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gotta step up our game fr (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
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[–] 42 points 4 months ago (31 children)

The crime does not matter. The reason the death penalty should be abolished everywhere is to spare the innocent a wrongful execution. It can never be 100% accurate 100% of the time so it should not be allowed at all.

The guilty can rot in prison. The innocent should never be executed.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago

    Even beyond the fact that they may execute the innocent it's still wrong. Let's say a world exists where the government has a 100% accuracy rate. The issue is that by giving them the right to execute their own citizens and the power to make laws it then allows them the ability to create laws designed to kill specific people.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (9 children)

    This is fallacious statement - nothing is ever 100% accurate 100% of the time, that's impossible.

    This is called absolute inaction in ethics - if you say that you can't take action unless there's utter most certainty and there's nothing in the universe that is utter most certain -> you can't take any actions. You're perpetually stuck in indecision.

    So it's perfectly possible to reach certainty where someone is practically 100% guilty. Would you say that the killing of Musolini was unjustified? Should he be serving a life sentence instead and we ought to risk revival of nazis just for sake of not breaking this dichotomy? Yeah he's 99.99999% guilty but we can't be 100% sure.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    nothing is ever 100% accurate 100% of the time, that’s impossible.

    EXACTLY. So while we need a system to punish and reform criminals we do not need to execute. Thats just not necessary and we can absolutely operate without it. We can ensure that we are not executing innocent people by not executing anyone.

    It is not absolute inaction. It is sparing the innocent because the govt cannot be trusted.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    I generally agree but there are costs to not executing someone clearly guilty as well and it's about measuring these costs. For a general murderer - sure the costs of keeping them banished forever are quite low but for someone like Musolini or this mayor? There are real costs of keeping them alive in banishment primarily the risk of them coming back or leaking influence back into the real world so imo death sentence here could be justified.

    Though in practice I agree that it's safer to not give government this power as overall risk of abuse is too high but ethically it's completely justifiable to kill someone who's incredibly dangerous even if 100% certainty is not possible.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I dont care about costs. This is about preventing wrongful executions. I cannot accept the arguement that say "well, its expensive to prevent the state from accidentally executing the wrong person" Too bad, thats the cost of justice. Prison is a punishment for the guilty, no one should be murdered by the state.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    I did not mean monetary costs but societal costs as well. Having a dangerous person in banishment still leaking danger to society costs more lives than that of one person.

    Let's say there's a cartel boss and sure you lock them up but they can still cause enough instability to start a cartel war killing thousands of innocents - wouldn't killing them (legally) be better for society as it would save thousands of lives? I mean we can probably be quite certain they're the cartel boss, not 100% but as close as practically possible right?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Once again you are focusing on punishing the guilty and not sparing the innocent. If we want to execute cartel bosses we will also execute innocent people. the only way to be sure the death penalty is not used erroneously is not use it at all.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (19 children)

    Why draw the line at execution?

    Seems like that same logic could be applied to imprisonment, or any punishment in general. "It can never be 100% accurate, so prison should not be allowed at all".

    Under your proposed system, innocent people willl rot in prison for life.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    You can't bring somebody back to life after killing them. If it turns out they were innocent after all, there's no releasing or recompensating a corpse.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (8 children)

    Agreed that some innocent people will be set free, but again this is not 100% perfect, so it is certain that innocent people will rot in prison until they die.

    Why draw the moral line at executing innocent people, but not at imprisoning innocent people for life ?

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    So youre saying being wrongly imprisoned is just as bad as being murdered? No, I dont agree with that

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    No, that's not my argument at all. I agree with the utilitarian argument that imprisonment is better than the death penalty.

    What I'm saying is that every moral argument against the death penalty can also be applied to life imprisonment. If you justify your anti-death penalty stance on the moral argument ("innocent people will die", as the first person I replied to said), then it is a slippery slope to a prison abolitionist position.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    What I’m saying is that every moral argument against the death penalty can also be applied to life imprisonment.

