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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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