The crime was when he was deeply addicted and drugged out of his mind 22 years earlier. I don't find it shocking that he's had another life since. Killing him in 2021 just seems so... pointless

What a weird viewpoint, there's this thing called justice. Think if your daughter/son/mom/dad got slaughtered, do you think the pain would be less acute even two decades later?

We can debate capital punishment, of course, but calling it pointless frankly misses the point.

> there's this thing called justice

In pursuit of justice, we sometimes tip over into revenge.

Given the fact that we've sent innocent people to their executions, I'm uncomfortable labeling it justice.

The implementation of the death penalty itself is vengeful and barbaric.

Accidents in enclosed spaces lacking oxygen provide plenty of prior art for killing a human without panic nor suffering. I believe certain drugs such as morphine in high enough doses would also induce death with minimal pain.

Yet the state-sponsored murderers still use barbaric methods. Even in states where the "gas chamber" is a thing, cyanide is used instead of inert gases such as nitrogen, despite the latter surely being cheaper, easier to procure and safer to handle for the murderers and the rest of prison staff.

I don't agree or disagree with what you're saying, but isn't this the point of a "jury of your peers"? To exact a punishment befitting the crime?

That's the idea. The actual practice of it has never been near perfect.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/02jury.html

> In North Carolina, at least 26 current death row defendants were sentenced by all-white juries. In South Carolina, a prosecutor said he struck a black potential juror because he “shucked and jived” when he walked.

There are other selection biases at play; any of those peers who oppose the death penalty are struck from the jury as a matter of course.

Note, jury doesn’t necessarily decide sentencing. Just guilt or lack thereof.

If you mention you know about jury nullification you’re going to get dismissed as a juror.

There are 3 aspects to criminal justice:

- special prevention

- general prevention (=deterrence)

- revenge

I understand it to be:

- retribution (revenge)

- deterrence

- rehabilitation

- incapacitation (they can't re-offend if they're in prison or dead)

In these sort of discussions about justice online, the first is often cast as illegitimate, the second as impossible, the third as the gold standard, and the fourth is frequently ignored completely.

Few people ever defend retribution, so I will here. Many people who are victims of crimes have a desire to see retribution done. If the government does not play at least some lip service to the desire for retribution, then more people will take it into their own hands. They'll seek vigilante justice. Vigilante justice is dangerous to society because it's often capricious and disproportionate. It is better for governments to sate the desire for retribution using official processes which can be checked with safeguards, such as trials.

> If the government does not play at least some lip service to the desire for retribution, then more people will take it into their own hands. They'll seek vigilante justice.

If that were the case, we'd see significantly higher amounts of "vigilante justice" in countries that have abolished the death penalty, right?

I think "vigilante justice" is more often than not "vigilante policing", when people believe criminals aren't being sufficiently investigated and arrested, not when people believe criminals aren't being sufficiently executed

The intensity of desire for retribution depends on the cultural context. In any case, you're conflating retribution with the death penalty, but these are not synonymous. Imprisonment is a form of retribution too, as are fines, caning, etc. Any punishment that is unpleasant has an element of retribution.

> we'd see significantly higher amounts of "vigilante justice" in countries that have abolished the death penalty, right?

No. The death penalty is not the only way to satisfy this nature.

+1 for retribution and social benefits mentioned. Should be obvious. People don't watch enough gangster movies. Or, hell, visit one of the regions of the globe with blood feuds. Not great.

The opening scene of The Godfather is about this. An otherwise law abiding man, let down by the criminal justice system, asking the mob boss to deliver vigilante justice.

You forgot one: rehabilitation, or correction

Recidivism

Presuming that the only option for "justice" must be a death for a death also misses the point.

Can’t be that weird considering that the vast majority of the first world doesn’t partake in the death penalty. Perhaps you are the one with a strange take on justice.

> There is no justice in this world. No single punishment can correct an injustice, because what is past cannot be changed, and those to whom injustice was done remain with their loss. But even if justice were attained in some other world, for what was lost in this one, if in some other world those who had been injured had returned to them what they had lost here, that is not a return of their life’s fulfillment; it is only consolation. What is lost at a certain moment can never again be compensated, because what is lost was needed at the moment it disappeared.

Goce Smilevski

> Think if your daughter/son/mom/dad got slaughtered, do you think the pain would be less acute even two decades later?

Yeah it would definitely be less acute, still there every day, but less acute. Like most trauma.

Would killing the murderer in 2021 make me feel any better? To that question the answer is without a doubt "no".

And honestly if your answer to this is yes, you’re in need of deep help.

This is silly. It’s fine to disagree, but millions (billions?) of healthy, morally ordinary people support the death penalty.

They might of course be wrong, in some sense, but they don’t “need help,” for crying out loud.

