
This year we can end the death penalty in California - abstractbill
http://paulgraham.com/prop62.html
======
jacquesm
The single best reason why the death penalty should be abolished is because it
does not have an 'undo' button. It's bad enough if people get jailed for a
long time when they are innocent, it is _much_ worse when they're murdered by
the state for crimes they did not commit.

Other important work done:

[http://www.innocenceproject.org/](http://www.innocenceproject.org/)

edit: sad to see this thread flagged off the homepage.

~~~
jsjohns2
The lack of an "undo" button is not exclusive to the death penalty, many
serious forms of punishment are irreversible.

Why, in your view, is it much worse for the state to jail an innocent person
for a long time (say, their entire adult life) instead of killing them?

~~~
jernfrost
That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person afterwards.
But I think it is a fair point, which is why I am also against harsh prison
conditions. I think prison should mainly be about rehabilitation and shielding
society from the danger of the person. If prison mainly means losing freedom,
you aren't necessarily ruined mentally when you get out.

~~~
xiaoma
> _That is bad, but you can compensate an wrongfully jailed person
> afterwards._

How do you compensate someone for being imprisoned (and likely raped) from the
age of 28 to 45?

In many cases, the death penalty is more humane.

~~~
jacquesm
Failure of the prison system to protect its inmates should not become a factor
in deciding whether or not it is more 'humane' to kill them outright.

The you might as well kill all prisoners because it is more humane, after all
where would you draw the line, 5 years, 10 years, 15 or 20, it's all time that
has passed.

Compensation should be of such a magnitude that it incentivizes society to
make sure it happens as little as possible.

------
AnimalMuppet
Back in the day, there was a serial killer named Ted Bundy. He killed a number
of women, was imprisoned, escaped (twice) and killed at least three more
people.

That kind of incident makes the problem much more complicated. The typical
argument against the death penalty is that sometimes innocent people are
executed. And it's true, and it's horrible. But if you don't execute them,
then the alternative is that they should be in prison for the rest of their
life. If they're innocent, that's still pretty horrible. The _real_ objective
is to keep innocent people from being convicted in the first place.

But like many other situations, the false positive rate and the false negative
rate are inversely correlated. How many guilty people should we free to avoid
sending one innocent person to prison? The obvious answer is "as many as we
have to" \- it's not acceptable to have innocent people in prison. But if
we're talking about serial killers, that question becomes "How many innocent
people do we want to see dead on the streets to avoid sending one innocent
person to prison?"

Back to the death penalty. Sometimes guilty people escape, too, and sometimes
they kill people after they escape. Executed people don't kill anyone ever
again. So, how many innocent people are you willing to execute in order to
prevent innocent people dying on the streets?

This stuff is very difficult. But given less-than-perfect prisons, I can see a
case for keeping the death penalty for serial killers.

~~~
jernfrost
If we cared about this, then why is revenge the core focus on American justice
system and not rehabilitation?

When people exit the prison system un-rehabilitated they will hurt more
people.

I think this is a more important question. Why is revenge given priority over
avoiding new victims?

Also if one actually cares about life, why are prisons such overcrowded hell
holes that prisoners get shanked and killed on a regular basis?

This is my issue with this sort of reasoning as it easily becomes cherry
picking of issues to support harsher justice system while ignoring all the
related issues which speaks for a milder system.

------
boterock
I find interesting that you in the US are thinking in banning the death
penalty.

Here in Colombia death penalty was banned about a century ago, unfortunately,
it has done more harm than good, because criminals (even very bad ones, the
kid rapists and stuff) are not scared of prison, prisons are so crowded that
sentences are short
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Garavito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Garavito)
is a good example, I don't think a lifetime of prison would forgive all he
did, he should be condemned for 1800 years) and this has led to crime rise.

There is a common belief that politicians banned death penalty long ago to be
able to be corrupt without any risk, in the long run if they're not dying,
they could steal a lot of money and then use half of it to get out of prison
early.

I know US corruption is not as bad as Colombian corruption. Unfortunately we
have to deal with our system, and the ban of death penalty has kept terrible
people in our country for a long time. It may be unethical to kill someone,
but in the end is the lesser evil, because it will never compare to the harm
that this person does to the society. As a Colombian I feel that corruption
and crime is going down now, and we are proud for it, but I also feel that if
we took the 'evil' decision earlier, we would be much better now.

