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Comment by paulhauggis | Hacker News Reader

Another example of why Iran is an evil dictatorship.

Democracies have the death penalty, too. This is another example of why the death penalty is never an acceptable punishment for a crime; this guy hasn't even had a chance to appeal properly, and they're already planning to execute him. That's not justice, that's barbaric.

> This is another example of why the death penalty is never an acceptable punishment for a crime

I disagree. Bashar al-Asad has killed 8300 Syrian in the past 11 months, and now the country is on the verge of civil war. Some crimes deserve death penalty (though, obviously writing an open-source app does not qualify!).

The fact that the death penalty seems reasonable in one case doesn't make it reasonable. The death penalty is inappropriate because it doesn't have any checks and balances; if you are executed and later found not guilty, you can't be brought back to life.

It's clear that fear of punishment does not deter crimes; otherwise death penalty states would have no murders.

How is this the lack of due process an argument against the death penalty? It doesn't follow.

You assume due process is uniformly applied in all death penalty cases, which has been repeatedly shown to be false in America. I suggest Googling "death penalty lawyer asleep" as a good starting point for this topic.

I didn't assume that; what you seem to assume is that death penalty cases more often lack due process than other cases. You may well be right (I have no idea), but that would still only be a weak argument against the death penalty and a strong argument for ensuring due process.

I suppose what makes the death penalty different is that you can't fix injustice after the fact. Once it's carried out, it doesn't matter whether the verdict is overturned.

This is exactly the takeaway that you are supposed to have from this propaganda.

Evil being the keyword.

Although there may legitimately be a need to help this person, the story definitely serves the purpose of those that wish to motivate the long-planned war with Iran.

Iran became a dictatorship because that was the way the US wanted it.

Nothing that Iran does to any web programmer justifies an invasion, bombing, or World War III. People don't realize that's what's at stake here. That is what these stories are about.

Look at a map. Look at where Iran is compared to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya. This isn't about a web programmer.

So Amnesty International has a hidden agenda here? Are you serious? What's wrong with the even simpler theory about investigating the string of innocent people getting the death penalty and the idea that these justified killings are political messages by the iranian government to the iranian people with regard the upcoming elections?

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