Last Words From Death Row (2015)
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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.That's why I'm so impressed with how Norway handled Breivik after he was arrested.
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.
This logic likely exists in a watered down form amongst the HN crowd more than Human Rights groups
What about the ones that have not, but are put down due to a malfunctioning justice system instead?
My uncle was (by his word, and I've seen the police reports which are a contradictory mess) falsely convicted. He got life in prison and could face parole after 20+ years. He didn't get a chance at that because he suffered and died in prison of cancer.
Falsely being convicted and put to death is horrific, but we also have a very rigorous appeals process, which is why some of these guys don't die for a decade or more. You get falsely convicted and 20 years, you aren't going to get near the appeals and your life is just as ruined. Those 20 years inside your lonely cell might even be worse than just being put to death.
It's never struck me as a realistic argument against the death penalty because of wrongful convictions. You could exaggerate your stance and suggest that no jails should exist and in fact no justice should ever be served because there are innocents.
To just say no death penalty, lock em up for 30 years instead doesn't begin to solve the issue and perhaps even fails to recognize how horrific that sentence is.
I personally think the extreme incarceration rate, the conditions in prison, the lack of measures aiming at reducing recidivism, the disproportional sentencing are bigger issues in the US than the death penalty. Not because the death penalty is OK in any way, purely because of the size of the effect.
> Falsely being convicted and put to death is horrific, but we also have a very rigorous appeals process, which is why some of these guys don't die for a decade or more.
There's plenty well documented cases where these appeals were done on an absolutely half-hearted basis, with very dodgy evidence.
> It's never struck me as a realistic argument against the death penalty because of wrongful convictions. You could exaggerate your stance and suggest that no jails should exist and in fact no justice should ever be served because there are innocents.
Reductio ad absurdum.
Not only that, is is a flaw that cannot be fixed. Period. There is no 100% reliable way to handle this without mistakes. And mistakes are not only irreversible, they cannot be made up for in any way. As such this particular system cannot be allowed to be used.
killing a dog because it bit a person is just another demonstration of how we overvalue human life. you should get mad about that- too.
1. "as someone who is atheist/nihilist/suicidal". Describing yourself as suicidal is not a great introduction, go and see a doctor. Self-termination is not a "normal" feeling.
2. "I see no reason not to put down humans who have malfunctioned" - See point 1. Also, non third-world countries should have a justice system which would aim to recover individuals instead of "putting them down" or "making them pay/suffer". You might be stuck during middle-age if you think otherwise.
3. "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" - again I don't even know where to start. Like if life was not difficult. Such a superficial view on life.
maybe next time try starting with some empathy.
I am not trying to be overly critical. I don't sense you are a bad person. maybe just uninitiated :).
the line between "direct" and "insensitive" becomes so much more clear only once you've experienced a similar depression.
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.
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...
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.
> 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.
Most people on death row didn't kill "dozens of people". It's a bad way to make an argument.
A Six Deuce Brim gang member, Adams was already serving life in prison for a Santa Barbara robbery-homicide when he was sentenced to death for killing three young men in South Los Angeles in 1994 in a gang-related shooting.
Aguayo was already in prison for the attempted murder of a woman when a DNA match linked him with the 1979 rape and killing of a pregnant woman.
Alcala is serial killer whose total victim count is unknown. He worked as a photographer and had been a “Dating Game” contestant. He was convicted three times for the 1979 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. The first two convictions were overturned. He also strangled to death four Los Angeles area women and in 2013 confessed to killing two women in New York during the 1970s. He was charged in September 2016 for an eighth murder in Wyoming.
Aldana was convicted of torture and murder for killing a 16-year-old runaway, who was living with him, after he believed she had become pregnant. He stabbed her more than 100 times.
Real people on death row with much smaller victim counts. Why do these people deserve to live?
Aguayo - killed one, tried to kill another
Alcala - unknown, eight known
Aldana - killed one
None of these are "a criminal with dozens of murders". When you said that, you were mocking the efforts of people trying to stop capital punishment. In truth, most people asking governors for stays of execution are not 'fixated on the tragedy of the criminal over the dozens they killed', because a) none of these criminals did that; and b) it's a false dichotomy to say that they're not concerned about the victims. Basically, you're strawmanning in order to make your point emotively rather than with reasoned arguments.
