> 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.