Comment by OkayPhysicist
3 hours ago
Anybody who is wrongfully executed was basically guaranteed to spend their entire life in prison. Death row inmates get dramatically more access to legal aid than anybody else rotting in a cell, so if they couldn't win their appeal, the guy doing life isn't, either.
Generally, I'm against incarceration for that reason. I think the relatively muted violence of it is too easy to stomach for the public, which leads to people letting the system get sloppy. For public and infamous crimes, however, where the question is not "what act took place", but rather "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"-type cases, I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment being on the table. We trust public officials with significant authority, and abuse of that authority is utterly irredeemable. Frankly, for elected officials I'd support a "two-thirds vote and you hang" policy. If you want power, and seek out power, you have an immense responsibility to live up to your constituent's expectations.
That isn’t true. There have been death row inmates exonerated, both before and after their execution.
The ones that were executed would have been alive for the exoneration if we they had been given life in prison instead.
> "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what is the punishment?"
I guess that last part is the perspective I'd change, for a more compassionate world. I'd much rather ask "did this act constitute a crime, and if so, what made the person commit that crime, and how can we help them not do that in the future again?".
For the kinds of "public and infamous" crimes I'm talking about, the answer is almost always greed, either for fortune, power, or fame. There's no need to ask "Why did Nestle decide to kill a bunch of African children by giving away just enough formula stop mothers from being able to breastfeed?" or "Why did tobacco companies stand in front of congress and lie through their teeth about how non-addictive nicotine is?" or "Why did Nixon decide to pursue the war on drugs in order to disproportionately target his political opponents and minorities?". The answer is that in order to end up in the C-suite or board of directors of a megacorp, or the White House, you have to be one of the most madly greedy, power-lusting parasites in the world.
My compassion for my fellow man is why I suggest we wait for them to commit a crime before punishing such behavior.
> you have to be one of the most madly greedy, power-lusting parasites in the world.
Yes, which is why we need to help these people. They clearly lost all their humanity and compassion, at one point we should care about the betterment of humanity as a whole, and put a limit to how these sort of people can act and do, the current situation is not tenable, and they should be classified as the sick people they are, rather than idolized.