~~~
aoeuasdf1
There's two parts that I'm still not sure about here - a question of moral
weight W: 1 * innocent prisoner executed == W * innocent victim of crime

and two epistemic questions, how many innocents X are executed per guilty
person, and how many victims Y are saved on average by the disincentive caused
by executing one guilty prisoner?

Per guilty person executed, we save Y lives and we are penalized W * X. Is Y >
W * X? If so it seems reasonable to keep the death penalty, all things being
equal (ignoring the cost of litigation vs. prison time, etc)

Does anyone have sources for what the values of any of these numbers should
be?

------
silencio
Don't forget to explicitly vote no on 66 if you are voting yes on 62. If both
of them pass, the one with more 'yes' votes will supersede the other.

~~~
noobermin
States should not allow two propositions that contradict each other to be put
up for vote simultaneously. They are generally confusing and almost always
favor the status quo at the expense of most citizens who don't have time to
understand the nuances of each prop/issue/initiative/ammendment.

~~~
shalmanese
You should try and get that as a proposition on the next ballot.

------
danhak
Important note on Prop 66, which PG unfortunately glossed over: it will
override 62 if it passes with more yes votes than the other measure.

Therefore, if you're opposed to the death penalty and intend to vote yes on
both measures--reasoning, for instance, that the reforms on 66 such as
expedited appeals for death row inmates are an improvement regardless of
whether 62 passes--you're undermining your own vote.

~~~
sdml
> a yes vote on 66 overrides a yes vote on 62

That's not entirely true. In the event that both propositions pass, whichever
proposition received more yes votes will supersede the other
[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_66,_Death_Pen...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_66,_Death_Penalty_Procedures_\(2016\))

~~~
danhak
Good point, I should've been more precise. Edited the comment accordingly.

------
jf
pg has put his "money where [his] month is" on this proposition:
[http://votersedge.org/en/ca/ballot/election/area/42/measures...](http://votersedge.org/en/ca/ballot/election/area/42/measures/measure/2025?id=statewide-42-ca#organizations-
Yes)

~~~
amha
$500K! Thanks, pg! I wish I could donate that much.

------
justinzollars
The death penalty never made sense to me. We teach our kids its wrong to kill
by killing? I'd rather the person spend their life in jail to think about what
they have done.

~~~
mikeash
I'm against the death penalty, but I don't think that argument holds up very
well. We say it's wrong to kidnap people and hold them against their will, but
we put people in prison as punishment. We say it's wrong to steal, but we use
fines as punishment. Pretty much by definition, any effective punishment has
to be something that's wrong to do to people in general.

~~~
wolfgke
> We say it's wrong to kidnap people and hold them against their will, but we
> put people in prison as punishment.

This is rather an arguments against prisons to me.

> We say it's wrong to steal, but we use fines as punishment.

Objectivists would indeed argue this is an argument against taxes.

~~~
mikeash
Saying all of these things are wrong is indeed consistent, but I don't think
many people would agree that it's a good idea to have no way to enforce laws.

------
afarrell
Note that this would only end it for crimes that fall under the state's
jurisdiction. For things like transporting people across state lines to kill
them or using a weapon of mass destruction in a manner detrimental to
interstate commerce, the death penalty could still apply on a federal level.

~~~
mdemare
So if somebody sets off a nuclear bomb, the feds are fine with it as long as
it does not hurt interstate commerce?

I know, constitution and all. But still, that sounds a bit mercantile.

~~~
detaro
Conventional explosives count as "weapons of mass destruction" as well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Cri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction#Criminal_.28civilian.29)
. And I guess the "interstate commerce" example comes from criminal code about
terrorism:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332a](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332a)

------
danieltillett
There is one good reason to keep the status quo (death penalty without any
actual deaths) which is that anyone given a death sentence gets their case
extensively reviewed and appealed by excellent lawyers working pro bono. The
people who get life get no help at all.

