If the death penalty debate were framed more around "innocent people get killed" and less around more nebulous value-judgement based arguments (which, though valid, divide pretty neatly along partisan and class lines), perhaps the death penalty in the US would have gone long ago.

Furthermore I think you don't go far enough. Around the world, abolishing the death penalty seems to be a mark of high development, apart from Japan (and arguably China and India) there aren't any highly developed nations that are still killing people.

It is similar to the "tough on crime" incarceration "debate" in the US, where perverse incentives and political expediency has led to the US being the highest-per-capita incarcerator in the world.

Framing the death penalty debate around "innocent people get killed" will not change the partisan/class perceptions.

The US criminal justice system requires root-and-branch reform, starting with issues around policing, cash bail, school-to-prison pipelines, and unfair drug and "victimless" crimes.

Australia has been going through a similar debate and is at a similar point, without the death penalty, but dealing with the systemic racism and other class related issues.

I don't agree. All of these moral castigations about it being 'inhumane' or 'barbaric' don't strike me as rational or compelling in the least. I think the idea is humane in the context of those impacted by the crimes in question and I don't see how putting a person in a box for the remainder of their life is qualitatively any less barbaric.

I don't know where pg lands politically but I'd say I'm probably right of center on the American spectrum and for me there are only two persuasive arguments that we should abolish the death penalty. One is that we make mistakes in who gets it, per TFA, and the other is that it's difficult to concretely describe the qualifications of who should get it, risking expansion at the whim of the populace. In other words I absolutely believe there are just executions, I'm just not entirely sure we can create a system to do it justly.

I think that is the GP,s point: the real problem is to convince you otherwise.

2) because you want to convince people of important moral principles. I don't want you to not beat your wife because you'll get caught, but because it's inherently wrong.

Alignment on public policy decisions allows for more degrees of freedom in underlying philosophical differences than attempts to align on the philosophical primitives themselves. It also achieves an immediate goal.

Plus if you are engaging in conversation in a good faith attempt to understand and be understood, you have to allow for the case that your views are moderated or changed as well.

(The distance you feel from that right now is approximately the same I feel in the opposite direction.)

For some they just say 'I'll do it for a dollar' and disengage. Realistically the cost of incarceration isn't what's driving their argument for the death penalty, it's just a talking point.

For me, it's just the price of due process.

Maybe to save a few keystrokes, I think we are too flippant about the death penalty today but I think its an essential part of a justice system.

For example in the UK 58% of people believe that the death penalty should be allowed for some crimes (e.g. terrorist attacks). Only 32% oppose it (presumably with 10% undecided):

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/legal/articles-reports/2019/10/0...

So far from being the majority view, often anti-death penalty stance is the minority view but the political elite suppress it.

Let that really sink in, most of the comments here are very wrong in thinking the debate is over, with twice as many of the public still supporting it in a country where it's been abolished for over 50 years. Always remember to fight against capital punishment, the deal is not done.

I believe they do this as they understand the nuance better and realize that overall it causes more problems than it solves, so don't want to open that can of worms once it's shut. Looking back in history there's also significant political fallout every time someone is found innocent after their execution. Some hard-right politicians will band it around for easy points with their base, plus obviously the wider public too for more extreme crimes.

Some western countries have respectably high numbers: France 50%, UK 48%, Holland 42%.

Not that the USA wants to be compared to us, but here in Romania it's at 91% and we still don't have it. (I suspect that romantic notions of Vlad the Impaler's time has something to do with the percentage.)

In Romania, the death penalty was not abolished by any democratic institution and that action was not preceded by any public debate.

The gang who seized power in 1989 in Romania abolished the death penalty immediately after killing the dictator Ceausescu to remove the competition, because absolutely everybody expected that many other people who had important positions in the Communist must be also executed immediately, because only that would have been consistent with the messages spread by the new power in the previous days.