If you're atheist, well, there's no 'heaven' to make it up to an actually-innocent convict (and their still-living loved ones). There is nothing you can do to 'make it better', not even in a token manner.
If you're a nihilist, well, it's the more expensive, labour-intensive path, requiring more effort. If nothing really matters, then why go to the extra effort?
And if you're proposing we treat humans the same way we treat dogs, then you should be aware that the number of dogs we kill for 'malfunctioning' (biting) is a rounding error of all the dogs we intentionally kill. If we were to treat humans like dogs, then for each of us there'd be someone deciding whether or not a person was convenient to have around (not necessarily someone that we even knew existed). Then we'd either be given a lethal injection if the decider was nice, or be killed in a variety of increasingly unpleasant ways if the decider wasn't. We kill an awful lot of canines (and all common pets) just because we can't be bothered to keep them around, from abandoned pets to puppy farms to feral culls to just getting rid of a pet's unwanted litter. Given all that, it seems odd to make much of a fuss over a 'broken' animal.
Final thought:
> but I don't believe execution is suffering
The act itself is largely not, but the lead-up to it is.
Society is a collection of individuals; everyone has different opinions and feelings on almost anything: at least when we discuss such sensible matters, we should rationalize our arguments, stripping any trace of subjectivity.
> I don't understand the great value placed on human life.
Coming to the case, you may not value your life very much, but we can't say the same for the criminal who is facing a death sentence. Personally, I don't feel empathy for some criminals who consciously perpetrated atrocious crimes; I literally fail to care for them. Nevertheless, I can objectively understand that in a civilized country any human must be granted some undeniable rights.
> I see no reason not to put down humans who have malfunctioned.
Humans do not malfunction. Humans err, whether deliberately or not. They must have the right to redeem themselves. And even if they refused to, putting them to death would still be a miserable solution: it wouldn't mitigate the crime, nor would provide justice -- and I mean justice, not revenge. Indeed, it would be itself a crime.
Edit: typos and form
But on the plus side, Breivik is currently working on his Poly Sci degree should they ever let him back into society.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/06/revenge-killing
So, what is the point of executing someone? The only thing it does is reduce our own humanity, it doesn't solve any problem.
Is that actually the opinion of the council? It's about whether they deserve it?
I am against the death penalty because I don't believe we can prevent political convictions of innocent people. But I do believe there are many criminals who deserve to die.
Heck I think there are nonviolent offenders who deserve to die.
It’s about whether a person deserves the right to live, and the European Council of Human Rights is of the opinion that the right to live can not be limited for any reason, it is inviolable. Everyone deserves the right to live.
It somehow feels very 'right' for lack of a better term - that rather than going out in what would, to him, probably be a martyresque way he now spends the rest of his days seeing how his plan - to sow the seeds of a fascist revolution - failed miserably. To him, that probably feels much worse than being murdered by the state.
iirc, his sentence was @20 years, not life.
If sentenced under this statute, your case will be up for review by a board after a few years; if they find that the inmate is still likely to pose a danger to society, they'll just shrug and say 'tough luck', then schedule another review in a couple of years time. No worries. Breivik is not being released anytime soon.
(It makes it hard to get why they did it when they're dead, but I really give zero f*cks about the monster's backstory.)
My 2nd preference is hearing that they were later killed in prison (a'la Jeffery Dahmer).
And this is exactly why it keeps happening.
It was concluded that the Sandy Hook shooter was a pedo that liked to shoot children.
The Colombine High School shooters were trying to kill the most people possible (but were shitty at making bombs).
The Colorado Theater (Batman) shooter said killing someone took their value and gave it to his life.
The Oklahoma City bomber said it was a counter attack against the Feds for Waco.
Dennis Nilsen killed 15 boys and slept next to their bodies because he felt lonely.
Son of Sam was a Satan follower listening to a demon that spoke to him through his neighbor's dog.
