This Year We Can End the Death Penalty in California

[sctb]

We've moved most comments to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12847611.

[danieltillett]

Repost from the dead thread.

There is one good reason to keep the status quo (death penalty without any actual deaths) which is that anyone given a death sentence gets their case reviewed and appealed by excellent lawyers working pro bono. The people who get life get no help at all and are just left to rot in jail.

I have read of prisioners being upset when given a life sentence as they know that no one will help them appeal their conviction. If you are innocent you want to be given a death sentence and sit on death row since you will have people helping you get your conviction overturned.

[labster]

"If you're a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system." - Peter Thiel

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/single-digit-millionaires-l...

[actuallyalys]

Interesting point. Isn't the solution to get people to help overturn unjust life sentences as well?

[BipolarElsa]

Good luck getting it passed in California. I voted already to ban it (and against the law proposing to speed up the death penalty), but according to all the major polls done on it, it won't pass.

Californians are, by and large, religious savages. They'll toke up before slaughtering prisoners like farm sows.

3 strikes? You're out. Thank prison lobby! On death row? Hurry up and die you sow!

Pretty pathetic. Thinking of moving to a more progressive state like Oregon or Washington.

[tptacek]

Duplicate of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12847611 (taking advantage, it looks like, of the WWW here and no WWW on the original).

[labster]

Yeah, that's on page 4 now, because people tend to flag political articles they disagree with now. I can't wait for the election to be over; hopefully sanity will return to HN.

[nothrabannosir]

It seems that one was flagged off the front page? According to the top comment there, at least..

[sctb]

This post violates the guidelines by lobbing a Molotov cocktail into the thread. We're asked not do do this:

Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[unethical_ban]

If the opinion "the death penalty is bad" can be broadcast on the site, then the opinion "Abortion is bad" should be allowed as well.