However, the people who had seized the power could not kill any other from the Communist leadership, because those were their friends, family or accomplices, so they used the surprise trick of promptly abolishing the death penalty.

This unexpected action was the moment when many people woke up from the euphoria after the supposed fall of the Communism and they began to suspect that the people composing the new power might not be who they claim to be, but it was already too late.

The immediate abolition of the death penalty in Romania had its desired effect, of transforming the former powerful communists into rich capitalists owning what had previously been called "the wealth belonging to all the people", so it is still strongly resented by many who remember those events.

So Romania is a very special case, which explains the unusually high percentage of support for the death penalty.

I'd put our abusive plea bargaining system in there.

Sadly the rest of the world is moving towards that bad idea, rather than away. :-(

I remember when the Guantanamo torture scandals emerged in the 2000s, how various political actors attempted to say 'Let's not get hot under the collar about this - let's put it on the table and talk it through.'

For me, there are some things that just don't warrant debate, and encompass such deep-seated truths about humanity that putting them up for debate is a repulsive and disingenuous act, as outlined in 'A Modest Proposal' . I agree with the parent poster that this is one of those cases.

EDIT: This was supposed to be a response to the parent comment of the one it got attached to (for some reason).

The authors of the Declaration of Independence would perhaps agree.

But, keep in mind that stance — as they will knew — would result in the ‘disagreement’ being resolved by force and war.

Consequently, it’s wise to really give some thought to whether an issue is ‘self-evident.’ I personally do not think capital punishment is such an issue; that is, I acknowledge there are good arguments on both sides.

(Are there good arguments on both sides regarding whether some people — like King George — are inherently and divinely superior to others by virtue of their lineage? That’s a different matter... I would have fallen into the ‘self-evidently’ absurd camp on that one.)

Having said that, the US is quite a specific case and the truth is that the current approach of the left doesn't seem to work there. Progress is being made, but as an outsider, there seems to be too much partisanship on both sides. Too much us versus them. There is as much derogatory and hostile attitude in the left leaning forums as the right leaning ones, with a small sliver of moderates who get lost in the noise.

I can't claim to have a solution to this. The US seems to be a feudal society at this point, where a large portion of the serfs are actively undermining efforts to lift them from their serfdom, and a large portion of the liberators consider the serfs uneducated peasants who refuse to accept what's good for them. They are both led by a political elite whose incentives are to maintain (even entrench) the status quo because it gives them an easily manipulated voter base and a clear enemy to rally against.

GP clearly uses a deontological line of thinking on this matter. Something that GP considers to be "inhuman and barbaric" invokes a line of thinking in where he/she believes one ought to not do a certain action, because it simply is wrong.

I'm not the best at explaining deontological ethics, nor are the people who think like this. My point is: a lot of thought has gone into the types of statements that GP makes, and IMO it's worth thinking about.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

You can be correct all day long and change nothing, or you can be persuasive and meet them in their thought bubble to coerce them toward aligning with your views. You can't just pop their world view with statements of fact, because they may very well think your fact is wrong. In this case not everyone believes the death penalty is immoral, so if your only argument is "the death penalty is immoral" you will change nothing.

For example people, once tried to end the deal then penalty by talking about to pain involved in hanging. Proponents agreed and eventually came up with the electric chair, then lethal injection. No pain, no problem right?

If we talk about innocents killed, proponents will add stricter guidelines, and allow for more appeals, or even say that the crime must have been videotaped in front of a crowd of witnesses. We might end up with a death penalty that applies to the likes of Derek Chauvin alone, but it’ll still be a death penalty.

I think we should celebrate that kind of incremental progress so long as it's not progress towards some kind of inescapable local minimum. And even in that case, it just becomes more complicated, not obviously wrong either.

Of course, and I agree with you on this particular issue. All I mean is that if we can act today to chip away at the problem rather than just talking about the ideals, that's good, and in a democracy, that's what we accept as we work towards the ideal.

