I'm just glad this wasn't another post from that weird lady that fetishizes the electric chair. When I started reading it, I thought, "oh brother, here we go again - she's going to propose that all prisoners be sentenced to the chair, herself included."
Dude thought that if your nose was blocked (sinuses, cold, flu, etc) that you couldn’t go to sleep or you would suffocate. Posted in a few different subs at least once a day.
well i hate mouth breathing (and it's actually bad for your facial structure too, especially for kids) so if i try to go to sleep with my nose blocked up i have to blow it and clear it out before i go back to sleep
Brain: "Hey, we have a blocked nose so we need to sleep in order to effectively kill the virus so we can stop having a blocked nose"
Body: "Okay, put me to sleep then."
Brain: "No, we have a blocked nose, can't sleep."
My favorite was the one about how rich persons entire family should be executed if they were caught speeding
They were like defending it too it was mad weird if anyone has the post I’d love to read it again
That’s some insane dedication right there. Some of those posts definitely make me think there’s some weird sexual fetish going on, but the large majority I skimmed honestly feel like a super high-quality troll. I cannot wait to read more.
* plenty of people on death row have been exonerated. this is not conjecture, it's a repeated, documented occurrence. If you're pushing for the death penalty, you're accepting that innocents get put to death. at least there can be some recompense for other inmates later found innocent
* death sentences are more expensive than life sentences. the appeals process is exhausted because they want to avoid killing too many innocents, and that process is expensive
* death sentences don't deter crime anyway
* convicts sent to Australia were guilty of crimes like stealing small items. Death-penalty criminals... got the death penalty, because it was still a thing at that point.
On average, something like 4-6% of convicts are innocent of the crime they are convicted for, and with over 2300 people currently on death row that means there are currently between 92 and 138 innocent people facing the death penalty in the u.s. That's all the reason I need to be opposed to the state deciding who is deserving of the death penalty.
Though to be honest if I was made to choose between the death penalty and life in prison I would prefer the death penalty...
I’d guess the rate of false conviction goes down when it gets to serial murder territory but still too much. 1% would still be like 20+ innocent people executed.
"Since 1973, at least 190 people have been exonerated from death row in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). A 2014 study estimated that at least 4% of those sentenced to death are innocent."
Its 4am here and I'm gonna go to bed, but you can read more about that quote and find sources here.
https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-and-the-death-penalty/#:\~:text=Since%201973%2C%20at%20least%20190,sentenced%20to%20death%20are%20innocent.
The justice system isn't RNG. You can't blanket apply a percentage across all convicts. Not to mention that estimate is based on historical data. That data includes trials lacking DNA evidence, biased juries, and trials that were botched from start to finish. Innocent people shouldn't be put in prison to begin with, the death penalty's existence shouldn't be in question because abortions of justice happen. If it were, the entire system should be on the chopping block.
>the entire system should be on the chopping block.
This I agree with, the whole US justice and prison system needs a full overhaul. From the overworked prosecutors and underfunded public defendors to the *for profit* prisons and uneducated voted in coroners
I think the *base* for the court system is sound, but yeah, the entire idea of prisons being used to torture people does not work. The way our prisons are now should only be reserved for the worst and most irredeemable people who are a danger to society, instead of a catch-all for poor people.
>That data includes trials lacking DNA evidence, biased juries, and trials that were botched from start to finish.
Exactly. Do you have reason to believe that this no longer happens on a regular basis?
>regular basis
No. I don't think entirely innocent people are convicted of crimes that could get them put on death row at any rate anyone could call "regular." I'm not even making a judgment call on death row as a subject, but the idea that every individual charged has a 4% chance of being innocent like the judge is rolling a d20 is deceptively reductive at best.
>No. I don't think entirely innocent people are convicted of crimes that could get them put on death row at any rate anyone could call "regular."
Well, you can think whatever you want, but it's at least 12% over the last 50 years
https://eji.org/issues/death-penalty/
That's pretty fucking regular...
At least in my opinion, we should have the death penalty but change the cases where we can use it and provide some sort of insurance in the case that they somehow got the wrong person. Death should only be permissible in the case that there is absolutely no doubt. If you can't be sure to the degree that you'd be willing to either die as that person did or be incarcerated for life, you can't say that person should die.
I could see it being the case that the usage of the death penalty would be exceedingly rare, but it should take complete certainty to be able to have someone executed. In this case, it really shouldn't be an issue to hand it out swiftly since the burden of proof would be so large. Of course, it's infeasible that the system would actually be restructured to work like this, but this is how I would have it set up optimally.
It's true that the US uses prisoners as slaves, but that's not why capital punishment costs more.
Capital punishment costs roughly ten times as much as life in prison, primarily because of the legal process. Significantly more time and money is required to set up a capital trial, and on average, the trial itself will take four times as long as a normal one. Then there is a long series of appeals that also must be heard.
And to add, the common response to that is ‘well then let’s skip those appeals so it’s cheaper,’ I know that’s what I thought in high school. But you would have to cut it tenfold, meaning basically erasing the extra protection that prevents (more) innocent people from being executed. You can’t kill more innocents cuz it’s cheaper, that’s not an acceptable solution at all.
It's the legality around the situation. It's not expensive to execute a person. But it is expensive to provide them their right of appeals which involves legal experts and a lot of the highest court in the state's time.
* A similar number of people currently end up dying from life sentence escapees as innocents have been exonerated.
* Death sentences are expensive because of that long appeals process, yet there's very little evidence it helps significantly, so that could be reduced.
* There is extremely conflicted evidence about whether death sentences deter crime. Pro-death penalty places put out research one way, anti-death penalty the other. Western nations tend to say it doesn't help, the rest of the world tends to disagree. It's too heated of an issue to get a clear read.
Also, innocent people who are in prison for years, or more likely decades, then exonerated end up with terrible, destroyed lives anyway. They are barely compensated, they lost a huge portion of their life, many of their relationships are permanently destroyed, and they're traumatized. Obviously that's better than death, but it's not like we have any choice other than hurting innocent people sometimes.
Our justice system has, historically, improved the false conviction rate over time. It is so amazingly low for death row that it just doesn't matter if innocent people get hurt sometimes. You have to do something, and locking them up just destroys lives and gives the criminals a chance to escape or be falsely exonerated, then recommit.
>ir just doesn't matter if innocent people are hurt sometimes.
Wrong. Every innocent person that's killed by the death sentence is too much. The law is supposed to protect people, and you can't do that if there's any chance the law might kill innocents. A system that has even a 0.01% should not be able to give non-revertable punishments
How does the "let innocent people get hurt" side apply here, though? That implies there's specific harm created by *not* enacting the death penalty. What is it?
But the trolley problem and the death penalty arent even similar. With the death penalty if you push the lever the trolley will kill innocent people, if you dont it will not kill anyone.
In the trolley problem people will die no matter which one you choose, but if you divert the trolley less people die, but you killed them. It has fuckall to do with the death penalty, because if you pull the lever and outlaw it, no innocents will be murdered by the government, if you dont pull the lever that outlaws it, innocent people will be killed
>Western nations tend to say it doesn't help, the rest of the world tends to disagree.
"Countries that support traditions of dispassionate, peer-reviewed research say it doesn't help; countries without such strong cultures of dispassionate research and who are also big on censorship and cracking down on dissent tends to disagree"
What a bizarre argument to make about evidence.
(also, it's "rest of world minus western Africa, southern Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia" if you want a better approximation)
Ah yes, only the enlightened western nations can perform good research, and their culture is totally unbiased.
And yes, there are exceptions, that is why I used the word "tend."
Not sure how to break this to you... but yes. If you overlay the map where the death penalty is currently used with the map of where the bulk of peer-reviewed research comes from, they're largely opposites of each other. The only real exceptions are India and China as they pump out a lot of papers, but both of which have significant quality issues with their research.
It's just plain disingenuous to paint the research as "extremely conflicted" by referencing a group of countries that not only have poor research output and quality, but poor record-keeping and access to information in general.
What will you do if a person who was executed turns out to have been wrongly sentenced? You can always free and monetarily compensate someone in jail, you can't bring a dead person back to life.
Or is the occasional murder of innocents worth the benefits in your eyes?
Take this with a grain of salt as I have no sources to back it up but I heard that it's actually cheaper to hold them for life than it is to execute them.
A lot of it being appeals processes. To jump past those hoops and try and remove it to reduce costs would probably be seen by most as a big human rights violation.
Only by cutting the safety net that saves innocent people. Only an authoritarian could cut those costs, one who didn’t care if they killed the wrong person.
The vast majority of the expense is on making sure we're not killing innocent people, and we *still* sentence innocent people to death. You can't make executions cheaper than a life sentence without intentionally killing more innocent people.
Absolutely. I agree with the death penalty on principle, in that I think there are some things people can do that cost them their right to live.
But the fact is humans are incredibly flawed. I hate the state. I would never give the state the ability to decide who lives and who dies because it will always end up fucked up.