I have read of prisioners being upset when given a life sentence as they know
that no one will help them appeal their conviction. If you are innocent you
want to be given a death sentence since you will have so many more people
helping you get your conviction overturned.

~~~
nothrabannosir
What's to say banning He death penalty entirely won't move that pro bono work
to life sentences, even if only partially..?

~~~
danieltillett
Well it might, but given it doesn’t now in states without the death penalty
there is no reason to think it will in the future.

I know if I was innocent and poor and had been convicted of a crime that was
either life in prison or death that I would want a death sentence.

------
ikeboy
> In the real world, about 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent. So
> this is not about whether it's ok to kill killers. This is about whether
> it's ok to kill innocent people.

>A child could answer that one for you.

[http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm](http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm)

N>25 [0]

[0] Graham, 2016

~~~
mturmon
Cute, but fallacious. To unpack, you seem to be arguing that since 4% of
people sentenced to death are innocent, then about 1 in 25 people are wrongly
convicted, and PG is saying that ratio is unacceptable.

I think your probabilistic reasoning is a bit off (by confusing P(I|DS) with
P(DS|I)).

But the actual issue is about the punishment, not the guilty/innocent
determination. So in other words, PG doesn't seem to be making any claim about
the size of the group of "n guilty men" \-- but rather about the way they can
be punished.

~~~
ikeboy
Saying we shouldn't punish anyone with the death penalty, because 1 in 25 of
them will be innocent, is making a claim about n guilty men. From my link:

>Commandments for man can be found in the book of Exodus, by the same
Author(s), where God rejects the tradeoff between convicting the guilty and
convicting the innocent, and simply commands, "the innocent and righteous slay
thou not." 32 One can take this to imply an infinite value of n, at least in
capital cases. The twelfth-century Judeo-Spanish legal theorist Moses
Maimonides, however, interpreted the commandment of Exodus as implying a value
of n = 1000 for execution. 33 He refers to it as the "290th Negative
Commandment" and argues that executing an accused criminal on anything less
than absolute certainty would lead to a slippery slope of decreasing burdens
of proof, until we would be convicting merely "according to the judge's
caprice. Hence the Exalted One has shut this door" 34 against the use of
presumptive evidence, for "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a
thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent man to death once in a
way." 35

There may be multiple ns required, one for conviction and one for punishment,
but the underlying structure is the same.

>To unpack, you seem to be arguing that since 4% of people sentenced to death
are innocent, then about 1 in 25 people are wrongly convicted, and PG is
saying that ratio is unacceptable. I think your probabilistic reasoning is a
bit off (by confusing P(I|DS) with P(DS|I)).

I'm not sure what you mean. If 25 people are sentenced to death, and one of
them is innocent, then PG is arguing we should let 24 guilty men escape death
rather than allowing 1 innocent man to be killed. I guess maybe I should have
said n>24, then, but the overall point remains.

~~~
jacquesm
No, it doesn't. They won't escape death, they'll be dead sooner or later
anyway. It is just that society will not have lowered itself to their level in
response _and_ will have an opportunity to figure out which of those people
was in fact innocent.

It's all fun and games until _you_ are that innocent person.

~~~
ikeboy
Don't be pedantic, you know I meant "escape the death penalty".

Are you arguing for n=infinity?

~~~
jacquesm
Well, it all depends on how many people you intend to kill, it's all about the
ratio npeopleinnocent/npeopleguilty after all.

The problem is that no matter how small the ratio gets in absolute terms there
is only the possibility of killing an innocent person or not killing an
innocent person. Even if you assume that _everybody_ is guilty I'd still make
the argument that people can genuinely change and that no matter what you do
you will not be bringing anybody back that's already dead.

Think of still having the death penalty as a black mark on a civilization. As
a nice example have a look at the Philippines and try to work out for yourself
if you feel that even if society will be better afterwards it is worth it to
kill this many people, many of them in serious trouble already.

The extreme example of that is a society that simply kills everybody that is
convicted of a crime, after all, why not, it makes society better, right? Or
does it?

