
The Case of Richard Glossip - david_shaw
http://pg.posthaven.com/the-case-of-richard-glossip
======
cjslep
Central Prison (where death row is for the state of NC) is right by NC State's
campus. While I was there I was a heavy metal radio host for WKNC, and
received a _lot_ of letters from death row inmates.

Very few letters were of the type I was expecting at the time: "Play this
Cradle of Filth song for me, or I will file down shards of my broken mirror in
order to kill you". Along with very entertaining, if graphic, pieces of
artwork.

Most of the letters were cordial, but gruff. Hard criticism of songs each
inmate did not like, glorified praise for the songs they did like. Rarely,
they would describe why a particular song was important to them and it was not
anything alien to my freshman self: lost love, old buddies, family, trying
times.

There was one I replied to and carried on a brief written correspondence with:
Tilmon Golphin. Make no mistake, there is no excuse for his actions. But what
I found fascinating was the attitude he decided to show in his letters; how
true his words were I cannot accurately judge. He showed me major regret of
brutally murdering officers of the law and provided no excuses, instead
showing acceptance of what he had done with his brother.

I later learned that particular case of his and his brother's is one where the
US Supreme Court's ruling in _Roper v. Simmons_ divided the sentences of the
brothers. Tilmon was 19, and his brother 17, so while both were sentenced to
death, the SCOTUS ruling means Tilmon is still on death row while his brother
is not.

I never would have thought I would learn so much from being a heavy metal
radio show host.

~~~
chch
I'd definitely read more stories about these letters; seems like a very unique
perspective!

I hadn't heard of Golphin before, so I was curious to read more, and it seems
that he's no longer on death row, as of December 2012:
[http://www.rrdailyherald.com/access/nc-judge-commutes-
deaths...](http://www.rrdailyherald.com/access/nc-judge-commutes-deaths-
sentences-cites-bias/article_8c458de6-45f9-11e2-9492-001a4bcf887a.html)

------
johnnyg
RE: How people are and the death penalty

The other day I was driving down the road and thinking about how people are.

It was 33 years coming but here's what hit me: people do what they want, even
in the face of devastating consequences.

See that long line outside any burger joint? See the stats on the amount of
hard drugs guaranteed to destroy your world we consume? See that person
cheating? See that DA wanting a win?

If you want a burger, a high, an orgasm or a conviction, you generally will
get it at some price that's ultimately...above market.

How much more prone to excess is someone in the heat of a moment? How unlike
the event does its moment by moment reconstruction during a trial appear? The
mismatch has always struck me as unjust. As people judging an event whose
experience they haven't had and haven't attempted to recreate. Though a jury
is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run through seems ripe
for reform.

An eye for an eye has its place. If you walk into a school, start shooting and
are captured alive - I think you just forfeited any claim on life or potential
rehabilitation.

Any shade of grey zooming out from that seems too hard for any government
system to decide well. I hear people say things in passing like "he only got
20 years". 20 years is a huge and devastating amount of time, as is one year.
As we've ramped up the time on these sentences and made it an all or nothing
proposition. Unfortunately, I don't think 20 years will do it if 1 year hasn't
and I don't think death will do it if 20 years hasn't.

Regarding Richard Glossip. I don't know him or his case. I don't know the
victim and while they won't return, there's a debt owed that I don't know how
to pay. I want Richard Glossip to live. I don't think taking another life will
pay the debt of the first. What I want most of all is for someone to tell me
how to pay that debt.

~~~
lisa_henderson
About this:

"Though a jury is a good idea and the best we've got, the process they run
through seems ripe for reform."

How do you justify the statement that a jury is the best idea that we have?
Germany has the concept of Schöffe, and some believe this offers results that
stick closer to the law than the jury system:

[http://www.britannica.com/topic/Schoffe](http://www.britannica.com/topic/Schoffe)

While any government of mortal human flesh must inevitably have some flaws,
the jury system seems especially bad at overcoming popular prejudice. In the
USA, "a jury of one's peers" has often meant a mostly white (or all white)
jury judging a black person, a circumstance that has given the USA many
hundreds of famous miscarriages of justice.

The system that grew out of English Common Law, and which dominates England,
Canada, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, is not the only system known to
liberal Western societies. The English system is unique in the authority it
gives to juries. Most of the Continental judicial systems either lack juries
or have juries whose goal is constrained relative to the English system.

A review of the legal traditions in liberal Western nations reveals a lot of
good ideas, many of which are probably superior to the jury system.

~~~
justin_vanw
Non common law countries have consistently suspended almost all civil rights
from time to time. In all the common law countries you list, this is basically
unheard of, at least in the last 400 years.

Our common law system has _evolved_ to be resilient against many different
things, rather than being designed to maximize efficiency of a few things. It
is certainly not perfect, there is no doubt of that. Combined with the culture
and other institutional patterns it has co-evolved with, it has proven
incredibly stable, open to evolving for the better, and has served our common
interests very well.

Perhaps Germany is better at overcoming prejudice, but that was after the
common law countries were forced to physically restrain them from aggression
and murder. The list of common law countries is also the list of countries
that have not had even a hint of losing their democratic institutions in
centuries. That is something you can't say about any other countries in the
world.

~~~
claudius
> Non common law countries have consistently suspended almost all civil rights
> from time to time.

 _Some_ civil law countries have suspended civil rights during the last 400
years. _Some_ common law countries have suspended civil rights during the last
400 years (e.g.: English revolution, detainment of Americans with Japenese
ancestry during World War 2).

> Combined with the culture and other institutional patterns it has co-evolved
> with, it has proven incredibly stable, open to evolving for the better, and
> has served our common interests very well.

Except when it doesn’t serve the common interests very well by, for example,
maintaining the legality of slavery well past the point it was abolished in
many (civil and common law) countries and by taking another 100 years to
reconsider the whole apartheid thing. In comparison, the civil law countries
in Scandinavia seem to have faired quite well on the civil rights front and it
was also civil, not common, law countries that drove the spearhead for women’s
suffrage.

> Perhaps Germany is better at overcoming prejudice, but that was after the
> common law countries were forced to physically restrain them from aggression
> and murder.

Ah, yes, the _famous_ French common law system based not at all on the Code
Napoleon and the equally famous Soviet common law system.

> The list of common law countries is also the list of countries that have not
> had even a hint of losing their democratic institutions in centuries.

Again, the English revolution comes to mind. Or that whole debacle where
slavery was only abolished after a bloody civil war in the _18_ 60s! Sweden,
Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland weren’t
exactly hotspots of instability either. And to be honest, I am not sure that
Quebec has seen many more fascist dictators than the rest of Canada, something
that would be implied by its civil law nature?

> That is something you can't say about any other countries in the world.

Except, of course, when you can.

~~~
justin_vanw
Well we'll see how long Europe can go before it completely burns itself down.
I think we are up to almost 70 years (the record is what, 99 years?).

------
gizmo
I encourage everybody to read up on the horrors of how the death penalty
functions in practice. Especially in combination with the plea-bargain system,
that effectively robs > 95% of suspects from their constitutional right to a
fair trial.

Finally -- and I know this is only a minor point in comparison -- it's worth
noting that pg doesn't have anything to gain by writing this, and people who
stick their neck out by writing about political issues inevitably get shouted
at. Soon enough publishing anything stops being worth the aggravation. So
credit goes to pg for standing up and speaking out, when it's all too easy to
be silent.

~~~
pdabbadabba
> I encourage everybody to read up on the horrors of how the death penalty
> functions in practice. Especially in combination with the plea-bargain
> system, that effectively robs > 95% of suspects from their constitutional
> right to a fair trial.

