Submitted by Waterwebgrasshopper t3_1151ux1 in Pennsylvania
affenage t1_j8zwq3i wrote
Life without parole, even though taxpayers fund the upkeep for the prisoner is LESS EXPENSIVE than a death sentence. With a death sentence, there are years of mandatory appeals, with high priced suitable state funded defense teams, and the prisoner lives in more expensive accommodations due to increased security, sometimes for years, sometimes forever, until the death sentence is actually carried out. The biggest reason I always hear people use in support of the death penalty is not wanting to pay to support these people and to just be rid of them - but it is the more expensive option!
Alternative-Flan2869 t1_j90cpib wrote
I was just about to post the same - so if the “bottom line” trumps any moral imperative, there you have it.
SwadianZunist t1_j917ali wrote
If you rely on life-in-prison being cheaper as the reason why the death penalty is wrong, then they’ll just try to make the death penalty cheaper in order to justify using it more.
I don’t trust the state with the power to execute it’s own citizens. We’ve all seen what can go wrong when they have that power. That’s why I think the death penalty is wrong.
cpr4life8 t1_j91lgpu wrote
That's not the only reason, it's just one of them because so many people who are pro death penalty think that it's more expensive to imprison someone for life than to execute them.
SwadianZunist t1_j91rh9z wrote
That’s fair. I just think that people rely too heavily on the “life-in-prison is cheaper” argument. I can understand leading with that argument, but you shouldn’t end it there.
cpr4life8 t1_j91sbz2 wrote
I think a lot of that stems from the uninformed who think it's cheaper to execute than to imprison for life. Some of those uninformed will then go on to argue that the appeals process should be changed so the state can expedite murder of a citizen. And they willfully ignore the fact that many who were wrongfully convicted no longer have the chance to appeal because the state killed them. Sometimes due to a technicality in which new evidence is still ignored.
B-Eze t1_j91wn62 wrote
What if it is more of a spacial reason. Who wants another prison in their area. How many more trees are we going to cut down?
One could argue in making our current prisons taller on the same foot print for increased space.
What if death is what the victim/family feel is justice. If you murdered my child in your rape/homicide spree, I would want you dead. I would personally like to make that happen but that isn't what a civilized society does. We let the court system decide and administer the humane, expensive, 3 round shot series if sentenced to death.
If I remember correctly no one has been sentenced to death in PA since the 70's?
cpr4life8 t1_j91xya3 wrote
What if we make more room for people who truly should in prison by setting free people who are there for minor offenses like marijuana possession? Then we don't have to build new ones.
Before Trump there had been no federal executions for 17 years. All it takes is the "right" person in office to crank up that death machine again. 1999 was the last execution in PA.
And last time I checked, I don't believe our legal system allows victims of a crime to decide the punishment - nor should it.
B-Eze t1_j9233ao wrote
I agree with more room by releasing minor offenses, a lot of places do this right now.
I was speaking on state executions which I believe was in the 70's, I could be wrong but PA hasn't sentenced anyone to death in a long time. Edit I just reread your comment, 1999 got it ty for the update.
Our legal system does not allow the victims to determine. We live in a civilized society as I said, the judge determines the sentences after the accused is judged by 12 of their peers.
cpr4life8 t1_j923vez wrote
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_M._Heidnik
There have been 3 executions by the state of PA since 1976. All were in the 90s during the Tom Ridge administration.
I'm glad we can agree that there are many imprison who don't belong there. Now if only prisons weren't operated for profit that might not be as big an issue as it is.
[deleted] t1_j922akv wrote
[removed]
w00dm4n t1_j9gdsds wrote
hryh
affenage t1_j9214bv wrote
Personally, I am not relying on this, nor suggesting it as a reason. I simply wanted to record those facts for use to dispel others who come back to you and say “but I don’t want my taxes paying to support the person in prison for life”. Personally I don’t want my taxes paying to murder anyone, so that is why I am against the death penalty. It is state sanctioned murder.
LadyBugTango t1_j9a9rpg wrote
The death penalty is wrong in my opinion. And I agree with you. But what is also wrong is letting inmates out of prison before their sentence is up. One of your guys law makers is a all for letting inmates out early who are not reformed. If you're gonna do away with death penalty, then keep inmates in prison til their sentence is over. I work in a prison and am not from there, but my family is and I follow your guys news daily.
idioma t1_j92cn3u wrote
I only support the death penalty for large scale financial crimes. Unlike violent crimes, complex financial fraud schemes are never impulsive or committed in the heat of the moment. They are deliberate and premeditated. By their very nature, they require a knowledge of guilt and a willingness to carry out their actions over a long period of time.
