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idioma t1_j92cn3u wrote

Reply to comment by affenage in Pennsylvania lawmaker to introduce legislation repealing death penalty by Waterwebgrasshopper

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.

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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%.

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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?

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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.

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idioma t1_j92vllz wrote

So then, just to be clear you are making a moral claim and are entirely inflexible on the matter, correct?

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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.

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idioma t1_j92ztyw wrote

I understand that perspective. Could you please answer my question? A simple yes or no would be fine.

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Zenith2017 t1_j9fdpnv wrote

Capital punishment doesn't deter premeditated violent crime. I appreciate your thinking but I don't think it holds water

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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?

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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