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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I'm very very broadly against the death penalty even in the worst of cases, but even entertaining what you suggest, I certainly think that a million is pretty low to be executed for.

I'm not even sure how you'd fully quantify that; suppose I had a flash drive with a crypto wallet worth two million bucks in my backpack, and then when I get up to go to the bathroom someone steals my backpack.

Now, technically this person stole "more than a million dollars", but I don't think you'd suggest we dust off the gallows just for snatching a backpack would you?

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I had hoped that it would be clear from context that I'm talking about someone who commits financial fraud, not just someone stealing a backpack, but if that was not clear then that is on me.

Disagree on $1 million being a low threshold. There are fraud operations out there that steal $10k from one pensioner and $50K from another that in aggregate hit $1 million. I think everyone involved in the fraud end of something like that deserves to forfeit their lives.

I mean, I was being deliberately obtuse on it to be fair!

While I could see myself getting onboard with locking these fraudsters up for the rest of their lives, I think our disagreement stems from the fact that I think actually executing people should be reserved for explicitly violent crimes, if at all. As stated, I'm broadly against the death penalty in any case, but I'm more amenable to it in regards as a direct means of public safety from violence.

Statutes as harsh as this have been tried but were repealed for unspecified reasons (Draco’s laws in Athens) or because juries wouldn’t convict in death penalty cases very often (England’s Bloody Code).

Yeah, I think I saw in a video or something where you used to be able to be hanged for forgery, which basically led to no one ever being convicted of forgery because people didn't feel like the punishment really fit the crime.

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