Yes. They do. If you support the death penalty then you’re probably in need of therapy to figure out some deep traumas.

You ever heard the proverb "revenge is a dish best served cold"?

I'm sure you'll get a few cheap virtue points for your rhetoric but the reality of the society we live in seems to contradict your opinion.

And for the record (which is really just a fancy way of saying "if I don't say this some jerk will come along and imply otherwise) I am against the death penalty because I think the risk of executing an innocent person is too great.

> Yeah it would definitely be less acute, still there every day, but less acute. Like most trauma.

I hope you realize you are co-opting someone's pain for your own political or ethical brownie points. A lot of people are completely happy watching their child's murderer/rapist be punished via the death penalty.

You're just trivializing an incredibly complex moral conundrum.

You're just "trivializing an incredibly complex moral conundrum" -- by stating someone is "co-opting someone's pain for your own political or ethical brownie points" for having an opposing view point on " an incredibly complex moral conundrum."

Given the rest of what you have written in this thread, your idea of justice comes off as being based in a punitive approach, and it shouldn't be surprising not everyone agrees with that.

I get the feeling you're projecting a bit? "co-opting someone's pain" means using someone's (inferred) pain to justify something you believe in.

Are you seriously arguing that the pain of someone's child being raped & murdered is inferred? Talk about the onus being on you to prove that. Your argument form is something like "if I chop your arm off, your pain is inferred" -- like, uh, guy, we all know it would hurt, it's not inferred.

Didn't you start this whole argument by doing just that and trying to coopt the pain of a victims family to try and prove a argumentive point?

How is it different when you did it?

Nope, because the default, prima facia, position is that killing people is bad and causes pain and requires some kind of response. That's why arguing against the death penalty is actually quite hard. Especially when faced with incontrovertible evidence (video/confessions/etc.).

Life in prison isn't a response?

Re: the edit, calling confessions "incontrovertible" is... unsupported. https://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvict...

> Life in prison isn't a response?

It is. Some people argue that it's actually a more harsh punishment than death, though. A lot of rich literature here.

> calling confessions "incontrovertible"

You're missing the forest for the trees, my point was "assuming guilt by default... blah blah." I know confessions aren't technically always reliable.

> killing people is bad

> arguing against the death penalty is actually quite hard

Almost in the same sentence too

You do realize there's a difference between the state killing as a punishment and an individual killing for sport, right? These are two different categories. To wit, it's obvious I was referring to the latter.

There's actually more categories as well: killing in a war as a combatant, euthanasia, abortion, and so on.

>and an individual killing for sport,

What about individuals killing as a punishment? That's a lot more common than organized recreational killings.

False confessions are a lot more common than you seem to think; a confession is hardly "incontrovertible". Confessions aren't an exception either, many forms of evidence are less reliable than many think or wish.

You didn't actually answer my question. You started by co-opting someones pain for your argument, asked us to put ourselves in their position and then told us we were wrong for doing exactly what you asked and did.

And if your default argument is that killing people is wrong then how is the state executing someone better and in favor of the death penalty? Your arguments make no sense.

> We can debate capital punishment, of course, but calling it pointless frankly misses the point.

They're in the process of debating capital punishment. They didn't miss the point.

Capital punishment itself is a whole can of worm to discuss on a forum. But wouldn't killing inmate exactly be pointless for someone aruging for abolishing capital punishment ? That seems to be the core of the philosophy to me.

Now think of your father getting sent to jail and executed for a crime he didn't commit. You're saying that's a worthwhile risk in the pursuit of justice?

Do you think the pain would be less acute after the killer was killed 22 years later?

And there is reason why we don't let justice be dispensed by the victim.

> As always, getting hardcore downvoted by HN programmers thinking they know ethics without reading a shred of the literature, so I'll stop responding.

How on earth did you graduate philosophy thinking there's a settled, correct answer on this subject?

Don't even try to reason with HN downvoters. They're not interested in your reasons.

There’s a very good reason we don’t put people with this mindset in charge of justice.

Hopefully you’ll learn that someday.

He said killing, no imprisoning.

From Wikipedia:

Jones experienced 'brutal conditions' during his childhood, suffering neglect by his parents, sexual assault by his siblings, and extreme poverty.[7][4][8] His mother threatened him with a gun, and when he was seven years old his older siblings forced him to have sex with his stepsister.[8] He shot himself twice, once in the hand to placate gang members and later in the chest in a suicide attempt. He became addicted to drugs by his early teens

Yes, contrast this with the bloodlust of The People. We are no so far aware from crucifixions, torture and the brutal death sentences in the circuses.

What this awful species, ad populum, calls justice is little more than a boderline erotic enjoyment of the torture of those "who deserve it".

