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 Jihadin wrote:
I support the Death Penalty. Granted I also accept the.01% "Oh Frack" factor. I just have my view point a bit skewered/different from the major line of views. I have squeezed the trigger quite a few times.

The "Of Frack" factor is 3.2%, but thanks.

Not feeling any guilty about it the difference

If you don't feel any guilt over killing 39 innocent to prevent be death of 15, then that's fine.

But using false numbers is serious business!

 d-usa wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
The 9000 convictions don't matter when you talk about the death penalty preventing murders.

You can't talk about how the death penalty is effective by talking about murders that were commited by people that didn't receive the death penalty and were released from prison instead.

It doesn't matter one single bit if 9,000 people a year are convicted of murder.
It doesn't matter one bit if 142 people are exonerated of murder charges since 1973.

There are only three numbers that matter:

The number of people that were actually executed.
The statistical number that those people might have killed if they were released from prison.
The likely number of people that were wrongly executed.

And we know, from your data, that execution might have prevented 15 deaths.

And we know, from separate data, that there is a high likelyhood that we might have executed 39 people that were innocent.

So while you throw out statistics that are, once again, based on a 19 year old 15 state study and also pretent that the only options are execution or release from prison (because your date does not address murderers that were never released and how many people were/were not killed because of life in prison) we do have a simple fact.

There is a high possibility that we killed 39 innocent people to fight the possibility that 15 other innocent people might have been killed.

It's actually far more deaths prevented than you say. 1.2 % of 9000 is 108, and as I said that is using low numbers for convictions and recidivsm.

Please explain how executing 43 people in 2012 prevented 108 people from killing?

As I said, we have enough data points to extrapolate. Six Sigma uses a similar type of calculation to predict trends for industry quality and prevention of rejects through problem solving.

We do have the data points, you are just either ignoring them or not using them correctly.

You cannot say "we prevented [9000 convictions * 1.2% recivitism rate] of murders because that is not the number we work with. We have to work with the actual numbers. If 43 people were executed last year, than that is the number you use when determining what number you might have been prevented.

In 2011 and 2012 we executed 86 people, so we may have prevented one statistical death (if we pretent that they would have been released if they were not executed). We do know that there is a very high likelyhood that we executed an innocent man in 2011. So during the last two years we executed an innocent man to prevent the hypothetical murder of an innocent man.

Now if you want to make some sort of stupid argument that killing all 9000 murderers we convict each year would prevent an additional 1.2% of murders down the line, then you also have consider the statistical rate of wrongful executions. If you say "in the past, 1.2% of murderers released from prison kill again" then you also have to accept the statistics of "in the past, 3.2% of people we executed were likely innocent".

So if you want to use the 9000 (lowball number) of convicted murderers each year and pretend that the only two options are "kill them or release them" then we get the following numbers.

Murders after release statistically prevented by executing every murderer: 108
Number of innocent people statistically executed by executing every murderer: 288

So if you want to say that killing 288 innocent people a year is okay if it prevents the death of 108 other innocent people, then that is just stupid.

But let's just consider the alternative that you have not provided statistics for:

9000 people a year in jail for life without parole:

"People kill and get killed in prison all the time" is the mantra that has been voiced here. Well, thankfully we have a law that required the report of every death of every person in custody in the USA. And the average homicide rate in prison is a whooping 0.004%. 4 out of 100,000 inmates are killed in prison each year.

So now we have three options to figure out a number each year for those 9000 people, let's make a fancy table:

Option | Number of Innocent people killed (per year)
Kill everyone | 288
Release everyone | 108
Life without Parole | 0.36

I can explain it to you, but I can't make you understand it. So this is probably my last post on this subject.

I am going off the number of recorded exonerations since 1972 from a site with an axe to grind against the death penalty vs the DOJ percentage of recidivsm across a lowball number of convicted murderers. I am giving full advantage to the anti death penalty position with my numbers. You are bringing in terms like "might have been innocent"etc.
I honestly don't think either one of us is going to convince the other of our respective positions. You say a lot on these forums I agree with, but not on this one.

This link makes for some interesting reading. It states that 8.6% of death row inmates have previously been convicted of murder.


http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/time-death-row#chara

I have been reading a lot about the death penalty from both sides since we started this conversation and it is a hard choice in either direction. Thank you for putting me onto this and I plan on studying this out some more long after we're done talking about the death penalty.