What do you mean by "in combination with," here? If you mean that the death
penalty is used to convince people to plead guilty, I'm with you. But if
you're saying that a large number of people who are sentenced to death were
pressured into pleading guilty, then I am skeptical, since it is unclear what
the defendant is receiving in exchange for the plea. (Usually it is a lighter
sentence...)

~~~
mikeyouse
I read his post as the death penalty can be a bludgeon that prosecuting
attorneys will wield to get many more plea bargains from people accused of
serious crimes. Pleading out to lesser offenses still with decades in prison
is a much different calculation for the accused if the alternative is a trial
with a death penalty vs. a trial with another decade or two on the end.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Plea bargains are a very core corruption of our justice system and should be
outright banned in every shape and form. Everyone who has ever accepted a plea
should have all punishments immediately ended (and any penalties accrued while
in prison just for a plea), but prosecutors would be allowed to bring trials
up against anyone freed to sentence them to their time served (the overload in
cases would force them to prioritize on only the worse offenders who probably
did do it while those who were forced to take a plea on dubious grounds would
be ignored and left to live their lives). And this would include compensation
for all those who have been imprisoned over a plea deal.

In short, every plea deal should be considered a grave injustice that needs to
be corrected.

Of course, it will never happen.

------
bruceb
Not the same case but Kayla Gissendaner is set to be executed tomorrow.
[http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/us/georgia-sets-
execution/inde...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/27/us/georgia-sets-
execution/index.html) Unless the Georgia parole board changes its mind. She is
guilty of having her husband killed. Guilt is not at doubt. The justice of her
punishment is.

Her children suffered from her crime but they are pleading to keep her alive.
She is the only parent they have. Killing their only remaining parent is
victimizing them again. Their pleas here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8pgceAhqJo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8pgceAhqJo)

Georgia parole board contact info: [http://pap.georgia.gov/contact-
us](http://pap.georgia.gov/contact-us)

~~~
appleflaxen
> Her children suffered from her crime but they are pleading to keep her
> alive. She is the only parent they have. Killing their only remaining parent
> is victimizing them again.

That's on Kayla Gissendaner; nobody else.

I'm personally against the death penalty under any circumstances, but this
particular case is no more or less egregious than any other.

------
emgoldstein
I have to wonder: before writing this essay, did pg read anything written by
anyone on the opposite side of this case? For instance, this?

[https://www.readfrontier.com/investigation/two-truths-
and-a-...](https://www.readfrontier.com/investigation/two-truths-and-a-lie-
what-records-interviews-reveal-about-richard-glossips-murder-conviction/)

If not, it seems like a pretty remarkable procedure to arrive at such a strong
conclusion, with no other information besides a brief summary by advocates for
the defense. Has pg ever served on a jury? If so, would he make his mind up
this way?

~~~
nkurz
Your questions (and link) are good, but I think you might be misinterpreting
Paul's logic. He hasn't concluded that Glossip is definitely innocent
(although he thinks he probably is), rather he's concluded that in the absence
of physical evidence and with the majority of testimony being provided by a
witness who has a clear motive to implicate someone else, that there must be
"reasonable doubt".

He may be wrong, and in particular "reasonable doubt" may not have the legal
definition that he thinks it does (legal terms rarely match common sense). But
his argument is not "Glossip is innocent", but "there is no way we have
sufficient evidence to kill this man without risking that we are killing
someone who might be innocent".

Have you served on a jury, by the way? I served as the foreman on one
relatively minor criminal case, and it did more to shake my faith in the rule-
of-law than any other (minimal) encounters I've had with the legal system. In
the end, we reached a unanimous "not guilty" in the case.

This was a difficult decision for all of us to reach, since the only way this
could be the "correct" decision was if both police officers who testified were
lying about significant details both in their report and on the stand. And yet
this is the conclusion we eventually all agreed upon as being the most likely
explanation for the way the pieces failed to fit together.

The defendant may well have done other illegal things, and possibly the world
would be a better place if he was behind bars, but as a jury we decided that
there was sufficient reason to doubt that he was guilty as charged. And yet
there was no particular guarantee that this case would turn out as it did. On
a different day, with a different jury, a different judge, or different
lawyers, (but the same defendant, witnesses, and evidence) a guilty verdict
seems likely.

As a limited participant in the legal system (but a "logical" computer
programmer) my assessment would be that if we have the death penalty, the
American jury system is practically guaranteed to occasionally sentence
innocent people to death. I'd guess that this is the part that bothers Paul as
well, I'd guess that he probably does have experience that leads him to
believe this, and I'd guess that his opinion on the matter is not likely to be
changed by a counterpoint that makes Glossip's guilt seem somewhat more
likely.

~~~
emgoldstein
I've served on two juries. In both cases, a drunk driver was acquitted. In
both cases, the defendant's guilt was obvious, and the cause was a single
juror who hated cops. (Or, more indirectly, the cause was an arrogant young DA
who wasn't aggressive enough in voir dire.)

On one of these cases, I was the last juror to hold out. It was like "12 Angry
Men" in reverse: "12 Hungry Men And Women." It was 5pm, I wanted dinner and so
did everyone else, and I didn't want to bring 11 other people back again
tomorrow. So I took the easy way out, as did 10 other people.

On our way out, the DA thanked us sarcastically and noted that the defendant
had two prior DUIs. If we'd given him a third, she pointed out, there might
actually have been consequences. As it was... I live in slight terror of
glancing at a newspaper and noting that he's erased someone's six-year-old,
just because I was hungry and wanted to go home for dinner.

To put it slightly differently: a few months ago, a woman in SF suffered the
death penalty. She was innocent. She just wanted to look at the sea lions, or
something. Unfortunately, San Francisco had sentenced her to death.

The executioner was an illegal-immigrant drifter who'd been pulled out of
ICE's deportation pipeline by "sanctuary city" policies originally intended
for intellectuals fleeing El Salvador in the early 1980s. A couple of days
before, he'd smashed the window on a car and stolen a gun, which he was using
(according to him) to shoot at sea lions. A bullet

Is her death an accident? How about Glossip's? I know of one billionaire who
cares a lot about Kathryn Steinle. I know of another billionaire who cares a
lot about Richard Glossip.

It seems to me both these deaths involve the action of the State, in choosing
to allow a human life to be taken -- in one case intentionally based on the
determination of guilt, in another case negligently, based on -- honestly, I
couldn't even tell you what this level of carelessness is based on.

Supposing Glossip is innocent -- which doesn't seem terribly likely once we
read the piece above, which is far more detailed and down-to-earth than the
emotional appeals that triggered pg. Then, his death would be an accident,
wouldn't it? The State did not set out to kill an innocent man. It didn't set
out to kill an innocent women, but it did that as well -- with far less
thinking than went into Glossip's case.

Suppose our other billionaire, the one we adore here instead of laughing at
for his ridiculous hair, had chosen to care about the other human life in
question. Or, more to the point, the next 1 or 10 or 100 that might be
sacrificed in this absurd and cavalier fashion. What would your response have
been?

~~~
nkurz
I appreciate the genuineness of your response, but again, I think you may
continue to misinterpret Paul's stance. I'm also not clear if Paul is the
"other billionaire" you refer to? I presume he's financially successful but I
don't know the degree. I should also be clear that I don't know him
personally, don't know his politics beyond broad strokes that he has written
about, and am interpreting based on what is written rather than inside
knowledge.

Personally, I'm not against the death penalty in theory. In certain cases,
executing criminals may be the best course of action. But I'd like it to be
reserved for cases where the guilt is certain and the debate is about the
severity of the punishment, rather than ones like this where the guilt itself
may be in doubt. My statement that juries are likely to occasionally sentence
innocent people to die does not necessarily mean that this is not the least
bad of the available bad options. I don't know enough about this particular
case to know whether this applies here.

    
    
      > Supposing Glossip is innocent -- which doesn't seem
      > terribly likely once we read the piece above, which is far
      > more detailed and down-to-earth than the emotional appeals
      > that triggered pg.
    

You're stretching here. I'd hope we would both agree that neither article
should be taken as proof of either guilt or innocence? And that neither of us
knows what other details Paul has or has not read? You started with a
legitimate question (has he read counter-articles) but now seem to be
presuming your conclusion, and then using that to make further unwarranted
logical leaps.

> What would your response have been?

I probably don't understand your question --- I think you are asking my
opinion on whether we should deport illegal aliens who are convicted of
violent crimes? If so, then yes. But more importantly I think we should
realign the rules we have on the books with the enforcement of those laws. I
generally have a stronger belief in rule-of-law as a principle than I have
belief that any particular law is or is not correct. I could be happy either
with stricter enforcement of current law, or movement toward something like
Appiah's Cosmopolitanism:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitanism)

~~~
emgoldstein
The other billionaire is Trump, of course.