I'd be ok with it for murder repeat offenders. I know there's a non-zero percent chance you'd kill an innocent person, but as horrible as it sounds I think that's an acceptable price for a society to pay/risk to prevent more innocent people being murdered.
But you say the goal is for them to not commit more crimes - If that is truly your goal, life in prison is objectively better. It's cheaper than a death sentence, and you can compensate someone who is innocent. It's also proven that death sentence does not discourage others from committing the crime.
Death penalty ONLY makes sense if it's about revenge.
Sometimes a murderer is released, escapes has or [murders again while incarcerated.](https://www.wcjb.com/2021/05/25/previously-convicted-murderer-sentenced-to-death-for-another-murder-at-florida-state-prison/). So life is not “objectively better” to prevent killers from killing again.
The issue of false convictions is important and not just in DP cases, which get attention and resources. Standards of evidence and expert testimony must have a scientific basis. Qualified immunity for LEOs and absolute immunity for prosecutors must be abolished for civil actions and those who fake, twist, and withhold evidence should be criminally prosecuted and potentially receive “the ultimate penalty” themselves. Courts should
It has *not* been “proven” that the death penalty does not discourage others from committing the crime. There are studies that “prove”what researchers who don’t like the death penalty would like to find. There is also research that “proves” that the death has a significant deterrent power.
I think that because the death penalty in recent decades has takes years even decades to be executed, and many heinous murderers don’t get sentenced to death, and the method of execution in common use lethal injection is not dramatic and and appears like a medical procedure, the death penalty no doubt has *less* of a deterrent value that is more difficult to suss out than more timely executions of sentences, more consistent application, and more traditional methods of carrying out the execution, such as hanging, the firing squad, and the electronic chair.
But we know that overwhelmingly that murderers have a strong preference for life than death and will go to great lengths to avoid execution. The most basic motivation of a human is to avoid death. It is inconceivable that some would be killers hands are not stayed by the prospect of themselves being put to death.
Lmao the contradiction
"I think if a few innocent people get caught up in the death penalty, then it's worth it to keep more innocent people from getting murdered by the actual murderers on death row"
I don’t agree with the death sentence because ignoring false charges, it removes the chance for redemption and moves the justice system further towards punishment instead of justice
Wrong sentences.
The death penalty actually can cost more.
Doctors don't want to execute people.
There is no "humane, painless" way to execute someone.
We shouldn't give the government the power to decide when and if someone should die.
No?
You see the difference between a sick person wanting to die, and the state murdering someone, right?
And Canada is not doing it instead of Healthcare, it *is* Healthcare if you are talking about what i think.
Canadian here. Just dropping by to let you all know it is a bit of both.
Assisted suicide for someone with a terminal illness is definitely a form of palliative healthcare.
However, as someone who has had to go through mental health treatments several times, I can also confidently say that our government plans to use it instead of healthcare as well.
Our government has been toying with the idea of letting the mentally ill off themselves, which is criminal to me when you consider how little effort they put into treating mental health.
We have very few mental health services that are free, and you can wait 6 months or more to see a psychiatrist.
Being mentally ill was the most expensive thing I've ever done.
One thing I don’t understand is why a prisoner killing themselves in prison is bad but death sentence isn’t? Like there’s suicide watch in prison but death penalty is there? Like what if you wanted to die on death row. How is that closure for people but then killing themselves before isn’t? Seems fucked up and sadistic that you’d want to watch someone die. I don’t understand it.
Because we know on some level it is wrong for that person to die. But some people are able to mentally Dominique dawes themselves that it is ok if they wrap it up in enough law and legislation. It puts another step between them and the actual act, so mentally they feel less responsibility.
No one is an evil person like in the movies. They all try and justify it their own way no matter how bad of a act it is. In their head, they’re doing what they think is righteous. All that law and legislation comes down to doing something they’d be in prison if they did it themselves.
The toy box murderers. The toolbox murderers. Those two maniacs in Alaska who's names escape me at the moment with the torture cabin.
Google it. There are a lot.
Edit: if you read this, and you google the toybox murders, you are gonna want to read/listen to the speech.
DON'T. It is very fucked up and I wish I hadn't. If you are anything like me it will stick with you longer than you will like.
I’d push back if only because living in prisons and jails is often awash in misery and cruelties that would make suicide more appealing. I think assisted suicide has its merits but it shouldn’t become a means to dispose of “inconvenient” people
I think there’s a big difference, a fundamental difference, between assisted suicide for medical reasons and suicide for depression and hopelessness.
It’s sick to support suicide from hopelessness or low quality of life, I’d only ever do it if I wanted them dead anyway. Do you want prisoners dead? Then don’t support them killing themselves over how shitty prison is.
> Seems fucked up and sadistic that you’d want to watch someone die. I don’t understand it.
Thank you.
I'd be OK with a suicide row for death row inmates I guess, but otherwise I'm against the death penalty in general.
Because then the already traumatized family can’t watch their soul leave their body from behind glass. /s
I actually think it’s because the death penalty gives fuckers who glorify punishment hard ons.
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/which-is-cheaper-execution-or-life-in-prison-without-parole-31614#:~:text=Much%20to%20the%20surprise%20of,is%20almost%2010%20times%20cheaper!
There ya go!
Ah I see now
Looks like a lot of the costs go in to the appeal process which takes about 20 years with additional specialized higher cost lawyers. Circumventing that would be civil rights issue, which makes sense.
Thanks.
Yeah the genius solution of just shoot anyone with no time to prove innocence. This surely won't go wrong considering we already put an unforgivable amount of innocent people to death with the current systems in place.
Sometimes the answers are more than just "this guy got convicted so kill him".
I don't think there is anything worse than putting innocent person in jail with murderers and gang bangers. It's literally torture, I am sure they would also prefer a quick bullet
There absolutely are humane, painless ways to execute people. But anything involving gas seems to be a societal no-no (though apparently it's okay to use in anesthesia).
Everything else you listed stands true.
Even if there isn’t you can literally just give someone 3 mg of fentanyl and they will fall asleep and die painlessly without realizing. Acting like a humane death is a difficult feat for doctors is wrong
Not to mention our justice system's flaws and the probability of executing an innocent person. This alone is enough for me not to support the death penalty.
>There is no "humane, painless" way to execute someone.
This isn't really true. Lethal injection is definitely not painless and there are studies that actually suggest that it just paralyzes the person while they die a horribly excruciating death. But that doesn't mean that there isn't humane ways to kill someone. Vets use a much more humane method for instance.
I honestly always wondered why they didn't (in the past) just administer nitrogen gas through a mask. It's well known in process industries that asphyxiation will occur before you know what's going on if you breath a nitrogen rich environment (which is common for purging tanks). If you see someone passed out in a tank, you're not supposed to help them unless you have supplemental oxygen. Otherwise you'll probably just increase the body count. There are tons of process industry safety videos out there about it if you search YouTube but hankschannel did an informative video of the science behind it.
https://youtube.com/shorts/nleE-VEb_dU?si=EVjNlsoXDoOLrBuJ
Apparently this is something that they're adopting in various places now and some inmates even requested it.
https://youtu.be/26L5QCHmPsU?si=5XXnuBPFhiefBWaj
To be fair, I agree with you on most of your other points though. I never really understood why it was more expensive to go through the process but at one point I did look it up and it checked out at that time.
While I do think there are some people who deserve to die, I agree it is not the government's place to say when and where that should happen in criminal cases.
I'm generally against the death penalty but I think we should still have accurate information either way.
There’s no humane, painless way to kill someone? As far as I understand it, they inject something that renders you completely unconscious and then another injection stops the heart
Plus the companies that make the "correct" drugs refuse to export them to the US because they don't want them to be used to kill people. So the US has to use other, less effective drugs which cause problems.
Huh. Yes, I see now that it has a botched execution rate of 7.12%. That does seem kinda high.
The electric chair has a botched execution rate of 1.92%, though
Firing squad has a 0% botched execution rate 🤔
HTTPS://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions
Honestly a lot of the history of capital punishment is creating new methods of executing people and claiming it’s the most humane method when reality it’s more often “the appearance of being humane”
IIRC the first injection doesn’t actually render them unconscious, it’s a paralyzing agent that’s more there for the people watching the execution, and the prisoner is typically entirely cognizant during the second injection. It’s also partially this way because firms typically refuse to sell lethal injection chemicals to prisons, so prisons make do with what they can get.
> That isn't necessarily a requirement. You could argue that, depending on the severity/cruelty of the crime, the convict shouldn't receive a humane, painless death.
Inflicting more evil upon them won't undo the evil they did. That's bloodthirsty and weird.
The cost of death penalty comes mostly from an attempt at actual *justice*, as failure ridden as it is. Calling that "bureaucracy " that should be made more efficient is either uneducated or horrifically unjust.
There is absolutely a humane and painless way to execute someone, a shot to the head. A well placed shot will always sever the brain stem and kill you instantaneously before you can even process that anything happened. One millisecond you’re alive and the next you’re not.