The problem is that people struggle with non-binary thinking.

It is not only possible, but probable that this person who has suffered so much is also broken and anti-social person.

Hey don't blame the species!

There’s something very odd to me about the modern progressive position that, more or less, if you can explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse it.

That description of his childhood works for me in sociological terms — let’s avoid stuff that we know to create monsters — but not on individual ones (i.e. the monster, having been created, is indeed a monster).

The question is, do you blame the monster for being a monster? Or do you blame the people that made them one?

There are valid points both ways. IMO I think the idea is that if you can explain the crime then maybe the monster was created by society and thus can be redeemed by society. If you can't explain the crime, maybe the monster is just a monster.

>IMO I think the idea is that if you can explain the crime then maybe the monster was created by society and thus can be redeemed by society.

I think that might be the thought process, but I do not think it is very accurate. Some damage simply cant be undone, especially early childhood trauma and developmental damage.

Similarly, blame isn't binary, both can be true. If we have dispensed with the concept of free will, then nothing is to blame, neither society or the individual. It simply is.

Once you reach that point you have to ask, what is it, independent of the assignment of blame.

Are they a monster? Did they brutally murder 3 people?

As a materialist and a determinist I accept implicitly that everything has a cause and nobody is really responsible for anything, in some sense. But I find it’s pretty hard to actually live as though that’s true.

Taken to its logical conclusions: I’m not even responsible for my belief that he’s responsible, and so on.

My response to this materialist argument is that it essentially goes full circle.

Once everyone has no responsibility, you are just left with what are they and what did they do. Did they act like monster, independent of the upstream causality?

I try to apply the same logic to myself when I get into a deterministic ego trip.

The question of if I can choose to go the gym today is irrelevant. The relevant question is do I think I am a dedicated person who will go to the gym today. If I am are kind, loving, and charitable myself, I find that the answer is "Yes, S1artibartfast is the kind of hard working person who would go to the gym".

It’s funny you say this, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. If you take the materialist position to its logical conclusion, then, in my view, instead of being exculpatory, you arrive back at an essentialist position.

Exactly my conclusion as well.

The interesting and challenging aspect of the essentialist position is understanding and believing in change. Past performance is not guarantee of future performance, even for the material determinist, as the world is not static.

Maybe you have never been to the gym, but today could be the first day. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what induced the change, but if you will fight it. In this way, I think that determinism is best paired with a optimistic and charitable perspective.

Most people have good intentions. I think that usually the biggest difference between those who act them out and those who don't is their essential optimism or pessimism. To that end, I try to encourage more optimism.

>There’s something very odd to me about the modern progressive position that, more or less, if you can explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse it.

I'm not following here. Who, specifically, is claiming that those who commit crimes shouldn't be held accountable (prosecuted, incarcerated, etc.) for those crimes because they had a rough childhood/suffered abuse/etc? Please do name names.

As a mild example, just as being drunk is a reason for being obnoxious/nasty, it's not an excuse.

As a person who is somewhat to the left of what other Americans call "progressives," (who are center/leaning center-left), I don't think that understanding something makes everything okay or that crimes should be ignored because of negative stuff in the perpetrator's past. In fact, I've never heard anyone make such a claim.

Many folks (at least in the US, and I'm sure elsewhere too) have been abused by society and the legal system. And we should make every effort to combat that.

However, there absolutely are folks who should be removed from society, as they've shown they cannot live in a society without harming it and/or those within it. And those people should be kept apart from society -- for the protection of society.

>That description of his childhood works for me in sociological terms — let’s avoid stuff that we know to create monsters — but not on individual ones (i.e. the monster, having been created, is indeed a monster).

Seems like a good idea. But no one (AFAIK) is trying to "excuse" criminal behavior even as we try to understand the causes.

>Seems like a good idea. But no one (AFAIK) is trying to "excuse" criminal behavior even as we try to understand the causes.

I think the knee jerk response would be about perspectives on poverty and class, but I think the more interesting response is that the criminal justice system already takes causes into account.

Provoked Crimes of Passion are treated differently than premeditated ones. Questions of mental capacity are relevant to sentencing. We have things like the twinkie defense and temporary insanity. We have Justified homicide due to self-defense.

In reality, the justice system almost always takes causes into account. Just not all causes. The interesting question is why some but not others.

>In reality, the justice system almost always takes causes into account. Just not all causes. The interesting question is why some but not others.

Absolutely. Circumstances are usually relevant and should be examined.

But GP[0] claimed that "progressives" argue that understanding the causes for the commission of crimes should "excuse" those actions.

Which is an unsupported assertion and I reject it because, at least AFAIK, no one takes that position.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34317453

Edit: Added the missing link, cleaned up prose.