The Green River Killer murdered 48 women and girls, dumped them in the woods and then returned to f*ck the bodies. His motivation was to kill as many women as he could.
Not sure how knowing any of that stops the next one.
If it's really a life choice someone is considering then I'm 1,000% behind them seeking help. If they've already started dumping bodies in ravines, not so much.
One of the most popular types of medicines in the usa to prescribe to people with psychotic tendencies entirely eradicates any psychotic outbreaks, but also completely suspends the physical production of dopamine, meaning people become physically unable to feel happiness, or much of anything. They become inert breathing husks.
And since a lot of people are either of the opinion "fix yourself, or we'll fix you with guns", and the "fix yourself" step is pretty much suicide, just of another kind, it is not only normal that people don't seek help, but it would be almost crazier to actually go and seek help.
Until the USA as a country actually start caring about these people, like the citizens they are, they will have no incentive whatsoever to trust themselves to other people, and things like those in your list will keep happening.
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.
After all, TANJ (There Ain't No Justice) in the natural world. Punishing people for breaking laws is one way that society "upgrades" over the natural world.
People are busybodies and like to exert control over each other. It's a power trip.
If that was true (in the US) then there would be more rehabilitation in prisons, preparing people to reintegrate into society. Instead of we don't and have a 75%+ recidivism rate for state prisons.
Also, the war on drugs.
I always thought this was exactly the reasoning behind the death penalty.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
You wrote:
For rape, sure, certain groups will get away with it. But for homicide? Are murders being selectively investigated?
The answer is, "yes, of course."
Slightly edited.
Edit: So I searched a bit, and, in NYC, it's said this is due to reduced budgets for homicide in certain areas that are predominately minority. For this to impact the stats (the raw numbers being that blacks, as a group in the US, commit 4-5x homicide by population, and similarly bad numbers looking at interracial crime) it'd have to be a massively disproportionate amount of non-blacks going into these neighbourhoods and killing them. From the "flavour" text in the articles I read, the victims families are lamenting that cops don't care because "it's just blacks men killing other black men".
But wow am I astounded how low the solved rate is, that's crazy. Though I would suspect most homicides are at least reported, whereas many lesser crimes (like drug possession) might not be. It's totally plausible that the real drug possession rate among whites is actually orders of magnitude higher than reported, less so for homicide.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond and correct me.
Your analysis here is based on another fallacy, which is that there's a direct connection between the crime of homicide and capital punishment. In fact, no: only a subset of murders, aggravated by circumstances mostly not present in gang shootings, attract death sentences. Further, some presumably large fraction of the black/black murders you're considering occur in jurisdictions that are statistically (or, as in the case of Chicago, legally) unlikely to apply capital punishment.
To reach a conclusion that there aren't racial disparities in capital punishment, you have to de-confound the homicide statistics to eliminate murders that are effectively or statistically ineligible for the death penalty, and then make comparisons.
The Nordics are the exception when it comes to focus on rehabilitation. Not to say they are right, or wrong, just that at this point in history they are the exception.
They are models, but they are also facing completely different dynamics than pretty much every other country. Wealthy and secure and:
* Denmark - 5.7 million people, 80% of whom are Danish
* Norway - 5.1 million people, in 1992 95% were native
* Sweden - 10 million, the largest non-Swedish ethnic group being the Finns at 150k
You can drive an hour's radius through many big US metros and cover more people than those countries and within that radius find swaths of hundreds of thousands of people of various ethnic groups. These population numbers really pale compared to anything in East Asia though even if they are homogeneous (don't discount how much that helps social dynamics).
The demographics are shifting in Nordic countries but they a really are extreme outliers worthy of praise and recognition that they are outliers.
edit to include reply:
You are talking about demographics. How can it be irrelevant?
The US is in the situation it is in because an entire demographic was transplanted here against their will due to slavery. Nordic countries do not have this situation (good!) so the potential remedies are different.
The only way to solve problems is to effectively diagnose them. You might not like that the US isn't a country of 5 million people with 80% native population which makes policy a lot easier, but that's reality. We can't make things better unless we recognize that and figure out the proper solution within this setting and not some other.