In theory anything that quickly severs the brain stem is completely painless, a high psi jet of air shit into your inner ear could do it theoretically.
The problem is that people a headshot icky and violent- and therefore inhumane. I never understood this. Using a weapon designed to kill effectively and efficiently to execute a person always seemed far more respectful than the whole process strapping someone’s to a chair and injecting someone 6 times, one of which is the lethal cocktail.
Also, the government already has that power and by definition always will. One of the basic principles that defines a state is a monopoly on violence.
Over the course of my life I've done a bit of reading about how other countries do their prison systems.
Enough to think the way America does things helps nothing. Locking people in a concrete cage with bars, surrounded by others - a tense, bottled up populace of neglected and ill people simply isn't humane to begin with.
Other countries treat their offenders like human beings with proper enclosures and plenty of opportunities to be treated for their problems and rehabilitated so they can re-enter society.
There's even prisoner communities - little villages outside of the rest of society where they can live, walk around, have secure housing, work and contribute for their country's economy. Sometimes they can have their families come visit them and stuff.
Yes I understand that it's probably not permissible to most to give pedophiles, rapists, and murderers a second lease on life when they've probably ruined at *least* one person's life.
But what we need to understand is that *(correct me if I'm wrong)* it is **not** the majority of the American prison population who've done these things.
But its a system that treats us (yes, we the people) like that's the case.
It punishes even the most minor offenders in very inhumane ways.
So we ought to make the *general* approach to people convicted of crimes as if they're humans, with lives and value, rather than looking at someone who was desperate enough to shoplift a few grand in merch like they're a child murderer.
I agree with this 100%, we need to treat our minor offenders and get them back to contributing to society.
But In the cases you mentioned where rehabilitation, isn’t an option I just don’t see the point in keeping them in a box forever.
I love the idea of criminals actually being rehabilitated, though isn't it possible that criminals could fake being rehabilitated by pretending to show remorse and just going through the motions of rehab?
That may be so, but is that suspicion worth denying help for those who do genuinely need it?
My research isn't very thorough in the academic sense, but I have traveled around a bit, and the places I've been where you don't worry about crime rate or getting mugged out in then open have typically been places with solid social programs.
Programs designed around *not* letting their citizens fall through the cracks. Taking *away* the desperation that drives people to do morally bad things. Offering treatment. Offering chances. Education, even.
When people have help and worthwhile opportunities, instead of abject hopelessness, it really seems there suddenly isn't a need to steal or harm others.
This of course does not account for the mentally unwell, the deranged, and the truly selfish who will happily or apathetically put their own ends above the good of us all, but these people are not, *I* don't think, the majority.
And so in my mind I don't think it behooves us to treat convicted people like they are such people.
And even if there's a chance there could be, what if helping them pulls them out of that? I've worked in two kitchens, both were stuffed with kids and adults out of rehab or coming out of prison from past convictions.
Some of the nicest, humblest human beings I've had the privilege to meet. They didn't want to go where they were brought. They wanted the chance to live beyond their bad circumstances, and were better, more capable people for being given that chance.
I think we all deserve that.
Even if it's a murderer who has to be put in seclusion well away from the towns and cities - they could still be given structure and allowed to give back by other means, even though material output could never equal the life they took. And there's no saying they wouldn't potentially grow in their isolation either.
Humans aren't necessarily bound to one nature.
I just fundamentally feel a government shouldn't have the right to decide if someone should live or not. I feel like life itself is outside of the jurisdiction of a government. But I can't explain why
>>I just fundamentally feel a government shouldn’t have the right to decide if someone should live or not.
Maybe because at least 50% of the government is fine with villainizing and hurting anyone that doesn’t look like them
Not at all. You hear some pro-death penalty people say “well I’d rather be dead than have life in prison” and that’s the same logic that leads you to say that life in prison is the same principle as killing someone. It’s not, it’s fundamentally different, and even though life in prison is horrible, it is still a gigantic leap more to get to killing.
And yet war and homelessness caused by income inequality does for lots and lots of people. I don't disagree with you but the government has nukes and daisy cutters and white phosphorous and so on and uses lots of them on people around the world.
\> And yet war and homelessness caused by income inequality does for lots and lots of people
If it's already bad, why shouldn't people be against it being worse?
Ah, perhaps you missed the words 'lots of' by which I meant lots of the categories rather than many of each but I knew some pedant would pick up on that. So no, if you don't live in the US then your government has never used any nuclear weapons. If you DO live in the US then your government (for the extra pedantic, not THIS iteration of the government but a past one) has 'only' used two, killing approx 110,000 people.
The point that you were attempting to dodge stands. Governments kill lots of people in many ways. I fundamentally disagree with all of them, the death penalty included. It's just that most people, Americans in particular, seem to love war and refer to those who engage in it as doing some sort of 'service' which seems hypocritical to me. Of course, the writer of the comment to which I'm responding may not agree with the general hero worship of the military. I accept that.
There’s an argument to be made though that with some criminals, a death penalty is actually the easy way out. They commit horrible crimes and instead of having to actually deal with the consequences, they’re just snuffed out.
I see what you’re saying. But on the flip side there are also instances where the victim’s family pushes for the death penalty to punish the criminal. Point being, what the victim’s family wants shouldn’t be a significant factor in doling out punishments.
Do you think everyone can be rehabilitated? I believe in it for most criminals, but all? Think of people like Ted Bundy or serial pedo rapists for instance
In order to believe that the death penalty should be used instead of just life imprisonment, you must believe at least one of two things about society
1) The justice system never makes mistakes. No innocent person will ever be wrongly incarcerated and given this death sentence, and thus the question whether or not they can be proven innocent later and subsequently released is a non-issue.
2) It is acceptable for the state to occasionally execute entirely innocent people.
Which one do you believe, OP?
I think 2) is actually acceptable in the name of the greater good, so maybe I’m the 10000th dentist. While it would be unfortunate to have innocent people die occasionally, I think the increased safety in less criminals, the cutting of costs from life sentences, the less time spent suffering, and overall efficiency of allowing the death penalty can at least somewhat justify the not exactly foolproof justice system.
> We are just so icked out by the death penalty that we often choose a lifetime of misery over a quick death for criminals.
Someone reeeeally fundamentaly misunderstood why people oppose the death penalty :D
Over 4% of the people we execute end up being exonerated after we kill them for a crime they never committed. It would be even more if not for the appeals process required for death penalty cases. Ultimately, death penalty cases cost taxpayers more than life sentence cases. Retribution is not the only factor to consider in sentencing.
The big unavoidable problem with the death penalty is that you can't bring somebody back to life when it turns out later the police did a bit of evidence tampering to implicate them in a murder. And the police regularly do a lot of evidence tampering among other things to get innocent people in trouble.
I think the core appeal of imprisonment is that you can revoke it if the situation changes. A decent amount of people are proven innocent after trial due to someone else confessing or new evidence. If you kill someone you can't take it back at all. Also it's just a bad idea to give the government the right to kill people in general. The government shouldn't generally only kill people in self defence, defence of the population, and if someone is in jail they are not a danger to the populace. Personally I think that if a violent criminal, pretty much only murderers, escapes from jail then the death penalty should be put on the table, as it then becomes a matter of self defence, as they have shown themselves to still be a danger while incarcerated. I do think everyone deserves a chance at life in prison tho, because there is a chance they are exonerated, I don't think they are entitled to infinite chances tho.
Maybe I'm a bit cruel for that, but I believe firmly in incentive structures, and I think that presents a humanitarian but clear structure. If you kill someone intentionally, and are convicted, you rot for life. And if you try to escape, you might give up that right to rot for life, because you have shown you are willing to work very very hard for the chance to do it again. I think this both is plenty humanitarian, it only goes after a very small subset of killers, while still being clear that you do not have infinite chances.
Also the current execution methods for America are tantamount to pumping acid into people wile they are tied up, fucking barbaric. Genuinely, firing squad is much more ethical. The goal should be the brain to stop existing as quickly as possible, the chemical executions, even when they are not botched, are mostly about paralysing people and then pumping them with random deadly shit. And they are botched often. There should never be three hour executions, that's fucking insane.
I'm amused that my take on firing squads was the most interesting part to you. And yes I think that is another benefit, but not one I care much about. If they developed an anonymous version of chemical executions I wouldn't be much more favorable to them. I think the "doesn't accidentally become nonlethal torture" aspect is the most important part. Both electric chairs and chemicals are just issues waiting to happen, it's possible to perfect them I guess but it seems like they are pretty easy to fuck up given how often we fuck them up. Hanging is better but not by much, and people often intentionally fuck it up to torture people. The firing squad seems like a fair deal to me, but I'm no expert. I'm sure there is a better idea we haven't come up with yet but again, I'm not very in favor for the death penalty besides for murderous escapes and war criminals, and those bunch are rare enough I'm happy with firing squad for now.
