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Comment by bartread | Hacker News Reader

I don't actually object to the death penalty too much from a moral perspective, but I'm no fan of it because - occasionally - it does seem like we might get it wrong. And if you get it wrong there's no undoing it.

If you falsely imprison somebody, even though you can't give them the time back, you can at least give them their freedom for the time they have left, and enough compensation to set them up for a decent life.

Certainly imprisoning a juvenile for a whole life term does seem to me the very definition of cruel and unusual, and especially if they weren't directly responsible for any murders.

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History has shown us time and again that the risks associated with improper use of the death penalty clearly outweigh the benefits (cost savings?).

And even the reduced cost associated with the death penalty is arguable, as many of those sentenced remain on death row for quite a while.

In practice, executing a prisoner in the US is far more expensive than imprisoning him (and it's usually a "him") for life.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/costs

How do you justify the death penalty morally?

I'm not quite sure what I think about the death penalty. But it is not obvious to me that it is a worse punishment than life in prison. In fact I think that personally, given the choice I would choose death.

> In fact I think that personally, given the choice I would choose death.

I, too, am not sure that I'd prefer life in prison over death, but in practice it takes decades to execute a convicted prisoner in the US, and since you're considered a particularly dangerous prisoner (since you have nothing to lose) you're held in particularly isolated and unpleasant conditions during those decades. If I thought I was going to get the death penalty I might prefer to just blow my brains out quickly and easily before they have a chance to slap the handcuffs on.

I can't be arsed to fact-check it, but I'm pretty sure I've read that death row inmates are more likely to die of natural causes while awaiting execution than they are to actually be executed - that's how long the legal process waits.

I can't, and I also find it hard to justify life sentences for all but the most horrific of crimes (and for those who pose too much of a danger to be allowed back into society.)

Norway doesn't even have a statutory penalty of "life without parole" except for military offences. The maximum prison sentence it's possible to receive in 30 years - although it's still possibly in practice to be imprisoned for longer, because your release after 30 years is conditional and the sentence may be extended. Even Anders Breivik, the terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011, didn't get a "life sentence" as that term would be understand in the US.

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

If you don't believe that people have a right to life, I suppose that being murdered by the state is just another notch on the spectrum of "acceptable punishment".

It's an odd contradiction to me that people who support the death penalty are mostly not ok with the state using, for example, punitive rape as a punishment, but killing is somehow okay, if the crime is severe enough.

How are rape and the death sentence related? You could just as well say that it's weird how people can support taking someones's freedom and locking them away, but are not okay with raping them.

Because we as a society have generally reached a consensus that premediated killing of human beings is one of the worst crimes possible.

The fact that it is regarded by some as an acceptable punitive measure carried out by the state, whereas other, lesser crimes against human beings are deemed "off limits" for such purposes, seems to me to expose an inherent contradiction. To avoid the contradiction, either both should be acceptable, or neither.

Presently there seems to be a slight majority consensus on Earth that the correct answer is "neither", with the overall trend suggesting that the rest of the planet will get there in another couple hundred years.

I could not agree more. It is barbaric and sends an incongruent message to society. How are we to teach people the value of a life by taking one?

There is a broad spectrum of value that is up for debate. There are amazing human beings, but also vile human beings.

There can be some morally justifiable scenarios. For example, someone who is a political or religious leader who has used that position to kill people. If they still have followers, their very existence can continue to cause issues. Think Saddam, Hitler, or Bin Laden.

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