after exoneration, I think death would be preferable.

I'm actually pretty ambivalent about the death penalty itself, but I am convinced of one thing: focused and concerted efforts to abolish it are misplaced effort. That time could be much better spent on pursuing needed reforms in the criminal justice system generally, and hopefully lead to a lessening of the number of wrongful convictions, in both capital and non-capital cases.

bd-from-kg

Doubting Didymus:

I’ve already done so. All of human experience supports the conclusion that increasing the reward for a given type of act will increase the motivation to do it, and that increasing the motivation to do it will increase the incidence of the type of act in question. Conversely, reducing the punishment for a certain act will increase the motivation to avoid doing it, and reducing the motivation to avoid doing it will decrease the incidence of the type of act in question. What is there about this that you don’t understand?

If you want to claim that capital punishment is a unique exception to how humans (and other animals, for that matter) operate, the burden is on you to prove it.

yguy:

When you learn to discuss things civilly, perhaps we can have a civil discussion.

everlastingtongue:

And when you keep running into one brick wall after another this is supposed to make you feel better? Personally, I think that the bitterness of knowing that you were wrongly convicted and that the conviction will almost certainly never be overturned would outweigh the very slim hope of getting a reversal. But maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, I wasn’t arguing that imprisonment is just as bad as death, simply that both involve irreversible harm.

The two cases are hardly comparable, but in any case what’s your point? Are we supposed to keep every hardened criminal who’s killed people on a whim alive because he just might turn out to be a Sakharov or Mandela?

Sounds like you agree that being incarcerated for a long period of time is a pretty serious punishment! Anyway, I think Alonzo has covered this point admirably.

yelyos:

First I doubt that many people given this choice would choose death over life in prison. So a death sentence is a better deterrent even if life in prison is “really”, in some sense, a worse punishment. Are we looking for retribution of deterrence? I vote for deterrence. Retribution per se is pointless.

Second, neither death (by the methods we use today) nor life imprisonment is anywhere close to the worst possible punishment. Lots of punishments that have actually been used are far worse. The Romans used crucifixion (which usually took several agonizing days, not three hours) and sentenced people to work in lead mines until they died from lead poisoning. Today many Islamic countries use stoning, which is designed to kill very slowly and painfully. But I wouldn't want to live in a society that utilized such punishments.

Suzanne**Atheist:

You cite Mike Rosoft’s point:

and comment:

This isn’t a problem specific to capital punishment; it’s a problem for all punishment. How do you decide whether a perp should get 10 years or 20, especially when either sentence is permissible under the official sentencing guidelines? And how about the folks who wrote the guidelines? How do they decide what sentence is appropriate for each crime?

Besides, if there’s actually an objective answer to the question of who “should” live and who should die, what’s wrong with executing the ones who should die? On the other and, if there isn’t an objective answer, the question (and the objection) is meaningless.

Anyway, in the real world we don’t try to attain “cosmic justice”, even if we believe there is such a thing. We try to reduce crime, and make law-abiding citizens safe, as much as possible with the limited resources available. For example, two guys commit a crime together; both are equally guilty. One makes a deal and gets a light sentence; the other stonewalls and gets the book thrown at him. Is refusing to rat on your pals a crime deserving of decades in jail? Probably not. But without confessions the system would be unworkable, so we encourage people to confess by offering deals.

Similarly, we punish cop killing much more severely than most other killings. Why? Is the life of a cop that much more valuable than anyone else’s? Of course not. But we have to protect policemen’s lives as much as possible if the system is to be viable at all.

More generally, punishments are based on the overall goal of deterring and preventing crime as much as possible. Thus, a repeat offender is more likely to be locked up, and for a longer time, than a first-timer, even if we can see how the former got to where he is because of a dismal upbringing, hopelessly inadequate schools, exposure to bad influences in a crime-infested neighborhood whereas the latter had every advantage. Why? Because locking up a repeater is practically certain to prevent him, at least, from committing more crimes for a while, at least against the general public.

So the answer to who should be executed and who spared is just like the answer to other questions of this sort. The answer is based on which punishment will contribute most to the public welfare. Do we get it wrong sometimes? Probably. Are there systematic biases in the system? Probably. Does that mean that we should stop punishing people for committing crimes? I don’t think so. If you want to make this an argument against capital punishment and not against all other kinds of punishment you need something more – something that makes capital punishment unique, such that we must have a perfect system before imposing it. And what if a system without capital punishment is ipso facto an imperfect system? Then we’re left, as usual, with a choice of unpalatable alternatives.