My point is that if your concern (or pg's) is strictly of the form "minimize
the number of innocent people being killed unjustly," there are much more
effective reforms available than abolishing the death penalty. For example,
switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:

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

Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably save 10,000 to 15,000
innocent lives per year. And I mean certainly innocent lives, not conceivably
innocent lives (like Glossip's).

Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the opposite direction
than you and everyone on this thread is suggesting. That's why I posted this
under a throwaway.

Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of innocent lives taken
unjustly isn't the source of the general concern for Glossip, what is?

~~~
nkurz

      > The other billionaire is Trump, of course.
    

I understood that you were referring to Trump. I was (and still am) uncertain
if you were referring to Paul Graham as the (other) "other billionaire", or
whether this role was being played by a third party. I haven't previously seen
Paul referred to as a billionaire on this site, although I suppose he might be
one.

    
    
      > For example, switching to the Japanese criminal justice system:
    

Whether a good or bad idea, I don't think there is a reasonable mechanism for
switching our justice system in a wholesale manner. Alex Kozinsky (a US 9th
circuit judge) has an excellent paper (mentioned in another comment and
previously discussed here) on possible ways to improve rather than replace the
system:
[http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...](http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Preface.pdf)

    
    
      > Judging by comparative crime rates, this would probably
      > save 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives per year.
    

There is a great deal of confounding between societal norms and criminal
behavior. I'd expect (for example) that if we somehow transplanted the US
system to Japan, that crime rates would remain low. I don't know what the
effect would be if we somehow switched the US to a Japanese system of justice
while leaving the other elements of US society in place.

    
    
      > Of course, it would be a reform in more or less exactly the
      > opposite direction than you and everyone on this thread is
      > suggesting. That's why I posted this under a throwaway.
    

I think you underestimate the degree of diversity of opinion on HN, and that
your sense of "you and everyone" is misguided. Consider your own example of
serving on a jury: the visible average opinion may not adequately reflect the
individual views. I'm also surprised that you would feel that posting this
under a throwaway account is necessary.

    
    
      > Which raises the question: if minimizing the number of 
      > innocent lives taken unjustly isn't the source of the
      > general concern for Glossip, what is?
    

I don't have a particular concern for Glossip, and had not heard of him before
reading the parent article and the counter-article that you posted (which I
appreciated). My concern is not for preserving the lives of murderers (if they
are) but for preserving societal faith in the expectation of an impartial and
fair system of justice.

Having such an expectation is today commonly considered naivetee, but I think
a lot of the progress made in America in previous generations was because
there was a belief that such a system was possible. I'd like to try to restore
some of that faith, and avoiding high profile miscarriages of justice (I don't
know if this is one) is an important part of that restoration.

~~~
emgoldstein
Consider your objective of "restoring faith" and the means you (and many in
society who seem to agree with you) adopt to bring it about: propagating the
idea that miscarriages of justice frequently occur. Even if this isn't a
miscarriage. Even if Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Ahmed Mohamed, etc, aren't
miscarriages.

You could say: our means of increasing faith in justice is to tell everyone
that miscarriages occur all the time, even if they maybe don't, so that good
ordinary Americans will become more and more concerned and prevent
miscarriages, which will increase faith etc.

This is a very complicated and indirect way of purportedly getting the result
you want.

However, if you wanted exactly the _opposite_ result - that is, you wanted to
_decrease_ faith in the criminal justice system - what would you do? Answer:
give as much publicity as possible to miscarriages of justice, purported or
real.

Which is exactly what you're doing, right? Have you ever heard the thing about
what to do when you're in a hole?

Also, I'm quite aware that Americans aren't Japanese. On the other hand, I
seldom hear that awareness from people who point out how much better urban
life is in, say, Reykjavik rather than Detroit. And appear to believe that the
problems of Detroit can be solved by adopting the ideology and/or governance
structures of Reykjavik. (Which, in fact, has pretty much already happened -
if anything, the flow is in the other direction.)

As for throwaways: stay on the reservation, and you'll have nothing to fear.
Duck under the barbed wire, and you'll find out...

------
msabalau
It's increasingly seems that the powers of prosecutors are deployed in
arbitrary and unjust ways: either overreaching (as in the case of Aaron Swartz
or Xiaoxing Xi) or non-prosecution of police brutality or corporate crime
(just changing now that the statute of limitations run out on those
responsible for the 2008 financial crisis)

It's not clear what can be done about it, other than occasionally writing a
check to the ACLU to help limit the damage. Any ideas?

~~~
mistermann
I honestly think the only thing that could ever change it is if some vigilante
with nothing to lose started bringing the same flavor of extreme justice to
the doorsteps of the people passing it out - fear of _potential_ ramifications
will _very_ quickly change behavior.

~~~
tsotha
That would cause change, but in the opposite direction. People would rally
around judges and prosecutors and you'd see fewer people questioning the
status quo. It would be a disaster.

~~~
VLM
Both proposals have been purely theoretical. I can provide three practical
historical examples of turning it up to 11:

1) abortion clinic bombing changed nothing; if anything it helped raise funds
(you'd almost think they were false flag operations? Is there anything that
helped the pro choice cause more than the bombings?)

2) the War on drugs has ruined uncountable lives, certainly far more than
drugs have ruined, none the less neither the fear of drugs or the more
realistic fear of the war on drugs keeps people sober, business has always
been booming.

3) the war on black men has gotten about 1/3 of them involved in the criminal
justice system. The result? None, no change. They haven't become refugees,
their culture has changed as little as possible under the circumstances, no
serious rebellion...

In those three examples taking normal level actions and turning them up to 11
has either been utterly ineffective or counterproductive. I'd have to say the
tsotha theoretical model fits observed reality better, although I admit
further research could find observations overturning that... although I don't
expect it.

~~~
mistermann
Those aren't bad analogies, but I wouldn't consider them good.

1) The public and perhaps even many scholars are split on abortion - I
personally don't think there's a clear cut "correct" answer.

2) I wouldn't expect people to quit. Drugs are fun, most are relatively
harmless, using them is not immoral, and you most likely won't get caught.

3) Similar to #2, and much of the issues here are a direct result of #2

Turning it up to 11 (great expression btw) to be effective should be used only
when there is obvious wrongdoing, when innocent people are clearly being
railroaded by people who either know the person is innocent, or made no effort
to determine innocence (which, let's not forget, is the job they are being
paid very handsomely to perform). I'm not sure if this particular case is a
valid example example for turning it up to 11, but there are certainly plenty.
I think this would be effective, and I believe there would be widespread
public support with sufficient communication.

------
justin_vanw
So I just read whatever I could find on Richard Glossip and the case against
him. On it's face it seems very likely that he is guilty.

It appears that someone had been stealing money and cooking the books at the
hotels Glossip managed, and about the time his boss became aware of the theft,
the boss was murdered. He admits to knowing that the boss was murdered and
_Glossip admits_ attempting to cover up the murder, his plan being to dissolve
the body in acid. Glossip, as manager of the hotel the body was hidden in,
reassigned cleaning staff specifically to prevent them from discovering the
body. The person who is known to have performed the killing, an employee of
Glossip's, says he was paid to do the killing by Glossip. Glossip also split
money from the wallet carried by the man that was killed with the killer.

Glossip has had a trial and a retrial, and was convicted in both of them.

So maybe the death penalty is good, maybe it is bad. Clearly there is a
serious debate there, and I am not attempting to defend the death penalty
here. There is almost no chance that Glossip is innocent, and it seems clear,
to me at least, that the state demonstrated he is guilty to the required
standard.

~~~
afandian
In all of the mistrials and cases where innocent people have been killed,
_someone_ has thought the party was guilty. The thing that makes the death
penalty barbaric is that people have misplaced confidence in their opinions.

~~~
justin_vanw
There are two issues here that most commentary about this case seems to be
happy to conflate:

\- Is he guilty

\- Should he be executed

These are independent questions. One is a question of fact, and there seems to
be almost no credible reason to doubt his guilt.

