
The Death Penalty in Louisiana - selimthegrim
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/06/revenge-killing
======
sageabilly
"Cox does not believe that the death penalty works as a deterrent, but he says
that it is justified as revenge."

That is so, so fucked up. An attorney, someone whose job it is to
_impartially_ argue the law, _equally_ to everyone, saying "Yeah you know, we
kill people _FOR REVENGE_." Not even, you know, hey if we have the death
penalty it'll maybe make people think twice about committing a serious crime,
but straight up saying "We're gonna get _REVENGE_ on anyone who dares defy the
law!" JFC.

*Edited to change judge to attorney

~~~
kazinator
Punishments for crimes are not merely deterrents; that is a secondary role.

Punishments are ... punitive, of course!

Suppose you break into someone's house and steal 50 bucks. You aren't just
forced to return 50 bucks; you go to jail for a while.

Even in civil suits, there are "punitive damages": remedies awarded to a
plaintiff beyond actual damages.

If you kill someone, then killing you is not even punitive really; it's like
taking 50 bucks from someone who stole 50 bucks. The revenge is less than
punitive. It's not true revenge. True revenge has a punitive aspect: it goes
beyond the original offense. Killing is only revenge if the method is more
fearsome and painful.

If a killer tortures someone to death, but is given a quick and merciful
death, that falls short of revenge.

Anyway, deterrent value must never be the focus; that is a pseudo-intellectual
liberal angle which detracts from the morality of the situation, which is
about justice.

If a punishment's ability to deter is considered important, that leads to
injustice. For instance, big punishments are handed down for small crimes to
"make an example" which discourages others. E.g. six month prison terms aren't
deterring petty pickpockets in some area, so we crank it up to five years.

~~~
carlob
IIRC in Turkey, they reintroduced death penalty for kidnapping and the number
of people rescued from kidnapping declined dramatically: it is much simpler to
do away with witnesses.

You can say you don't believe in deterrents, but you surely cannot believe
that it's good to have punishments that encourage to commit more crimes.

For what is worth I agree with you that deterring from committing crime is not
the primary purpose of legal punishment, but I think that the primary purpose
should be reeducation and reintroduction in society. You'll probably call that
a crypto-socialist intellectual angle, but I don't think a just society can
exist with both death and life penalty.

~~~
kazinator
> _You can say you don 't believe in deterrents, ..._

But your example is precisely of a deterrent gone wrong.

They clearly tried to deter kidnapping by making it a capital offense, and it
backfired.

It is also unjust: an extreme version of my fictitious example of giving petty
shoplifters five year sentences.

Zeal to create a deterrent resulted in a horribly unjust law, which backfired
on top of that.

> _I think that the primary purpose should be reeducation and reintroduction
> in society_

Reeducation is more suitable for exhibitionists, shoplifters, embezzlers, ...

The risk of re-offending is there, but nobody dies, and there is a chance for
improvement.

When it comes to violent crime, the focus of the criminal justice system must
be to protect people.

~~~
carlob
In another comment you said that one homicide should be punished by death in
the exact same form. This would have the exact same effect as the kidnapping
example: if you killed one person why not kill 50?

~~~
kazinator
I wrote no such thing in that other comment. I said that such a punishment is
_just_ and concluded the comment with a remark that though just, it is not
necessary to implement. The intent was to argue that even a barbaric form of
capital punishment is just, never mind "regular" capital punishment.

> _if you killed one person why not kill 50?_

The simple fact that you can only be executed once already encourages multiple
murders. However, you have a very valid point here in that some killers would
be otherwise satisfied in perpetrating a single murder that involves torture
might, out of fear of a tortuous execution, opt for "quantity over quality"
and kill more people in a quick and clean manner.

------
nickthemagicman
I live in Louisiana. America has the highest incarceration rate per capita
amongst all countries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in America.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_incarceration_rate)

Tis truly a messed up place.

~~~
acquihelpHN
Something doesn't add up. The country list puts the US incarceration rate at
707 per 100k, but the state list gives an average of 478 per 100k including
federal, which the highest state not even breaking 700. What gives?

~~~
andrelaszlo
"Jail and federal prison inmates are not included in the state rates."

------
eghad
How is that we have a system where we have an assistant district attorney (now
running for DA) who not only openly believes we need to kill more people, but
thinks they deserve to suffer as much physical pain as "humanly possible"? I
mean his own colleagues question his mental instability, and nothing happens.
When no one is willing to actually disbar someone like this, where are the
effective checks on power?