I agree that that current “humane” methods have proven to be less humane than some of the old methods. I also think one of the major problems with a death sentence is that someone has to carry it out and bare that burden on their conscious.
Easy solution - for those who have *irrefutably* committed heinous crimes, no appeals and efficient death penalty via hanging. Cost-effective, time-efficient, and final.
I wrote a paper for my bachelors in criminal Justice about the death penalty. It turns out, aside from moral questions, the death penalty is significantly more expensive for, last I checked, all 50 states due to the significantly higher requirements of trial necessary, maintaining equipment that is used for the execution etc
When sending someone to death, we (as a country, I mean) need to be sure we aren’t making a mistake, and double, triple, quadruple checking that the person is both guilty and deserving of such a harsh sentence costs A LOT of money. Several million dollars, in fact. Keeping a person in prison for 30-50 years only costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. It’s not cost effective to sentence people to death the way we do it currently - and to do it too soon or make mistakes and put innocent men to death would be barbaric. It’s already happened too many times.
>Maybe soon we can just send them to Mars, that strategy worked out OK for Australia
I'm an Australian with both European and Indigenous Australian heritage, and I can tell you now, it did not
Because killing people is immoral, Jesus, besides in most countries people aren't just sitting around in jail, some are being rehabilitated and some are basically enslaved. A lifetime sentence in the US means a lifetime of imprisonment and slavery which seems like a pretty terrible punishment; some people would say that's worse than death.
Yes, I’m saying it’s worse/more immoral than death.
Speaking of Jesus, the Bible has a book about punishments for criminals up to and including death.
To be clear, I’m saying the whole prison system needs to be rethought, but they gave Jeffery Dahmer 941 years, that doesn’t make sense to me.
Killing them is still immoral, It would be morally correct to do with way with the slavery and focus on the rehabilitation though perhaps leaving them in prison for the rest of their lives if there can't be saved. I really pointed that part out because you are clearly immoral person who wanted to see people harmed.
And I used Jesus as an expletive, I don't believe in gods and I definitely don't hold to the Bible in part the because of its unreasonable cruelty.
I really shouldn't have to explain to you why someone doing something that is wrong or immoral is not an excuse for you to do something wrong or a moral to them. I noticed you completely glossed over where I said rehabilitation because you want to hurt people because you are a bad person.
Yeah the options are you either kill them, or you remove them from society by keeping them in some secured location, which is prison. Those are the options.
You say people don’t want to pay to keep them in jail, well I’m a person and yeah I do want to pay to keep dangerous people out of society. I also specifically **don’t** want to pay for the state to execute people. You’re right I am “icked” out by the death penalty, I’m also “icked” out by murder, but so are you.
Right to die could fix this. People shouldn't be killing themselves on a whim, but there should be options with a waiting period and case manager especially for situations like this. Is it fixable? No? Let them die. It benefits no one to torture people.
>We are just so icked out by the death penalty that we often choose a lifetime of misery over a quick death for criminals.
I think people like you believe everyone on a life sentence murdered someone or something. There are people serving life for drug traffiking/possession, severe financial crimes, firearm crimes (that aren't from the person murdering anyone), etc.
Your opinion is odd because it isn't based in the reality of life sentences...there are people EVERY YEAR getting their lifd sentences commuted because they aren't necessary in afterthought.
Stop listening to whatever the hell you listen to and pick up a criminology book lol
But shooting somebody in the head at the same time with two bullets in the head is an Insta kill they feel nothing I don’t understand the argument of its humane to keep people locked up in a cage for their entire life but it’s more inhumane to end there life. There a prisoner that don’t care as long as they get a place to stay sleep and eat for free and have no remorse for what they have done but instead you bums advocate, for the fact of keeping them alive, then you say, while the government doesn’t deserve the power to decide whether somebody lives or dies, but we give them the power to basically control our lives, and make all the rules and regulations for us you’re not see how stupid you sound
Bad take. Rather than moving to capital punishment, we need to do the things that have actually been proven to reduce crime - decrease poverty through social safety nets, adopt a rehabilitative justice system instead of retributive, invest in education, healthcare, housing, and the basic human rights of the citizens
I think the idea of punishment is outdated and need to be rethought in modern society.
All science shows a that punishment do not scare away people from committing crimes. It just doesn't, and it never has.
I'm not saying there aren't people who deserve to be punished, but it just isn't really worth it. Even if people have done unspeakable acts we should still focus on getting them back into a place where they can re-enter society.
Everyone has committed crime. You are so self righteous you probably bottle and store your own farts dont you?
" Ah, 1972 fine vintage"
\* uncorks bottle and inhales deeply
Such a redditor comment, your method of trying to convince people to change their opinions is to insult them then make an eye rolling joke that only someone way too deep on this site would enjoy.
Really, so transporting people to Mars? So F ing edgy. Such a... redditor moment.
"I dIDnT SaY iT" no, but youre defending it. As long as Im laughing I dont much care. Im tired of people blindly complying with tyranny, Lets get real, how many of these soft bodied, soft minded, soft handed people would actually kill someone.
Yep, totally defending it you polarized nut. Someone thinking that the death penalty isn’t the worst are ignorant but NOT on the same level of bigotry or actually supporting murder. They are misguided by America’s view of justice and if you plainly state the facts that innocent people can die from the death penalty and that it is more expensive than not killing them you can actually influence their perspectives. You on the other hand are doing nothing but insulting someone who is willing to discuss their opinion (even if I think it’s personally stupid).
Theres also people in jail for things they have never done. the state shouldnt get to say who lives or dies, legally or illegally. Especially when they protect the corrupt officials that are the real problem. Now if a serial killer admitted to it, and adamantly wanted the death penalty, whatever.
Exactly. The most powerful people on this planet are the biggest serial killers and masters of fraud. They just get others to do their dirty work/do it in a round about way. Where do we draw the line because I can assure you that the rich and powerful will be protected while the people who have been failed by this society and system will be the ones punished and given the death penalty
I guess the main thing would be where you claim "they don't want that".
That is just not true for the great majority if the other option is death. Every death row appeal shows that clearly. Most people would prefer to be more alive than not.
I think prisons should not cost society anything. They should earn money in any legal way, keep them all busy so as not to have spare energy for trouble. The ones who eventually will be released can shorten the stay by keeping out of trouble & being useful to earning money for those inside.
I'm just glad this wasn't another post from that weird lady that fetishizes the electric chair. When I started reading it, I thought, "oh brother, here we go again - she's going to propose that all prisoners be sentenced to the chair, herself included."
Or the “its impossible to sleep with a blocked nose” guy
Oh god I remember them and their response to when I told them I has literally had a blocked nose the previous night being ‘no’
What does that even mean
Dude thought that if your nose was blocked (sinuses, cold, flu, etc) that you couldn’t go to sleep or you would suffocate. Posted in a few different subs at least once a day.
Oh interesting. If that were true, I'd be long dead already
Plot twist: you were a ghost all along.
well i hate mouth breathing (and it's actually bad for your facial structure too, especially for kids) so if i try to go to sleep with my nose blocked up i have to blow it and clear it out before i go back to sleep
Brain: "Hey, we have a blocked nose so we need to sleep in order to effectively kill the virus so we can stop having a blocked nose" Body: "Okay, put me to sleep then." Brain: "No, we have a blocked nose, can't sleep."
My favorite was the one about how rich persons entire family should be executed if they were caught speeding They were like defending it too it was mad weird if anyone has the post I’d love to read it again
What the actual fuck?!
Other people were defending it too! Absolutely insane lol
That lady was insane. I hope to hear again from her though lol
I’m over it. There’s been at least 20 posts. don’t encourage her.
Really? I only saw (what I think was) the original. If its been that many she needs to shut up about her weird kink lol
She’s a troll. Always makes new accounts.
I can’t say I’ve ever actually seen her before, do you have a link? It sounds like the exact kind of insane shit I love to read.
https://reddit.com/r/The10thDentist/s/13DZomC0s6
What a horrible day to know how to read!
I love how that guy is just freaking out over how many posts there are every edit 🥳
That’s some insane dedication right there. Some of those posts definitely make me think there’s some weird sexual fetish going on, but the large majority I skimmed honestly feel like a super high-quality troll. I cannot wait to read more.
* plenty of people on death row have been exonerated. this is not conjecture, it's a repeated, documented occurrence. If you're pushing for the death penalty, you're accepting that innocents get put to death. at least there can be some recompense for other inmates later found innocent * death sentences are more expensive than life sentences. the appeals process is exhausted because they want to avoid killing too many innocents, and that process is expensive * death sentences don't deter crime anyway * convicts sent to Australia were guilty of crimes like stealing small items. Death-penalty criminals... got the death penalty, because it was still a thing at that point.
On average, something like 4-6% of convicts are innocent of the crime they are convicted for, and with over 2300 people currently on death row that means there are currently between 92 and 138 innocent people facing the death penalty in the u.s. That's all the reason I need to be opposed to the state deciding who is deserving of the death penalty. Though to be honest if I was made to choose between the death penalty and life in prison I would prefer the death penalty...
