Russia bans death penalty

[Serafine666]

CORRECTIONI found a better number for total executed: 15,645 as of March 11 2009 here.. I'm still looking for a better source to quote the number from although I'm seeing the number repeated in quite a few places (none of whom actually say where it comes from).

[Darth Wong]

Would you be happy playing Russian Roulette as long as the gun had more than 100 chambers?

[Starglider]

Would you be happy playing Russian Roulette as long as the gun had more than 100 chambers?

Not a good analogy. Russian Roulette is played for thrills, or maybe a wager, but in any case voluntarily. Being on death row doesn't happen voluntarily, and saying that it is necessary to prevent killers from killing again, or to avoid wasting money that could be used for lifesaving medical treatments etc, is a much better justification than any plausible justification for Russian Roulette. Better to just ask, 'would you still agree with the death penalty if you were one of the innocents being held on death row'?

[Serafine666]

Would you be happy playing Russian Roulette as long as the gun had more than 100 chambers?

Yes.

[Serafine666]

Not a good analogy. Russian Roulette is played for thrills, or maybe a wager, but in any case voluntarily. Being on death row doesn't happen voluntarily, and saying that it is necessary to prevent killers from killing again, or to avoid wasting money that could be used for lifesaving medical treatments etc, is a much better justification than any plausible justification for Russian Roulette. Better to just ask, 'would you still agree with the death penalty if you were one of the innocents being held on death row'?

My answer to that question is "yes" as well because the rate of the innocent being identified and freed continues to increase (which, incidentally, decreases the chance of a tragic mistake).

[Simon_Jester]

I threw in the number of exonerated people just as a factoid because if I'm answering Simon's challenge about the rate of innocent people executed per every guilty person executed, the number of innocent people who are not executed isn't relevant because those constitute the number of people that the current safeguards have managed to catch and save.

That is only true if we can infer that there are not more innocent people on death row who were not exonerated. I don't know that that's a reasonable inference.

If, say, the system only catches 80% of all people who are convicted when they are really innocent and exonerates them... for every four people being exonerated, one innocent person dies. That would have a drastic effect on the rate of innocent executions.

On top of that, keep in mind that there are relatively few resources dedicated to proving people innocent after they are dead. Since you consider only people who were innocent and were executed, that distorts your sample severely; the only people you detect as innocent victims of death row are those who just happen to have had someone come in after they were dead to clear their name.

Since his point was "the US has not gotten its system to the point where there is an acceptable margin of error" (which he defined as over 100 guilty executed per innocent person),

I specified an acceptable margin of error as being lower than one in 100; I did not specify how much because I don't feel comfortable trying to pin that number down without one hell of a lot of thought. 100 is a lower bound on what the number might be. But that's a nitpick.
_______

Would you be happy playing Russian Roulette as long as the gun had more than 100 chambers?

Not a good analogy. Russian Roulette is played for thrills, or maybe a wager, but in any case voluntarily. Being on death row doesn't happen voluntarily, and saying that it is necessary to prevent killers from killing again, or to avoid wasting money that could be used for lifesaving medical treatments etc, is a much better justification than any plausible justification for Russian Roulette. Better to just ask, 'would you still agree with the death penalty if you were one of the innocents being held on death row'?

Or, if we stick to the Russian Roulette argument, we should at least make the "reward" of surviving a round of the game commensurate with what Serafine sees as the "reward" of keeping death row in operation:

"Let's play Russian Roulette with a 100-chamber gun. Every time the gun doesn't fire, I will kill one criminal currently serving a life sentence for terrible crimes."

To me, that sounds somewhat perverse; I don't understand why I should want to be the guy with the very large revolver pointed at him in this scenario. Have I really gained something worth a ~1% chance of death when I discover that Cop Killer #48 is now dead and not alive? Is my life improved that much?

Some things are worth dying for. I'm not sure that's one of them. And if it isn't worth dying for, it usually isn't worth killing for.

[Serafine666]

That is only true if we can infer that there are not more innocent people on death row who were not exonerated. I don't know that that's a reasonable inference.

If, say, the system only catches 80% of all people who are convicted when they are really innocent and exonerates them... for every four people being exonerated, one innocent person dies. That would have a drastic effect on the rate of innocent executions.

On top of that, keep in mind that there are relatively few resources dedicated to proving people innocent after they are dead. Since you consider only people who were innocent and were executed, that distorts your sample severely; the only people you detect as innocent victims of death row are those who just happen to have had someone come in after they were dead to clear their name.