The other is a question of ethics and policy.

As for your argument on why the death penalty is barbaric, it is not a valid
argument. Reductio ad absurdum, your argument implies that _every_ punishment
is barbaric, because all punishment is the result of people's 'misplaced
confidence' in their opinions. So if the death penalty is barbaric, it's
certainly not because of the reason you say.

Don't take that as an attempt to justify the death penalty. I believe that
almost all the prison sentences handed out in the US greatly exceed the
severity of the crime being punished. I can't understand why any prison
sentence would be for longer than 5 years in those cases where there is no
chance of a repeat offense, no matter what the crime was. I also can't
understand why we would ever want to let someone out of state supervision
(prison or other) if there is a very high chance they would commit additional
crimes if released.

~~~
afandian
You can't give someone their life back. Nearly any other punishment can be
stopped.

~~~
wtbob
You're right that you can't get someone his life back: you can't give back
someone the empty years he spent in prison; you can't remove the pain and
agony of years removed from polite society; you can't remove the cruelty and
abuse he experienced from other prisoners.

Punishment's unpleasant (that's its nature); death and imprisonment are
unpleasant.

And yet, there are crimes which deserve death. Not to execute vicious
murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice.

~~~
DanBC
> Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound
> miscarriage of justice.

That's a minority position. At least 100 countries don't use the death penalty
at all. Another 50 countries have a death penalty but haven't executed anyone
for at least 10 years. The 30 to 40 countries left are a list of oppressive
regimes or countries with corrupt justice systems or justice systems that do
not comply with human rights laws.

It's more likely that the US is in violation of human rights laws than all
those other countries have profound miscarriages of justice.

~~~
wtbob
> > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound
> miscarriage of justice.

> That's a minority position.

It's also correct. If 100 other countries jumped off of a bridge, would you?

Although, if you _do_ want to argue from popularity, polls consistently show
majority support for capital punishment even in countries without it. From
that standpoint, abolition of execution is undemocratic.

There are many crimes for which the _only_ just sentence is death (c.f. the
Oklahoma man executed some time ago, who raped & buried alive a young woman,
or the man in Washington, D.C. who tortured & murdered a family in their
home): not to impose it is itself unjust. For, say, Hideki Tojo to have died
peacefully in his bed after the deaths of millions would have been a moral
outrage: his hanging was the only appropriate sentence.

The State's monopoly on force is predicated on it assuming the duty of
exacting vengeance on behalf of its citizens: if a State refuses to exact that
vengeance in every circumstance, regardless of evidence and certainty, then
its monopoly on violence loses its legitimacy.

------
csomar
I live in a country with a terrible human rights record. Yet, since 1991, it
never had a death penalty applied. [1] You might get sentenced to a death
penalty (on extreme cases), but it's not applied. The law still legalise it
but there is some pressure to remove it currently.

I find the news that 1) a death penalty is about to take place in the U.S, 2)
hastily and 3) with little evidence really _shocking_ , _disturbing_ and
_unacceptable_ in a country which is supposed to be at the front of defending
human rights.

1: [http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-
post.cfm...](http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-
post.cfm?country=Tunisia)

~~~
joesmo
The US is most certainly not at the forefront of defending human rights if by
that you mean actual action to stop abuses rather than mere lip service. Our
prison system is an atrocious human rights disaster. Our justice system is
effectively non-existent and almost 100% based on forced plea bargains (this
case being an unusual exception that actually went to trial). Guantanamo Bay.
Abu Ghraib. And that's just in the last decade. If you look at reality, you'll
see that the US is full of human rights abuses, almost all preventable. And as
far as the prison system, well it's by far the worst in the world.

------
falsestprophet
If Richard Glossip wasn't sentenced to death, he would likely have languished
in prison as long as he lived. That would also be a horrible injustice.

People see more motivated by orders of magnitude to get death penalty cases
right relative to life incarceration cases.

Counterintuitively, justice may be better served by abolishing life
imprisonment and mandating the death penalty for cases where periods of
imprisonment would exceed 20 years or so.

If the innocence rate for executions is 4%, then surely the innocence rate for
long term incarceration must be much higher.

~~~
efuquen
> Counterintuitively, justice may be better served by abolishing life
> imprisonment and mandating the death penalty for cases where periods of
> imprisonment would exceed 20 years or so.

I've seen several people already share this sentiment and it really confuses
me. Because

1) It's made by people who have never, and come from a background where they
most likely never would, have to seriously make such a choice. (If I'm wrong
let me know).

2) I would venture if you really were faced with such a choice it would not be
the automatic "kill me if I get more then 20 years" one that you flippantly
imply you would make. I have a feeling when faced with the actual prospects of
death vs imprisonment of 20 years or more, rather then on some hypothetical
situation in an internet forum, you might decide differently.

3) Even if it was the case you were to decide death over long term
imprisonment, what would give you, or the justice system, the right to decide
that for anyone else facing that situation? I have a feeling most people would
still choose life, even if faced with perpetual imprisonment, over death.

And finally lets just assume Richard Glossip was unjustly found guilty of this
crime, I know nothing about this case so lets just assume. The problem isn't
specifically with the sentence but the fact that he is in fact not guilty, but
was deemed guilty by his peers. By killing him you eliminate any possibility
of recourse, he already paid the ultimate price. At least with life
imprisonment there is still a chance for having some just conclusion, even if
it's late and inadequate to the penalty he suffered.

~~~
falsestprophet
Richard Glossip did make this choice. He could have pled guilty and have
received a sentence of life imprisonment.

In our current system innocent people accused of capital crimes are often
faced with the choice of pleading guilty or going to trial and facing the
death penalty.

This isn't a highly just arrangement.

------
acqq
The death penalty:

Of the 49 European countries, only 1 (Belarus) still has the death penalty and
executes people.

Last time a civilian executed in Mexico: 1937, Canada: 1962, UK: 1977, Russia:
1999

In 2014, only these countries executed more people per million than the US:
Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan,
Palestine, China, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan, Afghanistan and Egypt And North
Korea N/A.

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

Internationally seen as against the universal _human rights_ :

1948: The United Nations adopted without dissent the _Universal Declaration of
Human Rights_ (UDHR). The Declaration proclaims the _right of every individual
to protection from deprivation of life._ It states that _no one shall be
subjected to cruel or degrading punishment. The death penalty violates both of
these fundamental rights._

2005: The UNCHR approved _Human Rights Resolution_ 2005/59 on the question of
the death penalty, which called for all states that still maintain the death
penalty to _abolish the death penalty completely_ and, in the meantime, to
establish a _moratorium on executions._

2007: The UN General Assembly (UNGA) approved Resolution 62/149 which called
for all states that still maintain the death penalty to establish a
_moratorium on executions_ with a view to abolishing the death penalty.

[http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-
penalty/inte...](http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-
penalty/international-death-penalty/death-penalty-and-human-rights-standards)

2015, the current year: 20 persons executed in the US

At least 278 persons executed in the US just since the last UNGA Resolution.

[http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-
list-2015](http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2015)

~~~
happyscrappy
The death penalty is to the left what partial birth abortion is to the right.
When groups are making emotional pleas to push their agenda then you know you
are being played.

~~~
acqq
Can be being not worse than Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
Jordan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Palestine, China, Singapore, Belarus, Taiwan,
Afghanistan and Egypt and possibly North Korea considered as being left or
right?

And what about the universal human rights? "The right of every individual to
protection from deprivation of life" and "no one shall be subjected to cruel
or degrading punishment."

~~~
happyscrappy
The only impediment to the repeal of the death penalty is the will of the
American voters, so that is where you should direct your outrage.

~~~
acqq
> that is where you should direct your hate

I beg your pardon?

> the will of the American voters

"A 2010 poll by Lake Research Partners found that a clear majority of voters
(61%) would choose a punishment other than the death penalty for murder."
(deathpenaltyinfo.org)

And between 1967 and 1977 not a single person was executed in the whole US,
independently of the possible will of some states. The Eighth Amendment from
1791, the visible public disapproval and stuff.

And please tell where you've found any "emotional pleas"? Edit: or even
"outrage"?