It's not racist to recognize that and it's wrong to call someone a racist because they are searching for solutions.
It is a massive self-reinforcing feedback loop. If we had even an ounce of the empathy and rational approach to public safety that the Nordic countries had, we wouldn't be having this discussion and that feedback loop would have been broken a century ago.
That said, this is not endemic to western cultures. The same attitude is prevalent in LatAm, Africa, South Asia, etc.
It would be helpful if people didn't perpetuate the myth that it springs from race (though race can exacerbate the issue). It was a problem in Britain before they became empire.
It's an issue in China, India, South Africa, Singapore, Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, Japan, Korea, etc. many places far-removed from western culture.
Whoah, don't tarnish everyone else with the fucked-up brush of the US system.
> Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc., regularly close prisons
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/01/norwegian-inma...
No justice system is perfect, but let's avoid the black/white scandanavia/ROW thing. The scandanavians do well, yes, but they're not the only ones that use rehabilitation.
> the fact is that common wealth countries like to kill and enslave people to punish them
Where do you see slavery or capital punishment in modern commonwealth countries? We're not in the 19th century anymore. I assume you actually meant Dominion countries and not commonwealth countries, but even so, which modern commonwealth countries have capital punishment? More importantly, how do you see it as a characteristic of a commonwealth country in general.
Sounds nice, but isn't it a very common motive that the aggrieved want "some sense of fairness" in punishment? You hear it a lot after publicised trials, the relatives will offer their opinion on whether the punishment was appropriate for their loss. Doesn't it seem a little weird that only society's interest is what matters?
There's a rather large can of worms in the ideas you speak of.
Safety, for instance, is not an obvious thing. Suppose a study comes out identifying that 50% of members of a given group (say geographical, skin color, education, etc) will commit a heinous crime (and 50% is way more than normal in the population). There is no further specific information; as far as members of this group, it's a coin toss.
What are we to do? The ones who haven't committed a crime yet are a risk. Can we lock them all up? I doubt it.
Here's another interesting one. A study appears in which it is studied what happens to jealousy-murders, eg where a guy finds his wife with another guy and murders them. Lets say the study concludes that once the murders have happened, the murderer is no more likely than anyone else to commit a crime. It's totally safe to let him out now, because it's safety we care about? Seems wrong. But many countries do recognise this kind of enraged murder as a special circumstance in sentencing.
Anyway, not saying I have the answers. Ethical questions have been vexing for a long time.
This is no different from thinking about what would happen if you could teleport. The correct answer isn't "but you can't do that".
That might be true in Norway, but it's clearly not true in the U.S. U.S. prisons and prison policies are tacitly designed to make them as miserable as they can be without making it obvious that they are in fact torture chambers. The widespread use of solitary confinement alone, which is now clearly understood to be torture, falsifies your assertion. The death penalty too does nothing to advance public safety. It is vengeance, pure and simple (and very expensive vengeance at that).
We absolutely punish people "because it makes us feel good". That is one explicit goal of legal theories of punishment - retribution is about replacing revenge, so that the state serves as a proxy for our monkey-needs for revenge.
In the U.S., things are very much tilted towards making people convicted of wrongdoing suffer. Granted, not as much as some places, but that's hardly anything to be proud of.
I sat in a court room during sentencing of a young man for a federal drug offense. He had prior drug offenses. No violent crimes. Right before he got clean, a friend asked him to mail him some drugs. The amount was just enough to qualify as intent to distribute. Mailingnacross state lines made it federal. The friend had been arrested and was given leniency in exchange for turning in someone else.
I knew the young man being sentenced. It took two years for him to be picked up. In the two years he had gotten clean, and started a small business that was growing. He had NA spnosors saying he never missed a meeting, drug tests over previous two years showing he was clean, a stack of letters vouching for his current character, and a dozen people in the courtroom who were there for support. He was also given the option of turning someone in, but since he had been clean for 2 years, he didn't know anyone.
The judge said that while rehabilitation was part of sentencing, the primary reason for sentencing was for punishment; To set an example and deter future crimes by both the convicted and people in the community.
He got 7 years in a federal prison.