There’s a kind of thing that happens in these discussions where somebody makes a complaint about an extremist position and somebody else responds that nobody thinks that and they’re kind of talking past one another.

To be clear, I acknowledge that we’re talking about an extreme, broadly unpopular position, but it is one running through certain segments of leftish twitter and academia. (No, I don’t keep a file of such utterances, so I can’t produce a list offhand.)

>To be clear, I acknowledge that we’re talking about an extreme, broadly unpopular position, but it is one running through certain segments of leftish twitter and academia. (No, I don’t keep a file of such utterances, so I can’t produce a list offhand.)

That's as may be, but lots of people say lots of stupid/ridiculous/untrue things all the time.

Who, in a position of power or influence (or reasonably adjacent to such power/influence), advocates such a view?

I can say all sorts of things, ranging from the mundane ("I like coffee.") to the ridiculous ("There is an underground advance alien invasion base under Biscayne Bay."). And while that does mean I will make coffee for myself tomorrow morning, it most certainly doesn't mean that the Army Corps of Engineers will be planting nukes in Biscayne Bay to destroy those evil aliens.

And it doesn't matter how many times I say it or to whom I say it, the Army Corps of Engineers aren't going to nuke Biscayne Bay. And no one should pay any attention to such ramblings.

And so I have to ask, why are you giving credence to (as you readily state) what some unbalanced rando thinks about prosecuting crime. And not just giving such credence, you also claimed that such views were those of "progressives."

You're now walking that back, but you (and that's what I responded to) implied that "excusing" criminal acts was somehow a "progressive" position.

It is not, and never has been.

There are those who claim that certain government officials routinely abduct babies and small children in order to murder them and extract some hormone to make them live longer.

Overwhelmingly, at least in the US, the folks who make (and/or believe -- not the same thing) such claims almost exclusively supported one political party over another.

Does that mean that everyone who supports that political party (or even a a tiny fraction) also believes such things?

By your logic, the answer should be "yes." Is that correct?

I could give a host of other examples of other ridiculous tropes from the extremes. None of which have support from anyone with or near any real power.

The upshot is that I took issue with you (specifically you, dionidium) smearing a broad group of folks (progressives) with a broad brush, claiming that an extreme stance by folks who may or may not consider themselves part of that group is the default belief of a group.

That's a clear example of "othering"[0], in which you are attempting to besmirch folks with beliefs they do not hold.

If you'd instead said something like "some extremist positions claim that people shouldn't be prosecuted for crimes if they had a bad childhood," I would have heartily agreed.

But "othering" has no place in reasoned discourse. Don't like progressives? I'm sure you can find stuff that's actually true to beat up on them. But just making shit up is low effort and doesn't add to the discussion.

[0] https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-othering-5084425

Edit: Added the missing link.

> * Does that mean that everyone who supports that political party (or even a a tiny fraction) also believes such things? By your logic, the answer should be "yes." Is that correct?*

I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.

>I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.

No. The source of the "conflict," as you describe (I call it a spirited conversation, but whatever blows your skirt up) is that you made an unsupported assertion (that the "progressive" position is that people with bad childhoods shouldn't be prosecuted for crimes they go on to commit), and I asked for specific information as to who, exactly, claims that to be not only their position, but that of progressives in general.

You danced around that very specific request and then somewhat backed off your (ridiculous) assertion.

And no, you didn't say "it's a progressive position," you said[0]:

   There’s something very odd to me about the modern
   progressive position that, more or less, if you can
   explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse
   it.

Not "a progressive postion," which is debatable at best, you called it "the progressive position" implying that was the belief of most who call themselves "progressive."

That's simply not true. Nor has it ever been.

And I called you out on your wholly unsupported, unsubstantiated and flat wrong assertion.

You are seemingly trying to walk back your statement and chalk it up to "conflict."

No. I'm not in conflict with you at all. You may think you're in conflict with me, but I'm just here trying to have good faith discussions.

You might try it some time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34317453

Edit: clarified my prose.

> Not "a progressive position," which is debatable at best, you called it "the progressive position" implying that was the belief of most who call themselves "progressive."

I am actually the world's foremost expert on what I mean when I say something. If we ever have a debate about what I meant, then I am 100% correct and you are 100% incorrect. When I do helpfully clarify something for you, that's not "walking back" anything. There is no debate to be had here. You can ask me to clarify something, but only I know what I meant.

Quoting somebody's words back to them as if to say, "but but but you said this!" is basically never useful, because you're always talking to the preeminent scholar on what that person meant and you should only ever be in the posture of accepting what they tell you they meant by those words.

If there appears to be some confusion about what I meant, then I am, as one former president so eloquently put it, "the decider."

>If we ever have a debate about what I meant, then I am 100% correct and you are 100% incorrect.

