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> There are vanishingly few situations where we can be 100%, absolutely clear on whether a person did something that warrants permanently removing that person from existence.

This is a little strawperson.

If you support the death penalty you also know innocent people will die from the death penalty.

But you support it because you believe overall less people will be removed from existence.

IE it's a deterrent. IE less criminals escape and go on the commit again. IE it costs less so more money goes to save lives in hospitals. [please don't rehash why this are faulty arguments, that's OT to the point I'm making]

For the record I am STRONGLY opposed to the death penalty (for moral/religious reasons).

That said, I wonder if you live in the same Texas I visit each year. The vast majority of Texans support the death penalty.

A University of Texas (Austin) poll last year showed 49% of Texans support the death penalty. 26% somewhat support. That's almost 20 million Texans. While just 19% are opposed (of which just 9% strongly oppose).

https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/set/support-death-penalty-f...

> There are vanishingly few situations where we can be 100%, absolutely clear on whether a person did something that warrants permanently removing that person from existence.

So would you say that the vast majority of murder convictions leave at least a little room for doubt?

Yes. "Beyond all reasonable doubt" is fine for throwing someone in jail and putting the key all but permanently out of reach. But I think that, as a society, we must retain the ability to say "oh shit we fucked up very much here is the door we are very sorry please take this huge sack of cash along with our sincere apologies" if or when we discover that our legal system made a massive error.

In this day and age, were an exoneration to happen, I would also mandate that the state put up billboards in the person's home town and where the crime allegedly took place and run Internet ads and do lots of press interviews to get it out as widely as possible that someone has been exonerated.

> "Beyond all reasonable doubt" is fine for throwing someone in jail and putting the key all but permanently out of reach. But I think that, as a society, we must retain the ability to say "oh shit we fucked up very much here is the door we are very sorry please take this huge sack of cash along with our sincere apologies" if or when we discover that our legal system made a massive error.

You'll still never return lost years and decades of someone's life any more than you could return life to a dead man. You can't restore the fractured relationships, undo the pain of imprisonment.

Honestly, I think a quick death (not the insane decades-of-imprisonment-followed-by-ritualistic-execution we have now) is far more humane than life in prison.

Then stop treating prisoners so poorly. What I read of US prisons sounds inhumane, so your last sentence comes across to me as comparing two different NaNs.

Also, many countries have banned life imprisonment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment#Reform_or_ab... .

> You'll still never return lost years and decades of someone's life any more than you could return life to a dead man. You can't restore the fractured relationships, undo the pain of imprisonment.

No, but you also can't make a completely perfect criminal justice system. It is infinitely more possible to free a person from prison, pay that person many millions of dollars (or do other things to make the remainder of that person's life very easy), and otherwise let that person go back to having some kind of life...than it is to raise the dead.

> Honestly, I think a quick death (not the insane decades-of-imprisonment-followed-by-ritualistic-execution we have now) is far more humane than life in prison.

Perhaps it is for the actually-guilty. But for the actually-innocent, I do not agree because they will always have the hope and possibility of someday being freed again.

> Honestly, I think a quick death (not the insane decades-of-imprisonment-followed-by-ritualistic-execution we have now) is far more humane than life in prison.

I think many would agree, that both systems are broken. The fix for the first is easier: Just stop it.

>I'm a native Texan, which I point out solely to rebut the assertion that all--or even many--Texans are in favor of the death penalty

When it comes to an action as permanent as killing a person, disapproval without preventative action (i.e., abolition) is tacit approval. So long as Texas keeps executing people, I don't see what difference it makes how many Texans are in favor of it.

What would you like techsupporter to do? Drive down to the prisons and personally tear down the bars?

"So long as Texas keeps executing people, I don't see what difference it makes how many [Americans] are in favor of it."

Honest question: how many people are actively protesting against the death penalty in Texas? A cursory search shows one annual march and protests on the day of executions, with turnouts in the low tens.

From the outside looking in, it seems that most Texans who oppose the death penalty are either indifferent or resigned to the issue. I'd love to be proven wrong, but I find very little evidence of a credible abolition movement. Without sustained political pressure, disapproval counts for very little.

Why does the popularity of a form of punishment matter so much?

If the death penalty is unjust, inhumane, and unequally applied, isn't it also then both crual and unusual?

The standard we apply in our justice system is not one of popular opinion.

>What would you like techsupporter to do? Drive down to the prisons and personally tear down the bars?

The perceived inability of one does not excuse the lack of action by the many, especially if the techsupporter's assertion is true -- that not many Texans support the death penalty.

I suspect that, given California couldn't even replace it with life imprisonment (it failed 52-48 with Prop 34 in 2012), the considerably more conservative state of Texas has at least a simple majority support for the death penalty.

>"So long as Texas keeps executing people, I don't see what difference it makes how many [Americans] are in favor of it."

I agree wholeheartedly.