> It doesn't feel like it's worth patting yourself on the back over reducing the number of unnecessary deaths cause when the process itself should be eliminated.

Life's too short, I'm happy to celebrate progress. I'm proud to see the end of it in my home state of Virginia this year, even if it's not nationally outlawed.

Saying “you’re a bad person if you disagree with me” draws a line in the sand that precludes civil disagreement and picks a fight. Most people like to avoid conflict, and any possible counterargument to “you’re a bad person” inevitably comes across as defensive.

In other words, the tactic is to bully the opposition into shutting up. And it works very well.

Additionally we're also discussing whether or not that approach can be effective at bringing in good policy, and I think that's often not the case. A hard stance with a binary argument is just very difficult to work with, you end up giving the opponent no opportunity to compromise and so they don't, you end up with no policy being written and things don't change.

Policy making is very intentionally an attempt to make a vast array of different views from across a nation coalesce into something that can be made into law, so it requires compromise.

You're not going to persuade a Q follower or BLM protester about the opposing viewpoint.

Polemics in this realm are far more effective.

Arguments and negotiations need to have common grounds on how thing are interpreted. Else the most immoral person flourishes.

Me following this US debate from the other side of the world I mostly see it framed as “the innocent people getting killed” and not the “immoral to kill” debate as per this article. I don’s see it getting anywhere.

Either way, stories (e.g. miscarriages of justice by an uncaring state) are likely a more effective way to convince in this controversy, not statistics:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/02/23/why-is-it-so-hard-to-pe...

It could be their upbringing which should be the responsibility of the society and clearly the society failed.

It could be a medical issue. A biological one.

It could be that the murderer did nothing wrong in their worldview.

We have to understand this as a society. We have to teach it if people don't understand it.

If there were some device (which doesn't exist and maybe can't) which simply lights up with perfect accuracy when pointed at someone who tortured someone before murdering them, I would support instant execution of that person by firing squad.

I'm not willing to accept a 4% error rate however. I'm not sure how low it would have to go, but it's lower than it plausibly can.

This isn't some kind of lack of "understanding" on my part, and you're not going to "teach" me to feel the same way about this issue as you do. We have different values. So you'll have to content yourself with my being on the same side of the policy question for different reasons.

I thought a lot about moral and ethics, the balance between being right and no right exists.

So I do believe your thinking can and might change in the future.

Your torture example still ignores the history of the torturer. Would you like to be killed after this from a society which had it easier and better then you and did not help you? Is that really fair to anyone?

Do you believe in a god? Would you assume jesus would let you in after that? (I'm not religious, I do think so that either it's a good god and it doesn't matter believing in her but your actions)

Do you believe that we are in a simulation? What if you wake up in your next life as a murderer?

There are so many potential thoughts which we haven't thought through that removing a murderer from society to prison is the best choice we have as long as it is a prison who tries to rehabilitate a person.

I’m not even sure what that is intended to mean - specifically the bit about intellectuals.

Fair enough, I understand that those are your beliefs (they are mine too) but you'd be surprised how poorly they hold up in the real world against the testimonies of victims of some truly horrific crimes.

But from the sound of it you would prefer to weaken the case for abolishing the death penalty for the sake of making a more general point around the sanctity of life that, in the long run, will achieve...what exactly?

ECONOMICS: Another counter-argument is "the society pay for the whole life of the jailed murderer, so it's a cost paid by the society for something that broke society laws"

And then another argument is "a murderer may prefer to be killed than to be kept in jail for the rest of his life".

Actually, there's a whole philosophical debate around all this: what is the role of the sanction ? Is it revenge from breaking society laws ? Is it revenge from the victim ? Can someone that broke society laws (even in murder case) be changed by the jail time and come back to the society as a good citizen or are some crimes the mark that this people are forever lost to the society ?

