Thread

1. tombert · 1790831351 · focus · HN ↗

   Oh yeah, I read about this.

   I'm pretty against capital punishment in general, so take that for what it is, but executing someone for something they did when they were eighteen really bothers me.

   I've never been a violent person but I do know that I was even more of an idiot then than I am now.

   1. sippingabonedry · 1790831581 · focus · HN ↗

      > for something they did when they were eighteen really bothers me

      She lured a classmate into the woods, slit her throat with a box cutter after torturing her for half an hour, bashed her skull open with a rock for good measure, then brought a piece of her skull to school the next day.

      > I was even more of an idiot then than I am now

      Do you think the above should be chalked up as normal childhood indiscretion?

      1. tombert · 1790832165 · focus · HN ↗

         > Do you think the above should be chalked up as normal childhood indiscretion?

         I didn't say there shouldn't be consequences. I just think that executing someone who committed a crime when they were effectively a child is kind of upsetting. I do not see how you extrapolated that I think it's "normal childhood indiscretion" out of what I said.

         1. sippingabonedry · 1790832464 · focus · HN ↗

            I interpreted it as an implication that it should be viewed as a lesser crime due to the perpetrator's age. At 18 you can:

            • Vote

            • Fight in the military

            • Act in pornography

            • Rent a car in MI, NY, QC

            • Many other adult things

            The crime perpetrated was premeditated and particularly demonic. It's a far cry from shoplifting a Snickers bar.

            > is kind of upsetting

            Bringing a chunk of the victim's skull to school to show your friends how good you are at murdering was probably pretty upsetting to a few people, like the victim's family and friends.

            1. jrflowers · 1790833192 · focus · HN ↗

               Execution is a weird thing for a civilized society to do and the bizarre people that fetishize it say weird shit like “It makes sense to murder somebody if they made other people upset” to avoid talking about how it doesn’t solve any problems that aren’t already solved by life imprisonment. The justification for execution is always “I want the state to kill people because I enjoy that sort of thing”

               1. eudamoniac · 1790866836 · focus · HN ↗

                  Society does not have an obligation to house and feed such people for decades on end. I'd rather they be killed because it should be much cheaper; whether it actually is or not by some aberration of dumb policy is not relevant to the philosophy. They are the enemy of society and are owed absolutely nothing but swift death, not room and board.

                  1. tombert · 1790868904 · focus · HN ↗

                     It’s not cheaper, and it really can’t or shouldn’t be.

                     In the US you have a right to appeal your sentence, which is a good thing. If the government is going to be killing people, we want to (at the very least) make sure they have dotted every “i” and crossed every “t”. You have to pay someone to read these appeals, typically an attorney or multiple attorneys and/or a judge. There can be a backlog so it can take awhile to get through all of them.

                     This is inherent to how capital punishment works in the US, and anything less would be borderline tyranny, so I reject your framing of it as “aberration or some dumb policy”.

                     1. eudamoniac · 1790869682 · focus · HN ↗

                        Well I reject your framing of it being impossible. If it is cheaper to house and feed a man for sixty years than it is to kill him, that is a policy decision, not a law of the universe. Other respectable countries manage to achieve this.

                        1. tombert · 1790871340 · focus · HN ↗

                           Most other “respectable” countries have actually gotten rid of capital punishment entirely.

                           I think we are at a fundamental disagreement though; I think it should be expensive and difficult to execute someone. I think the slow appeals process is a good thing. It should hard for the government to kill people who aren’t a direct threat.

                           I don’t know your politics but it doesn’t matter the specifics. Imagine whichever politician that you think is most stupid and tyrannical. Do you really want to give them the ability to rapidly kill people they don’t like without at least some bureaucratic checks in place?

                           1. eudamoniac · 1790871753 · focus · HN ↗

                              Politicians don't convict people. It's not a political issue; the person was convicted by a jury of their peers, which philosophically should indicate something important: the body politic unanimously believes he is guilty of heinous crimes. They believe beyond a reasonable doubt that this man, for example, raped and killed a dozen infants. Then in the court of appeals it was upheld. I believe that it is better for society* in that case for that man to then be swiftly executed.

                              * In the sense that society needs to feel that the state executes justice and that such people are not being kept alive on their own dime. That breeds contempt for the system and for the state.

                              1. rurp · 1790888053 · focus · HN ↗

                                 Politicians literally write the laws that people get convicted of violating, and they can write those laws pretty much however they want. A juror's job is not to decide if they think an act was morally wrong, it's to judge them against the law as written. Laws can and have been written in all kinds of horrible and negligent ways.

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