NHGH

But, more likely than not, you'd be disappointed, as discussed here. Some folks are well compensated for their ordeal. A lot more aren't.

Quote:

I believe that we have agreed that wrongful imprisonment does less damage than wrongful execution, and even that damage can be - partially at least - fixed. ... Mike Rosoft

From reading the previous posts, it seems that Alonzo Fyfe doesn't agree. It's not clear that bd-from-kg agrees. And I have to say that I don't really agree either.

I think there's a subjective element here. Imprisonment (or execution) will affect some people more heavily than others; so it's quite possible that in some cases, wrongful imprisonment does less damage than execution and in other cases, it will do more.

Obviously, other factors affect this judgment as well, including length of imprisonment (though for any crime which could result in a death penalty, the alternative will of course be a very long term of imprisonment), conditions of confinement, expected likelihood of exoneration, etc.

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, you left out a couple of parts.

(1) It is the PERCEIVED cost and benefit that determine behavior, not the ACTUAL cost. Psychological tests demonstrate that a loss of 15 years or more in prison is PERCEIVED as being the same as the loss of life.

(2) You also left out, "all else being equal."

For example, a company can sometimes raise prices, and end up getting more customers, where an increase in price is PERCEIVED to be an increase in quality, or status, or some similar good. The law of supply and demand says, lower the price and you will increase demand. But exceptions do exist, because the relationship between price and demand assumes an "all else being equal" that simply cannot be strictly enforced in a social environment.

One of the problems that your thesis runs into is the fact that most murderers are young -- people who have more to lose. If what you write here is strictly true, it should follow that older people should be committing more murder than younger people -- and terminally ill people (who have not suffered a loss of mobility) should be more likely to kill than healthy people.

Yet, healthy young people (men) are more likely to murder than people in any other group. Which argues against the idea that there is a strict relationship between what a person may lose and their inhibitions against murder.

A likely reason that there is less murder in a society that bans capital punishment, as I explained in an earlier post, is that it raises the psychological barrier against killing by reducing the opportinity of the would-be killer to rationalize his or her action.

An older person likely has higher psychological inhibitions against murder than younger people, and thus do not murder even when they face little or no deterrence effect.

The way to reduce murder rates among younger people is to raise the psychological barriers against murder. Abandoning capital punishment may lower one psychological barrier against murder (fear of punishment), but raise a higher and stronger barrier against murder (perceiving the killing of another as somehow justifiable). Thus, lower murder rates.

Ennazus

I agree. It is a problem for all punishment. None of it is fair. Why does one criminal get a light sentence and another get a stiffer one? Why does one murderer get the death penalty and another gets life? Why do tax evaders sometimes spend more time in prison than child molesters and rapists?? If real courtroom life is anything like books I've read, criminals are sentenced according to whims of judges and lawyers and prejudices of juries.

I do agree with previous posters that a wrongly-convicted person's life may be ruined after a long imprisonment, but I still feel the alternative (death) is worse. Our country needs serious sentencing and prison reform, that's for sure. How we go about this, I have no idea.

Doubting Didymus

You, sir, are talking out of your ear. I understand the claim you are making, and now I am asking you to prove it. "Proof" usually means more than simply restating your assertion in a bigger scentence. I'm requesting evidence of a higher standard than simple "it's common sense", or, "it's obvious that humans would act that way". That really isn't good enough. Can you, or can you not, prove your assertion?

Attempting to shift the burden of proof is a sign of desperation. I have made NO claims. YOU are the one making a claim, and I am the one asking you to prove it. If you can not, and I don't think you can, then I will treat your assertion in the appropriate way, by considering it a baseless hypothesis devoid of support, and thow it on the scrapheap next to crystal therapy.

So, I ask once more: Will you prove the following assertion?

"the certainty that one will not be executed no matter what will result in more murders. What you actually get is more innocents being killed by murderers but fewer being killed by the state."

In other words, you say that capital punishment results in less murder, and that removing capital punishment will result in more murder. Teriffic! I understand that claim completely, and now you have but one simple task ahead of you:

Prove it.