~~~
kazinator
That is clearly wrong; they only deserve to suffer as much pain as they
inflicted, not as much as possible.

Ideally, offenders eligible for the death penalty should perish in exactly the
same circumstances as what they inflicted. Someone who starved an infant to
death should be starved; someone who strangled ought to be strangled and so
on.

(By and large it's good enough to have them permanently gone by any means.
That's the important thing: erasing the mistake.)

~~~
jkyle
Would you consider the guaranteed percentage of innocently convicted being
starved, strangled, or any number of unimaginable torturous horrors committed
to them at great pain and distress acceptable collateral damage in a quest to
exact sadistic justice?

~~~
kazinator
I only described what I think is just, not arguing that it should actually be
implemented. There are numerous problems with actually implementing the
concept, not the least of which is that it is being barbaric, and requires
psychopathic executioners that only differ from the convict in that what they
are doing is legal in its context.

------
sschueller
Why does the US use a complex 3 injection cocktail?

In countries where assisted suicide is legal people just swallow a pill and go
peacefully to sleep. Yet in the US there is this "crisis" of not being abel to
source the injections needed.

Pets are also put down very easily with a single injection which makes them go
to sleep and the heart beats slower and slower until it stops in a few
minutes.

~~~
tokenadult
_Yet in the US there is this "crisis" of not being abel to source the
injections needed._

Many medical doctors (persons with legal authority to prescribe drugs) and
pharmacists (persons with legal authority to dispense drugs) object to capital
punishment, and thus will not supply prisons with drugs that have the sole
purpose of killing someone.

~~~
gadders
So they wouldn't supply medication for assisted suicide either?

Also, allowing people to opt out on supplying the drug on matters of
conscience is a slippery slope. What about letting people opt-out of providing
abortions? Or marrying gay couples? A case could made for people refusing to
do these as matters of conscience as well.

~~~
tP5n
No, it's not a slope. Gay marriage and the death penalty are two very
different things and I can't believe I'm typing this out.

There also numerous reasons to be against the death penalty but not abortions,
but something tells me I'd rather not have this discussion here and now [1].

[1] for what it's worth, an example not related but relevant:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770221)

~~~
blfr
They're not very different if you believe that personal ethical beliefs can be
used as a justification to not provide a service.

~~~
chucksmash
If you supply drugs to be used in an execution, you are part of a chain of
actions that ends with the intentional taking of a life.

If you bake a cake for a gay couple, you are part of a chain of actions that
sort of, kind of, indirectly might offend your sensibilities.

Those two outcomes are vastly dissimilar - equating them because they are both
"doing things you object to as a matter of conscience" is too reductionist by
half.

~~~
blfr
If you supply drugs (or facilities) to be used in an abortion, you are part of
a chain of actions that ends with the intentional taking of a life. Same with
assisted suicide.

But even the magnitude cutoff is arbitrary. At which point is the result "bad
enough" that ethical reservations start to apply?

------
ablation
No matter how many times I read about the death penalty in America, I just
can't wrap my head around the fact that it still exists, that the powers that
be kill their own citizens in such a way.

It's so incredibly horrifying to me that it almost becomes an abstract
concept, but then you read an article like this and - guilty or innocent - the
true human cost and all that associated suffering comes right back to you.

~~~
seivan
What do you suggest in regards for money being spent on containing people who
have zero chance on rehabilitation?

Sweden can't afford cancer medication for certain people, but has no issues
containing violent sadists.

[http://www.svd.se/effektiv-cancermedicin-anvands-
inte](http://www.svd.se/effektiv-cancermedicin-anvands-inte)
[http://www.sydsvenskan.se/skane/hon-fick-ny-cancermedicin-
ut...](http://www.sydsvenskan.se/skane/hon-fick-ny-cancermedicin-utomlands/)

Some people in the middle east tortured children, women and committed other
atrocities while laughing and recording it.

Whats your take on that?

~~~
DanBC
The death penalty is more expensive than life in prison.