You are the person others perceive you to be, at least as far as they're concerned. Perhaps that's something to keep in mind when you're attempting to share your thoughts.

And that's the last I'll say on the matter.

Have a nice day.

> That description of his childhood works for me in sociological terms — let’s avoid stuff that we know to create monsters — but not on individual ones (i.e. the monster, having been created, is indeed a monster).

Can you elaborate on this

this is sickening. makes me not want to move to the US. that, and mass killings without gun law changes, & health insurance letting people die or bankrupt, even if I wouldn't have that problem myself

> And you would let him.

I would not. But I does not mean that I kill people - whether it is murder or capital punishment.

Is it less pointless to keep him in jail for the rest of his life?

To be fair. The decades of stays that separate his crime from his punishment were his choice.

“On 12/15/98, at approximately 8:30 a.m., Mathis shot three victims in the head with a .45 caliber pistol at a known drug house in Fort Bend County, Texas. One of the victims, a 15-year-old Hispanic female survived the shooting, paralyzed from the chest down. Mathis reportedly turned the gun on two other intended victims, however, when he attempted to pull the trigger, the gun either misfired or had been jammed.”

“Yes, sir. I just want to say to all my supporters, family and friends; I love y'all and appreciate y'all. To the ones representing me today, thank you for everything. The system has failed me. This is a miscarriage of justice. There are people on death row that need help. I love my family. I love you too, Mom. I am alright. I asked the Lord to have mercy on me and I hope He has mercy on these people carrying out this mass slaughter. They have no respect for humanity. To Melanie, I never meant to hurt you. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am not asking for your forgiveness. All I have to worry about is God forgiving me. I hope you get better and for the doctors to continue to take care of you. Take care of my mother for me. To everybody, know that I love you and I am OK. Lord, have mercy on my soul. Lord, have mercy on my soul. Lord, have mercy on these peoples' soul. Life is not supposed to end this way. No more pain and frustration. When I knock at the gates, they will open up and let me in. To my mom and everybody, I love you. I can feel it right now. My life, my life.”

Interesting seeing the visualization someone else linked that “love” was the most common word.

This person used the word love 4 times, while simultaneously denying his responsibility and saying that it’s the rest of the world that’s bad.

He lived in extreme poverty, was neglected by his parents, got sexually assaulted by his siblings and was forced to have sex with his stepsister when he was seven. He shot himself twice, once trying to kill himself. The world he lived in was bad.

GP is talking about Mathis Milton. You're quoting a wikipedia article about Quintin Jones. Obviously, they are not the same person.

Whoops my mistake. I’ll try to make my point with Mathis Milton as well:

“Milton dropped out of school after the 8th grade and worked as a cook, mechanic’s helper, and laborer before his arrest. Milton abused alcohol and drugs as a teenager.”

In another article he was being referred to as having “low IQ”. Combined with the fact that the murders happened in a crack house, I infer that he probably lived in a similar environment and had a comparable upbringing and childhood.

I don't dispute that Milton's life growing up was probably tough, but your comment upthread is making specific factual claims (e.g., that he was raped by his sister/siblings), which are to the best of our knowledge not true (because you confused the subject of the thread). We should avoid making false statements.

And? That describes lots of people who don't go out and commit heinous crimes.

What does that have to do with the killer not taking any responsibility, accusing other people of lacking humanity and saying to a victim that she was just "at the wrong place at the wrong time" with 0 other admission of guilt? I get that we could maybe, maybe stretch the argument that he had a rough upbringing (though dropping out of school isn't that extreme) to "explain" the circumstances of the crime... but not that he was basically still seemingly remorseless after having decades in death row to reflect on his acts.

He does show signs of remorse: “To Melanie, I never meant to hurt you.”

With regards to the guilt question: I did make the honest mistake of misquoting the history of another inmate before, what stands out to me and what I wanted to point out: I don’t think it is a coincidence that both of those inmates grew up in an environment of poverty. We do have the specifics of what happened in childhood in the first case, the second one I can only infer from the fact of teenage drug use and of growing up in a certain environment, which are both things I would expect to have a high correlation with childhood trauma.

This is not to say that Milton is not guilty of a crime, in the legal sense. But to expect someone who has been beaten, abused and has gotten the short end of the stick all their life to take full individual responsibility for something he didn’t have a choice in does seem inhumane to me. In a way like Melanie, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And what purpose would such an admission of guilt serve? Would it take make it easier to believe that tragedies like this are fully the individuals responsibility and that the environment the individual grows up in has no influence on the outcomes?

Lol now you guys are literally just guessing about “how bad he had it” to justify the sociopathy

That's a different person, although his world was probably not much better.

is it so hard to believe that someone who spends 20 years in prison might have recognized their mistakes, and set out to do as much good as they can within their constraints?