~~~
ikeboy
>Even if you assume that everybody is guilty I'd still make the argument that
people can genuinely change and that no matter what you do you will not be
bringing anybody back that's already dead.

That may be (and I agree with it), but I'm critiquing PG's argument (in
particular his assertion that it's obvious), not his conclusion.

>The extreme example of that is a society that simply kills everybody that is
convicted of a crime, after all, why not, it makes society better, right? Or
does it?

You need different punishments for different crimes, or someone who commits a
small crime has no more deterrence against big crimes. I'm not sure what point
you're making with this.

~~~
jacquesm
The justice system is - in principle - not about revenge but about balance, a
balance between running a safe society and one where people that misbehave are
placed in a spot where they can be re-habilitated and then can re-enter
society. That path is closed in an extreme way by killing someone, there is no
rehabilitation from that no matter what.

Deterrence and punishment have very little to do with each other (but
deterrence and the chance of being caught _do_ have a lot to do with each
other).

So fundamentally the justice system is not about punishment at all, though
from the victims perspective that might seem to be the case.

------
murtnowski
California already removed the death penalty in 1972 then later reinstated it.
This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and
denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they
wanted.

Since being reinstated only 13 people have been executed. And none in the past
10 years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Californ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_California#Executions_after_1976)

~~~
jernfrost
Why can't people speak in honest terms? What you mean isn't justice, but
revenge. Killing a killer will not undo the damage they have done. It will not
bring a life back.

If people require revenge for emotionally healing then that is because society
has promoted this as justice.

I've never heard of victims desiring death for killers in my home country, but
we are not so big on revenge and don't.

The American justice system frequently paints a trial as some sort of game,
where the victims family score more points in the competition for every year
extra the perpetrator gets in prison.

What about helping victims in meaningful ways instead? They might need mental
health care, time of from work, economic support etc. America tend to do
little in this regard.

It reminds me of the conservative desire to ban abortion, but unwillingness to
actually help a family in a difficult situation giving birth to a child.
Instead of making it easier to have a child so people themselves will chose to
keep it, instead they want to intimidate parents to keep it threatening with
prison and fines.

It is a fundamentally negative and cynical perspective on humanity. I guess
that is what you get when people follow a faith which teaches that people are
only good because the fear eternal punishment in hell.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Imprisoning a killer will not undo the damage they have done, but that doesn't
make imprisonment revenge.

~~~
alphapapa
Indeed, the concept of justice is strikingly lacking from these discussions.

------
AdamN
I agree, and smart of pg to stick to the most defensible reason not to have
the death penalty. Even in a world where we know the killer is a killer
though, it's unethical to do it.

------
cypherpunks01
Relevant article from The Marshall Project (in my opinion a very respectable
source), "Three States to Watch if You Care About the Death Penalty" referring
to Nebraska, Oklahoma and California ballot measures:

[https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/10/19/three-
states-t...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/10/19/three-states-to-
watch-if-you-care-about-the-death-penalty)

------
raverbashing
" This is about whether it's ok to kill innocent people."

So why is the discussion to eliminate the death penalty instead of ensuring
more oversight or limitations?

Something like:

\- Not applicable when only one murder committed

\- Bigger burden of proof for the DP to be applicable (not only relying on
witnesses, for example)

~~~
Analemma_
> So why is the discussion to eliminate the death penalty instead of ensuring
> more oversight or limitations?

The Supreme Court has gradually been mandating more and more oversight and
limitations on death penalty cases since 1976. It doesn't seem to have made a
major dent in the false conviction rate or the arbitrariness of when capital
punishment is used, especially with regards to race. And while I don't think
cost should even be relevant to the discussion, it's worth noting that these
limitations and oversight requirements- which still aren't good enough- are
the main reason why it costs 10 times more to execute someone than to put them
in prison for life. Combined with the death penalty's demonstrated lack of
deterrent effect - simpler and better to just get rid of it.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes, I agree. Maybe it's not more oversight, but better oversight

And of course, prosecutors that push dubious cases should be punished as well.

------
tptacek
This kind of post isn't going to change anybody's mind, and isn't intended to
(Paul Graham is a fine persuasive writer, and good persuasive writing tends
not to include appeals like "a child could answer that one for you").

