
Last Words From Death Row (2015) - dannyow
http://babble.nfshost.com/babblenumber1/
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brute
Nice to analysis but one should be hesitant to draw conclusions. Word
frequency analysis lacks context. Same problem for approaches that separate
words into positive and negative categories.

Example:

    
    
       I love to kill your family and the people that support my death.
       God is going to come for you and all your friends and I know that even your lord Jesus will not forgive what you have done.
       You will be sorry, you will see.

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minimaxir
/r/dataisbeautiful has had a lot of fun with this particular dataset:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/search?q=last+words...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/search?q=last+words&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

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Kenji
The death penalty is barbaric. The only time when a criminal should die is
when they immediately threaten another person's life and there is no other
safe way to stop them.

That's why I'm so impressed with how Norway handled Breivik after he was
arrested.

~~~
kuschku
It’s interesting that an opinion that is supported by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, by the EU (which ended up banning companies from
exporting supplies for death penalty to the US due to that), and by the
International Court of Human Rights, is downvoted on HN.

It goes so far that countries in the ECHR can not extradite citizen to the US
if they might face the death penalty, because the death penalty is something
that, according to the European Council of Human Rights, no one, not even a
criminal, deserves.

~~~
__s
I didn't downvote, will probably be downvoted, but as someone who is
atheist/nihilist/suicidal, I don't understand the great value placed on human
life. We slaughter animals, we put down dogs which bite, I see no reason not
to put down humans who have malfunctioned. All while being generally left
wing. I think suffering should be an active goal, but I don't believe
execution is suffering. There's enough effort to focus on progressing those
who do buy into constructivism; those who don't wish to participate should
exile themselves from society rather than lash out in deconstructivism

This logic likely exists in a watered down form amongst the HN crowd more than
Human Rights groups

~~~
aaron-lebo
It's weird because life is both overvalued and undervalued.

The same people who believe that the death penalty is barbaric (hey, we all
die, that's the hard truth) get fixated more on the tragedy of the criminal on
death row than the dozens of people they killed.

I do mean that literally. Monsters like John Wayne Gacy don't need to live any
more. They have nothing to offer society but a sneering "kiss my ass" as they
are put to death.

~~~
mrec
I think your position is perfectly coherent, but I don't think the opposing
view is necessarily _that_ weird, for two reasons.

The first is that this isn't zero-sum; there's no evidence I'm aware of that
the death penalty reduces homicide. Killing a murderer isn't going to bring
the victims back, anyone even mildly sceptical about the criminal justice
system should be against irreversible punishments, and (speaking personally
and emotionally for a moment) I think it does something bad to a society when
"giving up on one of your citizens completely" becomes an option.

The second is the idea that a lot of the passion surrounding the death penalty
is about signalling membership of a political tribe rather than about any of
the individuals involved. This is the "I can tolerate anything except the
outgroup" theory [1]: tribe A attacks/defends murderer M not because they
hate/like M but to emphasis their difference from tribe B.

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

~~~
aaron-lebo
You're right. Didn't mean that suggest that the other side is weird, just that
society's back and forth is weird, your second point gets to that. Yet another
controversial topic that gets at that friction is people's view on abortion
and war. Some people will fervently protect an unborn child but see nothing
wrong with carpet bombing fifty others. On the other hand some people are
fervently anti-war but see nothing odd about someone having six abortions
(slow down maybe?). So much of it does seem like political signaling.

You are right the deterrent argument is dumb and unsupported.

> it does something bad to a society when "giving up on one of your citizens
> completely" becomes an option

Human societies have been like this forever, though. Sometimes the protection
of the society is more valuable than an individual's life. That stance can be
taken too far, but I struggle to see what the point of keeping individuals
like Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy around. We can give up on them. We give up quicker on
lots of people in society, why not someone who is a mass murderer? They've got
nothing to offer and they've given up their rights in taking the rights of and
normalcy of hundreds of others.

~~~
mrec
Abortion is actually a different case, I think; that comes down to
incompatible axioms. Two people can both believe 100% sincerely that killing
people is wrong, but if one of them considers a foetus to be a person and the
other doesn't, they aren't going to agree on abortion.

> We can give up on them. We give up quicker on lots of people in society, why
> not someone who is a mass murderer?

Yeah, I know. Ultimately I think my unease here is a kind of slippery-slope
argument, and deserves to be taken with the same generous pinch of salt as any
other slippery-slope argument.

I suspect that much of the opposition to capital (and corporal) punishment has
to do with how strong and visceral a mental impression it makes on those
witnessing or even thinking about it. Conversely, I'm sure we underestimate
the soul-destroying misery of long-term incarceration, because it doesn't
offend our sensibilities as much. Same goes for many of the other people we
give up on, which goes back to your point.

In any case, thanks for the thoughtful replies. Being able to have a
reasonable discussion on an emotive topic with someone holding different views
is always a breath of fresh air.