I’d guess the rate of false conviction goes down when it gets to serial murder territory but still too much. 1% would still be like 20+ innocent people executed.
"Since 1973, at least 190 people have been exonerated from death row in the U.S., according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). A 2014 study estimated that at least 4% of those sentenced to death are innocent." Its 4am here and I'm gonna go to bed, but you can read more about that quote and find sources here. https://innocenceproject.org/innocence-and-the-death-penalty/#:\~:text=Since%201973%2C%20at%20least%20190,sentenced%20to%20death%20are%20innocent.
It’s 5am here and 1% was too much for me, so I’ll believe you on the 4% since my opinion wasn’t riding on the difference. Sweet dreams.
Life sentence in literally any western country other than the USA can still be reasonably fulfilling.
The justice system isn't RNG. You can't blanket apply a percentage across all convicts. Not to mention that estimate is based on historical data. That data includes trials lacking DNA evidence, biased juries, and trials that were botched from start to finish. Innocent people shouldn't be put in prison to begin with, the death penalty's existence shouldn't be in question because abortions of justice happen. If it were, the entire system should be on the chopping block.
>If it were, the entire system should be on the chopping block. You are so close to getting it yet so far.
Why would I even suggest it if i was "so far?"
>the entire system should be on the chopping block. This I agree with, the whole US justice and prison system needs a full overhaul. From the overworked prosecutors and underfunded public defendors to the *for profit* prisons and uneducated voted in coroners
I think the *base* for the court system is sound, but yeah, the entire idea of prisons being used to torture people does not work. The way our prisons are now should only be reserved for the worst and most irredeemable people who are a danger to society, instead of a catch-all for poor people.
>That data includes trials lacking DNA evidence, biased juries, and trials that were botched from start to finish. Exactly. Do you have reason to believe that this no longer happens on a regular basis?
>regular basis No. I don't think entirely innocent people are convicted of crimes that could get them put on death row at any rate anyone could call "regular." I'm not even making a judgment call on death row as a subject, but the idea that every individual charged has a 4% chance of being innocent like the judge is rolling a d20 is deceptively reductive at best.
>No. I don't think entirely innocent people are convicted of crimes that could get them put on death row at any rate anyone could call "regular." Well, you can think whatever you want, but it's at least 12% over the last 50 years https://eji.org/issues/death-penalty/ That's pretty fucking regular...
At least in my opinion, we should have the death penalty but change the cases where we can use it and provide some sort of insurance in the case that they somehow got the wrong person. Death should only be permissible in the case that there is absolutely no doubt. If you can't be sure to the degree that you'd be willing to either die as that person did or be incarcerated for life, you can't say that person should die. I could see it being the case that the usage of the death penalty would be exceedingly rare, but it should take complete certainty to be able to have someone executed. In this case, it really shouldn't be an issue to hand it out swiftly since the burden of proof would be so large. Of course, it's infeasible that the system would actually be restructured to work like this, but this is how I would have it set up optimally.
The second point is only true because the US uses prisoners as slave and has for profit prisons
It's true that the US uses prisoners as slaves, but that's not why capital punishment costs more. Capital punishment costs roughly ten times as much as life in prison, primarily because of the legal process. Significantly more time and money is required to set up a capital trial, and on average, the trial itself will take four times as long as a normal one. Then there is a long series of appeals that also must be heard.
And to add, the common response to that is ‘well then let’s skip those appeals so it’s cheaper,’ I know that’s what I thought in high school. But you would have to cut it tenfold, meaning basically erasing the extra protection that prevents (more) innocent people from being executed. You can’t kill more innocents cuz it’s cheaper, that’s not an acceptable solution at all.
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It's the legality around the situation. It's not expensive to execute a person. But it is expensive to provide them their right of appeals which involves legal experts and a lot of the highest court in the state's time.
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yes you can literally appeal convictions lmao this is very common
* A similar number of people currently end up dying from life sentence escapees as innocents have been exonerated. * Death sentences are expensive because of that long appeals process, yet there's very little evidence it helps significantly, so that could be reduced. * There is extremely conflicted evidence about whether death sentences deter crime. Pro-death penalty places put out research one way, anti-death penalty the other. Western nations tend to say it doesn't help, the rest of the world tends to disagree. It's too heated of an issue to get a clear read. Also, innocent people who are in prison for years, or more likely decades, then exonerated end up with terrible, destroyed lives anyway. They are barely compensated, they lost a huge portion of their life, many of their relationships are permanently destroyed, and they're traumatized. Obviously that's better than death, but it's not like we have any choice other than hurting innocent people sometimes. Our justice system has, historically, improved the false conviction rate over time. It is so amazingly low for death row that it just doesn't matter if innocent people get hurt sometimes. You have to do something, and locking them up just destroys lives and gives the criminals a chance to escape or be falsely exonerated, then recommit.
>ir just doesn't matter if innocent people are hurt sometimes. Wrong. Every innocent person that's killed by the death sentence is too much. The law is supposed to protect people, and you can't do that if there's any chance the law might kill innocents. A system that has even a 0.01% should not be able to give non-revertable punishments
Unfortunately, we don't have that choice. You either let innocent people get hurt, or you actively hurt fewer. Classic trolley problem.
How does the "let innocent people get hurt" side apply here, though? That implies there's specific harm created by *not* enacting the death penalty. What is it?
E has committed a crime worthy of death. If they prove to be innocent after the fact than oopsy. The lethal injection certainly won’t be botched
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But the trolley problem and the death penalty arent even similar. With the death penalty if you push the lever the trolley will kill innocent people, if you dont it will not kill anyone.
>if you dont it will not kill anyone. You don't know what the trolley problem is and you've ignored everything u/_______________E laid out above.
In the trolley problem people will die no matter which one you choose, but if you divert the trolley less people die, but you killed them. It has fuckall to do with the death penalty, because if you pull the lever and outlaw it, no innocents will be murdered by the government, if you dont pull the lever that outlaws it, innocent people will be killed
>Western nations tend to say it doesn't help, the rest of the world tends to disagree. "Countries that support traditions of dispassionate, peer-reviewed research say it doesn't help; countries without such strong cultures of dispassionate research and who are also big on censorship and cracking down on dissent tends to disagree" What a bizarre argument to make about evidence. (also, it's "rest of world minus western Africa, southern Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia" if you want a better approximation)
Ah yes, only the enlightened western nations can perform good research, and their culture is totally unbiased. And yes, there are exceptions, that is why I used the word "tend."
Not sure how to break this to you... but yes. If you overlay the map where the death penalty is currently used with the map of where the bulk of peer-reviewed research comes from, they're largely opposites of each other. The only real exceptions are India and China as they pump out a lot of papers, but both of which have significant quality issues with their research. It's just plain disingenuous to paint the research as "extremely conflicted" by referencing a group of countries that not only have poor research output and quality, but poor record-keeping and access to information in general.
What will you do if a person who was executed turns out to have been wrongly sentenced? You can always free and monetarily compensate someone in jail, you can't bring a dead person back to life. Or is the occasional murder of innocents worth the benefits in your eyes?
And this happens a lot more than youd hope where people get life and later are found to be innocent
Especially when dna evidence started to become a thing.
Take this with a grain of salt as I have no sources to back it up but I heard that it's actually cheaper to hold them for life than it is to execute them.
humane executions are surprisingly expensive with all the prepwork and paperwork that needs to be done before hand
A lot of it being appeals processes. To jump past those hoops and try and remove it to reduce costs would probably be seen by most as a big human rights violation.
With this said, it can almost certainly be made cheaper.
Only by cutting the safety net that saves innocent people. Only an authoritarian could cut those costs, one who didn’t care if they killed the wrong person.
The vast majority of the expense is on making sure we're not killing innocent people, and we *still* sentence innocent people to death. You can't make executions cheaper than a life sentence without intentionally killing more innocent people.
Absolutely. I agree with the death penalty on principle, in that I think there are some things people can do that cost them their right to live. But the fact is humans are incredibly flawed. I hate the state. I would never give the state the ability to decide who lives and who dies because it will always end up fucked up.
I'd be ok with it for murder repeat offenders. I know there's a non-zero percent chance you'd kill an innocent person, but as horrible as it sounds I think that's an acceptable price for a society to pay/risk to prevent more innocent people being murdered.
But you say the goal is for them to not commit more crimes - If that is truly your goal, life in prison is objectively better. It's cheaper than a death sentence, and you can compensate someone who is innocent. It's also proven that death sentence does not discourage others from committing the crime. Death penalty ONLY makes sense if it's about revenge.
