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Comment by murtnowski | Hacker News Reader

California already removed the death penalty in 1972 then later reinstated it. This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they wanted.

Since being reinstated only 13 people have been executed. And none in the past 10 years.

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

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I think one of the best takes on this issue was a quote from a death penalty critic in the documentary film "Deadline". He said, "We all agree that we should have a system that kills John Wayne Gacy but there is no way to create a system that kills only John Wayne Gacy."

Meaning that, there are certain cases where we are 100% certain of a persons guilt and can mostly agree that that person should die but how do we ensure a death penalty is used exlusively in those cases?

I suppose one starting point would be to allow executions in the case where the defendant confesses under oath in a courtroom.

Though it might be considered poor policy, since it would discourage people from accepting a plea bargain or confessing.

Not to mention all of the people who give false confessions.

False confessions are a common cause of incorrect convictions.

https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/...

Also on the theme of false confessions and how broken the US justice system is, I strongly recommend watching the "Paradise Lost" series of documentaries.[1][2]

[1] - https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Paradise-Lost-The-Child-Murder...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost:_The_Child_Murde...

> This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they wanted.

That qualifies more as 'revenge' than as 'justice'.

The whole idea of a punitive system is broken at the foundation. Jail is not there to remove people from the pool (though in some cases that is a happy side effect), it is there to rehabilitate. In extreme cases this means people will never be released. But executing them makes 'us' just as bad as 'them'.

It should be there to rehabilitate, because (EDIT: in large part, there are other reasons) ultimately the vast majority of the incarcerated will be released back into society.

Unfortunately, the US has long since decided that punishment is the purpose, that these people are getting what they deserve. It's a very frustrating culture to be surrounded by.

> Jail is not there to remove people from the pool, it is there to rehabilitate.

According to whom?

> But executing them makes 'us' just as bad as 'them'.

So you're saying that, for example, the state executing a mass murderer is just as bad as mass murder?

According to much of the Western world.

And even if you don't accept that, just consider: most crimes aren't murder. They don't get people sent away for life, but for a period of 1-a few years.

They will be released back into society. If we do not rehabilitate them, we can expect recidivism from either failing to counter the errant impulses, exposure to similar or worse criminal elements while incarcerated, or failure to reenter society (due to ostracism, failure to adapt to changes, lack of social structure like family and friends). We are literally creating the problem by failing to rehabilitate criminals, and instead focusing on "punishing" them.

There is much to unpack in this topic, but I'll just point out that the idea that its purpose must be singular, one of punishment or rehabilitation, is a false dichotomy.

what's the difference?

Are you seriosuly asking that question?

Justice is supposed to measured and balancing for society as a whole, meted out by an impartial judge and jury of peers.

Revenge is completely subjective and ruled by emotional responses by the aggrieved party. It's almost always going to be more destructive disproportionate than it needs to be.

The last people that should decide the fate of those who have harmed them are the victims. That just leads to pure chaos.

I could decide that if someone threatened my life that I would achieve justice by circumventing law enforcement and the justice system by murdering the person in question plus their whole family, whether they meant it or not. I could state reasons of personal/family honour and whatever other bullshit would justify those actions in my mind. That doesn't make it right, or just. It makes it a response borne of unchecked emotion.

You might say that is okay, but it would quickly lead to pure anarchy if we all followed that ideal. That's why we have a justice system in place that doesn't (or tries not to) focus on revenge.

The idea that distraught family members necessarily have a clear picture of what fair justice they deserve seems extremely odd to me.

This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they wanted.

And thus the state protects the convicted from the vengeful desires of the victim's family members and doles out the justice the community has deemed appropriate. Just because the victims pay the state to "string 'em up!" instead of doing it themselves doesn't mean it's not mob justice.

If by community you mean a few government elite, and some judges, then yes. If you mean the population of the state, a large majority at the time supported the death penalty, which why it was reinstated by popular vote soon after.

The population of the state simultaneously wanted the death penalty and to follow the Constitution. One role that the population of the state gave to judges is to referee these conflicting desires.

Not only did Californians vote to reinstate the death penalty, they then voted to impeach the justices of the State Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, who actively blocked its use after it became law again. So I don't think there is much argument that the courts were just implementing the will of the people.

I didn't make that argument. I was arguing that the people wanted contradictory things. The courts are just caught in the middle.

The people didn't want contradictory things, they wanted the death penalty, and they wanted the courts to implement it. The court wasn't caught in the middle, it was just composed of judges with opinions out of alignment with the general population.

So you don't think that the people want the Constitution, or the court system?

Think of a constitution as guardrails about democracies, the constitution nails a couple of very basic rules down hard and leaves room for interpretation and variation. It's a good principle, the constitution guarantees long term stability and the 'basics', the parliaments/congresses/whatever the local variation is called deal with day-to-day variance.

So 'the people' will want both, depending on whether they have the long or the short term view and those two views can and do contradict at times.

