Executions of the conceivably innocent are no better than human sacrifice | Hacker News Reader

Executions of the conceivably innocent are no better than human sacrifice

latimes.com

IMO, this article isn't even really about the death penalty, or shouldn't be.

> In Texas they’re getting ready to kill Robert Roberson next month. Roberson was convicted of killing his 2-year-old child in 2002 [...] In the days before the child’s death, she was running a fever, and an emergency room doctor prescribed an antihistamine that can cause fatal respiratory distress in young children.

> When Roberson brought her back to the ER, law enforcement officials didn’t like the way he was acting — unemotional and detached — and concluded it was evidence of guilt. It was likely evidence of his autism.

> The detective who testified against him now realizes that and is urging clemency so that Roberson is not put to death for a crime that he did not commit and that did not even occur, because evidence suggests the child died from pneumonia and septic shock. But Roberson is scheduled to be put to death for shaking her to death anyway.

If the author's description of the case is accurate, it really doesn't matter how you feel about the death penalty—you can replace "put to death" with "life in prison" and you're still left with an extreme miscarriage of justice. This person is very very obviously not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and he should be awarded his full freedom.

> If the author's description of the case is accurate, it really doesn't matter how you feel about the death penalty—you can replace "put to death" with "life in prison" and this is still an extreme miscarriage of justice

The difference is that you can partially undo a sentence of life in prison. The death penalty is permanent. In the absence of a perfect justice system (and perfection is not achievable in anything as complicated as a criminal justice system), innocent citizens will eventually be killed by the state with no chance of them eventually being set free if a miscarriage of justice comes to light.

Worldwide death penalty map: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

Could this argument extend to all punishment?

Fining the conceivably guilty is theft?

Arresting the conceivably guilty is kidnapping?

Should we go totally anarchist and get rid of all law enforcement?

I'd support getting rid of LE, but we can not let them become gangsters. That happened in the former Soviet Union after they fell apart.

> Fining the conceivably guilty is theft?

> Arresting the conceivably guilty is kidnapping?

Not to be rude but: yes, obviously. The solution is restitution if it turns out that the fine was theft. Hard to do that for an execution.

Why should LE get to hide behind a paper shield?

They're human, they're civilian (in the US), they're no different from you or I.

Make them carry insurance. Fire them for mistakes. Allow citizens to fight back against injustice.

Too many police get away with murder and our politicians do nothing.

Sheesh.

What do we do? Are we so apathetic that we don’t care?

I guess we all just feel that caring requires too much effort and lack of a personal return on investment.

My activism will start and end here with this comment.

Maybe things will be better in the future.

More than likely not.

Work to advocate for the elimination of the death penalty in your state and support groups like the Innocence Project are small but actionable steps.

Support for the death penalty is a form of "virtue signaling" to indicate that someone cares for law and order and justice for victims. The reality is that a large subset of the voting population believes it is safer to kill a few innocent individuals rather than accidentally let a guilty person go free.

Sounds like we should fix the right problem then! If my loved ones don’t get justice, then I am taking shit into my own hands.

State-sanctioned homicide does not seem like justice to me, especially when there are false positives. And taking things into your own hands will just land you in that same prison cell, which your loved ones probably would not appreciate.

> The reality is that a large subset of the voting population believes it is safer to kill a few innocent individuals rather than accidentally let a guilty person go free.

This is a strange sentence to read, as if the one has anything to do with the other. Abolishing the death penalty won't cause guilty people to go free.

If you execute an innocent person for a crime, in most cases it means you are letting the actual perpetrator go free.

I'm against both, but "no better than" is a cheap exaggeration. Yes, they are better. This doesn't make them OK (in my view), but let's stop acting silly.

It's no better. The only reason you think it's any different is because you think one has a defensible purpose and one does not. Maybe you consider the one more like an industrial accident.

But they both have actually the same purpose. In both cases it's something the perpetrators think must be done for the greater good of all.

Any argument you can present ultimately resolves to that, and that is the literal definition of a sacrifice.

Or are you suggesting that an injection is better than a knife to the heart or a burning?

Jailing someone is also something perpetrators think must be done for the greater good of all. I honestly don't understand the comparison at all. Plenty of things are done for a greater good. Some of them work better than others.

Similarly, bloodletting and modern medicine have the same purpose (making the patient feel better), but one of them is better than another.

Jailing is an example of something that is not no better. It is better.

The problem is not execution, is "justice", not just failing, but also without consequences for doing so, even in the cases of repeating offenders.

Putting a few individual injustices up front doesn't show how the system may not be at its best, to say the least. And a relatively fast and painless execution may be better than a full lifetime in prison being innocent, of which the few stories of people being released after decades being innocent may hide the fact that may be orders more than never were or will.

https://archive.ph/HwKJk

Ah, but the innocently conceived...

This is the crap that makes california stink. After 30+ years, I moved my wife and kids out of SF Bay Area, and I was telling my wife exactly this morning, how surreal of a feeling it is to not think about crime in a new england state. When I would drive around the bay area, I would think about the most recent freeway shooting, or the increase in home invasions in the affluent east bay suburbs, etc. After living in the north east for 6 months, it's such a liberating feeling not watching you back all the time because of crack-pot DAs that allow criminals to loot & kill and not get prosecuted (Pamela Price). I couldn't care less for the op-ed above, and california needs to stop being so liberal, it's ridiculous.

In parts of the Midwest cars are unlocked and keys are kept in them.

Lots of diversity of experience in this country.

New England has no death penalty. California does. What is the crap you are referring to that makes California stink?

You joke but I’ve lived in the US for so long that I’m immune to bullets.

Executing innocent people doesn't prevent crime. If anything, it tells people that execution has little relationship to what you do, so you might as well do what you want.

How many innocent people would you execute to turn California into New England?

Also, why is New England so solidly against capital punishment?:

- Connecticut ended the death penalty in 2012, after only having used it once (in 2005) since 1976.

- Capital punishment has been abolished in the U.S. state of Maine since 1887.

- Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984, and hadn't used it since 1947.

- New Hampshire abolished the death penalty in 2019, and although they still have someone on death row, they haven't executed anyone since 1939.

- Rhode Island abolished capital punishment in 1852, and hadn't used it since 1845.

- Vermont officially stopped executing people in 1972, and hadn't done it since 1954.

https://www.vox.com/world/2015/12/13/9989250/japan-crime-con...

I could not have picked a worse example

I don’t disagree that there’s room for improvement, but I’m hesitant to accept as gospel the misconviction rates we hear about. Japan’s system that you mention, for instance, also boasts a ~99.9% conviction rate [0] and isn’t adversarial in quite the same sense as the US. It seems plausible that, with such powerful norms against acquittal, the justice system may be less than motivated to revisit their judgments regardless of what might come to light later.

Maybe confidence in judgments is a good proxy for quality in judgments, but history seems to offer examples to the contrary.

I worry that we’re quick to assume that all truths are knowable, and it’s just a matter of trying hard to find them out. As amply demonstrated by the endless flow of “true crime” media, sometimes situations are ambiguous, memories unreliable, evidence scant, and reasons mysterious. Sometimes people get away with stuff, sometimes you just have to decide who you believe. Some uncertainty is irreducible: I worry that even a spectacularly well-“fixed” justice system will always have to take decisions on incomplete information.

[0] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...

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