Is almost as if they were partially rehabilitated.

Depends on what he did between the crime and death.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of this case, and I'm not excusing any crimes, but it is certainly possible to commit serious crimes, and yet be able to say what he did.

No one also knows how it felt like to be him. Again, not to excuse any crimes, but a lot of people suffer horribly in silence until they snap.

Just because someone was convicted of a crime it doesn't mean they committed the crime. In the case you quoted above who knows, but certainly there are a few wrongful convictions in there. A really barbaric system.

>but certainly there are a few wrongful convictions in there.

And that's the best argument against capital punishment.

A wrongful conviction with a long (life+$X years) sentence allows for wrongful convictions to not only be reversed, but then the wrongfully convicted can be released, hopefully with some restitution.

If someone is wrongly convicted and executed, there's no useful recourse.

If someone is correctly convicted of a heinous crime, keeping them off the streets is effective enough to stop them from committing such crimes in our society. What's more, I'd say that decades in a 10x10 box is much worse than the sweet release of death in a few years.

I imagine some folks would disagree with that assessment, but that's how I see it.

If it turns out later (cf. The Exonerated Five[1]) that they're not actually guilty and we'd heeded the rantings of some people[2], they would likely have been murdered by the state for a crime they didn't commit. How is that fair or appropriate?

Sadly, we seem to have forgotten about Blackstone's Formulation[0] here in the US. And more's the pity.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

[1] https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/central-park-five

[2] https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-news-trump-death-pen...

Edit: Corrected prose.

> A wrongful conviction with a long (life+$X years) sentence allows for wrongful convictions to not only be reversed, but then the wrongfully convicted can be released, hopefully with some restitution.

If you've locked someone up for half their lifespan, even in much better conditions than US prisons, even millions wouldn't make up for that, and I doubt we give them millions. Execution takes away someone's whole life, but that's not such a huge step change compared to taking away a substantial portion of their years. We should take false imprisonment just as seriously.

A lot of them seem weirdly certain they'll end up in Heaven, too.

If I didn't know any better, I'd be asking what it is about Christ that turns people into murderous psychopaths...

You've got cause and effect backwards, I suspect. Is it surprising a "say the magic words and everything's forgiven" ideology is particularly appealing to death row inmates?

I think it looks good on your parole application to have converted to one of the major religions while in prison. Maybe people really believe, but just from a getting-out-ASAP standpoint, pretending to be religious is good business in prison.

Now if you're on death row, I don't know if it matters or not. That might just be legitimate fear, and Jesus has been known to give people second chances where the court system hasn't. Few people spend every day thinking about their own death, but on death row, that's pretty much the only recreational activity available. I can certainly understand why people would go looking for a higher power.

What coreleation this has to recidivism, I don't know, but it's probably a positive signal. (If you believe scripture, you probably don't mind adding a few other rules and regulations on top. Follow those extra rules and regulations and you don't go to prison again.) On the other hand, a lot of priests seemed to skip seminary on the day they had the "don't fuck children" lesson, so I have no idea how it all works out in the end.

This one is easy, as Jesus in the bible clearly says that if you are truly sorry, then even the most heinous will enter heaven, by the saving power of God.

Your response is also predicted.

> I'd be asking what it is about Christ that turns people into murderous psychopaths...

That's a reasonable question. Christianity does have an emphasis on forgiveness, which I suspect these prison chaplain programs emphasize, however murder is considered a mortal sin that separates one's soul from god and that cannot regularly be forgiven.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_sin, scroll to 'Actions constituting grave matter' for the list.

My grandmother was devout and spent her last few weeks convinced she was going to hell for something I do not know.

> However murder is considered a mortal sin that separates one's soul from god and that cannot regularly be forgiven.

By Catholics, specifically. Evangelical Christians don't typically share this belief.

Mortal sins can absolutely be forgiven in Catholicism

See for example the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1456

> 1456

> Confession to a priest is an essential part of the sacrament of Penance: "All mortal sins of which penitents after a diligent self-examination are conscious must be recounted by them in confession, even if they are most secret and have been committed against the last two precepts of the Decalogue; for these sins sometimes wound the soul more grievously and are more dangerous than those which are committed openly.

That seems to say mortal sins must be confessed. But I cannot see where it says they can be forgiven.

The only unforgivable sin according to the Church is "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit"[1], which is defined as refusal of God's mercy and forgiveness [2].

[1]: https://ucatholic.com/catechism/1864/

[2]: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d... (see 46)

Your references seem to say that blasphemy is unforgivable but not that other mortal sins are forgivable. Unless I’m missing something.

> However murder is considered a mortal sin that separates one's soul from god and that cannot regularly be forgiven.

