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A comment on Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington. Parent comment

Re:Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington by jimbob45 on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:47PM (#35646819)
The death penalty isn't common at all. I'm seeing 18 individuals for 2022 and also that 2022 was the eighth consecutive year with less than 30 individuals served the death penalty. I'm finding it hard to believe that many mistakes were made with that few number of individuals (the data was kinda tough to find so I welcome better data if anyone has it).

[0]https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/2021

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Re:Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington by roblabla on Thursday April 20, 2023 @06:12PM (#35647189)
The very website you link has data about exonerations[0]. From a quick look, it looks like this is about people who are still alive, not dead people found innocent after the death penalty was carried through (I'm having a hard time finding that specific datapoint). Given the exoneration data though, I'd have a hard time believing that number is 0.

[0]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence

EDIT: Oh boy that rabbit hole is deep. So here's some _potentially_ innocent people who have been put to death[1]. None of those are actually proven to be innocent, but there is at least some amount of evidence that spells reasonable doubt on their conviction.

[1]: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/execute...

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Re:Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington by mrguyorama on Friday April 21, 2023 @03:14PM (#35658610)
Is nobody here aware of the Innocence Project?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_Project

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Re:Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington by tialaramex on Thursday April 20, 2023 @06:10PM (#35647162)
What is "many" here? How many times is it OK for us to execute you for a crime you didn't commit? Is it alright so long as we only kill you once?

It took a matter of minutes to find that Toforest Johnson was successfully convicted of murder based on somebody claiming they overheard him confessing. The prosecution had concealed from the defence the fact that they paid this witness a substantial sum of money. That sort of bullshit shouldn't work to give somebody a traffic ticket, never mind a death sentence and yet sure enough US courts thought that was good enough.

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Re:Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington by shanecleveland on Thursday April 20, 2023 @06:30PM (#35647407)
>> "I'm finding it hard to believe that many mistakes wee made ..."

So you are OK with a a few mistakes, as opposed to many?

Point is also that it is possible that a mistake will be made. We know wrongful convictions have occurred, including for those on death row.

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Re:Gov. Inslee signs bill to repeal death penalty in Washington by jimbob45 on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:25AM (#35653388)
I’m not a huge fan of the death penalty myself but I don’t see a meaningful difference between the death penalty and life imprisonment. I’m quite confident that there are far more frequent errors in incarceration with life imprisonment than with the death penalty. Just seems like bikeshedding to focus on a thing that can have at max 18 errors a year.
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