~~~
happyscrappy
Fine edited to outrage. Your goal is to paint the US as similar to those
countries but the fact is it is up to the states. Here are the states with no
death penalty:

Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode
Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, District of Columbia

~~~
throw7
Just want to add, there is a death penalty at the federal level. Most
recently, Tsarnaev being executed in a no death penalty state (massachusetts).

------
splat
I highly recommend anyone interested in this to read the article Criminal Law
2.0 by Alex Kozinski (a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals). He
presents twelve fundamental tenants of the criminal justice system that are
flawed and suggests some ways to fix them. (E.g., "Eyewitnesses are highly
reliable" and "Long sentences deter crime.") If you haven't read anything by
Kozinski, you should. It's very readable. Especially the conclusion.

[http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...](http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Preface.pdf)

------
rottencupcakes
In general, human testimony is one of the weakest forms of evidence we have.
People, even when they don't have incentive to lie, have horrible memories! It
should barely be admissible, let alone for first degree murder, especially in
cases like this where the witness is being bribed for his testimony.

~~~
justin_vanw
You don't need CSI to convict someone of murder.

In this case:

Means: he knew the person who committed the physical attack and had influence
over this person

Motive: the victim was accusing him of embezzling $6000

Opportunity: plenty

Proof defendant actually acted on the motive: he attempted to hide the body
from discovery, helped hide the victims car, contributed to a conspiracy to
cut the body up and dissolve it in acid, split the money from the victim's
wallet with the other man involved, and made sure that cleaning staff that he
managed were reassigned so that they would not find the body. None of this is
in dispute!

This is by itself enough to convict him.

~~~
jessaustin
Wow I'm surprised that we're only talking about $6000. Maybe this is a
privileged reaction, but in USA is that sum worth all the trouble of even a
"successful" murder, let alone the calamity this turned out to be? Morality
helps morons more than it helps rational people. A rational person would
realize that a disagreement over $6000 will be much less hassle over the long
term than a murder conspiracy. Someone to whom that is not obvious, and who
also lacks enough moral sense not to murder in such a situation, really is a
threat to the public. Maybe we shouldn't kill him, and maybe a long prison
sentence isn't the best answer, but at the very least the public ought to be
warned that this guy is completely irrational and might decide to murder for
no good reason at all.

------
ChicagoBoy11
One thing to consider is that this case (and the 4%) figure refer to those
who've been sentenced to death, where the standards for prosecution and
sentencing are the absolute highest. It would only be natural to suspect that
this figure is even greater the less the sentence/crime.

Until we carefully scrutinize the incentives facing the judicial system as a
whole (and see how unbalanced it is), this is bound to be the norm.

------
DubiousPusher
"Might Sneed have lied to save his own skin? Reasonable doubt? Nothing is more
likely."

And nothing more need be said. I don't understand how it seems impossible to
force into people's heads the two notions that the burden of guilt lay with
the prosecution and that guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.

------
thrownaway2424
One of the most distasteful aspects of this case has been the way the Daily
Oklahoman, the local newspaper, has been demanding the man's death every day,
in effect reprinting the Attorney General's press releases as news and
editorial columns. I point to "AG's office calls witnesses in Glossip
innocence claim 'inherently suspect'" and "Glossip attorneys cross line with
criticism of DA". The Daily Oklahoman is a journalistic embarrassment on every
topic but in the case of Glossip it has really shone an unintentional light on
bloodlust in the state.

------
ianbicking
So maybe 4% of people who get the death penalty are innocent. And some other
portion probably don't deserve the death penalty according to the criteria
we've established. So we get rid of it, and then what? They all get life
without parole? How much better is that? And what about all the innocent
people who are receiving that punishment right now? Or who are losing 5 or 10
years of their life? Getting justice right is tremendously important. The
death penalty is something people can line up around without truly engaging
with the justice system at all. It feels like a huge distraction to me.

We use the phrase "paying your debt to society" but no one pays any debts.
They only incur debts. Debts to their family who they can't support. Debts to
a society that ends up weaker than it started. The cruelty of this system
isn't best exemplified in the death penalty.

~~~
late2part
How much better is life without parole than death? By almost all measures,
it's much better.

------
Alex3917
The crazy thing is that although salient, of all the ways the US government
kills innocent people, the death penalty probably has one of the lowest total
body counts.

At least in comparison with wars of aggression, foreign coups, the war on
drugs, subsidizing cars, subsidizing fossil fuels, subsidizing tobacco, weak
pharma regulation, promoting antibiotics in food, cop shootings, fast food
subsidies (via corn), not implementing cap & trade to combat climate change,
privatized health insurance, trade embargoes, promoting harmful nutrition
guidelines, lack of food safety standards/inspection, lack of any required
safety testing for new chemicals, etc.

~~~
philwelch
It seems almost pointless to even have a formal death penalty when law
enforcement officers are given effective blanket immunity against homicide
charges.

~~~
tsotha
That's not true. They officer who shot Walter Scott has been charged with
murder.

~~~
philwelch
One officer charged out of hundreds of Americans killed by police every year.
Statistically, that's still effective blanket immunity.

~~~
tsotha
You can't know that without knowing how many would have been charged had they
not been police officers.

~~~
mikekchar
Your comment intrigued me and I thought it might be fairly easy to estimate
this number, but it seems that justifiable homicide numbers are under reported
in the US: [http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-the-data-on-justifiable-
hom...](http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-the-data-on-justifiable-homicide-
just-wont-do-1725/)

It is interesting to look at the graph at the top of the article, though. Why
do justifiable homicides for police and private citizens track each other
almost identically? I can't think of any explanation.

According to: [http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-
kil...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-killings-
this-year-black-americans) the number of police homicides have also been under
reported, historically. It appears (if the Guardian's reporting is correct)
that some states don't even report at all some years.

But let's assume that there are 15,000 homicides per year by non-police and
that 1000 of them are deemed justifiable homicides (double the reported ones
to account for under reporting). That's about 7% of homicides that are
justifiable.

In the second link, it says that 19 out of 547 were killed by police after
they were taken into custody. 31 were killed by tasers. 119 were killed while
unarmed. What percentage of these killings were justifiable?

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-
charged...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged-for-
on-duty-shootings-1416874955) claims 41 police officers were charged for
shootings in a 7 year period. That is about 5.86 per year. The original link
claimed about 87% of killings were shootings, so let's assume that police are
charged with killing linearly and we get about 7 officers charged per year. I
think it is telling that I can't find the success rate of prosecution anywhere
:-P

So if we assume all 7 officers were found guilty, that means we get 540 out of
547 killings to be justified, or 98.7%.

So the average citizen has an upper bound of somewhere around 7% of having a
homicide found to be justified, while the police have a lower bound of around
98% of having a homicide to be found justified. This despite the fact that
3.5% of police homicides happen after the suspect is in custody, 5.7% happen
as a result of the suspect being hit with a taser, and 21.8% of the suspects
are unarmed.

While I wouldn't say this is a case for "blanket immunity", I have to say that
the numbers do not seem reasonable to me. Especially if 20 people are killed
by police while in custody and there is not an expectation that a charge will
be laid in any of the 20 cases, that does not seem reasonable at all given
that at least 93% of civilian homicides are deemed not-justifiable.

But even more worrying is the sorry state of affairs for the reporting of this
data (if the newspapers I browsed while doing my back-of-the-envelope
calculations are correct). If they don't have better reporting, I don't know
how anyone is supposed to scrutinize it.

Anyway, I hope someone found this interesting. Apologies if I made any math
mistakes along the way.

------
lazyant
Appalled that people are killed legally based only on a criminal's word. Also
appalled that we still have the death penalty in some countries, these are
pretty much all backwards countries with the outliers of US and Japan; it's a
litmus test for humans rights imho.

~~~
plaguuuuuu
Define backwards?

Singapore has the death penalty. Taiwan has the death penalty. Singapore is
probably the most advanced economy in the world. one of Taiwan's main exports
is computer engineering R&D for most of the hardware in your PC (as the
hardware itself is now manufactured and assembled in China)

Taiwan has nationalised health care - score 1 for Taiwan over the US.

