• lordkuri@lemmy.world
      8·
      1 year ago

      Yes, and 2 wrongs make a right of course. /s

      Or maybe it’s about vengeance and not about paying a due to society?

        • letsgo@lemm.ee
          5·
          1 year ago

          That’s easy to answer. Justice is not perfect, and sooner or later you will execute an innocent person. We know this has happened in the UK, because DNA evidence proved that the person couldn’t have been there, and they would have been released had they not been executed.

          Death is final and you don’t just respawn at your bed, so this is the worst possible outcome. Abolishing the death penalty avoids this terrible situation, and yes it means you keep people like this alive until their natural death, but it also maximises the chance that new evidence can be found that proves that person didn’t in fact commit the crime.

            • letsgo@lemm.ee
              3·
              1 year ago

              That’s the dilemma. The thing is, when we last executed an innocent, we believed we had absolute incontrovertible proof. We have always known a death sentence to be final.

              Maybe this argument will win the day: The value of human life is so high, and the execution of an innocent is so terrible, that we convert the death sentence to life imprisonment for the benefit of all those that will later be proven innocent. And yes this means some genuine criminals will live, but that is a better price to pay than executing even one innocent. The death penalty will ALWAYS have some collateral damage, and the only way to avoid that is to abolish it.

              In Cruz’s case of course another significant aspect is the lack of sensible gun control. But you Americans value guns more than you value kids, and until that changes you’ll be stuck with your Cruzes. Killing Cruz for a systemic failure is no solution.

            • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
              1·
              1 year ago

              Then it’s still a bad idea because of the literal cost to taxpayers.

              Life in prison is $70,000 per year (paid by taxpayers, of course).

              The legal battle around the death penalty is around $1.12 million, also paid around taxpayers

              https://www.cato.org/blog/financial-implications-death-penalty

              That’s 14 times more expensive.

              There are tons of things I would see the state spend money on rather than literally killing people. In the case of this, maybe mental health help for the victims.

                • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Well one way to lower it is to settle law around the death penalty it seems

                  Or you could just not kill people.

                  Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present system ($137 million per year), the present system after implementation of the reforms … ($232.7 million per year) … and a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty ($11.5 million).

                  From amnesty USA. https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost/

                  Ted Kaczynski lived until 81 and absolutely deserved death.

                  And he did die. Does that not satisfy you?

                  Kidding, but it’s not a matter of deserves. It’s about the states power in relation to their citizens. The state shouldn’t have the power over life and death, because power corrupts. Cases like this: https://innocenceproject.org/melissa-lucio-9-facts-innocent-woman-facing-execution/

                  The poor woman was interrogated for 5 hours straight by police into confessing her “crime”, while pregnant with twins, after which she was sentenced to death (still alive btw, lawsuits still ongoing and sucking up taxpayer money, even 13 years later.). One of the influential things in her death was the District Attorney who was attempting to be reelected on a “tough on crime” platform.

                  Cameron County D.A. Armando Villalobos was running for re-election and seeking a “win,” and is now serving a 13-year federal prison sentence for bribery and extortion.

                  Of course, you made an argument about “what if we require really, really hard evidence”… but what evidence is greater than a confession? What if evidence is fudged? There can never be a guarantee, and we should design our systems to account for human error… or malice.

                  Prison should be a place to rehabilitate people first, and a place to remove dangerous people from society second. Not a political platform, like the death penalty is so often.

                  The death penalty is the ultimate form of virtue signaling. An expensive way to remove someone from society, when life in prison would have the same effects, relatively. Everybody dies eventually, no need to waste money on killing people early when we could be spending money on keeping people alive.