How many exonerations since 1972 does your source say happened? 39 is the average that I have found, but since courts don't clear cases of people that have been killed it is hard to find any actual numbers.

That's the main reason I use "high likelyhood of being innocent", because we usually don't get a legal sentence of "not innocent" after execution.
Which is also the reason I use "high likelyhood of murdering again", because we don't know that those executed would have been part of the 1.2% that murder again.

 d-usa wrote:
How many exonerations since 1972 does your source say happened? 39 is the average that I have found, but since courts don't clear cases of people that have been killed it is hard to find any actual numbers.

That's the main reason I use "high likelyhood of being innocent", because we usually don't get a legal sentence of "not innocent" after execution.
Which is also the reason I use "high likelyhood of murdering again", because we don't know that those executed would have been part of the 1.2% that murder again.

Here's the link:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

Okay, I had my "wrongfully executed" and your exonorated confused. I am using the number of people that had their sentence carried out despite evidence of their innocence or strong doubts about their guild. The 39 people suspected of being wrongfully executed wouldn't be exonerated since courts drop those cases once the punishment is carried out.

That's what I have the problem with. We have a 3.2% rate of killing innocent people, and released murderers have a 1.2% rate of killing innocent people.

Actually keeping murderers in prison has the lowest rate of deaths out of all options. Bad guys are punished, the population is safe, and innocent people are least likely to die.

Where are you getting the 3.2% figure from again?

Total number of people actually executed (until 2010).
Number of claimed wrongful executions.

(Source from good old reliable Wikipeida)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution

 whembly wrote:

Are you surmising that the burden of proof for capital offense be higher than what we have now?

No, I'm summarizing the thread as I have read it.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Are you surmising that the burden of proof for capital offense be higher than what we have now?

No, I'm summarizing the thread as I have read it.

Gotcha... nicely done.

I see that the Wiki article cites the link I provided. If I read the article correctly, it says there were 39 executions since 1992 that could and should have been overturned.
I don't get the 3.2% figure from that. What am I missing here since I don't think you're just making up and throwing numbers out.

I think that the source counts 39 since we resumed in the 1970s. The source they link to for the 39 execution number doesn't have a hard date for when they cut off counting, but the posted date on the website for it was 2010. So with the 2011 case we should be up to 40, but I am not 100% sure on the date range so I didn't add it.

Used this for the total number of executions since the 1970:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year

So through 2010 that gave me the total of 1,234 people executed.

39 wrongful executions out of 1,234 people = 0.0316 wrongful execution rate.

I see now what you're talking about. I understand now how it boils down to a disagreement between us about the statistics used.
I am going off people actually exonerated, but you are going off something that possibly has a good argument in it's favor also.
Time to study this out a bit more.

Yeah, I wish we had a perfect system where 100% of innocent people are exhonarated. But I think I would rather have an innocent person be in jail, still have some activities, still be able to interact with his family instead of being executed.

The 1.2% reoffender rate probably balances out with the multiple victims though. Some probably kill more than one person after release, but not all of the 9000 people are going to get released to begin with.

It's a major tragedy either way, for sure.

Should probably just outlaw all guns, that would reduce the number of dead people more than anything...

[/thread derailed]

 d-usa wrote:
Should probably just outlaw all guns, that would reduce the number of dead people more than anything...

[/thread derailed]

I'm afraid that there is only one true solution. *loads shotgun* It's time to ban PEOPLE The death rate will spike for a couple years but I think it'll even out just fine by the end

 d-usa wrote:
Should probably just outlaw all guns, that would reduce the number of dead people more than anything...

[/thread derailed]

After this spirited discussion I say off to Frazz's lawn for Brandy and Cigars.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Should probably just outlaw all guns, that would reduce the number of dead people more than anything...

[/thread derailed]

I'm afraid that there is only one true solution. *loads shotgun* It's time to ban PEOPLE The death rate will spike for a couple years but I think it'll even out just fine by the end

Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
I have not yet made any illogical statements and you know it. And you have tried to dodge my question like you're in a Matrix movie:

The acceptable standard I want from you is the number, or ratio, of innocent people executed by the state that you are willing to tolerate. And you know that is the standard I was asking for, because it is the only quesiton I have asked you for several posts now.