No, this is just an update, for Graham's California readers, most of whom can
safely be assumed to agree with him, that they should take special care to
vote this year.

I'm glad California has a chance to end the death penalty this year. You'll
catch up to Illinois soon enough, Silicon Valley!

But this isn't the kind of post that finds a good home here on HN. This is the
kind thing you want to post (repeatedly) to Twitter. Here, it's just more
flame war stimulus.

I flagged this post --- and, because it's a PG post, did so vocally this time.
You should too!

~~~
jernfrost
So how do people ever change their mind on anything? I'd say that within any
group with a certain conviction there will always be people at the fringes
which are less convinced and who are willing to explore alternatives.

I once believed in the death penalty. I once believe in God. I was once a
libertarian. Of course a single person didn't change my mind on these points,
but being exposed to alternatives by many people over time changed my
perspective. Although I guess often simply seeking information is what
eventually does most to change opinions.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not arguing against persuasive essays. Persuasive essays are great. I'm
saying that this isn't a persuasive essay. It's a political bulletin. I agree
with its politics, but not with its place on the HN front page.

~~~
jacquesm
Even if the essay isn't persuasive the discussion could be.

I also think that your flag-marshalling is in pretty poor taste, flagging it
yourself for whatever reasons you have is fine but to call on others to do so
as well is really not good.

~~~
tedunangst
Isn't that exactly what the article is doing, calling on others to vote the
same way?

~~~
jacquesm
No, it isn't. Flags are counted asymmetrically compared to votes. But if you
want to be clever about it go ahead, personally I think it is against what HN
is about, if we're going to have flag brigading we might as well have vote
brigading. See also: digg.

------
grondilu
What is the acceptable rate of mistakes for the judiciary system? Death is an
irreversible punishment, so I can understand that it seems incompatible with a
wrong judge decision, but the alternative, that is for instance perpetual
incarceration, is only reversible on a very theoretical basis (if an innocent
is in prison, his case will be reviewed only if he's very lucky).

So arguably, any sentencing is unfair when it's wrong. Death only makes it
more obvious. Then, what's the acceptable error rate in a judiciary system?
The author mentions 4% being unacceptable. What about 0.1%? 0.0001%?

Crime can not be left unpunished, can it? And yet I doubt it is possible to
always be _absolutely_ sure of either guilt or innocence.

After all, doesn't the Law talk about "reasonable doubt"? Doesn't that also
mean by contraposition that below a certain threshold, it becomes unreasonable
to consider unlikely circumstances or extraordinary events that would prove a
defendant non-guilty?

------
rm_-rf_slash
Execution is cathartic but hardly effective. Clearly it does not deter
murderers as they believe they will either get away with it or they simply
don't care as long as they satisfy their need to kill.

The wrong people can be executed and unlike a prison sentence, there's no
going back.

Appeals can last for decades and waste enormous amounts of time and money.

End the death penalty. It's just not worth it.

~~~
jernfrost
I think research shows, that what people care about is the likeliness of
getting caught. The length of the sentence doesn't really have that deterring
effect. If it did then the US with each extremely long sentences should not be
having magnitudes higher homocide rate than European countries with rather
mild sentences.

------
Unbeliever69
I always think of Star Trek and how some advanced civilization or a future
version of ourselves will perceive the barbarism of our current society. I
would not be surprised if the earth gets paved over for an intergalactic
superhighway because frankly, we are not worth saving. Humans, have very
little humanity. We have a LONG way to go. This is a small start.

------
jernfrost
The death penalty makes no logical sense. It only appeals to primitive
emotions.

Why have a penalty which 1) Can never be reversed if you kill an innocent 2)
Cost a lot more than life in prison.

Now why it might be argued that a killer has no right to life, what about
those close to the killer? Killers might have a wife, husband, brother,
sister, friends, mother and a a father. By killing the killer you inflict
hardship on these people. To what purpose? In prison this person can't hurt
anybody else, so why unnecessarily reduce the life quality of somebody else.

I see it being argued that the victims families deserve this, but I think that
has been learnt and conditioned in society. E.g. in my own country Norway, I
hardly ever read about victims and relatives who desire a death penalty or any
particularly harsh or painful punishment. I think the desire for revenge is
something which is simply promoted by conservative christian groups.