Don’t think that’s true. Murder is considered a grave sin but not one that can’t be forgiven…remember Paul (who wrote several books of the New Testament) was a killer, so was Moses in the Old Testament.

I think the only sin mentioned as unforgivable is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” which is very vague.

(Was raised Christian, no longer one).

Edit: Another comment there’s a Catholic-evangelical disagreement on this, so maybe that’s the case.

IIRC it was a a little vague about what Saul of Tarsus actually did to the early Christians. I've heard it argued that Moses killing the Egyptian was an act of faith rather then of murder.

FWIW I think god is not real, just playing devil's advocate.

This actually goes the other way, if you believe the science: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0886260513504646

A lot of these people are in touch with prison ministries trying to get them to repent, so they probably weren't frequently meaningfully Christian before that on average. I don't have any way of knowing if these people were sincere or whether they'd have done the things they did all over again, but I don't really find it a bad thing if people realize that they've done bad and want to do what little they can to atone for it.

But yeah, I know it's not like an "I'm sorry" is going to bring mom back. And I say that as someone who heard those very words from the man who murdered mom.

So take the supposed repentance with a grain of salt, but I think it's at least better than the alternative where they never even acknowledge that they did something awful.

I think it's usually a cynical ploy for a last minute pardon.

I've seen a number of these things and can only come to one conclusion. Most of the people on death row are deeply mentally ill. The state is effectively using prison in place of mental health facilities.

For instance the person you are quoting also mentions friends and family in his final words. Yet he writes his final words specifically to the warden. This does not seem congruent with a sound mind. More like he is mentally unable to connect relationships and really has no frends or family and the warden is the closest thing to a authority/parental figure he has.

I could easily be wrong in my intrepretation.

You're assuming that mental illness is something that can be cured, and that the cure is not equivalent or worse than killing them.

Quite frankly, our brains are plastic, but not that plastic. It's possible (and we don't know enough about brain structure to say for certain either way) that someone can get into an antisocial enough state that it's impossible, by ethical means, to retrain them, to get them out of that state.

On a motherboard, if you flash your bios wrong you can pull the flash ROM and replace it with a new one. Brains are integrated packages and you can only reprogram them by their IO interfaces, and their IO interfaces are shut down or stuck in a boot loop, or simply running such a hardened update mechanism that any attempt to update the firmware simply adds your attempt to a blacklist and removes the interface you attempted to use.

This analogy is incredibly weak: Human minds are not computers. Put another way: Someone, particularly those on death row, might be so recalcitrant and antisocial that any (ethical) attempt to teach them teaches the opposite reaction, either from spite or from hate. You reward them for good behavior and they make an active attempt not to do that anymore to spite you. You punish them for bad behavior and it only reinforces their hate for you. You do the opposite, rewarding bad behavior and punishing the good, you're making negative progress.

Alternatively, imagine that you have invented a miracle drug that can render a brain fully plastic; Rewrite it to your whim. Is it ever ethical to use such a drug? I say no. It is an unacceptable moral hazard to ever use such a drug. The act of killing is a loss for both parties; Obviously more for the killed, but it is a deep scar that the killer bears, too. Taking on that scar is sometimes worth it. If you were to simply reprogram, from scratch, your convicts into wonderful (or even simply acceptable) people, you would have turned that around. There would be something to gain from "personality death-row". Making it socially acceptable to forcibly reprogram your opponents and feel good about it is a dystopia greater than any that a sci-fi writer has written, and I'm sure many have tried and not gotten the full horrors that it would unleash.

Damn that's a lot of words to just say you're fine with killing mentally ill people.

You know the guy that shot Reagan, John Warnock Hinckley Jr. He just got released from a secure psych facility. He shot the president and then got treated for being crazy. As a response, the conservatives in the 80's defunded public psych work and increased funding for prisons.

The death penalty is a cruel policy choice. Nothing more than that.

It's a lot older policy choice than Hinckley so maaaayyybe a little more to it.

This is almost comical revisionism. It's been weird to watch this narrative take its shape throughout the years though.

That doesn't sound like someone particularly mentally ill. Just your common dark triad who can't take responsibility for his actions.

That doesn't explain why you would write your final words to the person imprisoning you rather than the supposed family and friends mentioned in the last words. Why not more than one letter, if you have family AND friends.

Seems to me like the warden is the only significant real person in their life and they lack the ability to distinguish relationships. I'm not a psychologist so just an observation.

Could be, but I hesitate to say that suggests he's deeply mentally ill. It seems pretty natural that one would develop a relationship with the warden. His position is somewhat paternalistic, if you think about it. Long-time wardens may not be a thing so much any more but they used to be a trope in American mythology. Death row inmates don't tend to be as violent as gen pop in prisons; that would obviate reasons for the wardens to be severe with them.