I want you to tell me what your number is. What is the maximum number of innocent people the state could execute for you to still simply write them off as collateral damage?


There is no appeal to emotion here. The only thing close to an appeal to emotion was a satirical response to Whembly's silly position of "I think everyone should just try their best", and even then it wasn't an appeal to emotion, it was an attempt to get Whembly to try and see things from the perspective of not someone who is currently immune from the issue.

So framing loaded questions, and appeals to emotion dressed up as satire are not fallacies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
You, and others, had your answer to that question before. You have an absolutist position which you have attempted to cover with a veneer of being reasonable and permitting the death penalty in circumstances so narrow as to de facto ban it. Had similar restrictions been placed on the availability of abortion people here would be outraged.

You want me to give you an arbitrary number, ask me how I came to that figure, argue the point as to whether it is reasonable given that for you any death of an innocent is intolerable, and all the while knowing that it is a loaded question designed to show that I am prepared to sanction the execution of innocent people. Let me make this clear in case you may have missed it the past several times - I am in favour of guilty people being executed. When you stop attempting to misrepresent my argument and have a less absolute position then perhaps we can have a discussion.
You are continually asking a tawdry and patently loaded question in an obvious attempt to discredit people disagreeing with your position. Again, you are showing very clearly that you are not interested in a debate you just want to rehash your talking points and lecture others. This is itself is treading the road of the fallacy of repetition.

There are de facto bans on abortions such as what you've described, and people are outraged by it. However, the comparison is faulty as abortion is not murder because a foetus is not a person; it is a malignant growth and remains such until it is capable of surviving on its own without latching onto the system of its host. I will also at this juncture point out the irony of your use of possibly the most inflammatory line of reasoning you could come up with in hopes of deflecting the argument, in the same paragraph wherein you accuse me of appealing to emotion.

And yes, I want you to give me a number, and no, it should not be arbitrary. And yes, the question is loaded because the position that you are arguing from is full of gak and this is the most direct way to force you to address that. A position such as "I am in favour of guilty people being executed" is every bit as worthless as a position such as "I think bad things shouldn't happen" and "all people should be happy". Your position is so vapid that I'm not entirely certain you didn't steal it from Gwynyth Paltrow.

I also am in favour of executing only the guilty. However, the current margin of error is not sufficient for me to be satisfied with the certainty that only the guilty are executed, and since I would rather seen 100 guilty men go free than execute one innocent, I have no problems not supporting the death penalty in all but a handful of cases (see my previous standard of proof that includes the killer taking selfies in the process of committing the act).

I fear that due to the nature of your position; "I support the death penalty only when they're guilty, but I'm not too worried about the standard for determining that guilt", we cannot have a reasonable debate as you have taken several pages to definitively prove that you bring nothing to the table on this matter other than empty rhetoric and platitudes, seasoned with just a dash of playing the victim.


Have a good day, Dreadclaw. Perhaps we shall discuss a different topic another time.

Relapse wrote:The fact that all those deaths could have been prevented if the convicted killers were executed is enough. I'm not talking about statistics between countries. I am stating the established fact that more people have been murdered by convicted killers who were not executed than there were innocent people executed.
You can no more bring those murder victims back to life then you could someone wrongly executed.

But what if one of those executed men would have gone on to cure cancer or AIDS or solve world hunger? You see, this is the problem with predictions: they're hard to make, especially the ones about the future.

Even keeping that aside, your position seems to rest on the idea that being killed by a murderer and being killed by the state are equivalent. While that is a legitimate position, I personally disagree with it: I see it as a greater crime for the state to wrongfully execute an innocent than I do for a murderer to earn that title. I feel as though what I'm trying to say isn't going to be terribly clear, but I hope the general sense of what I'm getting at comes across. Allow me to use an analogy: do you consider a heroic last stand by a stalward military man in defense of country to be better, worse or equal to that same person hanging out in his backyard and being killed by a random piece of detritus dropped from a passing airlplane -perhaps some frozen excrement.

