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Over a decade ago, the BBC came out with a documentary titled How to Kill a Human Being that went into what the director believed to be the most humane and painless way to execute someone if you really wish to do so. Towards the end of the documentary, they interview someone who believes that death row criminals don’t deserve the most humane death possible because those criminals hardly offered their own victims a humane death. The documentary gives it an air of “Look, we’ve found a humane way to actually do executions, and these barbaric Americans don’t want to do that because to them, bloodthirsty cruelty is the point.”
Well, what do you know, Alabama has now actually implemented this “most humane” form of execution for the first time, and news coverage from the BBC and others have been almost exclusively negative. There’s little to no nuance, just statements that the UN and EU condemns this “particularly cruel and unusual punishment.” Where now is the context that the US is merely doing what it was previously criticized for not doing?
To be sure, the scene of thrashing does seem to be more violent than the documentary insinuated such an execution would be, but that itself appears to be because the inmate tried to forcibly hold their breath for as long as possible instead of allowing themselves to pass out from hypoxia. I wouldn’t pin the blame for voluntary thrashing on the method of execution.
What do you think? Am I wrong in reading this as just another case of “Americans can do nothing right”?
I'm pretty sure it's 100% outgroup-hatred along standard culture war lines. Executing convicted murderers is a red tribe value, therefore to all blue tribe civilized society, it's savage, uncivilized, and wrong no matter how it's done, and every weapon in the culture war will be brought to bear to oppose it. That explains why a genuine attempt to do it in a more "humane" way has absolutely no effect on the media position. It was never about that, it was about crushing red tribe.
Meanwhile, if somebody wanted to execute Jan 6 convicts, even in the most pointlessly brutal way you could possibly imagine, the same sources would likely cheer on how they were getting exactly what they deserved and lament that the punishment wasn't harsh enough.
I'm blue tribe and nobody I know would cheer on execution of Jan 6 convicts.
I'm against the death penalty for all cases except very rare individuals who are responsible for something on the magnitude of genocide, or if there was somehow someone too dangerous to keep alive (ie, the Joker from Batman fiction). I'm against it for multiple reasons, but prime among them is the terrifyingly high conviction rate if innocents.
Was everyone who died during the Iraq War a terrorist? likely not, some innocents died and it was an acceptable loss. Edge cases does not invalidate the cost/benefit analysis. If a death penalty (or life on death row) is an effective deferent, which I think it is, then it's worth it even if some innocents are caught in the net.
I think war makes for an awkward analogy to the death penalty, but I take your point that cost/benefit analysis is applicable.
However, when I google, all the results I see say that there's no evidence death penalty works as a deterrent.
But on the other hand, all the sources are biased. Murder rates are higher in capital punishment states but I could easily see that being correlation, not causation. I really can't find any good stats here.
I'm changing my stance to "I believe the death penalty is likely bad, but with low confidence, and more research needs to be done on the matter."
Important part: compared to what?
I would really look into details how it was calculated, I expect a lot of bad psychology. And yes, effective catching criminals is better than extreme penalties, yes - criminals are often stupid, but it works at least on margin.
If you would introduce death penalty for say speeding and would keep law and actually execute people (rather than change or ignore law) then I bet that speeding would be deterred.
See also cases where death penalty is needed as criminal cannot be put into prison or will escape anyway (not applicable to USA, admittedly but your claim was broader).
Well, reports on 18th century public executions, where people could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief, attracted the same kind of boisterous crowds as Dickens describes, and while the poor wretch on the gallows was being hanged for pick-pocketing, the thieves in the crowd were busy performing the same crimes. So deterrent effects aren't very strong when people are hardened to seeing executions.
The Golden Age of murders in Britain were often domestic poisonings because, ironically, divorce was seen as more scandalous than murder by the perpetrators. A lot of people commit crimes in the heat of the moment and unpremeditated, and those who do plan out their crimes imagine they'll never be caught. So I think execution or life imprisonment are both equally good deterrents, and maybe life in jail until you're old and feeble is a worse deterrent than a quick execution? I don't know. I think there is a deterrent effect, and there should be deterrent effects for all punishment, but that the deterrent isn't strong enough for capital punishment to justify it, and it is mostly about revenge and satisfying vindictiveness. I've felt the impulse myself, reading terrible crimes, that the perpetrators should be burned alive or tortured to death - but that's not good. That makes me just as much ready and eager to murder, and murder horribly, as they are.
I think the "anti-revenge" argument proves too much. It ultimately depends far too much on how much deterrent effect there is.
Most acts of violence are done in heat of the moment or otherwise irrational decisions: thus deterrence effect must be small, as the people who are committing illegal violence are not weighing their options and consequences rationally. And in fact, despite the all might of the (Western, developed) judicial system, most (Western, developed) countries have still some amounts of criminality. I acknowledge it is a point of contention, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that deterrence effect is small-to-negligible. Thus, any punishment worth its name is unjustified as deterrence, as deterrence doesn't happen to meaningful extent.
If there is no meaningful deterrence, and the idea of revenge is verboten, what reason remains to administer any punishment at all? If we are talking about a criminal who is a high-risk repeat offender, there is still argument that we should incapacitate to prevent them committing further crimes. However, not all people are like that. Some want to commit one, specific murder. Or some goody-shoes comes and argues they have a very good method to "rehabilitate" them (or prevent committing any more crimes, which is functionally same thing), and it involves electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, perhaps sniffing their internet traffic, and perhaps soon, AI. (Thus, they'd have a system of no other punishment than what is necessary to monitor they won't do it again.)
Thinking about this, I came to conclusion that justice as a concept must involve retributive elements, that is, a form of revenge, or it is not justice. A method that prevents the perpetrator from committing more crimes does nothing to the victim of their previous crimes. It is fully defenseless in the face of fait accompli: when crime has been committed, it can no longer be prevented. There either can be retribution or no retribution: admittedly is retribution is weak of ghost of justice as it can not make the crime undone, but it is still more than nothing, because acknowledges the pain of the victim (as it is administered in relation of the crime) whereas preventive methods won't ( as they focus on the future of the perpetrator), neither do deterrent methods (because they are concerned only with deterring other people, and the method of deterring crimes may turn out to be unrelated to the crime itself).
Finally, the system of no justice that I outlined is not fantasy, but the Nordic model slightly exaggerated. Yet it is proving impossible. According to their stated principles, Norwegians should let Anders Behring Breivik out as soon as their relevant officials are reasonably sure he is no longer danger to society or rendered harmless, as he has already sit the 10 year mandatory sentence they had in the books. Practically, by their stated philosophy, they should: after a hypothetical release, Breivik would be under constant monitoring, probably would not have chance to commit nor organize any further acts of terrorist violence, and he is getting pretty old. Yet they can't bear themselves to do it, and twist themselves into all kinds of legal knots that are not very believable as written but taken seriously because everyone involved deep-down knows it would act of injustice to let him walk free again. (I agree that he should sit for life, or should have faced capital punishment long ago. The Norwegian unwillingness to administer their law according to its written intentions shows they apparently also think their chosen system is illegitimate, in this case. And if it doesn't fit in this case, why not the other cases?)
What I mean about revenge are the people saying "hell yeah they should suffer, I'd be fine with it if they were tortured to death" and the likes. That has nothing to do with deterrence or even punishment. And it's people who have no relationship to the murder or the offender saying it. I understand a parent or spouse or close family member wanting to tear the offender limb from limb. Someone sitting in their chair miles away with no connection going "put it on TV and I'll pay to view" is not healthy for society in the long run, is what I'm saying.
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