Comment by mootothemax | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mootothemax | Hacker News Reader

This dates from the so-called "Bloody Code" era of 1688 to 1815, where some 220 offences could lead to the death sentence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code

Apparently "theft of goods worth more than 12 pence, which was only about one-twentieth of the weekly wage for a skilled worker at the time" could lead to the death sentence.

Other crimes that could be punished with death included:

- Being in the company of Gypsies for one month

- Strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age

- Blacking the face or using a disguise whilst committing a crime

The latter comes from the Black Act, which introduced 50 such offences:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Act

"Pleading the belly" was an option for women who were detectably pregnant, and if they were found pregnant, the woman's death sentence could be postponed until they had delivered their child, changed to penal transportation, or even pardoned altogether:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleading_the_belly

A jury of matrons would be responsible - sometimes corruptly - although a woman would only receive one reprieve; any further pregnancy would be ignored and the death penalty carried out regardless:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_of_matrons

It's easy to forget living in 21st century Britain how far we've come generally.

Thanks for the reminder.

And the death penalty was only formally abolished by the Human Rights Act 1998 (for the remaining offences of high treason or arson in a naval dockyard).

I believe that polls on the subject of reintroducing it for serious crimes regularly return over 50% support.

Edit: oh and you can still get disproportionate sentences for trivial crimes in California under the "three strikes" law. There are people serving life sentences for minor shoplifting.

Indeed and the world is not perfect but it's a damn sight better than it was 200 years ago (in the west) anyway.

To quote William Gibson

> "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed."

> I believe that polls on the subject of reintroducing > it for serious crimes regularly return over 50% support.

To some degree understandable. I used to be against the death penalty for humanitarian reason, but after Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people, mostly children, and got only 21 years in prison [0], I think it would have been better if we just had hanged him. At least then the families of his victim could get to move on, knowing that they will not meet him on the street sometime in the future.

0: 21 years is the maximum prison sentence in Norway, but the prison term can then be repeatedly extended by five years as long as he is considered a threat to society. However that someone is being a threat to society can be hard to prove, so it is totally possible that he will be getting out some day.

so it is totally possible that he will be getting out some day.

Isn't that the whole point of a maximum prison sentence, though?

I have some curiosity about how you went from 21 years of jail time to the death penalty without even thinking about something else like a life sentence.

Cases like these - you could try to argue what's best with all kinds of arguments, ideas, principles and aim. Death? Life? 21 years + you need to make a shrink happy?

So the interesting question is: why does his current sentence bother you?

I'm honestly curious on your perspective.

"There are people serving life sentences for minor shoplifting."

So don't repeatedly shoplift and you won't have any problem. Seems fair to me.

So why bother with minor shoplifting if, bar the death penalty, you can commit some really lucrative crime and receive the same penalty? Fair? Hardly! It's a law best described politely as 'short-sighted' in that someone hasn't bothered to work out its implications.

If possible, go big. Once your crime is large enough, you just need to pay a really large fine to make your troubles all go away.

It seems fair to him.

Perhaps. But is the outcome really in anyone's best interests? Is it cost-effective? This isn't exactly a value-adding business, so you're paying for some unlucky idiot's incarceration instead of healthcare, policing, infrastructure...

It sounds insane to me.

Also, are you sure you know every law on the book? I suspect quite a few people break more laws than they think, they're just never enforced. Until some DA wants to set an example, and throws the book at you - at which point this is more about personal gain (for the DA) than benefit to society, let alone fairness.

Let's put it this way - unless all laws are uniformly and blindly enforced, they're never going to be entirely fair. With so many laws on the book, and with each instance at the whim of very few people (law enforcement) with virtually no checks and balances, you can be absolutely sure it's not fair. If furthermore even the judiciary is explicitly forbidden from using common sense...

...it's about as fair as cancer. Sure, you can be really stupid (or get really screwed), but nothing you do can entirely protect you - and even those taking risks don't always pay a (significant) price. Some people are unfortunately born with genetic or cultural risk-factors that you really can't call fair.

It's not the end of the world, and it's not societies worst problem, but let's not kid ourselves that the justice system really deserves that name.

Unfortunately not all parts of the world are on the same civilized level yet. There are many countries in which the law is based on so called divine rules and there it is seen as something positive/progressive that the woman can give birth to her child before she is being stoned for her "crime" (e.g. adultery (true meaning: have been raped)). Way to go humanity.

The lines are imaginary. They still execute people all of the time in America, oftentimes for things just as trivial.

Although I'm against the death penalty and I think it's used too much here in the US, I don't think it's used 'all of the time' and I'm pretty sure it's never for something trivial. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

An alarmingly large number of police have acquired the delusion that it is permissible for them to exercise the state's power to punish suspected criminals, without affording them the courtesy of due process.