I see the former as noble and a "good" death, whereas the latter is just a random, senseless tragedy and ultimately meaningless death. Similarly, I see a killer doing his thing as being tragic, but not as much a travesty as a state which is entrusted with the duty to protect its citizens effectively doing the polar opposite of that duty when it wrongfully executes someone.

So I'm curious: do you take a similar positon, or do you consider a death to be a death to be a death, irrespective of circumstance?

A fetus is a malignant growth.

We have crossed into crazy town.

Feel free to define it more accurately in two words or less.

 azazel the cat wrote:

Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
I have not yet made any illogical statements and you know it. And you have tried to dodge my question like you're in a Matrix movie:

The acceptable standard I want from you is the number, or ratio, of innocent people executed by the state that you are willing to tolerate. And you know that is the standard I was asking for, because it is the only quesiton I have asked you for several posts now.

I want you to tell me what your number is. What is the maximum number of innocent people the state could execute for you to still simply write them off as collateral damage?


There is no appeal to emotion here. The only thing close to an appeal to emotion was a satirical response to Whembly's silly position of "I think everyone should just try their best", and even then it wasn't an appeal to emotion, it was an attempt to get Whembly to try and see things from the perspective of not someone who is currently immune from the issue.

So framing loaded questions, and appeals to emotion dressed up as satire are not fallacies? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
You, and others, had your answer to that question before. You have an absolutist position which you have attempted to cover with a veneer of being reasonable and permitting the death penalty in circumstances so narrow as to de facto ban it. Had similar restrictions been placed on the availability of abortion people here would be outraged.

You want me to give you an arbitrary number, ask me how I came to that figure, argue the point as to whether it is reasonable given that for you any death of an innocent is intolerable, and all the while knowing that it is a loaded question designed to show that I am prepared to sanction the execution of innocent people. Let me make this clear in case you may have missed it the past several times - I am in favour of guilty people being executed. When you stop attempting to misrepresent my argument and have a less absolute position then perhaps we can have a discussion.
You are continually asking a tawdry and patently loaded question in an obvious attempt to discredit people disagreeing with your position. Again, you are showing very clearly that you are not interested in a debate you just want to rehash your talking points and lecture others. This is itself is treading the road of the fallacy of repetition.

There are de facto bans on abortions such as what you've described, and people are outraged by it. However, the comparison is faulty as abortion is not murder because a foetus is not a person; it is a malignant growth and remains such until it is capable of surviving on its own without latching onto the system of its host. I will also at this juncture point out the irony of your use of possibly the most inflammatory line of reasoning you could come up with in hopes of deflecting the argument, in the same paragraph wherein you accuse me of appealing to emotion.

And yes, I want you to give me a number, and no, it should not be arbitrary. And yes, the question is loaded because the position that you are arguing from is full of gak and this is the most direct way to force you to address that. A position such as "I am in favour of guilty people being executed" is every bit as worthless as a position such as "I think bad things shouldn't happen" and "all people should be happy". Your position is so vapid that I'm not entirely certain you didn't steal it from Gwynyth Paltrow.

I also am in favour of executing only the guilty. However, the current margin of error is not sufficient for me to be satisfied with the certainty that only the guilty are executed, and since I would rather seen 100 guilty men go free than execute one innocent, I have no problems not supporting the death penalty in all but a handful of cases (see my previous standard of proof that includes the killer taking selfies in the process of committing the act).

I fear that due to the nature of your position; "I support the death penalty only when they're guilty, but I'm not too worried about the standard for determining that guilt", we cannot have a reasonable debate as you have taken several pages to definitively prove that you bring nothing to the table on this matter other than empty rhetoric and platitudes, seasoned with just a dash of playing the victim.


Have a good day, Dreadclaw. Perhaps we shall discuss a different topic another time.

Relapse wrote:The fact that all those deaths could have been prevented if the convicted killers were executed is enough. I'm not talking about statistics between countries. I am stating the established fact that more people have been murdered by convicted killers who were not executed than there were innocent people executed.
You can no more bring those murder victims back to life then you could someone wrongly executed.

But what if one of those executed men would have gone on to cure cancer or AIDS or solve world hunger? You see, this is the problem with predictions: they're hard to make, especially the ones about the future.