I'm against the death penalty. I'm french so we don't have it since 1980. And we don't really have "forever jail": it's 20 years I think and can even be shortened if prisoner show in jail that he's ready to come back to society (except if it would be a trouble for the society). As a consequence, there's from time to time a convicted criminal, out of jail after a reduced time, that kill/rape someone again. And each time, there's a public discussion about this...

20 year is the maximum required in case of non-premeditated murder (or manslaughter on minor i think).

In some cases (murder of a minor, group manslaughter of a state agent, premeditated murder of a state agent and one other case i can't remember), the criminal can be given "incompressible" perpetuity. After a minimum of 30 year, on a judge decision (often because the murderer is dying or very, very old), the "incompressible" part can get shafted.

Also death penalty is expensive. More than keeping prisonners locked up.

Counter-argument to what? Surely not counter-argument to the death penalty since "releasing people" is not the alternative to the death penalty, life imprisonment is.

Obviously there's probably also various other reasons for that too, like they usually also have heavily restricted gun ownership, but there's certainly no evidence that abolishing the death penalty has adverse effects.

Now I'm not sure what you think fundamental, but I am pretty sure that "murder" is a something the other side understands.

The irony in this is iron clad. It is also hyperbole, because this is an internet comment, not a political debate.

Also, I don't really see equivalent expectation routinely placed on right - they are not expected to proactively make compromises on their own heads before they even state position.

Everyone has a moral high-ground that isn't debatable.

The right does this as well for it's issues such as abortion.

Left or Right, everyone thinks there is some moral high ground that's not debatable. Everyone has some line that they don't think should be crossed.

If we just use this argument and don't try to establish general principles we end up with a pointless shouting contest.

For once I think the death penalty is at least worth considering from the utilitarian point of view (in our current system the consensus is that it's cheaper to keep someone in prison for life though but it might change in the future) as well as from revenge/restitution point of view as a lot of people strongly think someone doing deliberate great harm deserves to be killed.

One way or another it's not simple from either ethical nor practical point of view. Personally I consider death penalty as desirable penalty for some crimes but I would never vote for it as I have no faith in our politicians being able to implement it in a fair way and flawed justice system not to abuse it.

It’s odd to me how controversial both issues are when the moral reasoning required is so easy. Taking any other position requires denying the premise that it’s wrong to destroy innocent human life. One can, but accepting that has some very nasty consequences.

Death penalty is any easy one. It was considered to be a proper penalty for various crimes for most of the human history in many cultures. It just takes understanding of ethical values of those cultures to understand why it was justified.

Your argument about taking innocent human life is a naive one. We do a lot of things that cost innocent human lives. Allowing diesel cars in cities cost more innocent lives than all death penalties in the history of humanity combined and it's not a small difference.

It's about tradeoffs and priorities. It's natural for a tribe or state to kill for treason for example as disincentivizing treason is more important (saves more lives, prevents suffering and destruction of your countrymen) than occasional mistake. Putting long term survival and well being of your society is more important than individual lives.

Our wealth clouds the picture so well. If it was required of everyone one to spend addition 20 hours a week providing food and shelter for a murderer atop of all the work we need to put into getting food and shelter for ourselves and our families you would be very quick to accept death penalty instead. As the choices would be about caring for your family and making sure the murderer doesn't die in custody. Today we can arguably afford it but if that's the argument then we already agree it's about tradeoffs and where the exact line is not obvious.

Even if you don't agree you can at least see it's a justified view. It's all about tradeoffs.

I’m not saying I agree, I don’t personally support the death sentence, but if you’re actually interested in changing peoples minds it’s good to know where they’re coming from, and why they may not find your argument compelling.

I personally find the posts argument far more compelling.

That is what makes crime so heinous.

So your focus should be prevention at any cost first and foremost, then justice as prevention (= rehabilitation) as well. Murdering a murderer is pretty solid prevention though, I give you that.

Yes, but you can try. I can see why the loved ones of a murdered person feel someone is 'getting away' when he is still alive. Killing them feels much more like payback.