I consider any country implementing the death penalty to be a cultural
backwater. Many parts of the US are basically the definition of a cultural
backwater anyway.

~~~
jamez1
Technology/Economy has nothing to do with how backwards/progressive a country
is.

~~~
tsotha
Not everyone agrees on what constitutes progress.

------
mrdrozdov
Vice released a special last night about mass incarceration related to non-
violent drug crimes. It included President Obama visiting a federal prison and
interviews with Former Atty. Gen. Eric Holder.

Trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWSW94-P3Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWSW94-P3Y)

Article: [https://news.vice.com/article/president-obama-heads-to-
priso...](https://news.vice.com/article/president-obama-heads-to-prison-in-
pursuit-of-criminal-justice-reform)

~~~
voltagex_
I don't always agree with the content / viewpoints that Vice puts out, but
this was one of the most well made and powerful documentaries I've seen in a
while. I'd like to think that President Obama's reactions were genuine and
that things might slowly start to change in the US.

~~~
jessaustin
A "genuine" president would have issued hundreds of thousands of pardons for
drug "crimes" by this point in his presidency. Obama is just another
politician.

~~~
voltagex_
Is there any precedent for anything like that?

~~~
jessaustin
Andrew Johnson pardoned everyone who fought for the Confederacy, other than
Jeff Davis and a few other bigwigs. Sure, armed insurrection is a less serious
crime than getting high, but I think the precedent stands.

~~~
jessaustin
Strictly speaking however "precedent" doesn't apply to pardons since they are
a power specifically granted the president by Article II, Section 2 of the
United States Constitution. Precedents are important in courts, so if e.g. the
Supreme Court had previously ruled that pardoning pot smokers is
unconstitutional then that precedent would be relevant. My impression is that
the courts don't want to touch pardons, which is only right, since the point
of putting them in the Constitution was to give the executive the ability to
rein in the vindictiveness of the legislative and judicial branches. I expect
that if Congress passed a law attempting to restrict the use of pardons, even
the most conservative jurist would toss that shit right out of court.

------
gautamnarula
PG, thanks for writing about this and bringing both this case and the death
penalty to readers' attention.

Richard Glossip's case is similar in many ways to Troy Davis[1]. You may
recognize that name--in 2011, when he was executed, he was the world's most
famous death row inmate. Like Glossip, Troy Davis had no physical evidence
against him. His conviction (of murdering a police officer) was based
primarily on 9 eyewitness testimonies. SEVEN of those eyewitnesses recanted or
altered their testimonies, many citing police coercion or intimidation. Ten
new witnesses came forward saying one of the two non-recanting witnesses,
Sylvester Coles, confessed to the murder.

A few days before he was executed, ONE MILLION people signed a petition to the
Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Despite this, and the many doubts in his
case, Troy Davis was executed on September 21, 2011.

I was close friends with Troy--I first visited him on death row in 2008 (when
I was 15), and spent the next three years visiting him, corresponding with
him, and talking to him on the phone. Troy was so well-known because his case
epitomized everything that is wrong with the American justice system and the
death penalty--racial bias (he was a black man accused of killing a white cop
in 1980s Georgia), an overzealous DA with a history of prosecutorial
misconduct, police coercion and witness tampering, the execution of innocents
(over a dozen death row inmates have been exonerated since he was executed in
2011...how many innocents were executed in that time?) and a justice system so
rigid and brittle that it would not even commute his sentence to life
imprisonment, despite even a federal judge admitting Troy had shown at least a
"minimal" level of doubt in his case.

Troy's last words, recorded minutes before he was executed, are haunting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98dlGv0k2MM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98dlGv0k2MM)

In 2012, I raised 11k on Kickstarter to write a book on my relationship with
Troy Davis called Remain Free[2]. It talks about many of the ugly aspects of
his life on death row and of the legal corruption in his case that he (and I)
couldn't publicly talk about while he was still alive. Since the book is built
on hundreds of recorded conversations, in person visits, and letters with
Troy, you really get a sense of who he was as a person and the kind of toll
two decades on death row takes on him and his family.

If you'd like a copy, you can order it on Amazon[3] or through
[http://remainfree.com](http://remainfree.com). All profits go to the
Innocence Project [4], a non-profit that works to free wrongfully convicted
individuals through DNA testing. Alternatively, email me
(gautamnarula[at]gmail.com) a screenshot of a $10 donation to the Innocence
Project, and I'll send you the e-book for free. Donate $20 to the Innocence
Project, and I'll send you a physical copy for just the cost of shipping ($3
in the US).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis)

[2] [http://remainfree.com](http://remainfree.com)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Remain-Free-Memoir-Gautam-
Narula/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Remain-Free-Memoir-Gautam-
Narula/dp/0984547819)

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

------
JackFr
Forget about the 4% innocent. Forget about racial bias and unreliable
eyewitnesses. How about we stop executing everyone including the guilty ones.

But please, enough with the rest of the world is enlightened and America is
basically gun-loving racist troglodytes. It's not true and it's not an
argument which will change anyone's mind.

------
nichochar
This is important, the "greatest country in the world" has to do better with
things like this.

As pg very well says, you cannot have human lives depend on other human's lack
of rigor, stupidity and incompetence

------
epmatsw
Seems like the real issue is that Oklahoma is not giving the guy a fair trial.
While the finality of the death penalty makes it (or at least makes it seem)
worse, it would/could be just as unfair to throw the guy in jail for life
without giving him his due process.

~~~
NhanH
There will always be mistakes and wrongful processes in any kind of system,
the difference between death penalty and life sentence is the finality of the
former: there is also some very small chance that you can be proven innocent a
few years down the road (we're all taking about extremes here).

------
heyrhett
Many people are also unaware of the high cost and inefficiency of the death
penalty in the U.S. With 3002 (as of April 2015) inmates on death row, there
were 35 executions in 2014.
[http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf](http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf)

Depending on the state, a trial with a death penalty could cost anywhere from
half a million dollars more, to millions more than a trial without a death
penalty.

Even at the absurdly high price of $35k per year per prisoner, life without
parole is likely a cheaper option for tax payers than the death penalty.

I don't mean to say this is the only reason why the death penalty is wrong. We
know for certain that provably innocent people have been put to death.

It's just that in addition to being morally wrong, it's also expensive and a
waste of resources. The only reason I can theoretically imagine for keeping it
around is that supposedly criminals might be less likely to commit a crime for
fear of the death penalty. I think every serious study has shown that harsher
penalties don't deter crime.

One of the best ways to actually reduce crime is to provide better early
education for poor people.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Ignoring the moralities and can-of-worms question of the death penalty itself
for a moment, I've always thought the reasoning of "life without parole is
cheaper, so let's do that" was flawed. Why not figure out why the death
penalty process is so expensive, and fix that instead? Then you can have your
moral & ethical arguments without adding economics to an already hairy debate.
I would bet the costs are rooted in over-inflated legal fees and prosecutorial
inefficiencies which should be fixed in any case.

------
lexcorvus
The subject is different, but the point is the same:

 _It is hard to imagine technology restriction working, because we have to get
past imagining this terribly powerful tool being wielded by our utterly
incompetent and corrupt rulers. The same problem exists in contemplating
effective protectionism. The most obvious outcomes of both these tools simply
amount to featherbedding if not outright theft. As a result, protectionism has
gained a bad name, and technology restriction is well outside the policy
landscape. Yet in actual reality, the problem is not with the tool, but the
wielder. Once we admit that USG isn 't working and has to go, we can imagine
replacing it with something that doesn't suck—and can actually wield such a
tool._

—Mencius Moldbug, "Sam Altman is not a blithering idiot" ([http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-alt...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html))

------
joshuaheard
Government is too incompetent to have the power to take your life.

~~~
webXL
I'm sympathetic to that argument, but the logical next step is to say that
they're also too incompetent to _protect_ your life, and then it's the wild-
west.

I believe in extreme circumstances, society should reserve the right to "not
turn the other cheek". Nothing is black and white. The government is not
completely incompetent, and not all cases have reasonable doubt. But cases
like this, no way. Define some clear-cut parameters and apply it to every
state uniformly.

~~~
Frondo
That is not the logical next step.