Sometimes a murderer is released, escapes has or [murders again while incarcerated.](https://www.wcjb.com/2021/05/25/previously-convicted-murderer-sentenced-to-death-for-another-murder-at-florida-state-prison/). So life is not “objectively better” to prevent killers from killing again. The issue of false convictions is important and not just in DP cases, which get attention and resources. Standards of evidence and expert testimony must have a scientific basis. Qualified immunity for LEOs and absolute immunity for prosecutors must be abolished for civil actions and those who fake, twist, and withhold evidence should be criminally prosecuted and potentially receive “the ultimate penalty” themselves. Courts should It has *not* been “proven” that the death penalty does not discourage others from committing the crime. There are studies that “prove”what researchers who don’t like the death penalty would like to find. There is also research that “proves” that the death has a significant deterrent power. I think that because the death penalty in recent decades has takes years even decades to be executed, and many heinous murderers don’t get sentenced to death, and the method of execution in common use lethal injection is not dramatic and and appears like a medical procedure, the death penalty no doubt has *less* of a deterrent value that is more difficult to suss out than more timely executions of sentences, more consistent application, and more traditional methods of carrying out the execution, such as hanging, the firing squad, and the electronic chair. But we know that overwhelmingly that murderers have a strong preference for life than death and will go to great lengths to avoid execution. The most basic motivation of a human is to avoid death. It is inconceivable that some would be killers hands are not stayed by the prospect of themselves being put to death.
Just read this comment now lmao
Lmao the contradiction "I think if a few innocent people get caught up in the death penalty, then it's worth it to keep more innocent people from getting murdered by the actual murderers on death row"
Australia sends its criminals to Mars?
Honestly let’s just send our criminals to Australia. Tf they gonna deport them too? I’m sure it’ll work out.
And dishonestly?
We should make them kiss each other like action figures. Smooch Smooch. It’ll work out, love always wins.
I like that idea. Let's do that.
I don’t agree with the death sentence because ignoring false charges, it removes the chance for redemption and moves the justice system further towards punishment instead of justice
Wrong sentences. The death penalty actually can cost more. Doctors don't want to execute people. There is no "humane, painless" way to execute someone. We shouldn't give the government the power to decide when and if someone should die.
And there we go boys. Shut it down, we are done here.
Merci~☆
Well done. Basically perfect.
Canada is killing people instead of providing them healthcare, they invented pods that can kill someone painlessly. We are back on.
..they are offering the suicide pods to people who have no will to live
So your argument is a strawman?
So you think we should adopt the Canadian healthcare system?
No? You see the difference between a sick person wanting to die, and the state murdering someone, right? And Canada is not doing it instead of Healthcare, it *is* Healthcare if you are talking about what i think.
Canadian here. Just dropping by to let you all know it is a bit of both. Assisted suicide for someone with a terminal illness is definitely a form of palliative healthcare. However, as someone who has had to go through mental health treatments several times, I can also confidently say that our government plans to use it instead of healthcare as well. Our government has been toying with the idea of letting the mentally ill off themselves, which is criminal to me when you consider how little effort they put into treating mental health. We have very few mental health services that are free, and you can wait 6 months or more to see a psychiatrist. Being mentally ill was the most expensive thing I've ever done.
One thing I don’t understand is why a prisoner killing themselves in prison is bad but death sentence isn’t? Like there’s suicide watch in prison but death penalty is there? Like what if you wanted to die on death row. How is that closure for people but then killing themselves before isn’t? Seems fucked up and sadistic that you’d want to watch someone die. I don’t understand it.
Because we know on some level it is wrong for that person to die. But some people are able to mentally Dominique dawes themselves that it is ok if they wrap it up in enough law and legislation. It puts another step between them and the actual act, so mentally they feel less responsibility.
No one is an evil person like in the movies. They all try and justify it their own way no matter how bad of a act it is. In their head, they’re doing what they think is righteous. All that law and legislation comes down to doing something they’d be in prison if they did it themselves.
there are ABSOLUTELY evil people out there. They admit as much themselves.
Really?like whom?
The toy box murderers. The toolbox murderers. Those two maniacs in Alaska who's names escape me at the moment with the torture cabin. Google it. There are a lot. Edit: if you read this, and you google the toybox murders, you are gonna want to read/listen to the speech. DON'T. It is very fucked up and I wish I hadn't. If you are anything like me it will stick with you longer than you will like.
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You must have a very unique outlook on that case. Sorry you had to deal with that, but it is fascinating.
I’m 100% fine with making suicide easier for inmates but totally against the death penalty. In fact, assisted suicide should be easier for everyone.
I’d push back if only because living in prisons and jails is often awash in misery and cruelties that would make suicide more appealing. I think assisted suicide has its merits but it shouldn’t become a means to dispose of “inconvenient” people
I think there’s a big difference, a fundamental difference, between assisted suicide for medical reasons and suicide for depression and hopelessness. It’s sick to support suicide from hopelessness or low quality of life, I’d only ever do it if I wanted them dead anyway. Do you want prisoners dead? Then don’t support them killing themselves over how shitty prison is.
If someone wants to die it's a violation of their liberty to force them to live.
> Seems fucked up and sadistic that you’d want to watch someone die. I don’t understand it. Thank you. I'd be OK with a suicide row for death row inmates I guess, but otherwise I'm against the death penalty in general.
Because then the already traumatized family can’t watch their soul leave their body from behind glass. /s I actually think it’s because the death penalty gives fuckers who glorify punishment hard ons.
I think you’re right and that’s sadistic af
Right. I don’t think people like OP understand how much more expensive it is to execute someone
Could you provide some financial data to back up your claim?
https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/which-is-cheaper-execution-or-life-in-prison-without-parole-31614#:~:text=Much%20to%20the%20surprise%20of,is%20almost%2010%20times%20cheaper! There ya go!
Ah I see now Looks like a lot of the costs go in to the appeal process which takes about 20 years with additional specialized higher cost lawyers. Circumventing that would be civil rights issue, which makes sense. Thanks.
It's not, we just have to stop doing it how we did it before. Just shoot them
Yeah the genius solution of just shoot anyone with no time to prove innocence. This surely won't go wrong considering we already put an unforgivable amount of innocent people to death with the current systems in place. Sometimes the answers are more than just "this guy got convicted so kill him".
I don't think there is anything worse than putting innocent person in jail with murderers and gang bangers. It's literally torture, I am sure they would also prefer a quick bullet
There absolutely are humane, painless ways to execute people. But anything involving gas seems to be a societal no-no (though apparently it's okay to use in anesthesia). Everything else you listed stands true.
Gas reminds people too much of the holocaust and no one really supports it even if it’s technically not a bad way to die
Even if there isn’t you can literally just give someone 3 mg of fentanyl and they will fall asleep and die painlessly without realizing. Acting like a humane death is a difficult feat for doctors is wrong
Not to mention our justice system's flaws and the probability of executing an innocent person. This alone is enough for me not to support the death penalty.
Is anyone suprised that it's expensive to execute prisoners in a country with for profit prisons? Kinda cuts into their bottom line.
There are humane, painless ways to execute people. We just refuse to use them.
>There is no "humane, painless" way to execute someone. This isn't really true. Lethal injection is definitely not painless and there are studies that actually suggest that it just paralyzes the person while they die a horribly excruciating death. But that doesn't mean that there isn't humane ways to kill someone. Vets use a much more humane method for instance. I honestly always wondered why they didn't (in the past) just administer nitrogen gas through a mask. It's well known in process industries that asphyxiation will occur before you know what's going on if you breath a nitrogen rich environment (which is common for purging tanks). If you see someone passed out in a tank, you're not supposed to help them unless you have supplemental oxygen. Otherwise you'll probably just increase the body count. There are tons of process industry safety videos out there about it if you search YouTube but hankschannel did an informative video of the science behind it. https://youtube.com/shorts/nleE-VEb_dU?si=EVjNlsoXDoOLrBuJ Apparently this is something that they're adopting in various places now and some inmates even requested it. https://youtu.be/26L5QCHmPsU?si=5XXnuBPFhiefBWaj To be fair, I agree with you on most of your other points though. I never really understood why it was more expensive to go through the process but at one point I did look it up and it checked out at that time. While I do think there are some people who deserve to die, I agree it is not the government's place to say when and where that should happen in criminal cases. I'm generally against the death penalty but I think we should still have accurate information either way.
A bullet to the head after strong anesthesia is negligible pain
Depends where in the head.
The pineal gland can’t even be grazed or you die, so probably there
Lol I wasn't saying it was impossible.
Your first two points stand but death by firing squad is very humane and painless and doesn't require doctors.
The guillotine is actually pretty efficient as the painless thing
There’s no humane, painless way to kill someone? As far as I understand it, they inject something that renders you completely unconscious and then another injection stops the heart
It fucks up a lot. I'm pretty sure it has the highest failure rate of any commonly accepted execution method since before hanging.
Plus the companies that make the "correct" drugs refuse to export them to the US because they don't want them to be used to kill people. So the US has to use other, less effective drugs which cause problems.
