This is for those who support the death penalty. First, let me be clear. I support the death penalty IN THEORY. If we could 100% ENSURE that ONLY guilty people were executed. I have no problems. But, thats simply not possible. Innocent people get put to death. This is a fact. So, in light of this, I cannot support the death penalty. But for those of you who do support it, knowing that innocent people get put to death. What is an "acceptable" level of innocent death in order to maintain the death penalty?
Sacrificing innocent people in order to put the guilty to death is just not acceptable for me personally. The crime of putting an innocent person to death is as great as the crime of a criminal murdering another human being. The State becomes criminal. Unacceptable for me. And the worse kind of criminal.
I said other, as long as the determination is made by a jury, not a judge. While mistakes may happen, the system works, and has worked for over 240 years. Clearly the Founders believed in the death penalty, so clearly it must be Constitutional, the only thing left is to work to ensure investigations and fair trials are conducted in determining when its appropriate...
What proportion of life imprisonment of the innocent is acceptable? Is that ultimately better or worse? Not trying to support the death penalty here, but I think the question is ultimately one of how we account for such potential mistakes in the criminal justice system.
Also 0. But at least if they are in prison, there is always a chance they can later be found innocent.
So what % of mistakes are you willing to tolerate in order to carry out the death penalty? We have had crooked cops. Crooked judges. Crooked prosecutors. Or simply public defenders who, given their case load, simply CANNOT take the time to properly defend their clients, and so cut corners, or cannot hire the needed investigatory people needed to mount a proper defense.
Its not about percentages, its about core belief in the system as a whole. Either you believe or you don't. There is no possible way to ensure perfection, all we can do is demand due diligence from all aspects of our legal system and root out corruption when and where it is found. Times and technology have changed, information is readily available and spread, reducing many of the problems you mentioned...
I'm not sure about the belief in the system argument. It works, but it also makes mistakes at times. We know that. There is always room to discuss and make adjustments to the system, especially where sentencing is concerned.
Nobody is saying improvements can't and shouldn't be made, but it all starts and ends in the basic beliefs set forth in the Constitution, trusting in juries of our peers, having rights that ensure the state cannot simply steam roll suspects without council, so on and so forth. The Founders believed they delivered such a system, including the death penalty. We accepted that system, but now liberals and anti-American idealists have begun to question the validity of what made the country in the first place...
Why do we recoil in horror at the thought of an innocent person being executed, but barely raise an eyebrow when tens of thousands of innocent people a year are killed by incompetent doctors? Why do we demand ABSOLUTE PERFECTION from professionals who toil away within our law enforcement, justice and corrections systems, while virtually ignoring the tens of thousands of fatal errors perpetrated by our medical professionals every year? here, I'll tell you. agenda. 100% agenda. and it's all firmly anchored in the usual suspects' Identity/Victim-Oppressor politics.
I voted other because there are no acceptable percentages of people that are innocent being executed.
I'm not sure about the death penalty, but for the general prison population the rate of innocent has been estimated at about 2 to 4%. Maybe that's a reason to reserve the death penalty only for the very worst crimes (worse than ordinary murder). Obviously if it is used less, there will be less innocent victims. (Might also provide a murderer with some minor incentive not to commit a crime more serious than he's already committed)
Find out what the percentage is of those Murders that we jail, who still end up killing others, whether due to escape/release or even while on the inside. Whatever that percentage is, I am good with.
I have a problem with those numbers. We have cases where a person is cleared 20 years after the crime, however, witnesses die, memory fades, and a new trial doesn't convict him, does not mean he is innocent. Yes, there are some, but not very many
Nikko Jenkins within a month after being released from prison killed four people. One was a young mother of four who he encountered while she was driving home from work. He carjacked her car and blew off her head with a sawed off shotgun in the middle of the street. He murdered two other men while robbing them. The fourth victim was his friend. Does he deserve the death sentence.
"It is better that 100 guilty go free, than a single innocent be wrongly convicted." I think Ben Franklin said something like that. He could not be more right.