Quite true. I admit that the data is a really tricky thing since quite a few of the places I came across that mentioned the number of innocent people executed repeated the "there is no reliable data" caveat. I can only answer with the data I was able to find and that data seems to indicate a very low error rate. I'm really sorry that there isn't anything more comprehensive and solid to argue with because this is a hugely important issue.

I specified an acceptable margin of error as being lower than one in 100; I did not specify how much because I don't feel comfortable trying to pin that number down without one hell of a lot of thought. 100 is a lower bound on what the number might be. But that's a nitpick.

Perhaps so but since I was trying to answer your challenge, I've got no complaint with you clarifying it.

Or, if we stick to the Russian Roulette argument, we should at least make the "reward" of surviving a round of the game commensurate with what Serafine sees as the "reward" of keeping death row in operation:

"Let's play Russian Roulette with a 100-chamber gun. Every time the gun doesn't fire, I will kill one criminal currently serving a life sentence for terrible crimes."

To me, that sounds somewhat perverse; I don't understand why I should want to be the guy with the very large revolver pointed at him in this scenario. Have I really gained something worth a ~1% chance of death when I discover that Cop Killer #48 is now dead and not alive? Is my life improved that much?

Some things are worth dying for. I'm not sure that's one of them. And if it isn't worth dying for, it usually isn't worth killing for.

Whether an individual person weighs the moral dilemma for or against execution as a just punishment is entirely up to them. I feel, however, that in a justice system that serves a larger society, whether a given punishment is just is something for the majority of those served by that system to determine. Whether it is brutal or not, whether it is "uncivilized" or not, whether it is flawed or not, the crux of the matter comes down to whether a society feels that it is acceptable to destroy a life as a just response to a certain crime.
I personally? I regard it as just in certain limited circumstances. Executing a Timothy McVeigh is just. Executing a Michael J. Swango is just. Executing a Gary Ridgeway (although he was ultimately spared the death penalty through a plea bargain) is just. Executing a multiple-murderer is just. Executing a child murderer is just (although the idea of caging them in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives appeals to my more perverse impulses). And in certain instances, executing a serial rapist is just as well. To use your standard, Simon, I would regard the knowledge that some dark evil soul has been destroyed as best we, as mere humans, can as something worth dying for.

[Simon_Jester]

Whether an individual person weighs the moral dilemma for or against execution as a just punishment is entirely up to them. I feel, however, that in a justice system that serves a larger society, whether a given punishment is just is something for the majority of those served by that system to determine. Whether it is brutal or not, whether it is "uncivilized" or not, whether it is flawed or not, the crux of the matter comes down to whether a society feels that it is acceptable to destroy a life as a just response to a certain crime.

I feel that this is not the whole issue- that there is also an unavoidable risk of killing innocent people who get caught in the gears of the system, or who are the victim of a biased system. That cost has to be taken into account; it can't just be shrugged off.

Innocent people sent to prison can be set free, and to some extent their fortunes can be restored. Dead people cannot be brought back to life; we have no way to make restitution to an innocent person we execute. That makes it a fairly big deal, in my opinion.

And in certain instances, executing a serial rapist is just as well. To use your standard, Simon, I would regard the knowledge that some dark evil soul has been destroyed as best we, as mere humans, can as something worth dying for.

I don't know; I don't consider it a positive accomplishment, myself. At most, it is the ultimate negation of a negative- destroying something bad. But negating a negative does not always yield a net positive. I don't think it's wise to give too much credence to that inner voice that says "Yes! I am glad that that criminal is dead dead DEAD!"

[Serafine666]

I feel that this is not the whole issue- that there is also an unavoidable risk of killing innocent people who get caught in the gears of the system, or who are the victim of a biased system. That cost has to be taken into account; it can't just be shrugged off.

Innocent people sent to prison can be set free, and to some extent their fortunes can be restored. Dead people cannot be brought back to life; we have no way to make restitution to an innocent person we execute. That makes it a fairly big deal, in my opinion.

I don't know; I don't consider it a positive accomplishment, myself. At most, it is the ultimate negation of a negative- destroying something bad. But negating a negative does not always yield a net positive. I don't think it's wise to give too much credence to that inner voice that says "Yes! I am glad that that criminal is dead dead DEAD!"

Well then, unless you think a discussion about our individual beliefs about the death penalty are worth more board space, I think we've reached a fair "agree to disagree" point. I hope capital punishment, along with the justice system in general, will be permitted to continue on its upward path to only punishing the guilty because ultimately, no matter how few innocents are accidentally killed, it never becomes any more acceptable even if the tradeoff is a-ton-of-salt tolerable.