this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Death penalty
On one hand, I don't believe capital punishment has any place in civilized society.
On the other, there are some in-human people (serial killers mainly, but including e.g. CEOs who have caused thousands of deaths to increase profits), where it just seems a waste of everyone's time, to lock them away in a cell for decades. Some people are just completely beyond rehabilitation, and if they are proven guilty with 99.9+% certainty, what's the point of locking then up and waiting for old age to do the job?
The problem with the death penalty is largely down to potential miscarriages of justice.
What if they get the wrong person and some innocent is put to death? Do you really want the state to have that sort of power over its citizens?
There's been two cases of this happening very recently that's been making the rounds on Lemmy. Two dudes on death row, new evidence comes up that puts their guilty judgement into question and their execution proceeds anyway.
Didn't only one of the executions proceed? I thought one was stayed (but maybe it still happened later, idk)
Possible. I haven't been following them that closely.
It is significantly cheaper to keep someone in prison for life than the death sentence process.
Doesn't have to be.
Do you have a source for that? I'm genuinely curious. Because I thought about that a lot too and I would have assumed that it costs way more to keep someone alive, fed, and supervised for 50 years vs. a death penalty.
Here is amnesty international
It basically comes down to trials being far more expensive , the required solitary confinement being more expensive, more appeals. Lawyers cost much more than prison meals.
Thanks! Yea that's super important information and this changes my opinion on that because I was thinking about cost.
I like life imprisonment for heinous people specifically because it seems like the less merciful option. Look at how many mass shooters and terrorists also take their own lives during the act - suicide is one of their objectives. If we can capture them alive and make them live in a small room, eating unexciting food and sleeping on thin mattresses for decades still to come - that's the ultimate rebuke to their ideologies of death. Execution, on the other hand, is giving them what they seek.
Same, I don’t necessarily think it prevents any crimes from happening, but there are some individuals who will provide nothing back to society that could possibly make up for what they’ve done, and their continued existence is a threat to those around them that have to deal with them on a daily basis.
BUT until the criminal justice system can be reformed or provide more equatable justice, I don’t know that we can 100% say everyone on death penalty deserves it. I don’t know how we fix it, but it shouldn’t be left to private individuals or groups to have to exonerate people on death row.
Plus the amount of money that gets sunk into looking after their old murdering asses.
In order to get 99.9% certainty, 1) you are saying you are willing to have one in a thousand death penalties against innocents, and 2) that requires a system made of people to do their job correctly 99.9% of the time. I dont think there is a job on earth that people in a large group can do that well.
Good luck getting that CEO in a court room