------
AlphaWeaver
[2015]

------
dcwca
> As a society, while our ethical ideal is justice, a more practically
> compelling priority is safety. This word, “wouldn’t,” is not compatible with
> our sense of safety

Safety is the ethical ideal, not "justice". We don't punish people because it
makes us feel good or for some sense of fairness, we remove people for the
good of society.

Edit: I'm Canadian. I know this isn't true today, but I'm glad I said it and
am grateful for the replies below. I hope this statement becomes true in
America one day.

~~~
civilitty
The United States justice system, as well as that of most common wealth
countries, is based not on safety or rehabilitation but on vengeance and
systemic racism. To claim otherwise, when the United States has
institutionalized slavery ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, _except
as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted_ ,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.") and more prisoners per capita or by absolute number than any
other country on this planet is naive at best. The overcrowding at every
prison, chronic corruption and mismanagement, privatization of the system and
unionization of its beneficiaries, and lack of all but the cheapest
rehabilitation programs makes it nearly impossible for convicts to reenter
society and become productive members. Texas is one of the most egregious
examples - especially given that they speed up the appeals process on purpose
and have shit for oversight on forensic science in criminal cases. Texas alone
has executed over 500 people since 1980, many of them borderline too mentally
incompetent to stand trial, let alone face death row. Combine that with a
culturally accepted racism among law enforcement, itchy trigger fingers, zero
training for how to actually deal with people, and a cultural obsession with
violence and you get the United States: a place where entire communities of
Latinos and African Americans are decimated because a significant fraction of
their working age males are stuck in a tiny cell with nothing to learn except
more crime and nothing to do when they get out except more crime.

Countries with prison systems that try to rehabilitate, like Norway, Sweden,
Denmark, etc., regularly close prisons and they have an amazing track record
with recidivism. People like to claim "blah blah homogeneous society blah
blah" but the fact is that common wealth countries like to kill and enslave
people to punish them - often because they view it as doing "God's work."

We do not have justice systems, we have vengeance factories.

~~~
MichaelGG
I'm very unimpressed with the US justice system and agree with a lot of what
you say.

But does this really explain a massively disproportionate homicide rate among
certain groups in the US? Sure for lesser or non-crimes like drugs there can
be massively unfair, racist enforcement and penalties. For rape, sure, certain
groups will get away with it. But for homicide? Are murders being selectively
investigated?

As far as Norway and "blah blah homogenous society" do they not also show a
heavy bias in crimes committed by the "non homogenous" population there?

~~~
Someone
_" But for homicide? Are murders being selectively investigated?"_

There's a scale from accident, via involuntary manslaugher to murder. There
may well be bias in judging what to prosecute.

Also, laws such "three strikes you are out" may lead to more murders. If, say,
you're a burglar with two strikes, and a house owner wakes up and recognizes
you, hitting him hard out of fear for that third strike becomes more likely.
Similarly, racial bias by the police may make people so wary of "he said, she
said" situations that they will 'snap' and kill someone instead (IMO, many
people convicted for murder aren't cold-blooded killers, but mentally not the
most stable persons who have been dealt a socially unfavorable card in life)

~~~
MichaelGG
Very good points, thank you. I wonder if there studies that show what kind of
impact this has, overall? Probably hard to measure without finding an area
that had a rapid racial change in government.

I guess I was just objecting to the idea that "racism" is the cause for these
statistical imbalances, especially since you see the same kind of thing
happening in Europe which would seem, at least on the surface, to have less
racism issues, no? But perhaps I'm wrong since a lot of good people think the
opposite, but it's hard to tell since it's so politicized and sensitive, just
like anything about race.

~~~
tptacek
It is absolutely _not_ the case that Europe has less problems with racism than
the United States. Racism is a very real problem throughout pretty much all of
Europe.

~~~
MichaelGG
Interesting. So e.g. Norway has a similar level of racism towards blacks as
the US does? Why?

~~~
tptacek
Non sequitur. Your analyses across this thread are all very weak, based on
weirdly fallacious premises; here, that "racism" means "racism against black
people".

A reasonable reader might suspect that you reached, for whatever reason, the
conclusion that capital punishment couldn't be racist (perhaps because, as
you've stated in other comments on HN, you feel the term "racism" is used too
often), and are now intent on working your way backwards from that conclusion.

I think you should take a beat and reconsider how you're approaching the
topic. It's an odd experience discussing this with you and watching you do
little dances after each response to reorient yourself towards your preferred
conclusion.

 _Edited extensively from the one-liner I originally wrote, sorry._

~~~
MichaelGG
Fair enough, though I'm not talking about capital punishment or lack of racism
in the US justice system. It's terribly unfair, especially to blacks in the US
- zero argument there.

Do you have any suggestions on straight, fact-based reading on the subject,
sources that aren't trying to appear sensitive? It's hard - even admitting
races and may have differences upsets people.

On Norway, I'm just saying they don't have the same levels of racism baggage
as the US regarding "Africans" (quotes cause it seems weird that many of them
have families in the US longer than mine, but I would get no qualifiers as an
American) yet still Norway sees overrepresentation.