People want the constitution in the way they want to interpret it, and they want judges who believe what they believe. There is no contradiction. It is naive to think of judges as some sort of objective arbiter, they are effectively political appointees sent to push an agenda.

> they then voted to impeach the justices of the State Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, who actively blocked its use after it became law again

nobody was impeached. It was a normal judicial retention election.

You are correct, it was a retention election which typically is a rubber stamp approval.

> This resulted in killers like Charles Mason being relieved from execution and denying many victim's family member from obtaining a measure of justice they wanted.

I weigh that measure of justice as less meaningful than the potential execution of innocents.

That's hardly comparable. In 1972 the supreme court decided that the death penalty laws _of the time_ were unconstitutional. The death penalty was almost immediately restored by public vote, with some modifications (switching from hanging to lethal injection, changing the appeals process, etc.)

The will of the people is the ultimate mandate in a democracy. In 1972 this mandate was for the death penalty. We'll see next week whether the mandate has changed.

"The will of the people is the ultimate mandate in a democracy."

Until a small group of judges say otherwise.

Actually I think the above statement is correct. If the U.S. was a pure democracy, the will of the people would be ultimate. As a constitutional republic, the constitution is ultimate, and in the U.S.'s particular implementation of the republic, the will of the people would mandate a law, and the supreme court would determine if that law comports with the constitution or not.

And then the people vote to change the constitution, as they are doing in California on next Tuesday.

Majority rules with minority rights. The judges are there in part to ensure the rights of the minority are respected.

The death penalty only further obscures justice by the very fact that innocent people have been put to death this way.

Precisely. To put it crudely, Charles Manson can be killed later, but innocents can't be un-killed.

Why can't people speak in honest terms? What you mean isn't justice, but revenge. Killing a killer will not undo the damage they have done. It will not bring a life back.

If people require revenge for emotionally healing then that is because society has promoted this as justice.

I've never heard of victims desiring death for killers in my home country, but we are not so big on revenge and don't.

The American justice system frequently paints a trial as some sort of game, where the victims family score more points in the competition for every year extra the perpetrator gets in prison.

What about helping victims in meaningful ways instead? They might need mental health care, time of from work, economic support etc. America tend to do little in this regard.

It reminds me of the conservative desire to ban abortion, but unwillingness to actually help a family in a difficult situation giving birth to a child. Instead of making it easier to have a child so people themselves will chose to keep it, instead they want to intimidate parents to keep it threatening with prison and fines.

It is a fundamentally negative and cynical perspective on humanity. I guess that is what you get when people follow a faith which teaches that people are only good because the fear eternal punishment in hell.

Imprisoning a killer will not undo the damage they have done, but that doesn't make imprisonment revenge.

Indeed, the concept of justice is strikingly lacking from these discussions.

> It reminds me of the conservative desire to ban abortion, but unwillingness to actually help a family in a difficult situation giving birth to a child. Instead of making it easier to have a child so people themselves will chose to keep it, instead they want to intimidate parents to keep it threatening with prison and fines.

Where did you get this idea, that pro-life people are anti-help, pro-intimidation people?

> It is a fundamentally negative and cynical perspective on humanity. I guess that is what you get when people follow a faith which teaches that people are only good because the fear eternal punishment in hell.

That's not what Christianity teaches. Christianity teaches that people are sinful, period. It is only through the redeeming sacrifice of Christ that we can be washed of our sins and be seen as holy in God's sight. We should then be motivated to lead holy lives primarily in gratitude and love, not out of fear. For example, I John 4:18: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love."

This justice-revenge distinction you are making is merely tone. Factually, they are one and the same.

Under the assumption that people believe executions offer <real> relief, I think that killing people convicted of murder for the hope of delivering speculative folksy medical / psychological intervention for proximally injured parties values life as absurdly trivial.

At the very least, any rational person should see that compared to armchair speculation of medical interventions, organ extraction offers real value! And not to mention, think of all those who die or suffer because of the pace of medical research. With these worthy prisoners, we can change that! This mindset that values convicts' lives as so trivial is troubling and wasteful.

TLDR: Who cares if a family didn't get the speculative relief they wanted from somebody's execution? That's a perspective that treats life as absurdly trivial, and I doubt the medical community believes this as a serious intervention to clinically significant distress.

Your argument seems to contradict itself. The death penalty is necessary for justice, but at the same time we should be OK with having it because it hasn't been used in a decade?

I'm not making an argument. I'm stating facts. I never said I was OK with it.

I don't believe it. Bringing up Charles Manson and using loaded language to describe his avoidance of it clearly makes an argument for the death penalty.

It is a fact that Charles Mason was relieved from execution. Just like it is a fact that because of the court rulings around 1972 he became eligible for parole.

Charles Manson and other 106 inmates on death row in 1972 were all convicted killers who were relieved from the death penalty.

Many victim's family members were upset by the courts decision.

Now I get to turn your technique back on you: I never said that wasn't factual.

I never said you said it wasn't

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