The logical next step is, "so the government should not be in the business of
killing people."

Life in prison? Sure, though I'm personally not sure depriving someone of
their freedom for the rest of their natural life isn't also unacceptably
cruel.

~~~
webXL
"so the government should not be in the business of killing people."

But as a species, we're a long way from selecting government officials who
don't want to kill. These freaks crave power.

And Glossip had the chance to take life if he confessed. He chose death. Just
goes to show that cruelty is subjective.

------
kylec
Very well written. I'm glad to see pg writing about things other than startups
again.

------
zatkin
If you think about it, death vs life in prison is pretty imbalanced. On one
hand, you can either die immediately and escape from it all (that being the
case), while on the other hand you're stuck in a cell for the rest of your
life, living with your thoughts, away from the rest of society. Personally, if
I had to choose, I would choose death, since it's quick and easy, and I won't
have to suffer through my own thoughts on a day to day basis.

------
Arainach
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/richard-glossip-
executi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/richard-glossip-execution-
oklahoma.html) gives more details about how the case has proceeded thus far.
From the description of the "evidence", this seems like a clear cut failure of
the justice system.

~~~
acqq
See also:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2015/09/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2015/09/28/oklahoma-court-denies-richard-glossips-request-for-a-
stay-of-execution/)

"When the order delaying the execution for two weeks came down, Glossip was so
close to his scheduled execution time that he had already been served his
final meal (which included chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, fish and
chips and a strawberry malt).

In addition to their requests to the Oklahoma court, Glossip’s attorneys had
also asked Gov. Mary Fallin (R) to stay the execution, arguing that the lethal
injection should be halted due to new evidence. However, Fallin denied these
requests, and she said her office determined that none of the evidence
presented by Glossip’s attorneys changed her mind.

“After carefully reviewing the facts of this case multiple times, I see no
reason to cast doubt on the guilty verdict reached by the jury or to delay
Glossip’s sentence of death,” she said in a statement earlier this month.
Fallin also said her office would respect the appeals court’s decision."

------
barney54
I support the death penalty, but I believe all executions should be carried
out Ned Stark style. As in, if you are the Governor, and can commute the
sentence, then you should be there and actually carry out the execution. If
you can save a person's life, you owe it to them and society to bear the
responsibility of not commuting the sentence and see what death looks like.

~~~
peeters
Why put the governor on the hook, but not the majority of Americans who
support the death penalty? If tomorrow 75% of Americans disagreed with the
death penalty, it would be abolished.

It's not your politicians who are keeping the death penalty, it is your
citizens.

~~~
danieltillett
This is a pretty reasonable suggestion. The jury that sentences a convict to
death has to actually carry out the sentence. I suspect that the number of
strong supporters of the death penalty will drop dramatically when faced with
having to perform the sentence with their own hands.

~~~
jessaustin
I sat _voir dire_ for the trial of an accused child molester. I'm sure at
least some of the venom displayed that morning was cynical, in order to get
out of serving on the jury. Significant numbers of people, however, didn't
strike me as intelligent enough to be cynical. So, I would say there are
_some_ crimes that would have no shortage of jurors willing to swing the ax
themselves.

------
javajosh
I'd like to examine the perverse incentives behind prosecutors going for the
throat. Wouldn't this problem effectively disappear if prosecutors were ranked
on "wisdom" and "mercy" instead of how badly (and cheaply) they crush someone
who makes even the smallest mistake through a plea deal?

------
joeevans1000
Albert Einstein:

"I have reached the conviction that the abolition of the death penalty is
desirable. Reasons: 1) Irreparability in the event of an error of justice, 2)
Detrimental moral influence of the execution procedure on those who, whether
directly or indirectly, have to do with the procedure."

------
DanielBMarkham
Been thinking about this subject for a long time, for very personal reasons.

Capital punishment exists so that people don't go get guns and kill lunatics
that have done them harm. For some crimes, only being told "We're going to
kill him" holds the social fabric together.

It's not justice, it's not fair, and it's a terrible way to run things. One
could make the pragmatic argument that if you're going to have a death
penalty, then hanging them outside the courthouse the day after the trial is
the way to do it. Otherwise you're just making a mockery of trying to be fair
-- which this was never about in the first place.

When you see somebody kill his family and then say "I deserve the death
penalty", when you see families torn apart by evil who demand that the
criminal must die, when you see people who are never going to be anything but
killers being set free to kill again? Even though you might be against the
death penalty, it's pretty obvious why it exists.

So I've given up fighting against the death penalty. These things move in
cycles. Another 50 years we won't have one and people will be clamoring for
one again. Instead, I'm extremely pissed about what pg mentions in closing:
prosecutors playing hardball with plea bargains.

Whatever you want the laws to be, I've seen enough prosecutorial misconduct
over the last decade to last several lifetimes. The vast majority of the time
they're doing a great job. But 1-10% of the time the public is getting
screwed. The incentives are all wrong and oversight in nonexistent. I've seen
them cover for bad cop decisions, screw over aaronsw, refuse to take DNA
evidence that would release innocent people from jail -- the list goes on an
on. Something is really rotten and needs to be fixed.

Even if you believe in the death penalty, you have to admit that the criminal
justice system is so broken that it's way beyond a reasonable doubt that we're
executing people we shouldn't. The system needs fixing. Not only will this
save lives, it will result in many people either not going to prison or
serving much less time than they currently are.

------
rdl
> "Richard Glossip's only hope now is if the Supreme Court intervenes."

Couldn't the President of the United States, Governor of Oklahoma, or other
federal judges below the level of the Supreme Court intervene, at least
temporarily?

~~~
tsotha
The governor of Oklahoma can delay the execution or commute his sentence
(which she seems disinclined to do), but not the president of the US. POTUS
can only commute/pardon federal crimes.

I not sure about the court side.

------
anacrolix
More generally it seems his argument is: Lessen the punishment because the
judicial system isn't reliable. That doesn't seem right. Maybe it should be
fixed, rather than introducing hacks like this.

~~~
jessaustin
How could any such system be improved ("fixed" seems to be asking too much),
other than through hacks?

------
mrtron
You can argue against the death penalty a thousands ways. It is statistically
racist, it is against the Christian way which is supposedly important in
America, there is little reason to kill someone when you can securely lock
them away indefinitely.

I don't see how you can argue for the death penalty. Killing people doesn't
help anyone. Who has lived a happy and healthy life as a result of a death row
execution of someone with a life sentence?

~~~
verbin217
In my experience Christian's seem very supportive of the death penalty.

~~~
lotharbot
[http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-
bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10](http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss10)
(2010) and
[http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14](http://sda.berkeley.edu/sdaweb/analysis/?dataset=gss14)
(2014) are huge data sets on peoples' demographics and opinions.

Run the table "CAPPUN" vs "RELIG". Nearly every major religious position in
the US (including atheist/agnostic/none) is largely in favor of the death
penalty, with only Muslims and Native Americans coming out as more than 50%
opposed in both sets, and "other eastern" being over 50% in the newer set.

Also of note: whites are much more in favor of the death penalty than other
races, Republicans are slightly more in favor than Democrats, people with
higher incomes are more in favor than those with lower incomes, and people
with average education (high school or 2-year college) are more in favor than
those with either very high or very low education.

(I'm from a religious subgroup that's anti-death-penalty, anti-war, pro-life,
etc. and I would argue that the death penalty isn't consistent with a
Christian ethic, but plenty of people obviously disagree with me.)

~~~
verbin217
Thank you for posting this. All of it was super interesting. Also thank you
for your assuredly thankless service as both a rational and faithful person.

------
lpolovets
An excellent book about another death row inmate (who was eventually
exonerated): [http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Time-18-Year-Odyssey-
Freedom/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Time-18-Year-Odyssey-
Freedom/dp/1602399743/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0)

The level of corruption/manipulation/etc. in some of these death row cases is
very frightening.

------
dlandis
> at least 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent

It should be made clear that this statistic was not derived from counting up
actual innocent people who were sentenced. It was a statistical estimate with
a number of assumptions built in to it. Not defending the death penalty, just
pointing out something that was not stated precisely in my opinion.

