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Comment by tveita | Hacker News Reader

Why would it? People are wrongfully executed all the time, but can you off the top of your head name one governor who has become known for that?

Executions serve no purpose for society except to satisfy our thirst for revenge, it makes little difference if the person they kill is innocent or not.

If he turns out to be innocent, they can always execute someone else to save face. Not the ones responsible for his execution, of course. Ironically, wrongfully executing someone doesn't carry the death penalty.

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In fact I CAN recall a governor who is known for the opposite, which was Dukakis being labelled soft on crime for furloughing Willie Horton. American voters quite consistently indicate they want stricter punishments, and from a politician's viewpoint the risk of freeing someone guilty is the worse alternative.

"Soft on Crime" is a catastrophic label for politicians in the US. This came to the fore recently with Francisco Sanchez, the illegal immigrant who murdered the girl on the pier in SF in July... everyone was outraged that he was let free, he was a "multiple felon" after all.. Except his felonies were all nonviolent, namely entering the country illegally and selling marijuana.

When people express their dissatisfaction with Obama's progress on freeing non-violent criminals, remember how much nuance was granted to those responsible for San Francisco's and California's decisions to show restraint in imprisoning Mr. Sanchez or how much nuance was granted to Dukakis. The teams working on commuting nonviolent Federal sentences spend an enormous amount of time vetting prisoners and are extraordinarily conservative.

It's probably good due diligence, but freeing one Willie Horton or one Francisco Sanchez is enough to severely damage a candidate, a party, or even the concept of criminal justice reform.

Former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is an occasional participant on Reddit, usually promoting either fitness or the after school program charity that he puts a lot of effort into. Easily the most common critical comment of him, that follows him into nearly every thread, is that he reduced the sentence of Esteban Nunez.

> Executions serve no purpose for society except to satisfy our thirst for revenge

This is illogical. When someone is executed, the are gone... literally.

It's like: "We'll kill the killers the right way ('humanely', with due process, etc.) so you don't go vigilante and murder them yourselves."

From this angle, assuming no other considerations, the legitimacy of the court system hinges on how often we see revenge killings. One could argue that the U.S. is more civilized now, so discouraging revenge killing is a fairly minor consideration.

Revenge killings are irrelevant. Nobody is saying instead of death penalty we should just free them. They'd be in prison. And if after 30 years someone gets parole, I highly doubt anyone will notice.

Yes, execution does prevent the same person committing more crimes... or any crimes at all in the case of the innocent. Prison also does that, somewhat less effectively, simply by denying them the opportunity, though it's significantly less final and it's not exactly perfect because they could still hurt other guards/inmates, escape, etc.

The real problem with them is whether there are better ways of accomplishing the goal of reducing crime.

There was a questionable execution in Texas in 2004 that's still shows up in the news occasionally[1]. If you are looking for a previous case that might help you guess how much this could be in the news, I'd look there.

It is a story, but Perry won at least one more election after this. It's not the type of thing that will end the career of a governor in a conservative state.

[1] - http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/08/03/fresh-d...

Possibly true, but I remember the Aaron Swartz' prosecutor Carmen Ortiz and I bet a lot of other people do as well.

At the time, then-governor Bill Clinton's execution of Ricky Ray Rector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector was a big deal.

It was a big deal at the time because Clinton deliberately made it a big deal to make a political point in the Presidential campaign.

But, even so, now I don't think its one of the top 20 things most people -- whether they are generally pro- or anti-Clinton -- think about when they think about Bill Clinton, so it doesn't seem to support the "this will be the thing you are known for" idea too well.

I hardly think you can say that's what Bill Clinton is known for. I've never heard of Ricky Ray Rector, but I have Clinton's autograph.

That's awfully cynical.

Well, so is capital punishment, in fairness.

It seems an appropriate response to the ultimate cynicism, capital punishment

This is name-calling, not an argument

It's not name calling; it means essentially the same thing as: "your claim is predicated on a degree of mistrust of humanity that is not shared by everyone"

Ok, here's argument.

> People are wrongfully executed all the time

Citation needed. I'm not aware of people who have been persuasively shown to be innocent post-execution.

> Executions serve no purpose for society except to satisfy our thirst for revenge,

Wrong, many studies show a deterrent effect.

> it makes little difference if the person they kill is innocent or not.

What? Of course it does.

> If he turns out to be innocent, they can always execute someone else to save face. Not the ones responsible for his execution, of course.

This hardly deserves a response.

Citation needed. I'm not aware of people who have been persuasively shown to be innocent post-execution.

In that case you have done very little research and cannot really be trusted to have an informed opinion on the matter.

I'm aware of death penalty abolitionists who argue that innocents have been executed. I'm not aware of persuasive evidence. If it were trivial to find some, surely you would have just posted a link instead of an insult.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Yes, death penalty abolitionists argue that innocents have been executed. In other news, sun rises in east.

>Citation needed. I'm not aware of people who have been persuasively shown to be innocent post-execution.

The size of the US list is concerning - and it isn't even complete. There's also the possibility of executions that haven't been further looked into where the person may have also been innocent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_i...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution

In your first link, I'm seeing pre-execution exonerations, not innocents executed. In your second, I'm seeing that some people have "doubts." Not exactly the same as "the wrong person was definitely executed."

Cynic is not a pejorative term, is more of a philosophical outlook.

Is this before or after the Internet-Social-Media era?

A woman was executed last night in the US, even after the Pope asked for clemency.

Indonesia executed a multi-national group of people five months ago.

Saudi Arabia beheaded an Indonesian maid with no legal representation five months ago, a group subject to so much abuse that Indonesia made it illegal to move to Saudi Arabia to become a maid.

In weeks nobody will remember Glossip either, least of all people getting their news from reddit.

In weeks state-sponsored execution will still be a national sport in these countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country

Citizens of those countries won't even remember to be embarrassed, let alone who the victims are.

Only one off the top of my head. Pilot did get pretty famous for it though.

edit - Vlad the Impaler probably also counts, given he was the Voivode of the Polity of Wallachia, so he was basically a military governor.

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