My main takeaway from this discussion is that Juan has probably murdered someone.
Lol, I couldnāt hurt a fly.
I donāt think it is a separate issue at all. People under threat of the death penalty are more likely to appeal, and their appeals will be more expensive.
But even the extra case costs are significant. One quote I read was:
Reviewing 15 state studies of death penalty costs conducted between 2000 and 2016, the study found that, across the country, seeking the death penalty imposes an average of approximately $700,000 more in case-level costs than not seeking death. The researchers wrote that āall of these studies have found ā¦ that seeking and imposing the death penalty is more expensive than not seeking it.ā
Using your figures, thatās an extra 21 years worth of incarceration costs incurred at trial. Never mind the trials that do not succeed in a conviction.
And then of course, most death penalty sentences are overturned. Washington Post:
But by far the most likely outcome of a U.S. death sentence is that it will eventually be reversed and the inmate will remain in prison with a different form of death sentence: life without the possibility of parole.
I really donāt think the death penalty is the cost-saving silver bullet you might think it is.
mmm, there might be some resemblance :P
Yes, but then you get the Texas solution. Faster time to death penalty and less approved appeal attempts.
It absolutely is, when considered within the context Iāve laid out, where there is incontrovertible proofā¦ because in those cases, you donāt need an extended appeal process. Thereās no reason to wait for years to perform the execution.
To be clear, this means that perhaps capital punishment wouldnāt apply to all the cases. Thatās fine. Some folks you may still imprison for life, where thereās some chance that they are in fact innocent.
But in cases where someone murdered people in a well recorded fashion? Thereās no reason for some drawn out appeal process, and thus it will be cheaper than keeping them alive forever.
Do they sentence a lot of people to death without this right now?
Some perhaps, but not āa lotā. I mean, in reality, there arenāt that many people sentenced to death in the US.
But I suspect there are folks who have life in prison, who could be executed, but arenāt because states donāt have the penalty, or as some folks here demonstrate, are sentenced by folks who just donāt want to be responsible for handing out such a sentence.
The problem is that they sentence people to death in not remotely open-and-shut cases.
Speeding up the process will just kill more people that shouldnāt die in the first place.
Ya, in such cases I donāt think capital punishment should apply.
Yes, yes you do. There is no way to build a functional and just legal framework around these things without building in safeguards such as, well, all the process and appeals in the current system. There is no such thing as proof so incontrovertible that we can bypass the safeties. Or else we face an unconscionable risk that bad or incompetent actors will cause the system to kill the innocent.
Even with all the safeguards currently in place, there are plenty of stories of people being found innocent after being on death row for years. There are even a few situations, such as the sad case of Carlos De Luna, where things come to light after an execution that cast a lot of doubt on the original conviction.
Why not? If you have something like video evidence where a person is clearly committing the crime, or multiple eye witnesses who are credible?
Like that guy in Portland as an example. He did it. I know with pretty much 100% certainty that he did. There is no chance he didnāt.
The problem is that for every case like Portland there are 10 where the prosecutor will push for the death penalty for the guy who drove the car and maybe didnāt know that his passengers were going to the drug deal armed. We want the death penalty for justice when faced with truly depraved murderers, and in practice it ends up being used according to the whims and prejudices of the particular communities where it is applied.
Because sometimes juries and prosecutors and judges are, unfortunately, biased and not strictly rational. There are plenty of scenarios where a court case with a lily-white jury and judge, in the right jurisdiction, could earnestly and sincerely believe some very questionable evidence to decide that a case was incontrovertible and promptly sentence someone to summary execution. Were that an option. Which thankfully it is not.
Bear in mind that Iām not arguing in favor of capital punishment as it necessarily exists within our current criminal justice system, but rather against the notion that capital punishment is inherently wrong.
My thought process has always been that if anyone has the right to take another Human beingās life it is the State as the enforcer of societal norms through the rule of law.
However, Iām torn as to whether the State should have that right.
Generally, itās the lifeboat analogy that gets me - if you shrink the societal population down to 5, and one person has done something so grievously wrong to the other 4 that they believe that person deserves to die, then that person is pretty much going to be put to death, right or wrong, for endangering the others.
So I do tend to fall on the side of the argument that the state should be able to (also because if it doesnāt, then some people will take justice into their own hands, one way or another, which is bad for society and the state as well), but Iām also a big believer in data - and the current facts are that the US Justice system is not 100% reliable AND itās cheaper to sentence people to life in prison with no parole than it is to give them the Death penalty (there are other fixes for that, but it makes the sub-100% certainty even lower, as best I can tell).
Eye witness testimony huh? You mean like the Central Park Jogger kind of eye witness? Or the 100s of other cases where DNA evidences was so perfect so sure that when we retested it again years later we apologize and let those people free.
I like to think there are open and shut cases but I know what video look like out of context, I know the police can alter them, and of course DNA testing is only as good as the test and the people performing the test.
Fair enough, Iāll have to pass on that since I reject the validity of the concept of deontological ethics.
Iām pretty darn sure there is no way for capital punishment to be right in the society we have right now.
No? Given that case didnāt have actual credible eye witnesses?