Death Penalty: What % of innocent deaths is acceptable?

And yet Im not. What a funny world eh?

I dont really understand the point your trying to make here.

 

The only way to answer this is to imagine you were on death row for a crime you did not commit. All other considerations are immaterial to the debate. If one innocent person is murdered by the state then the state is complicit in that murder. Since we are the state, that would make each of us his murderer by association.

 

DNA is helping to insure that there are no mistakes. It's also exonerating some wrongly convicted. It's estimated that 4.1% are innocent but that number should drop with new technology.

 

You basically said in an earlier post that it is an imperfect system and that one innocent person being put to death should be a reason not to have the death pemalty..
Well heslth care is not perfect, there for assisted suicide and abortion should not happen either. Or plastic surgery. If it is not to tave a life, then it should not be allowed. I'mjust going by your logic

 

Other - Zero %

 

Here's 2 interesting cases
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/1...ules-in-favor-inmates-wishes-to-continue.html

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/1...s-to-reveal-drug-to-be-used-in-execution.html

Where in the inmate has had enough and just wants it over with.

 

DNA won't help if the evidence has been planted like Mark Fuhrman did repeatedly.

 

Cruel and Unusual is subjective.
A choice of methods would alleviate that concern.
Gas Chamber
Electric Chair
Drugs (Why can't they just Michael Jackson them)
Hanging
Firing Squad - my personal choice. In an instant, a hole where the heart was.
Other. - I mean maybe beheading, bullet to the back of the head, exsanguination, etc.

So which method would you choose?

 

And what evidence did Mark Furman plant

 

What about the ones out west and in the Mid-west?

 

I agree, what ever the percentage is... I am good with it. you gotta figure that those folk probably did something wrong to deserve their punishment. You can just look at a person and know that he is a criminal type. Such people should not escape justice on legal technicalities. Law enforcement does its best to protect us from such people. We should not make their jobs more difficult by nit picking them on so called evidence.

 

10 percent is OK.

 

That's what the appeals system is for, and we've seen organizations that oppose the death penalty that offer assistance, but they know that most cases are correct in the first place...

 

And it seems when a case is overturned, it is not necessarily because the person is innocent, but rather they cannot re-convict him 20 years later.

 

I would choose not to be executed.

But if I had to go, i would go with drugs of course.

 

Usually, but not always. That's been the case of a lot of the people awaiting the death penalty who were latter discovered to be innocent. They looked like a killer, and that probably prejudiced the jury.
Then they might have some criminal history in their distant past, on top of that, and of course that is brought up during the trial (or had an influence on the detectives and prosecutor to believe they were the one who committed the murder even when the evidence might not be the strongest).

 

I can understand your perspective, but I still think the ratio should be tilted a little bit so that more people are killed due to release of killers than the number that are wrongfully put in prison for life or executed. You are arguing from a utilitarian perspective, but there is also the moral perspective, and in general it's a good idea to try to avoid government from being the one to inflict a moral wrong. (i.e. better to risk government doing a little bit of something that's not enough than risk doing something that's too much, causing something bad)

 

That's the point. Unless they are put to death, there is no assurance that they will not kill again. That article was full of people who plea bargained themselves into position to be released at some time then killed again. Others escaped or killed cell mates.

 

Not sure what you're trying to say here.

Maybe trying to avoid some responsibility for being shown that your compassionate way of punishment, to avoid taking life....actually takes lives.


Murderers should be put down. if you don't you are enabling them to kill again.

 

But the whole point is that innocents get executed by the government. I recognize the problem you are trying to outline here, and I agree that most killers shouldnt be released. But that doesnt excuse the government from executing innocents.

 

That may have occurred rarely in the past. However, with all the DNA evidence checks, other safeguards and stringent qualifications necessary for a death sentence it would be nearly impossible to occur now. Below is a list of the 23 men that were executed last year. Every one of them had at least a decade to prove their innocence. The world won't miss any of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States_in_2017

 

Nearly impossible. Not impossible.

There are still plenty of corrupt cops. Prosecutors. Judges.

Just look at whats happening in Baltimore.

 

"The world" does not miss all the innocents slaughtered every year by governments and private interests. Only their loved ones do.

Should we, as a People, surrender to the State the power to kill its citizens under the pretext that it is infallible?

Should the United States be a global leader along with Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and China in the practice (with the distinction that the US never executes wealthy individuals)?

I would expect our moral values would comport with those of advanced, western nations, instead, reinforced by an antipathy to the arrogation of such existential power by politicians.

 

Which is more reprehensible, the execution of 23 convicted murders or the abortion of nearly a million innocent babies every year?

 

What State is responsible for "the abortion of nearly a million innocent babies every year"?

If you are upset by advanced, western democracies where politicians do not seize control of wombs from the instant of conception but only intervene after a person has developed during gestation, try not to confuse that with states like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and China that still kill their citizens in cold blood.

You sound like a maximal statist.