Dare I say I find it rather comforting to know these people no longer walk the earth.

https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/obryanronald.jp... https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/garrettjohnny.j... https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr_info/wootenlarry.htm...

>Dare I say I find it rather comforting to know these people no longer walk the earth.

And if, next week, evidence is found that one or more of those folks didn't commit the crimes for which they were convicted -- are you still going to be comforted by their deaths?

I'd say that being in prison serves essentially the same purpose, had those folks not been executed, they'd be in prison and that's enough comfort for me.

Isn't that enough "comfort" for you?

That's not a jab at you. Rather, I'd like to understand why you feel that simply removing such folks from society (i.e., a long prison sentence) isn't sufficient, and death is the correct response?

Is there something I'm missing?

> Isn't that enough "comfort" for you?

No, it isn't. There is a certain peace and relief seeing these individuals brought to death. I don't mean to come across as provocative. To think of someone like Anders Breivik living in relative comfort after the atrocity he committed, it's simply absurd.

>No, it isn't. There is a certain peace and relief seeing these individuals brought to death. I don't mean to come across as provocative. To think of someone like Anders Breivik living in relative comfort after the atrocity he committed, it's simply absurd.

So it's retribution, not accountability or the safety of society that interests you?

But if we go with your preference, while Anders Breivik might suffer the same as those he murdered, these guys[0] (among many, many others) would have been murdered (and incorrectly so) for no reason other than the desire to satisfy your (and that of others, not singling you out per se, although you did express that belief) desire for revenge and retribution -- even if those murdered by the state didn't actually commit such a crime.

I consider Blackstone's Formulation[1] to be much more appropriate.

And I'd also say that being confined for the rest of your life, even in a dull, but comfortable environment meets the need for the safety of society and the need for accountability to the law.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

"Live, laugh, love"

Another way of looking at is that 22 years ago he did a terrible thing that he thought he would never do and has regretted ever since. This does not absolve him of shit, but:

We then collectively, as a society, took 22 years to murder him back.

Are we going to claim we did it as a mistake? Is ours a crime of passion? What excuse do we have for our violence? "He did it first"?

So I find it hard to reconcile that we are living in modern, democratic, freedom-loving countries, and the best we could come up with in response to murder was more murder.

When we kill inmates, we torture them for decades with the knowledge that they will be murdered for their crimes and it will hurt. We deprive them of all freedom in the meantime. Decades of knowing that society as a whole hates you so much that they locked you away out of sight and want your blood. We then surround them with the most violent people we have in society, and offer them little protection from each other.

And then finally, one day, if they survive the ordeal, we kill them and call it justice. That's what I have a hard time reconciling.

This is such a foolish way of looking at public order. The point is not whether murder is wrong or whether punishing is wrong, because after all we are not children arguing about right and wrong. Rather, we need a public that is free of murderers and so when people engage in antisocial behavior we remove them from the public. We don't remove someone for X years because we think they "deserve" to be removed for X years -- we remove them for X years because that's how it takes them to age out of being prone to commit acts of more violence.

It is about keeping society going. The moment you start getting into debates about right and wrong, you prove that you have no interest in keeping society going and are instead focused on making yourself feel good by making various philosophical pronouncements which are ultimately quite arbitrary. But what is not arbitrary is whether people can walk the streets safely at night or not. Do we live in a peaceful society or do we live in a society in which the wealthy barricade themselves in and hire private security while the poor are left to fend for themselves? That's what matters, and it's all that matters, because public justice is not an ethics class, it's a class about how to create safe streets so that society can continue to function in peace.

The moment you stop caring about how to create a peaceful society, what you get is a violent society that eventually disintegrates into warring clans and someone will rise to the top who can promise order, and he will not care a bit about your philosophical debates. And the people will support him, because not worrying about being attacked as you walk about the city is a required part of having cities in the first place. And we want cities, we want high density living in which strangers can interact with each other without violence -- we want civilization. Therefore we adopt policies that defend that civilization independent of any musings about who has the right to take a life or imprison someone and what that means for someone's soul, etc. It is only those people who take it for granted that they are living in a peaceful society, who are able to engage in these musings about what is right and wrong. But God help the society that takes them seriously or listens to their advice.

> Rather, we need a public that is free of murderers and so when people engage in antisocial behavior we remove them from the public.

Sure. There’s a wide gap between how Texas and Norway accomplish that.

I find your philosophy appalling and terrifying and I hope you never hold office.

You're right, they've suffered a terrible injustice. They are the real victims. We should probably free all violent criminals at once. What could go wrong?

Hasn't the Innocence Project saved a non-trivial amount of people from death row?

The sad thing is a percentage of these last words are made by innocent people. The US justice system isn't perfect, not even close.