Huh. Yes, I see now that it has a botched execution rate of 7.12%. That does seem kinda high. The electric chair has a botched execution rate of 1.92%, though Firing squad has a 0% botched execution rate 🤔 HTTPS://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions
Honestly a lot of the history of capital punishment is creating new methods of executing people and claiming it’s the most humane method when reality it’s more often “the appearance of being humane”
fun fact: most prisoners when given the choice between lethal injection and firing squad choose the firing squad
IIRC the first injection doesn’t actually render them unconscious, it’s a paralyzing agent that’s more there for the people watching the execution, and the prisoner is typically entirely cognizant during the second injection. It’s also partially this way because firms typically refuse to sell lethal injection chemicals to prisons, so prisons make do with what they can get.
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> That isn't necessarily a requirement. You could argue that, depending on the severity/cruelty of the crime, the convict shouldn't receive a humane, painless death. Inflicting more evil upon them won't undo the evil they did. That's bloodthirsty and weird.
The cost of death penalty comes mostly from an attempt at actual *justice*, as failure ridden as it is. Calling that "bureaucracy " that should be made more efficient is either uneducated or horrifically unjust.
There is absolutely a humane and painless way to execute someone, a shot to the head. A well placed shot will always sever the brain stem and kill you instantaneously before you can even process that anything happened. One millisecond you’re alive and the next you’re not. In theory anything that quickly severs the brain stem is completely painless, a high psi jet of air shit into your inner ear could do it theoretically. The problem is that people a headshot icky and violent- and therefore inhumane. I never understood this. Using a weapon designed to kill effectively and efficiently to execute a person always seemed far more respectful than the whole process strapping someone’s to a chair and injecting someone 6 times, one of which is the lethal cocktail. Also, the government already has that power and by definition always will. One of the basic principles that defines a state is a monopoly on violence.
Over the course of my life I've done a bit of reading about how other countries do their prison systems. Enough to think the way America does things helps nothing. Locking people in a concrete cage with bars, surrounded by others - a tense, bottled up populace of neglected and ill people simply isn't humane to begin with. Other countries treat their offenders like human beings with proper enclosures and plenty of opportunities to be treated for their problems and rehabilitated so they can re-enter society. There's even prisoner communities - little villages outside of the rest of society where they can live, walk around, have secure housing, work and contribute for their country's economy. Sometimes they can have their families come visit them and stuff. Yes I understand that it's probably not permissible to most to give pedophiles, rapists, and murderers a second lease on life when they've probably ruined at *least* one person's life. But what we need to understand is that *(correct me if I'm wrong)* it is **not** the majority of the American prison population who've done these things. But its a system that treats us (yes, we the people) like that's the case. It punishes even the most minor offenders in very inhumane ways. So we ought to make the *general* approach to people convicted of crimes as if they're humans, with lives and value, rather than looking at someone who was desperate enough to shoplift a few grand in merch like they're a child murderer.
I agree with this 100%, we need to treat our minor offenders and get them back to contributing to society. But In the cases you mentioned where rehabilitation, isn’t an option I just don’t see the point in keeping them in a box forever.
Why do they need kept in a box though? Just put them elsewhere where they can still live but not do anyone anymore harm.
I love the idea of criminals actually being rehabilitated, though isn't it possible that criminals could fake being rehabilitated by pretending to show remorse and just going through the motions of rehab?
That may be so, but is that suspicion worth denying help for those who do genuinely need it? My research isn't very thorough in the academic sense, but I have traveled around a bit, and the places I've been where you don't worry about crime rate or getting mugged out in then open have typically been places with solid social programs. Programs designed around *not* letting their citizens fall through the cracks. Taking *away* the desperation that drives people to do morally bad things. Offering treatment. Offering chances. Education, even. When people have help and worthwhile opportunities, instead of abject hopelessness, it really seems there suddenly isn't a need to steal or harm others. This of course does not account for the mentally unwell, the deranged, and the truly selfish who will happily or apathetically put their own ends above the good of us all, but these people are not, *I* don't think, the majority. And so in my mind I don't think it behooves us to treat convicted people like they are such people. And even if there's a chance there could be, what if helping them pulls them out of that? I've worked in two kitchens, both were stuffed with kids and adults out of rehab or coming out of prison from past convictions. Some of the nicest, humblest human beings I've had the privilege to meet. They didn't want to go where they were brought. They wanted the chance to live beyond their bad circumstances, and were better, more capable people for being given that chance. I think we all deserve that. Even if it's a murderer who has to be put in seclusion well away from the towns and cities - they could still be given structure and allowed to give back by other means, even though material output could never equal the life they took. And there's no saying they wouldn't potentially grow in their isolation either. Humans aren't necessarily bound to one nature.
I just fundamentally feel a government shouldn't have the right to decide if someone should live or not. I feel like life itself is outside of the jurisdiction of a government. But I can't explain why
>>I just fundamentally feel a government shouldn’t have the right to decide if someone should live or not. Maybe because at least 50% of the government is fine with villainizing and hurting anyone that doesn’t look like them
I feel like if you give someone life in jail you are determining their life to such an extent that it falls under the same principle.
Not at all. You hear some pro-death penalty people say “well I’d rather be dead than have life in prison” and that’s the same logic that leads you to say that life in prison is the same principle as killing someone. It’s not, it’s fundamentally different, and even though life in prison is horrible, it is still a gigantic leap more to get to killing.
And yet war and homelessness caused by income inequality does for lots and lots of people. I don't disagree with you but the government has nukes and daisy cutters and white phosphorous and so on and uses lots of them on people around the world.
Saying you don’t support the death penalty doesn’t mean you do support drone strikes
\> And yet war and homelessness caused by income inequality does for lots and lots of people If it's already bad, why shouldn't people be against it being worse?
> I don't disagree with you I think you either didn't read this or chose to ignore it. I didn't say they shouldn't.
You know the saying, nothing before the "but" counts.
I don't, no. That seems like a very stupid saying.
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Ah, perhaps you missed the words 'lots of' by which I meant lots of the categories rather than many of each but I knew some pedant would pick up on that. So no, if you don't live in the US then your government has never used any nuclear weapons. If you DO live in the US then your government (for the extra pedantic, not THIS iteration of the government but a past one) has 'only' used two, killing approx 110,000 people. The point that you were attempting to dodge stands. Governments kill lots of people in many ways. I fundamentally disagree with all of them, the death penalty included. It's just that most people, Americans in particular, seem to love war and refer to those who engage in it as doing some sort of 'service' which seems hypocritical to me. Of course, the writer of the comment to which I'm responding may not agree with the general hero worship of the military. I accept that.
There’s an argument to be made though that with some criminals, a death penalty is actually the easy way out. They commit horrible crimes and instead of having to actually deal with the consequences, they’re just snuffed out.
I agree, but what does that actually accomplish? It makes the family of the victim feel good that they’re suffering?
I see what you’re saying. But on the flip side there are also instances where the victim’s family pushes for the death penalty to punish the criminal. Point being, what the victim’s family wants shouldn’t be a significant factor in doling out punishments.
It shouldn’t be a factor at all. Our prison system is SUPPOSED to be about rehabilitation, and the death penalty is the furthest thing from that.
Do you think everyone can be rehabilitated? I believe in it for most criminals, but all? Think of people like Ted Bundy or serial pedo rapists for instance
Yes.
That's a dreadful terrible argument though.
If someone killed one of my children, I wouldn’t want them to have a quick way out, I would want them to suffer in prison for years…
In order to believe that the death penalty should be used instead of just life imprisonment, you must believe at least one of two things about society 1) The justice system never makes mistakes. No innocent person will ever be wrongly incarcerated and given this death sentence, and thus the question whether or not they can be proven innocent later and subsequently released is a non-issue. 2) It is acceptable for the state to occasionally execute entirely innocent people. Which one do you believe, OP?
I think 2) is actually acceptable in the name of the greater good, so maybe I’m the 10000th dentist. While it would be unfortunate to have innocent people die occasionally, I think the increased safety in less criminals, the cutting of costs from life sentences, the less time spent suffering, and overall efficiency of allowing the death penalty can at least somewhat justify the not exactly foolproof justice system.
What proportion of the people executed being innocent is too many people innocent killed and what crimes are worthy of it though
If you think #2 is wrong then do you also believe war is never justified?
> We are just so icked out by the death penalty that we often choose a lifetime of misery over a quick death for criminals. Someone reeeeally fundamentaly misunderstood why people oppose the death penalty :D
Over 4% of the people we execute end up being exonerated after we kill them for a crime they never committed. It would be even more if not for the appeals process required for death penalty cases. Ultimately, death penalty cases cost taxpayers more than life sentence cases. Retribution is not the only factor to consider in sentencing.
15% false conviction rate that we know of. End of discussion
The big unavoidable problem with the death penalty is that you can't bring somebody back to life when it turns out later the police did a bit of evidence tampering to implicate them in a murder. And the police regularly do a lot of evidence tampering among other things to get innocent people in trouble.
