A string of long and bloody lethal injections last year led to a brief moratorium. But an internal review from prison officials remains shrouded in secrecy, and advocates warn new protocols may increase the risk of torturous executions.
Do we ever give the death penalty to someone who kills someone by accident or in an unfortunate situation?
No, but we sometimes give the death penalty to… people who didn’t do anything wrong? And maybe, just maybe, it’s too easy, too consequence-free, for the state to take someone’s life, if it just happens by accident sometimes.
The difference is that we don’t give the death penalty to somebody who accidentally does something wrong. And we especially don’t do that in such a deliberate drawn out process.
Yes, and I would argue that it’s crueler to put an innocent person through that drawn out process than it is someone whose mistake or carelessness actually caused an innocent life to be lost.
It is a mistake worth dying over? Maybe not, but as long as there is no consequence to getting it wrong, there is literally zero incentive for public officials to get it right, especially those wanting to prove themselves “tough on crime”
I’m not sure why you act as if all innocent people are completely innocent. It could be that they made mistakes and we’re careless and that was a part of what led them to being falsely convicted.
Literally zero incentive is an extremely high bar and certainly incorrect.
I understand wanting to ensure there’s a better incentive than currently exists, but giving them the death penalty for false death penalties is just a roundabout way of stopping the death penalty. So you may as well just do that directly.
What I mean is that take a situation where someone was convicted of murder, but the reality is that was a false conviction and they were only guilty of manslaughter.
I shouldn’t have used the “innocent person” phrasing because that’s too low resolution for this discussion. You can’t always neatly put a person into innocent/guilty categories.
No, but we sometimes give the death penalty to… people who didn’t do anything wrong? And maybe, just maybe, it’s too easy, too consequence-free, for the state to take someone’s life, if it just happens by accident sometimes.
The difference is that we don’t give the death penalty to somebody who accidentally does something wrong. And we especially don’t do that in such a deliberate drawn out process.
Yes, and I would argue that it’s crueler to put an innocent person through that drawn out process than it is someone whose mistake or carelessness actually caused an innocent life to be lost.
It is a mistake worth dying over? Maybe not, but as long as there is no consequence to getting it wrong, there is literally zero incentive for public officials to get it right, especially those wanting to prove themselves “tough on crime”
I’m not sure why you act as if all innocent people are completely innocent. It could be that they made mistakes and we’re careless and that was a part of what led them to being falsely convicted.
Literally zero incentive is an extremely high bar and certainly incorrect.
I understand wanting to ensure there’s a better incentive than currently exists, but giving them the death penalty for false death penalties is just a roundabout way of stopping the death penalty. So you may as well just do that directly.
Wow.
What I mean is that take a situation where someone was convicted of murder, but the reality is that was a false conviction and they were only guilty of manslaughter.
I shouldn’t have used the “innocent person” phrasing because that’s too low resolution for this discussion. You can’t always neatly put a person into innocent/guilty categories.