I don't think this behavior is increasing by all that much. I think the increasing ubiquity of cameras capable of recording decent quality video and the increasing ease in distributing that video is making the existing behavior more noticeable.

The fact that police killings are not capital punishment executions is largely a semantic distinction. Some people feel it is important, while others are less apt to recognize it.

As such, whether the death penalty is used "all the time" or not, and whether it is used for "something trivial" depends largely on how you count the bodies. People have been killed by police for misdemeanor offenses, or even no reasonable suspicion whatsoever.

I don't erase that semantic distinction entirely, but it is rather counterproductive to abolish the post-conviction capital punishment without also rigorously investigating and prosecuting all police-involved deaths. If cops believe that a suspect deserves the death penalty, and the state does not employ it, that person may never get the benefit of a single hearing before a judge.

Around 1,000 people were killed by police in the US last year[1]. I assume that in the vast majority of those cases the use of lethal force was justified to protect the officer(s) or bystanders. Then there are the mistakes.

In what percentage of these cases would you guess that suspect was killed because the officer decided to play judge, jury and executioner? 1%? Even a shockingly high 10%, that would not be an order of magnitude more than the number of capital punishment executions per year.

[1] http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/09/more-than-1000-people-have...

It's a matter of perspective. In how many of those cases might the police have had other options? According to http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/apr/15/... an (unfortunately politicized) article I just found, it looks as though US law enforcement is several orders of magnitude more bloodthirsty that the UK's. Now situations differ, but the US isn't some lawless third-world country. If the the will was there to limit these killings, there's no way that difference would be THAT large.

By these numbers, it looks as though the vast majority of the US police killings are preventable - which doesn't mean that the agents at the scene at the time were Judge Dredd, it just means that they, their department, and society as whole put them on the spot. I'm sure some people like the power trip, but with disparities in death rates like these, that doesn't sound like plausible major factor to me.

I think we mostly agree.

I'd need much more information to decide whether I think US law enforcement is more bloodthirsty. The fact is our cops are much more heavily armed. They have to be because our criminals are too.

Assume all you like. The written police reports all say "officer safety" and "feared for their lives", but it has become more common these past few years, with the rise of camera-equipped mobile phones and retail establishment surveillance cameras, for a video to surface after the report has been filed that completely contradicts the police perspective.

For instance, the report says "suspect reached for my gun" while the video shows "suspect attempting to flee". The report says "aggressive posture", "belligerent", or "combative stance", and the video shows "police employee suddenly attacks someone for no apparent reason".

This is exactly why Wisconsin took away the ability for police to investigate their own public mistakes and clear themselves of all wrongdoing.

So we cannot assume anything. We know that it is at least theoretically possible to employ people as professional police with a lower annual body count by examining other countries (and also that it is possible to kill more per year). Without an open process to examine and investigate the police-involved deaths, we cannot say with certainty that any percentage of them, from 0% to 100%, is due to intentional malicious acts.

It is certain that a positive percentage of all police reports involving use of force are falsified and later contradicted by bystander video recordings. And that is exactly why Colorado is implementing a "right to record" law, with a $15k penalty every time police interfere with people recording them doing their jobs.

And I dispute your later assumption that police are more heavily armed because they need to be to counteract criminals that are more heavily armed. They are more heavily armed because they can use civil forfeiture seizure proceeds to buy decommissioned or surplus military equipment. These "toys" are then used to conduct no-knock raids on people not known to be armed with anything at all.

If you stop assuming things about the police that tend to paint them in a more positive light, and look at only the facts that you can prove, the naked numbers are frightening.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that all killings by police in 2014 were completely random and 100% malicious. Then my chances of being killed by police in the US during that year were about double my chances of getting hit by lightning in the US that year. It wouldn't even place on the list of things I'm frightened about.

Maybe we can agree on this: more transparency is needed. Resistance to transparency is very suspicious.

My point about US/UK police was not about police militarization. That is a different issue. Regular cops out on patrol every day in the US carry guns. Their counterparts in the UK do not. I believe US cops should carry guns because it's so easy for everyone else in the US to get guns, including the criminals they will encounter. A consequence of everyone (cops & crooks) having guns is that there will be more exchanges between them that involve lethal force. Another consequence of cops having guns is that they will use them whenever they believe at the time that lethal force is justified. Sometimes they will be mistaken.

It's not really relevant to someone who is murdered whether it is a judge or a cop who sentences them to death. The result is the same: someone is murdered and those doing the killing face no consequences whatsoever.

No, no they don't. There are currently very few crimes that don't involve killing someone that can receive capital punishment in the US, and their constitutionality has never been tested because no one has been sentenced to death for them.

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