I don't that this does reasonably make sense, but I can understand where they are coming from.

I'm sure many find that it didn't feel like it at all, because of my argumentation. Payback will always be incomplete. It can never be paid in full.

Even if you kill someone over and over again (some Sci-Fi comes to mind), the perp always took the first step and elevated his role in society unjustly.

I get that he ruined (well, ended) someones life, but what does society gain from ruining his life in turn, to the point of what feels like mental torture: Being locked up for such a long time, all the while knowing that you will eventually just be executed.

From what I gather on Americans' comments about this over the years it's mostly about "not spending taxpayer money" to house, feed and take care of criminals that received a death penalty.

I don't know how true this argument can be given all the costs over decades associated with a death penalty judgment (appeals, preparation for death row, maintaining death rows, etc.)

Quick edit after reading the thread a bit more, an example of what I mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900987

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

If you're from a part of the world where the death penalty was consigned to history decades ago, it's quite astonishing that a supposedly civilised nation would defend it.

The USA has some odd hangups.

Criminals sentenced to death are supposed to be a danger to society so great that the only solution is to eliminate them. So, typical trolley problem: is it better to kill a criminal or let him go, potentially resulting in the death or several more innocent victims. Prison for life is another option, but is permanently restraining someone and endangering guards and other inmates a good alternative?

So yes, other justifications are needed. And the article gives one.

Edit: I've now done some research and found some death-row-inmates do express a preference for a death sentence:

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2012/09/25/why-death-row-inmates-...

https://www.quora.com/Is-prison-crueller-than-the-death-pena...

http://www.bu.edu/pilj/files/2015/09/17-2SmithArticle.pdf

The key issue for me is necessity. It is not necessary to execute criminals, even murderers. I do have sympathy for the view that murderers deserve death, maybe many of them do, but then you get into drawing lines between cases that deserve death and ones that don't. Is the evidence in this case good enough to kill, but this one the evidence is only good enough to incarcerate. It politicises the judicial and criminal justice system. So I oppose the death penalty not because it's barbaric or morally wrong per se, but because it introduces moral hazard that compromises the system.

We can see this in the US where prosecutors fight tooth and nail to preserve convictions and ensure convicts get executed largely in order to protect the system of executions from the embarrassment of death row inmates getting exonerated. Defending the system becomes more important than serving justice.

As a Brit I think politicisation is the thing that concerns me most about the US justice system. Elected prosecutors, elected judges, the politicisation of executions I described above. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but comparatively speaking all that just isn't a thing over here at all. Political debate on criminal justice is focused on laws and the administration of policing. That's really about it. It's not like we don't have miscarriages of justice, our system is far from perfect but it's mainly sees as being independent and professionalised.

Thing is, most of the time, people who are subject to the death penalty are there because they did “inhuman and barbaric” acts.

It is kind of like the paradox of tolerance. For society to prosper, you need to punish inhuman and barbaric acts, or at least isolate people who do that from society. However, such punishment is likely inhuman and barbaric at least on some level. Limiting a persons freedom of movement and interaction is inhuman and barbaric.

In addition, by not having the death penalty, you are subjecting others to have to deal with the person who did the inhuman and barbaric acts, whether other inmates or guards.

I am of the opinion that there are some acts that are so heinous that a person should never be a part of human society again. In that case, rather than prolonged human isolation, which is actually barbaric in and of itself, I think it is actually more humane to end their life. It does not have to gruesome or painful, no more than euthanizing a beloved pet with a terminal condition has to be gruesome. But some acts are incompatible with ever being a member of human society in any form.

Edit:

In addition, there are a lot of stuff that could be considered inhuman and barbaric but we do them for what we think as the good of society.

Spaying and neutering your pet sounds inhuman and barbaric.

Modern surgery, especially cancer surgery where they remove large margins of apparently healthy looking tissue, could be considered inhuman and barbaric.

