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Comment by omginternets | Hacker News Reader

I do see the difference, but I'm not convinced it's anything but marginal.

A ruined life isn't much better than death, and sometimes worse IMHO. Without wanting to throw around accusations (truly! I don't mean to presume anything about you, specifically!), I find that people who make your argument often have no appreciation of just how terrible a ruined life can be. I think it's critical to remember that there can be no suffering after death, and while I'd still rather rot in prison than hang for a crime I didn't commit, there's no question that imprisoning an innocent person will cause tremendous suffering and debilitating handicap.

To be clear: there are other, stronger arguments against capital punishment. My point is rather that this one isn't the strong argument it's often made out to be.

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I think people who have been freed after decades in jail have very different humble opinions. There are plenty of documentaries and articles and books on that subject if you're interested.

Yes, I'm reasonably well-read on the subject. I don't deny that these people do exist. Rather, I argue that the "killing is worse than perpetual imprisonment because the later can be rescinded" argument is weak.

This is because either way, people's lives are being ruined. There are a great many people who have been freed from jail only to continue suffering on the outside as a direct result of their incarceration.

Incidentally, I think you've made some assumptions about my position on capital punishment that are mistaken...

EDIT: I seem to have been unclear and this is causing a lot of visceral reactions. Yes, it's worse to be wrongfully killed than wrongfully incarcerated for life (or incarcerated for some length of time and then released). The argument is that it's still close enough that the argument of irreversibility should apply (IMHO) to life sentences. As such, I don't think this is a very strong argument against capital punishment. As an auxiliary point: I think there are other, much stronger arguments against CP. tl;dr: a life sentence is bad enough that the irreversibility argument should apply to it as well.

Nobody is going to argue that lives aren't being ruined, but you said the difference between being killed and being freed after a decade is marginal, which is almost too ridiculous to respond to.

It's one argument of many, but it's useful for people who think capital punishment is morally justified, but don't want innocent people killed.

So, do all of those people released from life imprisonment feel they'd be better off if they'd been killed?

I think the parent is right that society should not regard life sentences and capital punishment differently with regard to permanency. Yes on an individual level, there exists the possibility of reversing a life sentence any time prior to the inmates death, but I think it's wrong for society to regard a life sentence as somehow a "less serious" sentence than a death sentence. Yes there are some innocent people serving life sentences whose convictions are overturned before their death -- but there are also some innocent people sentenced to the death penalty who are freed prior to execution.

We cannot ignore that there are also innocent people who are sentenced to life in prison -- who die in prison. From the perspective of maximum damage, surely society has harmed these people (and their families) more than it harms the innocents who are executed.

> The argument is that it's still close enough that the argument of irreversibility should apply (IMHO) to life sentences.

That doesn't make sense. While irreversibility is, in fact, an absolute trait of a death sentence, the irreversibility argument is an argument about the relative features of death sentences vs. life imprisonment.

Its true that any imprisonment includes some harms that are (or some probability of harm that is) irreversible, those harms can stop being compounded at any time during the imprisonment by terminating the imprisonment -- as has been done, in fact, not only for innocence but for other causes -- and, even while irreversible, can in some cases be compensated for in some extent, which also (though more rarely) occurs.

To the extent either of those can happen in the case of death sentences, it is only because death sentences are, in practice, sentences to long-but-indefinite terms of imprisonment followed by death, and the imprisonment portion of that sentence behaves exactly like any other sentence of imprisonment. (And note that death sentence proponents often argue that this feature of the death sentence is, itself, a misfeature imposed by resistance to the death penalty which should ideally be eliminated.)

Marginal doesn't matter. The function of justice in society is for people to feel protected, without the burden of constant attention to the safety and well-being of themselves and their family. That sense of justice is often wildly different than any objective measure of justice.

In the context of wrong convictions, I think the question is whether people fear being wrongly convicted more than they fear a cold-blooded killer escaping a life sentence. And secondarily, how strongly wrong convictions of others effects their sense of justice and equality more generally, and thus the legitimacy of their government.

I'm sure this sense has changed over the years, especially when we were more segregated and different classes of people didn't feel that the treatment of certain classes could effect their own class. But I think it's become increasingly the case that the death penalty is having a detrimental effect on our sense of justice and equality. Part of that has to do with modern mass media--dead or alive, our killers are both omni-present and strangely distant. Also, unlike in bygone times we basically kill on-the-spot many of the criminals we'd otherwise be afraid of. For example, domestic terrorists.

So on the whole I would guess that the death penalty provides increasingly less benefit and incurs increasing social costs. The moral question is more definitive for some, but if we're going to be utilitarian about it, it's much more complex than a simple accounting of the statistics.

>I do see the difference, but I'm not convinced it's anything but marginal.

That is incredibly myopic and presumptuous. You're effectively arguing that we're going to destroy your life so it'll be better if we just end it. If the person's life ends up being so terrible after the fact they still have the option of just ending it. There is no benefit to making such a callous decision for them. Calling the argument weak when your own is short-sighted and at the very worst disingenuous is kind of disgusting to me, personally.

I am not even sure you understand your own position completely.

No. With respect you don't understand my position.

I argue that a life sentence is only marginally better than a death sentence. I further argue that if we oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it causes substantial irreversible damage, then we must also oppose perpetual incarceration because the difference in harm is not large enough (IMHO). I, and many others, are not willing to do away with perpetual incarceration so this is not a satisfactory line of argumentation.

From there, I reach my point: there are other, more compelling arguments against the death penalty.

I'll say the same thing to you as the other guy: you're making assumptions about my position relative to capital punishment.

If you're going to call people disgusting, at least make a good-faith effort to understand what they're saying.

You brought up those points, but there is no supporting evidence for them. There is plenty of accounts from people who went through this process with the exact opposite opinion you are stating.

No where in my post was there indication or any reason to make the claim that I don't understand what you're saying. I get what you're saying, it's just unsupported and presumptuous -- which is exactly what I said in my first post.

Even if we knew that in every single case that your life was completely ruined after the fact for various reasons (which is factually not the case), it's still morally reprehensible that you consider the outcomes marginally different to the point where whether or not we allowed you to live is insignificant.

I don't consider this argument weak at all. There is no reason for it to be weak; in fact the only way it can be weak is if you make certain assumptions (that we know aren't true) along with some other not-so-popular philosophical value judgements. Hence, not only is the position rather disgusting at a certain level, but making a claim that the argument in discussion is weak is actually rather weakly supported in and of itself.

Again, it is you who does not really understand the position you are taking. I'm not sure how much more you want me to spell it out.

> I argue that a life sentence is only marginally better than a death sentence. I further argue that if we oppose the death penalty on the grounds that it causes substantial irreversible damage, then we must also oppose perpetual incarceration because the difference in harm is not large enough (IMHO).

This is where your argument fails to convince me (and, I suspect, many others). I could accept, if I really stretched myself, that a death sentence is only marginally worse than a life sentence, but only up to the point when it is actually carried out. The obvious discontinuity brought about by the irreversibility of death cannot be ignored; it makes the distinction between the two sentences not marginal, but catastrophic.

Because of this, your argument is weak (IMHO, in keeping with your restrained manner).

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