Hacker News Reader

The rest of the western world sees the death penalty as morally wrong and more similar to murder than justice. By their standards you are essentially saying "The government has only murdered a few people recently".

View on HN

More accurately would be the government murdered nobody recently. Sure they have in the past but California hasn't actually executed anyone in 12 years (13 in a few days). Also while California has the death penalty, it is fairly reserved in what can earn it: Repeatedly convicted first degree murder with a number of conditions, treason, intentionally derailing a train resulting in deaths, perjury resulting in someone else receiving the death penalty, or fatal assault as an escaped convict already in for life. With the exception of possibly treason, all of those seem like mostly reasonable conditions if a state had to have a death penalty.

> intentionally derailing a train resulting in deaths

That seems oddly specific, do you know why it singles out trains?

From what I can find that bit was added in the 1870s to help curtail train robbers who were using more aggressive and destructive means to acquire their loot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com