If the US didn't imprison so many people they'd easily be able to afford to
house the actually violent criminals.

~~~
maxlybbert
That's only true because the cost of appeals is included in the cost of having
somebody on death row.

For the record, I'm very happy that people on death row get so many appeals.
I'm very happy that some of those appeals are automatic (all states I'm
familiar with automatically appeal any death penalty sentence to the state
supreme court).

But given that the average death row inmate lives 20 years or so in custody,
and that the average life sentence prisoner lives two or three times that
long, and assuming that the people on death row don't get incredibly expensive
food, it seems that the only reasons for a difference would be increased
security costs (are life sentence inmates less likely to try to break out?) or
costs not directly related to jail, such as legal appeals.

We could save a lot of money by simply denying appeals to inmates on death
row, but I don't think that would be an improvement. If anything, the
difference in cost between death row and life imprisonment suggests that life
sentences aren't getting the same scrutiny that death sentences get, and we
probably have more innocent people serving life sentences than awaiting
execution.

~~~
kawakiole
How on earth is the cost of a legal appeal not directly related to jail?

~~~
maxlybbert
The statement that "putting people on death row costs more than putting them
in prison for life" is incomplete. The complete statement is "under our
current legal regime, including costs of various appeals, putting people on
death row costs more than putting them in prison for life."

Since the costs of appeals dwarfs all other relevant costs, it's just as true
to say "under the current legal regime, appeals for death row inmate cost much
more than appeals for life sentence inmates." That's a very different
statement, and not necessarily something we want to fix.

If we did want to fix it, we could either spend less money on appeals for
death row inmates (make it much harder to get off of death row/get
exonerated), or spend more money for appeals for life sentence inmates.

Indeed, it might just be that we aren't doing everything we should to find
wrongfully convicted inmates who weren't given the death penalty.

But that's certainly not the message people seem to be trying to make with the
statement. The message I've always heard was "it would cost less to put him in
jail for life." Or "it would cost less to get rid of the death penalty
altogether." The first message has less impact when you realize that the costs
involved are nearly all about legal appeals, not about running a prison,
feeding the prisoners, etc. The second message is provably false: in a regime
without the death penalty, the resources currently used to get people off
death row would be used to get people out of life sentences.

------
mcherm
This article has little to do with startups, technology, or "hacker news". But
it is of the utmost importance to human beings, and hackers are human also.
That is why I voted up this article.

------
saturdaysaint
If "deterrence" theories had any validity, the Middle Ages would be remembered
as a golden age of peace and civility. Conversely, shouldn't states without
the death penalty be positively crime ridden compared to the revenge-happy
southern states? I'm being somewhat trite, but it doesn't take too many
thought experiments and statistical exercises to see that revenge doesn't
serve justice.

------
selimthegrim
Personally, after the paragraph describing Nathan Bedford Forrest's picture in
the DA's office, I had to get up and take a break from reading. Even as
someone who lives in New Orleans, the wat/paragraph ratio was > 1 for this
article.

------
crisnoble
Dale Cox was only one person in the article who I felt deserved to be put on
put on trial.

------
dr_hercules
BBC - The Science of Killing Human Beings:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQoyRs5cWc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQoyRs5cWc)

It's easy, safe, cheap and humane to suffocate a delinquent with Nitrogen.

Those features are also obvious - so of course there are people in charge how
do want the condemned man to suffer while dying.

------
Shivetya
The death penalty isn't the problem and never has. There are far too many
people who have no place in society and there is zero benefit to society to
continue their existence.

That being said, abuse by the legal system of those who cannot afford to
defend themselves properly has gone on for far too long and its not just a
Southern thing. From the bail bond market to the plea bargain junket of
Federal Courts, justice isn't the goal, successful prosecution is.

So until the goal posts are moved we are not going to fix this situation.

~~~
Justsignedup
The death penalty is a problem:

\- it never really acts as a deterrent

\- often the person on death row is basically in solitary confinement. So even
if they are released, they are released crazy

\- the penalty is quite final. there is no appealing afterwards

\- it is mostly about revenge

\- ripe with abuse

~~~
at-fates-hands
You forgot the part about executing innocent people.

Currently the rate is roughly for every 10 guilty people who are executed, 1
innocent person is executed.

I don't care how you cut that statistic, it's too much.

~~~
just_had_tea
Wow, that's really sad. Do you have a link for that statistic? How is it
determined?

~~~
at-fates-hands
It's from the statistics of people on death row being exonerated for their
crimes:

[http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/...](http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/argument3a.htm)

 _Since 1973, at least 121 people have been released from death row after
evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 982
people have been executed. Thus, for every eight people executed, we have
found one person on death row who never should have been convicted._