~~~
a13n
The death penalty costs more than life in prison? Source?

~~~
Analemma_
It's a pretty well-known fact that execution typically costs around 10 times
more than life imprisonment. Here's a page with links to multiple peer-
reviewed sources, covering multiple states:
[http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-
penalty](http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty).

The issue is that the appeals process is extremely expensive and time-
consuming. You could conceivably simplify and streamline it (to the extent
permitted by the Supreme Court, which has been mandating ever-stricter
requirements for capital punishment cases), but that would make it even more
unacceptably error-prone than it already is.

------
bolocker
Why can't we just get that 4% bad convictions down to 0% for the death
penalty? There are many cases where no one disputes the guilt of the
perpetrator, like mass shooters or murderers that film themselves in the act.
Death penalties could have an even higher standard.

I've noticed a strange pattern where wealthy elites like Paul Graham are
obviously very disturbed by things like the death penalty, animal rights, and
tragedies they see overseas but can hardly be bothered to care about the great
suffering poor people face generally.

The only issues that they care about are ones that directly affect their own
conscience and mental well-being.

"The death penalty is bad because it makes me feel bad"

Whereas people who don't live such privileged lives can see so many worse
problems in everyday life, like being hungry, suffering from bad/no medical
care, to being victimized by street crime.

~~~
Karunamon
_The only issues that they care about are ones that directly affect their own
conscience_

Is it not a prerequisite that a wrong begin to effect your conscience before
you want to do something about it?

~~~
bolocker
Yes but if you live in an elite life bubble you'll only care about things that
make it through that bubble.

Why are so many rich celebrities obsessed with animal rights, the death
penalty, and climate change?

Because those issues affect them personally in some way. They gnaw at their
conscience in a way that the extreme suffering of hundreds of millions of
their fellow citizens does not.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I don't think this is right. Climate change is not known for personally
affecting anybody. It's more of an ineffable millenarian idea.

Rather, I would say rich celebrities are obsessed with animal rights, the
death penalty, and climate change because those ideas are fashionable among
rich celebrities, not because they're relevant to rich celebrities for any
fundamental (i.e. would still apply if no one knew what the celebrity
believed) reason.

~~~
bolocker
Plenty of educated elites are well aware the problems climate change could
cause for them personally. Civil unrest, rising sea levels, and pollution.
Things personal wealth only partially mitigates.

------
eikenberry
Is it better to kill an innocent or let them spend their life in jail? Given
the states of our jails, I'm not sure but I think I'd prefer death.

~~~
carapace
Well, okay, when _you_ are wrongly convicted and sentenced to life in prison
_you_ can request execution. For _every other innocent person_ that's wrongly
convicted let's _not murder them_ against their will, eh?

(Also, let's _fix the jails and prisons_!)

~~~
pm90
Its hard to fix the jails and prisons when widespread poverty still exists in
society, for the simple reason that if the prisons offer a better lifestyle
than living in the society, more people would choose to go to prison.

~~~
maxerickson
There are many changes that could be made to prison without making it a better
option than living free but below the poverty line.

~~~
carapace
Inverting the logic: We must let or make the conditions in our prisons be
harsh, harsh enough so that poor people don't commit crimes just to get "three
hots and a cot" on the taxpayers' dime.

Doesn't that sound insane?

Let's fix the prisons, _and_ let's have something like a basic standard of
living, below which we only let people live if they want to. I.e. so-called
Universal Basic Income, or something. I think we should literally give people
housing, food, water, and health care, just because.

------
ggonweb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation)

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer",

~~~
bolocker
At 4% it would be "It is better that twenty five guilty persons escape than
one innocent suffer."

------
maerF0x0
IMO I cannot fathom being sure enough of anything to without doub deem someone
unredeemable. To the extent that people are unredeemable is to the extent I
think our rehabilitation system is failing.

------
gxs
I like his message mainly because I agree with the death penalty in principle.
If you want to be a shitty human being, with 7B people on the planet we don't
really need you.

But, in practice, we will never get it 100% right. Probability of killing an
innocent person will always be >0.

For that reason alone, we should get rid of it.