------
bambax
"There" is reasonable doubt doesn't mean much.

Reasonable doubt is not an observable quantity, like water on Mars; the
question is whether _jurors in the case_ doubted of the culpability of the
accused. Obviously they didn't.

If they did, that may save this man's life, but do nothing against death
penalty. Death penalty is barbaric; if you can make the case that guilty
people should not be executed, I think it's much stronger than if you just
argue in favor of the innocent.

... notwithstanding the fact that Scalia argued in 2009 that executing
innocent people was perfectly fine: _" This Court has never held that the
Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full
and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is
'actually' innocent"_. (You have to love the quotes around the word
'actually').

\- - -

Completely OT: inconsistent number of spaces after periods is very annoying
(the second paragraph has one, the third or 7th have two for example; the 6th
paragraph has both). The correct number of spaces after a period is ONE, but
if you disagree, the least you can do is be consistent.

~~~
Peaker
The point of the essay is that the incompetence causes reasonable doubt not to
mean much. And that's why they end up executing innocent people.

------
blfr
If we can't entrust the justice system with the death penalty, how can we
entrust it with a lifetime imprisonment? If we eliminate lifetime
imprisonment, can we really trust them with 35 year sentences? Twenty years?

There is no punishment that fits both the guilty and the innocent. There is no
compromise.

------
flippyhead
I recently read a book that makes this same case very strongly:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JYWVYLY](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JYWVYLY)

I was incredibly eye-opening how common this kind of thing is. It makes me
sick.

------
thret
Even if everybody on death row were guilty beyond all doubt, I don't think it
is right to sentence an innocent person to kill another human for any reason.

I wouldn't want it on my conscience, so how can I demand if of someone else?
No innocent person deserves that responsibility.

------
idibidiart
[http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/bernie-sanders-on-the-
death-...](http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/bernie-sanders-on-the-death-
penalty-the-state-shouldnt-be-in-the-business-of-killing-people/)

------
raonyguimaraes
I agree, you should not have death penalty in US, specially without any
physical evidence. This is a broken system and it should be fixed!

------
peterwwillis
I upvoted this mainly because I think it's healthy that people consider the
ethics by which they and their fellow citizens live. But generally speaking,
this is a stupid reason not to kill someone.

The DA basically told this guy point-blank that if you don't want to die, take
this deal. If you do want to die, don't take the deal.

He chose not to take the deal.

Is there a chance that "good sense" could have prevailed, and that by some
fluke, some part of the system wouldn't work, and so he would be saved from
the death penalty? _Maybe._ But if he had taken the deal, he would
_definitely_ not have died.

This guy chose to play russian roulette with a six-shooter with five bullets
in it and lost. And this is the reason we shouldn't kill people? Because a guy
who can't do the basic math of "which choice is more likely to end in my
death" chose poorly?

No. The guy should have taken the deal. Much like the rest of the people on
the planet who choose to take huge risks with their life, he's going to lose
out on this bet. And that has nothing to do with why we should stop the state
from killing people.

Our system of justice is based on laws and rules. They can't be broken
arbitrarily, which is why innocent people are put to death. Not because we're
mean. Not because we're stupid. We make the rules, and we have to enforce
them. In this case, one of our rules is, if you do X, you die.

So, if you don't believe in killing innocent people, by all means, get rid of
that rule. But don't tell me we should get rid of the rule because the rules
weren't perfect.

~~~
URSpider94
So, if I'm innocent, I should take a plea bargain (which, let's not forget,
involves me standing up before God and everyone and saying, "yes, I did it,"
so that I can spend the rest of my life in a maximum security penitentiary, so
that I can avoid being put to death? Not sure I agree with your logic there.

~~~
peterwwillis
Here's a diagram of the logic.

    
    
      Do you want to die?
      
        Y ->
             Reject offer. ->
                              Death penalty.
        N ->
             Accept offer. ->
                              Life in prison.
    
    

I don't know how I could simplify this further.

~~~
cortesoft
That wasn't the choice given. It was "Accept this deal for life in prison" or
"Have faith that your innocence will prevail in the court of law and you will
be exonerated."

If I, an innocent man, was given that choice... I would probably try it out in
court. I would assume my innocence would prevent the court from convicting me.

------
aashaykumar92
A solution is to build a platform that crowdsources such cases to raise
awareness AND a call for action. The community would need to be unbelievable
but it's not at all impossible. Once there are 100,000 signatures on any
petition under 30 days, the White House guarantees a response. There are many
great communities with more than 100,000 active users. Why not?

~~~
tdylan
As bad as this situation is, Internet mob justice has a terrible track record
and is not the solution. Most recent example is Ahmed the 'inventor'.

~~~
jessaustin
Do you intend to suggest that Ahmed should have gone to jail, and that the
teachers, administrators, cops, and prosecutors who tried to send him there
were somehow _wronged_ by the "Internet mob"?

'Cause that would be silly...

~~~
tdylan
Absolutely not. Sending a kid to jail because he brought a clock to school is
silly. However, a kid who bought a clock from the 80s, than repackaged it in a
pencil box claiming it his 'invention', and put a timer on it making it beep
in class, who was then evasive when answering questions, on the day after 9/11
anniversary, definitely deserves some suspicion.

What I object to is the praise he's gotten, from Obama to Zuckerberg. Without
even one look at the facts of the situation.

------
ekianjo
> That's why we can't have the death penalty in the US. I don't know exactly
> when it's permissible to kill someone. But I know for sure the Oklahoma
> judicial system should not be allowed to. If they have that power, all it
> takes is a half-assed police investigation plus a prosecutor playing
> hardball with plea bargains, and innocent people die.

Mmm? So, because the system is not perfect, we should remove death penalty
altogether? Is that seriously the point PG is making here?

IRL there is no perfect system whatsoever. Yet we learn how to live with risk
and deficiencies and hopefully improve things as we move forward to make less
mistakes. Whether that applies to the US Judicial system, I don't know, but
that's not a good reason to remove the death row altogether. There are a
number of criminals who are well known to have no empathy and can kill without
remorse or emotion, and I don't see how this kind of individuals can be
rehabilitated in any way within society. On top of that, every individual who
is conscious about their actions should also face responsibility - that's part
of the "social contract" on which we base our actions every single day. There
should be strong consequences for murder and certainly Death Row has its place
as well.

But yeah, there is no discussion that we should have due process to make sure
ONLY convicted criminals (with proper evidence) go to Death Row.

~~~
swehner
You ask "Is that seriously the point PG is making here?"

I think that is indeed the case.

I also suggest that your writing doesn't make any kind of valuable argument
against that suggestion. Yes, of course, "because the system is not perfect,
we should remove death penalty altogether." That's the way it is.

When you write "There should be strong consequences for murder and certainly
Death Row has its place as well," well, maybe you need some more time to think
about what those "strong consequences" are?! My impression is that you'll have
a difficult time coming up with reasons to support your choices.

I always find people who worry about the death penalty have some kind of
delusion, are somehow obsessed with the question, for no good reason. Unable
to cope with the world as it is.

~~~
ekianjo
> I think that is indeed the case.

Then why is that PG article coming up now? It's not like it's a newsflash that
we have innocent people dying in the Death Row. it's been happening for years.
Is it an epidermic reaction of some sort ? The news effect, just like people
who can't fall asleep for 15 mins because they saw something horrible on TV
and then forget it and go on with their lives the next day ?

If you are revolted against something, that should be on your agenda every
single day of your life, not just when the news talk about it.

~~~
peterwaller
This narrow view seems to miss the fact that the world is a complicated place,
where mere revulsion frequently isn't sufficient to actually enact meaningful
change.

Being in a state of revulsion requires valuable energy. If you spend all your
time being revolted, then you won't actually be able make friends and
influence people, as it were. PG is in the position that he's got a sphere of
influence, and now you chide him for what? Expressing a valuable thing in such
a way that he can potentially cause a coherent constructive interference of an
important community. I'd say that was quite a good thing. He also used timing
to his advantage to get people to listen.

In your post you imply he doesn't think about this regularly, but you have no
evidence for this. He could be thinking about this all the time, but we don't
get to hear about that.