Even keeping that aside, your position seems to rest on the idea that being killed by a murderer and being killed by the state are equivalent. While that is a legitimate position, I personally disagree with it: I see it as a greater crime for the state to wrongfully execute an innocent than I do for a murderer to earn that title. I feel as though what I'm trying to say isn't going to be terribly clear, but I hope the general sense of what I'm getting at comes across. Allow me to use an analogy: do you consider a heroic last stand by a stalward military man in defense of country to be better, worse or equal to that same person hanging out in his backyard and being killed by a random piece of detritus dropped from a passing airlplane -perhaps some frozen excrement.

I see the former as noble and a "good" death, whereas the latter is just a random, senseless tragedy and ultimately meaningless death. Similarly, I see a killer doing his thing as being tragic, but not as much a travesty as a state which is entrusted with the duty to protect its citizens effectively doing the polar opposite of that duty when it wrongfully executes someone.

So I'm curious: do you take a similar positon, or do you consider a death to be a death to be a death, irrespective of circumstance?

I'll start by answering your first question to another poster. To me if you stay at 50% or under in execution of innocent people, you're on the right side of the equation in keeping the death peanalty going. That doesn't mean I'm going, yee haw, hang em!, because it is a tragedy whenever someone gets executed. Safeguards against killing an innocent person need to continualy be put in place and improved, but at the same time, we have to make sure that those condemned for murder are not position where they somehow get a chance to kill someone else as the 1.2% recidivsm rate shows is happening.
To me, death is not just death, since the nature of some of these murders are fairly horrifying. The fact that they are in some cases witnessed by children makes it even worse. Execution is a more clinical affair with as much consideration given to the condemned as possible and subject to state imposed conditions. I speak of this from a position of working with a man who used to help execution squads at the state prison here in Utah and talking with him about this very question.
It's an interesting question about the stalwart military man and the person in their back yard. Yes, it would be a preferable death to go making a heroic last stand, but I'd like to put this forward based on the death this past week of a man I knew quite well and respected. He never did anything considered glorious, but he put others above himself and fought with severe health and other problems most of his life. What he went through would have broken a lot of people and caused them to cacoon themselves or commit suicide, but he was always there to help those who needed it. The lesson I carried away from him is that everyone dies, whether covered in glory or covered in gak, but what is important is how well we live our life and do good for others.

As I mention earlier in the thread. There really needs to be an outside panel to accept or reject a request of execution. Like a panel of six individuals. Go over everything. If there's a doubt and the clarification of the "doubt" is half ass or worded to fit the subject matter in then out it goes. The panel would have to consist of individuals who have "opted out" a life. EXAMPLE Mainly soldiers/marines who knows the risk of squeezing the trigger at a threat.

Kind of poorly worded. Hopefully I have the gist of it

@ Relapse: just to be clear, you just advocated for a 50%-1 rate of wrongful execution in order to prevent a 1% recidivism rate.


That's weird.

 azazel the cat wrote:
@ Relapse: just to be clear, you just advocated for a 50%-1 rate of wrongful execution in order to prevent a 1% recidivism rate.


That's weird.

Yes, I realized I had totaly mispoken myself on that after I left for some errands. What I mean to say is that if the amount of executions of innocent people is less than the recidivsm rate, then we should continue with the death penalty. I had quite an in depth discussion about this with d-usa last night that gave me food for thought on the matter.
There are ways around the recidivsm, the most obvious being not to so quickly be releasing convicted murderers as currently happens.

Relapse wrote:

Yes, I realized I had totaly mispoken myself on that after I left for some errands. What I mean to say is that if the amount of executions of innocent people is less than the recidivsm rate, then we should continue with the death penalty. I had quite an in depth discussion about this with d-usa last night that gave me food for thought on the matter.
There are ways around the recidivsm, the most obvious being not to so quickly be releasing convicted murderers as currently happens.

I don't think recidivism is relevant to whether or not the death penalty should exist. Recidivism is, as you seem to note, an issue regarding sentencing in general.

To my mind the death penalty persists because people demand that the state provide a certain form of catharsis to the victim, and the people who have become emotionally engaged with a particular case.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Feel free to define it more accurately in two words or less.

To call a fetus a "Malignant growth" isn't to define it, it is characterize it.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Feel free to define it more accurately in two words or less.

Why?

Why?

Who cares?

I was getting to that.