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Comment by neallindsay | Hacker News Reader

The death penalty should be abolished. You don't get sentenced to death for harming others, you get sentenced to death for being unsympathetic to the jury (because of racism or, as in this case, because you don't appear to exhibit the right emotions) and for not having enough money to afford a good lawyer.

You can die from being poor in a bunch of different ways in this country, but this is one we could easily eliminate.

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I think we need to find another way or some kind of middle solution.

Like in the situation where everyone knows this person did crime X or Y (for example lets say murdered several children) we can just immediately execute them via hanging or firing squad (quickly) instead of letting them sit in prison for a decade+ while we "wait" on their lethal injection nonsense to go down.

The tricky part is having a fool proof system where we only execute people where the evidence is 100% and then perhaps multiple independent review panels also agree all evidence points to yeah they did it or the criminal themselves admits to the crimes.

Some kind of system where everyone executed has been universally agreed upon as guilty.

A sentence of death should be swift, agreed upon by all, and not a criminal spending decades in prison wasting tax payers money.

Yes, the only real argument against the 100% cases that I've ever heard is that there would be fewer people admitting to murder if they knew that they would be killed. But I think this shouldn't bother us, so what if fewer people confess? I think most confessions are already only done when they see themselves having no other choice than admitting what they did. Also we are talking about the 100% cases, people who e.g publically shot someone or are so mentally ill or stupid that they confess anyway where by definition we might not even need to wait for a confession.

I think most people who are against the death penalty are not fully honest with their opposition, consciously or subconsciously. Outwardly they say that they oppose it due to the danger of innocents being hurt. But inwardly I suspect a far less well intentioned reason because we see an indication for this in the release of murderers from prison after only ~15 years sometimes. What genuinely moral person would ever support the release of a murderer? But see, if we don't execute murderers immediately it starts a whole process in humans. They see the suffering of the murderer in prison and they feel bad. It's automatic, they can't turn it off. This the kind of automatic biological pity when you see someone suffering which is not a good kind of pity in this case. This person murdered another human being, his life should be forfeit. But then an even sicker consideration starts coming into play: The humans who see this other human (murderer) suffering say: Well, this is a waste! This too is inevitable thinking in humans. We see a human being who seems to behave well now, in a cage, and seems to be nice and you can talk normally to them over topics like the weather and family and suddenly the thought comes that this is an economic waste. Then society suddenly has a big, daily economic incentive to release him. This is why I support the death penalty to be carried out immediately, we cannot trust people to be objective about pain and suffering, especially not decades after the committed murder when the wounds aren't fresh anymore. But the victim cannot talk and plead for justice.

I consider your logic and beliefs sick. And if you feel so much for victims what do you think about politicians? Their actions kill people by truckloads with no recourse.

Why would we need to kill them at all?

That requires so much trust in the people in power. People who have demonstrated repeatedly throughout history that they don't deserve blanket trust. It's like suggesting lynch mobs never got it wrong.

This sounds like legally it would make things even harder.

At the moment, in principle you are only convicted if you guilt is "beyond a reasonable doubt". That already has to be done by a jury.

How do we decide if someone is "universally agreed upon" to be guilty? Bigger jury? Also, it would be weird to have a jury say "This person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but not universally agreed upon".

Virtually Western democracies support death penalty besides the US and Japan. It literally puts us in a lot with the countries. We consider it to be backwards (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia).

I don't think Americans sometimes realize how radical of an outlier we are to the rest of the world on this and many other issues, including probably most notably, basic social policy.

>"Virtually Western democracies support death penalty besides the US and Japan"

You do not make any sense. It is all backwards.

>"(Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia)" Russia has a moratorium since the end of 80s / beginning of 90s and does not execute people.

All variation in punishment for a crime is effectively due to being unsympathetic to a judge or jury. The death penalty isn't special there.

Gender matters more than just about anything else in sentencing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity

I guess the bigger problem is jury trial. Jury trial exists when there is a lack of evidence and the prosecutor wants to charge based on his feelings/agenda or whatever. It's a corrupt system and the public is entertaining the whole ordeal.

What is your alternative which is better than a jury trial?

Jury also has an option to say fuck the law and proceed with nullification.

I thought the judge handles sentencing and the jury are fact finders only deciding innocent or guilty. Is that not true for the death penalty?

It depends on the state, but it is common for the jury to vote on the death penalty as well.

The death penalty is a question of fact, not of law, according to current SCOTUS precedent.

As I understand it, death penalty cases need a special jury, consisting of people who approve of the death penalty. Also, in practical terms, they need an incompetent defense lawyer.

Death penalty in the US seems like a remnant of slavery more than anything else. I guess the same could be said for much of the US government (polices, judicial system, etc)

Considering the death penalty existed in English common law far before slavery, this is ahistorical.

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