~~~
mibbiting
Nothing is 100% certain. If you perform a heart operation, there's a chance
you'll kill the patient. Does that mean we should get rid of heart operations?

If you put a serial killer to death, you can be 100% sure they won't kill any
more people. If you put him in prison, you can't. He may escape, or he may get
released early and kill again. Or as often happens, he'll kill other prisoners
whilst in prison.

It's a question of whether you value potential victims, or potential falsely
convicted innocent people. IMHO the former is a far bigger problem.

~~~
gxs
This is a bit of a red herring as I am making no assertions regarding what
else may or may be assured 100%.

We have different tolerance for accuracy depending on the context, and my
assertion was that in this case 100% would be necessary for, at least me, to
feel comfortable carrying out the punishment.

~~~
mibbiting
But my point is that are you just "ignoring" the other side of the argument -
if you don't put a serial killer to death, there's a chance others will be
killed.

If you don't put them to death, can you be 100% sure saving that life isn't
going to cause more people to die?

It's not simply a case of "punishment". It's preventing further crime and
deaths.

------
njharman
Huh, surprised to learn CA has death penalty. In "good" company with thirty
other states.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States)

------
harryh
I, like pg, am against the death penalty but I don't agree with the reasoning
in this essay.

Of course there are error rates in our judicial system. It would be impossible
to not have them. But these errors are not confined to death penalty cases. We
surely wrongfully imprison some people, and wrongly fine others. That does not
mean that we shouldn't have fines or prisons.

I don't see a good justification to apply this reasoning to the death penalty
but not other forms of punishment.

~~~
J-dawg
You can release a wrongly imprisoned person or refund a wrongly imposed fine.

~~~
bluedino
You can't undo 10 years of imprisonment. You can't give back time or take away
what the person had to live through.

~~~
lr4444lr
And arguably, considering suicidal ideation of inmates and ex-inmates, may
itself create death. I'd be curious to know how the rates compare with
wrongful death penalty judgments.

------
avelis
Does a death sentence make us a better society for justice? I don't have an
answer to that question. However, it is a question I prefer to not have
experimented on in our justice system.

I recently watched the documentary 13th from Netflix. It really puts into
perspective our pro-incarnation justice system. While capital punishment and
death row is a section of our justice system, it has the highest stakes in
outlining where our ethical limits reside as a society.

------
paulddraper
> about 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent.

Be careful how you read this number.

This is NOT the proportion of convicts wrongfully killed. This is the number
that have wrongfully received a death sentence.

A death sentence is nearly always appealed, and usually multiple times.

The number of convicts sentenced to be executed that subsequently fail every
single appeal is likely far, far smaller than that statistic.

------
breatheoften
When I was young, I was certain the death penalty is obviously, trivially an
incorrect thing to do. Regardless of what was done, there was no cause for
society to choose to take someone's life.

Now that I'm older, I worry about the possibility that banning the death
penalty is an implicit acceptance of the policy of locking people away for
life. According to the article 4% of people who are sentenced to the death
penalty on death row are innocent. He doesn't offer statistics for the number
who actually receive the punishment however given that not all people on death
row are executed, and the significant resources devoted to the appeal process,
the percentage of innocents who are executed must be lower than the 4% who are
sentenced.

I must ask how many innocent people are sentenced to life in prison. I can't
imagine anything worse than an innocent person sentenced to life in prison --
and eventually dying in prison.

If we are to make decisions about punishment taking into account the
possibility of an incorrect sentence, I believe we need to be more realistic
with regard to the hierarchy of punishments that we are inflicting. A sentence
of Life in Prison carried to term is a worse punishment than Execution.

~~~
J-dawg
The US practice of locking people up for life is pretty shocking to many
people in Europe. In the UK, the number of people who will never be released
is somewhere around 50, in the USA it's something like 50,000.