    So you ARE equating living life in confinement with literal death. This is where we disagree. Death and imprisonment are not at all the same or equal.

    Imprisonment sucks, yes, but thats part of a crime and punishment system. Death does not need to be part of that system. How hard is that to accept?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    It's not about acceptance, it's about the underlying logic. You can assert your position all day, I'm asking why.

    Why don't you say "Punishment sucks, yes, but that's part of a crime prevention system. Imprisonment does not need to be a part of that system. How hard is that to accept"?

    Or why don't you say "death sucks, yes, but that's part of a crime and punishment system. How hard is that to accept"?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Because we do not need to execute people, but we do need to imprison some.

    Why is it that when I say 'we shouldnt kill people' you say 'then why even lock them up?'

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Because every moral argument that can be applied to the death penalty can also be applied to imprisonment. I think we're going in a circle here.

    The system you support imprisons thousands of innocent people, many of them for life. How do you morally justify this? Is it just a trolley problem for you, and the innocent people rotting to death in prison are just the unfortunate ones tied to the tracks, and they must die for the good of the system?

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago

    Because every moral argument that can be applied to the death penalty can also be applied to imprisonment.

    No I disagree. The goal is simple and specific: stop wrongful executions.

    You can say "well also other stuff is bad" sure, thats not the point here. the point is that we make ONE change and save lives. Stop executions. No other changes are required. The system, the facilities, the employees, everything else already exists to facilitate this.

    So while there are MANY other improvements that can be made to the justice system this is ONE SINGLE SIMPLE change that WOULD ABSOLUTELY save lives.

    Why havent we done it?

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Because you can review a case under new evidence or for any numbers of reasons, and figure you got the wrong person.

    Ooops can't un-execute that innocent. My bad.

    And the whole rehabilitation thing. But I am guessing your argument is you can't rehabilitate a billionaire or something. You are wrong btw if you think that.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    But I am guessing your argument is you can’t rehabilitate a billionaire or something. You are wrong btw if you think that.

    You can not rehabilitate the thousands of people who's lives were worsened by a billionaires actions. They commit crimes on a scale so insane that they need to be addressed in an entirely different way from conventional crime. They don't rob a business and kill a store keeper, they put thousands of people out of work and leave them unable to support themselves and their families. They destroy lives for the sake of personal gain on an industrial scale.

    A single armed man in a stadium couldn't do as much harm to humanity as a multi-billionaire does from his desk.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (6 children)

    You're right to say that life imprisonment is an improvement over execution because some innocent people will be set free. But under the imprisonment system, it is still guaranteed that innocent people will rot in prison until they die.

    You can't un-execute the innocent, but you also can't un-rot the innocent who die in prison.

    Why is one morally acceptable and the other is not?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Both arent good, sure, but how can you say death is the same as life in prison?

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    That really depends on living conditions in prison. There are fates that are worse than death.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    And yet there are ways to deal with that yourself if you choose that exit, the govt should not be able to make that choice for you. The key here is taking away the govts right to murder its people just because it made an oopsie

    Keep the perspective here: You are arguing that 'prison can really suck so the govt should be allowed to execute people it says are guilty'

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    That's not my argument at all, and I'm confused where you got that idea.

    If you want to embellish my argument, it should sound something like "the prison system imprisons innocent people for life, which is the same result as the death penalty, so anyone who argues against the death penalty should also argue for full prison abolition"

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Thats a slippery slope that is common in these discussions. Im saying the death penalty shouldnt exist, prison is still important for society. We just cannot trust the government or any legal system to hand out executions. The ONLY way to be sure innocent people are not executed by the death penalty is to not have one at all.

    Its pretty simple.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Most of the people who oppose the death penalty also want to improve prison conditions and minimise the amount of people sent to prison in the first place.

    "Conditions in prison are bad" is an argument for improving living conditions for prisoners, not for murdering them.

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