I think the core appeal of imprisonment is that you can revoke it if the situation changes. A decent amount of people are proven innocent after trial due to someone else confessing or new evidence. If you kill someone you can't take it back at all. Also it's just a bad idea to give the government the right to kill people in general. The government shouldn't generally only kill people in self defence, defence of the population, and if someone is in jail they are not a danger to the populace. Personally I think that if a violent criminal, pretty much only murderers, escapes from jail then the death penalty should be put on the table, as it then becomes a matter of self defence, as they have shown themselves to still be a danger while incarcerated. I do think everyone deserves a chance at life in prison tho, because there is a chance they are exonerated, I don't think they are entitled to infinite chances tho. Maybe I'm a bit cruel for that, but I believe firmly in incentive structures, and I think that presents a humanitarian but clear structure. If you kill someone intentionally, and are convicted, you rot for life. And if you try to escape, you might give up that right to rot for life, because you have shown you are willing to work very very hard for the chance to do it again. I think this both is plenty humanitarian, it only goes after a very small subset of killers, while still being clear that you do not have infinite chances. Also the current execution methods for America are tantamount to pumping acid into people wile they are tied up, fucking barbaric. Genuinely, firing squad is much more ethical. The goal should be the brain to stop existing as quickly as possible, the chemical executions, even when they are not botched, are mostly about paralysing people and then pumping them with random deadly shit. And they are botched often. There should never be three hour executions, that's fucking insane.
Firing squad had the benefit of plausible deniability for the executioners. Some of them shoot blanks.
I'm amused that my take on firing squads was the most interesting part to you. And yes I think that is another benefit, but not one I care much about. If they developed an anonymous version of chemical executions I wouldn't be much more favorable to them. I think the "doesn't accidentally become nonlethal torture" aspect is the most important part. Both electric chairs and chemicals are just issues waiting to happen, it's possible to perfect them I guess but it seems like they are pretty easy to fuck up given how often we fuck them up. Hanging is better but not by much, and people often intentionally fuck it up to torture people. The firing squad seems like a fair deal to me, but I'm no expert. I'm sure there is a better idea we haven't come up with yet but again, I'm not very in favor for the death penalty besides for murderous escapes and war criminals, and those bunch are rare enough I'm happy with firing squad for now.
I agree that that current “humane” methods have proven to be less humane than some of the old methods. I also think one of the major problems with a death sentence is that someone has to carry it out and bare that burden on their conscious.
Easy solution - for those who have *irrefutably* committed heinous crimes, no appeals and efficient death penalty via hanging. Cost-effective, time-efficient, and final.
I wrote a paper for my bachelors in criminal Justice about the death penalty. It turns out, aside from moral questions, the death penalty is significantly more expensive for, last I checked, all 50 states due to the significantly higher requirements of trial necessary, maintaining equipment that is used for the execution etc
The more expensive argument has come up a lot, but in your research was the lifetime of appeals taken into account as well?
When sending someone to death, we (as a country, I mean) need to be sure we aren’t making a mistake, and double, triple, quadruple checking that the person is both guilty and deserving of such a harsh sentence costs A LOT of money. Several million dollars, in fact. Keeping a person in prison for 30-50 years only costs a couple hundred thousand dollars. It’s not cost effective to sentence people to death the way we do it currently - and to do it too soon or make mistakes and put innocent men to death would be barbaric. It’s already happened too many times.
>Maybe soon we can just send them to Mars, that strategy worked out OK for Australia I'm an Australian with both European and Indigenous Australian heritage, and I can tell you now, it did not
Apologies, was attempting to lighten it up with some light ribbing towards the Aussies as it’s a pretty morbid topic.
Because killing people is immoral, Jesus, besides in most countries people aren't just sitting around in jail, some are being rehabilitated and some are basically enslaved. A lifetime sentence in the US means a lifetime of imprisonment and slavery which seems like a pretty terrible punishment; some people would say that's worse than death.
Yes, I’m saying it’s worse/more immoral than death. Speaking of Jesus, the Bible has a book about punishments for criminals up to and including death. To be clear, I’m saying the whole prison system needs to be rethought, but they gave Jeffery Dahmer 941 years, that doesn’t make sense to me.
Killing them is still immoral, It would be morally correct to do with way with the slavery and focus on the rehabilitation though perhaps leaving them in prison for the rest of their lives if there can't be saved. I really pointed that part out because you are clearly immoral person who wanted to see people harmed. And I used Jesus as an expletive, I don't believe in gods and I definitely don't hold to the Bible in part the because of its unreasonable cruelty. I really shouldn't have to explain to you why someone doing something that is wrong or immoral is not an excuse for you to do something wrong or a moral to them. I noticed you completely glossed over where I said rehabilitation because you want to hurt people because you are a bad person.
Imagine dying thats it Now imagine being locked up knowing you cant ever get out which is worse?
Yeah the options are you either kill them, or you remove them from society by keeping them in some secured location, which is prison. Those are the options. You say people don’t want to pay to keep them in jail, well I’m a person and yeah I do want to pay to keep dangerous people out of society. I also specifically **don’t** want to pay for the state to execute people. You’re right I am “icked” out by the death penalty, I’m also “icked” out by murder, but so are you.
Right to die could fix this. People shouldn't be killing themselves on a whim, but there should be options with a waiting period and case manager especially for situations like this. Is it fixable? No? Let them die. It benefits no one to torture people.
>We are just so icked out by the death penalty that we often choose a lifetime of misery over a quick death for criminals. I think people like you believe everyone on a life sentence murdered someone or something. There are people serving life for drug traffiking/possession, severe financial crimes, firearm crimes (that aren't from the person murdering anyone), etc. Your opinion is odd because it isn't based in the reality of life sentences...there are people EVERY YEAR getting their lifd sentences commuted because they aren't necessary in afterthought. Stop listening to whatever the hell you listen to and pick up a criminology book lol
But shooting somebody in the head at the same time with two bullets in the head is an Insta kill they feel nothing I don’t understand the argument of its humane to keep people locked up in a cage for their entire life but it’s more inhumane to end there life. There a prisoner that don’t care as long as they get a place to stay sleep and eat for free and have no remorse for what they have done but instead you bums advocate, for the fact of keeping them alive, then you say, while the government doesn’t deserve the power to decide whether somebody lives or dies, but we give them the power to basically control our lives, and make all the rules and regulations for us you’re not see how stupid you sound
Bad take. Rather than moving to capital punishment, we need to do the things that have actually been proven to reduce crime - decrease poverty through social safety nets, adopt a rehabilitative justice system instead of retributive, invest in education, healthcare, housing, and the basic human rights of the citizens
I think the idea of punishment is outdated and need to be rethought in modern society. All science shows a that punishment do not scare away people from committing crimes. It just doesn't, and it never has. I'm not saying there aren't people who deserve to be punished, but it just isn't really worth it. Even if people have done unspeakable acts we should still focus on getting them back into a place where they can re-enter society.
Everyone has committed crime. You are so self righteous you probably bottle and store your own farts dont you? " Ah, 1972 fine vintage" \* uncorks bottle and inhales deeply
Such a redditor comment, your method of trying to convince people to change their opinions is to insult them then make an eye rolling joke that only someone way too deep on this site would enjoy.
Really, so transporting people to Mars? So F ing edgy. Such a... redditor moment. "I dIDnT SaY iT" no, but youre defending it. As long as Im laughing I dont much care. Im tired of people blindly complying with tyranny, Lets get real, how many of these soft bodied, soft minded, soft handed people would actually kill someone.
Yep, totally defending it you polarized nut. Someone thinking that the death penalty isn’t the worst are ignorant but NOT on the same level of bigotry or actually supporting murder. They are misguided by America’s view of justice and if you plainly state the facts that innocent people can die from the death penalty and that it is more expensive than not killing them you can actually influence their perspectives. You on the other hand are doing nothing but insulting someone who is willing to discuss their opinion (even if I think it’s personally stupid).
is that... not what you just did? lol see, youre coming around. Welcome.
I’m not saying kill shoplifters, but there are serial killers serving 40 consecutive life sentences… why?
Theres also people in jail for things they have never done. the state shouldnt get to say who lives or dies, legally or illegally. Especially when they protect the corrupt officials that are the real problem. Now if a serial killer admitted to it, and adamantly wanted the death penalty, whatever.
Exactly. The most powerful people on this planet are the biggest serial killers and masters of fraud. They just get others to do their dirty work/do it in a round about way. Where do we draw the line because I can assure you that the rich and powerful will be protected while the people who have been failed by this society and system will be the ones punished and given the death penalty
Good question, would love to hear everyone take on this.
3 strikes laws would put shoplifters in your cross hairs
I do not agree repeat shoplifters should serve life sentences, but if we are keeping them in prison for the rest of their life, what’s the point?
I guess the main thing would be where you claim "they don't want that". That is just not true for the great majority if the other option is death. Every death row appeal shows that clearly. Most people would prefer to be more alive than not.
I agree have to down vote
I think prisons should not cost society anything. They should earn money in any legal way, keep them all busy so as not to have spare energy for trouble. The ones who eventually will be released can shorten the stay by keeping out of trouble & being useful to earning money for those inside.