Maybe I'm a limp wristed liberal, but 'Three strikes' has always seemed
utterly barbaric to me. Even its name being based on a sports metaphor seems
totally inappropriate for something so serious.

~~~
breatheoften
Wow -- US population is roughly 5x the UK population, yet we have 1000x people
serving life sentences ... I can't help but think of that quote that we should
judge the state of a society by the state of their prisons ...

I really wish we could do something to dramatically change the prison system
in the US -- its insane how much horrible inertia guides its current
trajectory ... Given how much more we know about humans than we did 200 years
ago, why aren't there better ideas on the role of prison and the justice
system disciplining their mutual evolution than were available in the past?

~~~
unclenoriega
I don't think the problem is a lack of ideas for a better prison system, it's
that people don't care. Most people assume that they'll never be in prison and
that the people who are deserve what they get—and that's if they think about
it at all.

If a politician does come along and try to change the system, he's got to
convince a lot of his colleagues that don't have a lot of reason to do
anything, and he's got to worry someone else will come along and tell voters
he's worried about making life good for criminals instead of better for good
people.

There's just no incentive.

------
amha
Thank you, pg, for this essay, and for putting money towards Prop 62. This is
such an important issue.

------
alphapapa
If the motivation for ending the death penalty is to avoid taking innocent
lives, what about how abortion takes innocent lives?

Regardless of where you stand on either issue, supporting one but not the
other seems like hypocrisy.

------
kumarski
I suppose the best hting we can do is share this post and go vote.

------
justabee
.

~~~
jacquesm
Except that historically it wasn't exactly a perfect record and faking
evidence is still quite possible.

Killing someone as punishment is simply not fault-proof and the whole idea
behind a justice system worthy of the name is that it tries very hard to
protect the innocent _even if that means some of the guilty will go free or
will escape punishment_. 'Perfect' evidence rarely is, and even confessions
are not always true.

~~~
justabee
.

~~~
jacquesm
You actually believe that present cases have 'perfect evidence'?

Preventable deaths are a step or two removed from state inflicted and
sanctioned murder.

~~~
justabee
.

~~~
jacquesm
> We shouldn't be coddling those who commit violent acts against others.

How is spending a lifetime in prison coddling?

> The derrent of death alone would save far many more people.

That isn't true, criminals as a rule have a hard time tying consequences to
their actions, have a high incidence of mental issues. If deterrence would
work at all it would be nice but it rarely does.

[http://nij.gov/five-things/pages/deterrence.aspx](http://nij.gov/five-
things/pages/deterrence.aspx)

~~~
justabee
.

~~~
jacquesm
You are tying all kinds of societal failures to the death penalty, killing
people will not solve any of that, it will in fact only make it worse.

But you're welcome to your own opinion, but 'you reap what you sow' applies to
societies just as it does to farmers.

Violence projected and practiced by the state will not help in moving society
to a more peaceful quadrant.

------
rndmize
I don't find the fact that some people are found innocent to be a convincing
reason to be against the death penalty. The replacement, which is life in
prison, strikes me as even less appealing. How is sending someone to jail and
leaving them there for 20 years only to figure out that people fucked up and
the guy wasn't actually guilty - "Sorry chap, but it's only a third of your
life we've ripped away from you, you've still got one third left!" \- any
better? I'd rather be dead.

~~~
brador
What if it was you? What if you were framed for a crime? Would you prefer the
death penalty then or only if it's someone else's head on the line?

State murder is an ugly business that has no part in any modern society.

~~~
rndmize
"What if it was me?" is exactly what I'm considering. Life doesn't have
infinite value in and of itself. Consider - if you were in a coma or
vegetative state, is that a life worth living, even if we have the technology
to keep that person alive? If you had Alzheimer's and were gradually losing
all mental faculties, would there be a point where you'd rather be dead?

I'd consider being in long-term or life prison to be the next closest thing to
those examples; a life without freedom, friends, family, with the potential
for a wide variety of suffering beyond that - poor medical, poor food, guard
abuse, fights, solitary, rape - what in this is worth living for? Prison is
specifically meant to be a punishment, not a rehabilitation. And then maybe
you get out a couple decades later, everything has changed, no one will hire
you, everyone has moved on...

