Hot take, but I feel like no humans should be killed as a punishment... But I'm also probably too European to understand the true value of death penalty.

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boredumb 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

If someone kills a family member and the court gives them 6 years and a parole officer, the remaining family will and has taken justice into their own hands and that has a much higher blast radius and margin of error than executing a guy convicted of the murder in a court of law and sat on death row making appeals for 10-15 years.

If dylan roof was allowed to live his full natural life in jail, there would be race riots in the US by the end of the press conference.

	▲	embedding-shape 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Cool, maybe rather than aiming to punish people, aim to rehabilitate them, and they don't need to spend their full natural life in jail. And if they're "unsalvageable" like many would claim, we (maybe not you, in the US, I dunno) have hospitals for those that are ill.

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Sohcahtoa82 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm only against the death penalty for the simple fact that courts have convicted innocent people. Sometimes, that conviction happens when the court actively blocks exonerating evidence.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/284/

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/319/

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OkayPhysicist 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Anybody who is wrongfully executed was basically guaranteed to spend their entire life in prison. Death row inmates get dramatically more access to legal aid than anybody else rotting in a cell, so if they couldn't win their appeal, the guy doing life isn't, either.

Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to people letting the system get sloppy. For public and infamous crimes, however, where the question is not "what act took place", but rather "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"-type cases, I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment being on the table. We trust public officials with significant authority, and abuse of that authority is utterly irredeemable. Frankly, for elected officials I'd support a "two-thirds vote and you hang" policy. If you want power, and seek out power, you have an immense responsibility to live up to your constituent's expectations.

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cortesoft 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That isn’t true. There have been death row inmates exonerated, both before and after their execution.

The ones that were executed would have been alive for the exoneration if we they had been given life in prison instead.

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embedding-shape 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"

I guess that last part is the perspective I'd change, for a more compassionate world. I'd much rather ask "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what made the person commit that crime, and how can we help them not do that in the future again?".

	▲	OkayPhysicist 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		For the kinds of "public and infamous" crimes I'm talking about, the answer is almost always greed, either for fortune, power, or fame. There's no need to ask "Why did Nestle decide to kill a bunch of African children by giving away just enough formula stop mothers from being able to breastfeed?" or "Why did tobacco companies stand in front of congress and lie through their teeth about how non-addictive nicotine is?" or "Why did Nixon decide to pursue the war on drugs in order to disproportionately target his political opponents and minorities?". The answer is that in order to end up in the C-suite or board of directors of a megacorp, or the White House, you have to be one of the most madly greedy, power-lusting parasites in the world. My compassion for my fellow man is why I suggest we wait for them to commit a crime before punishing such behavior.

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CamperBob2 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a uniquely-American perspective: "Our government can't do anything right. But hey, I still trust it to kill the right people."

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1234letshaveatw 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

so true, citizens of the dozens of other countries with the death penalty believe their governments to be infallible

	▲	happosai 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country Vast majority of death penalties happen in countries where citizens don't have much of a say what their government does...

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s5300 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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