[purpleflame1257]

I think the death penalty should be on the books, but the practical application of it is so unworkable that it should effectively never be administered. The biggest problem, of course, is that there's no way to make a wrongfully sentenced person whole.

[kiba]

If the death penalty is so rare and never administered, then its theoretical deterrence value is going to be zero.

There's no point of keeping around an inhumane law if it doesn't save anyone and actually contribute to the death toll.

Likewise, with the march of science and technology, I expected we will revisit the question of the role of punishment in reducing and preventing anti-social behaviors.

[em-bee]

the death penalty is not about deterrence, but about adequate punishment for the crime. if you murder someone you have lost the right to your own life. but in my belief the death penalty should only be applied if the defendant voluntarily admits their guilt without coercion regardless how obvious the evidence is otherwise. this removes any deterrence effect because a defendant can always plead not guilty.

[Ichthypresbyter]

It has deterrence value in edge cases that almost never happen.

Possibly the best example is treason in wartime. Life imprisonment isn't a deterrent there- people usually only betray their country in a war if they believe that the other side will win, in which case they will be set free and given a medal.

But I agree with you outside that specific edge case.

[FireBeyond]

My father worked for the Sheriff's Office in Australia, maybe 25 years ago. It should be noted that there, the Sheriff's Office is not a police department, but something in between the Marshal Service and a process server.

My father's boss was the Sheriff for the state. Australian law still had two capital crimes (I don't know if they are, currently): high treason, and piracy on the high seas.

Not exactly common crimes, to be sure.

But under law, if someone had been convicted of one, my father's boss would have to either have overseen the execution (by hanging, and somewhere in the bowels of his offices was the equipment), if not conducted it himself.

He was very vocal that the minute someone even stood trial for one of those crimes, he was resigning his commission, to avoid any chance of that.

[wildzzz]

Why retain it as a potential punishment if the burden of proof to obtain it is impossible? There's always a chance the evidence is objectively incomplete and even if they confess, there's always a chance they were coerced. Putting an innocent person in prison for life is awful enough but at least there is time for them to appeal or for contrary evidence to surface some day. Condemning that innocent person to death puts a countdown on proving their innocence. Maybe someone else confesses to the crime or some other exculpatory evidence is uncovered years after the execution. What does the state do at this point? They can't reanimate the dead. How do you make family members whole when you've legally murdered their parent/spouse/child? Money doesn't replace a person.

You also could end up with situations where a particular governor is indifferent to the plight of someone professing their innocence due to their own bias where next year, a new governor comes in that is more sympathetic that would have stayed the execution or pardoned that person. The world is just too complex to be 100% certain that someone must die for their alleged crime.

The law needs to be applied fairly to everyone. You can't simply give some people the death penalty and others life in prison for the same crime just because a case seems more concrete (or more likely, they can afford a better lawyer that creates stronger doubt).

And you know what's worse than death? Sitting in a little box for the rest of your life separated from friends and family while the world passes you by. People commit suicide for less.

[magicalhippo]

Here in Norway we don't have the death penalty. We did however have a guy go around on an island shooting and killing 69 people[1], most of them kids, until the police came and arrested him. He confessed and there was absolutely zero chance it was not him, as there were hundreds of kids on the island who saw him.

He got the same sentence as a guy who's just been found not guilty for sexually assaulting and killing two young girls, after 21 years in jail[2]. The police found blood from one guy, but arrested his friend as well. After the first guy confessed, the police suggested he couldn't possibly have done it alone, and only then did he implicate his friend. His friend has always claimed innocence, and got the longer sentence due to it. There was never any direct evidence of his friends involvement. The friend recently got his case re-tried and found not guilty.

If the death penalty is on the table, I think it's pretty clear which of these two cases it should apply to, and which it should not.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baneheia_murders

[fakedang]

Part of the reason for America's variance in trial decisions is related to the jury system, which imo is highly flawed. You're essentially putting the lives of the innocent and the guilty in the hands of a set of people who barely have any training in unbiased analysis. And more importantly, with the jury system, you do not have a way of establishing precedence.

As proof of this, the most successful legal system in the US, the Delaware Chancery Court, is a non-jury trial court.

> Why retain it as a potential punishment if the burden of proof to obtain it is impossible?

India has the death penalty, but they use it for the most egregious of crimes (brutal rape-murders like the one in 2012, terrorists, gangland bosses, etc.).