In the Middle Ages, dissecting dead human bodies was considered inhuman and barbaric.

So the fact that a person sees something as inhuman and barbaric really is not overwhelming evidence if something should be done.

Or how about self defense? If a person is protecting their lawful rights, home, property and family and in the process must kill an aggressor to do these things, should they just not do so out of a certain absolute ethical posture about the wrongness of killing other human beings? Just to clarify where your own fundamental posture on killing in the name of the law this draws some lines or exceptions.

However, I agree with Paul. The fact that anyone not guilty of the crime is executed is unacceptable, to say nothing of the startlingly bad accuracy of the system in practice.

Prison is inhumane and barbaric, and has the opposite of the intended effect most of the time. Many ex-cons have become hardened criminals through their time on the inside, and even for those who haven't and want to reintegrate productively, the outside world does its best to prevent reintegration.

How many innocent people are killed in prison, not by the state, or have their lives ruined? You can say as long as they're alive there's hope they'll achieve something and be happy, but statistically those prospects are dimmer every year they spend inside.

The only remaining good thing prison does is keep bad people from causing problems in society for some number of years. Which is the same thing the death penalty does.

I don't know if the most productive way to use political capital to reform the criminal justice system is to abolish the death penalty. Unjustified state-sanctioned death might be terrible, but so are things like the drug war which probably do more aggregate harm. In an ideal world we'd get rid of prisons somehow, too.

In addition to ending the drug war and trying to fix neighborhoods that have been broken by it, fixing misaligned incentives for prosecution and law enforcement to prosecute cases would have a massive impact, far greater than any squabbles about the death penalty. Too often the prosecutors and law enforcement have desire to convict someone, and the defendant is the best chance they have, so they go ahead. More neutrality has to be introduced somehow. Judges being allowed to direct questions to witnesses might be a place to start.

I dont want to work to house, guard, and feed them.

There have been some political leaders in the past who have said the same about the disabled.

If we give our government the power to premeditatedly kill people merely to reduce the costs to taxpayers, we are stepping down a very dark path.

Sorry, but that's exactly the kind of world we live in. The world simply is barbaric no matter what we would prefer. When people mess up a little bit, we put them through a process that, despite its massive inadequacy, is intended to rehabilitate them so that they can return to society. The death penalty is for when someone commits a crime so severe that they cannot ever return to society. If you are not able to think of this kind of situation, I suggest you may not be very familiar with the details of truly horrendous crimes. If we don't have the death penalty, we end up in the strange position of housing and feeding and providing medical care for the most harmful people in society at the expense of their victims.

It's all a matter if you believe in that core piece of universal human rights or not.

You have to define who made up this right. Not everyone will agree. Most people will have boundaries on that no matter what all human lives are the same. Killing someone else on purpose breaks that boundary.

I think arguing for its abolition on the basis of "the system is bad" is completely valid

> familiar with the details of truly horrendous crimes

And this still happens. And I agree, society is sometimes too tolerant with people who have no business in being in it (which, true, is a much smaller percentage of people on death row)

But don't expect the legal system to try to improve how many innocents they convict.

As for truly horrible crimes (which is something else to each of us), there are also tons of different views - do we want to be in society that is above emotional vengeful reactions, and more about compassionate loving ones? Ie like all good christians/muslims/etc are supposed to be according to their holiest books? You have to start somewhere if you even want to get there. You have to be morally strong to act in smart and compassionate way if you want to claim progress of mankind in this area. And so on.

I don't have a clear position on this myself and not stating some higher moral ground, since there are many pros and cons on both sides and quick emotional reaction to some murderous pedophile is as expected. But I am 100% certain that this very topic reveals a lot about mankind and us humans in our progression to be a better species, compared to primitive uneducated masses of the past. Or regression, its up to us.

Of course, the application of the death penalty in the US is very wrong. Other cultures have solved this issue a long time ago.