Additionally, the motivation to commit financial crimes is entirely selfish and is done in the direct interest of the perpetrators. They assume the risks of being caught and charged because the benefits are high, while the chances of being convicted are dependent upon several factors. Even when convicted, the sentences are often much lower than those given to violent offenders. Ultimately, the penalties are perceived as merely the costs of doing business.
Now, imagine that instead we mandated the death penalty when financial crimes reached a threshold. For simplicity, sake, we can use the lifetime median earnings for the state or nation where the crime was committed.
If you make a median salary of roughly $50,000 per year and you work for at least 20 years, you will end up with a lifetime earning of about $1,650,000. Let’s assume you work from the age of 15, and retire on your 65th birthday; half a century of labor ought to be enough for anyone. We double the original figure and round up to an even $4 million. That’ll be our threshold.
The collapse of Enron, for example, involved more than $60 billion in assets. That’s well above the threshold; it is our threshold times 15,000. Now, imagine all of the co-conspirators who were directly involved and responsible for the decisions to commit massive amounts of fraud. Surely that number is fewer than 15,000.
Would everyone involved in this scheme be willing to go along with it if they knew that they would be executed if convicted? Would it still be worth the risk? Would all of those self-interested, greedy, and distrustful people be comfortable with that kind of risk, knowing that all it would take is one brave whistleblower to bring it all crashing down?
I doubt it.
Under this legal framework, the likely response when someone proposes doing something illegal with large amounts of money would be “No, Bob, I won’t cook the books for you. That’s a lot of money you’re dealing with, and I have a family. I’m not willing to die just so you can make a quick buck. Find someone else!”
The death penalty does not work as an effective deterrent against violent crimes, but when applied to financial crime? I’d like to give it the college try, and see what happens.
cpr4life8 t1_j92jj2m wrote
Life in prison would be effective for financial crimes and there'd be no state sponsored murder.
Nothing is going to deter crime 100%.
idioma t1_j92riku wrote
> Nothing is going to deter crime 100%.
Interesting counterpoint. Could you show me where in my comment I asserted that my goal was to “deter crime 100%”? Why must that be a standard, and what is your basis for it?
> Life in prison would be effective for financial crimes and there'd be no state sponsored murder.
What is your best evidence in support of that claim?
cpr4life8 t1_j92uvpx wrote
Where is your evidence that the death penalty would be any more effective than life in prison for financial crimes?
I didn't claim that you were asserting that something was going to deter crime 100%, my point is the state shouldn't be fucking murdering people because no matter what the penalty is people are still going to commit crimes. And if the state isn't murdering people then there's no chance that someone who is wrongly convicted is going to be murdered.
It's not that fucking hard. The state shouldn't kill people. Period.
idioma t1_j92vllz wrote
So then, just to be clear you are making a moral claim and are entirely inflexible on the matter, correct?
cpr4life8 t1_j92z86w wrote
If there is a chance that a wrongfully convicted person can be put to death then there is no way to give that person's life back after the punishment has been administered. If there is no death penalty then there is no chance that the state is going to murder someone who did not commit the crime for which they have been convicted and sentenced.
idioma t1_j92ztyw wrote
I understand that perspective. Could you please answer my question? A simple yes or no would be fine.
Zenith2017 t1_j9fdpnv wrote
Capital punishment doesn't deter premeditated violent crime. I appreciate your thinking but I don't think it holds water
idioma t1_j9ftbwt wrote
> Capital punishment doesn't deter premeditated violent crime.
Yes, agreed. Did you even read the first paragraph? Or like, the first sentence? That was exactly the point I was driving at and I provided an explanation for why it doesn’t.
> I appreciate your thinking but I don't think it holds water
So you agree, but you don’t think the argument “holds water.” Okay. What am I supposed to do with this opinion?
Zenith2017 t1_j9fuh4z wrote
I could have made my point more clear. What I mean to say is, because we know it doesn't deter a premeditated violent crime, I'm pretty sure it will also not deter a premeditated large scale financial crime and that is why I say the theory doesn't hold water. My greater implication being that the death penalty doesn't help in basically any way, there's no benefits that aren't based on emotional responses
I do agree with your point that something like that affects way way way more people and at larger scales than any isolated violent action. Steal $50 with a gun and you're away for 20, steal $50M with a Ponzi scheme and you're put away for a couple years at best
idioma t1_j9g17pw wrote
> because we know it doesn't deter a premeditated violent crime, I'm pretty sure it will also not deter a premeditated large scale financial crime
Why?
I provided a clear explanation of how these crimes are different. They are not at all alike. Financial crimes are dispassionate both in their planning and in their execution. Violent crimes, even when premeditated, are passionately executed (pardon the pun). The motivations for violence are entirely different than the motivations for financial crime. Wanting someone dead is very different from wanting to enrich oneself. The motive for financial crime is rooted in financial gain. Violent crime is not.
Even if you do not agree in principle, surely you can recognize these differences are real.
We probably both agree that the death penalty as it is currently applied is not effective. We may also agree that the injustice of killing the wrongfully accused outweighs any possible benefit to society. On moral principles, we may also agree that the state shouldn’t have the power to condemn people to die.
What remains a matter of speculation is whether or not people would willfully engage in large scale financial crimes if the penalties were absolute.
Zenith2017 t1_j9g1w0t wrote
I don't know if we have the data out there to prove it conclusively. If we do I'm not aware of it to be honest. But I do know that negative reinforcement in general doesn't work, and so I expect that trend to hold true for financial crime regardless of the severity of the punishment
idioma t1_j9g7ikq wrote
That’s a fair point. From a policy position, the most effective approach would be to eliminate the conditions that make financial crimes a viable option. One major obstacle, however, is that the people who tend to have institutional access to large sums of money tend to come from a caste of society who obtained intergenerational wealth. Show me a wealthy family, and I will show you a list of crimes and human rights abuses that got them there.
When people in poverty run the streets and organize, our criminal justice system is almost indiscriminate in their application of violence. When you are poor and get money through illicit means, the police will kick down doors and shoot before they even consider reading you your rights.
When wealthy criminals empty the retirement accounts of an entire generation, their lawyers get a letter in the mail: politely asking them if they wouldn’t mind please, maybe consider, if they have time, to sit for a deposition, with a lawyer present. It’s obscene, and feeds into the idea that their place in society is above the law.
The basic theory of justice is that the state has a monopoly on violence. And this theory only works when it is applied equally for the rich and poor alike.
GunterBoden t1_j9gxmkl wrote
This is a load of shit. Death sentence is only expensive because of a bunch of bureaucracy. This will embolden people like the asshole parkland shooter and the asshole buffalo shooter.
Ok_Ad_1739 t1_j900qk3 wrote
Then get rid of the mandatory appeals
cpr4life8 t1_j91ln2a wrote
Yes, great idea. Strip people of their constitutional rights so we can put them to death and then later say...oops, turns out this other person did it. Our bad. Here's a bunch of taxpayer money in a settlement.
nalgene_wilder t1_j91feck wrote
No. Killing people is bad, actually
ImNorm29 t1_j903q3z wrote
What I hear you saying is we need an express lane added!
realhighstonerguy t1_j90d322 wrote
What I hear you saying is that you believe the government should have the authority to kill it's citizens. Too many innocent people have been executed.
affenage t1_j90ehvr wrote
I completely agree with you, I think killing is wrong, whether by a person, or a government.
gdex86 t1_j90ukts wrote
No that is the absolute thing we don't want. If you want to argue for the state ending someone's life you should want to be absolutely sure of guilt and that the legal process was above board. Which even now the current process is only so so at. Arguing for an express lane gives up the ghost you care about the spectical not justice.
Finrodsrod t1_j912vko wrote
Cool. So what happens when you speed up the process and now have people killed by the state that turned out to be innocent?
AlVic40117560_ t1_j91sbd8 wrote
Even with the current slow process, there have been plenty of examples of people being proved innocent after the government killed them. Imagine how much worse it’d be if it was a quick process.
Put a loved one into that situation. They literally didn’t commit a crime. They go through the whole process and they put them to death for a crime that they didn’t commit. A few years later, they come out and say they made a mistake, someone else did it. If they were still alive, at least they could be let free. But they’re dead you can’t take that back. They killed your mother/father/sister/brother/son/daughter because the other side had better lawyers and was trying to get a good conviction rate. That’s fucked. Putting one family through that is not worth killing to guilty people. And it’s already a whole lot more than just one family with the current process.
ImNorm29 t1_j9964sd wrote
Can you name some in PA who have been proven innocent after they were executed recently? I mean I'm not even sure when the last time we executed anyone in PA, but say in the last 40 years - has it actually happened that someone was executed and later found to be innocent?
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