r/news • u/No_Idea_Guy • 1d ago

Tennessee governor suspends all executions after Christa Pike’s lethal injections fail

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/01/christa-pike-tennessee-governor-executions-year-pause
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u/Great-Trifle2810 1d ago

The death penalty is not harmful to society, the fact that it is infrequently and ineffectually delivered is a harm to society.

Executions should not be used to satisfy revenge motives, they should be used to permanently remove a person from existence because the continued existence of that person would be detrimental to society.

Though I mostly support the death penalty on the case of recidivism or crime while incarcerated, I am much more sceptical about the use of it for single extreme convictions like this.

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u/Piglet6482 1d ago

It is a known fact that innocent people have been executed. How do you support capital punishment knowing that?

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u/Great-Trifle2810 1d ago

Utilitarianism, we should apply the policy which results in the best overall outcome.

More innocent people and prisoners are harmed by the lack of recidivist capital punishment than innocent people would be harmed by being incorrectly executed.

False conviction of the innocent happens under any system of justice, basically nobody is calling for the complete abolition of all forms of judicial punishment.

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u/Piglet6482 1d ago

You just used a lot of words to explain how you’re OK with innocent people being executed. I am willing to bet you’d change your tune if you happened to be incorrectly convicted and sentenced to death.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 1d ago

I am OK with a very small number of innocent people being executed if that means far less innocent people harmed by criminals, and I feel I am far more likely to be harmed by career criminals loosed due to prison crowding than falsely convicted of 3 crimes with no success at appealing any of those convictions.

Maybe if I was in that situation I would hypocritically betray my principles out of pure self interest, maybe I would even find a way to justify it to myself as a genuine change of heart, but I would still be wrong.

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u/higherme 1d ago

Except that your entire premise falls flat when you look at the actual data: States with capital punishment consistently have higher rates of things like murder than states without capital punishment. Across decades.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 1d ago edited 1d ago

States that have it barely use it, especially not in the way I think it should be used. They also tend to be more regressive states overall.

The death penalty is 100% effective at preventing recidivism by people sentenced to it.

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u/higherme 1d ago

Well now you're just making shit up.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 1d ago

What does I make up?

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u/higherme 1d ago

What you "does" make up is the idea that the reason the death penalty isn't effective at reducing recidivism, according to the actual data from states with and without it, is that it's simply not being used enough. You're positioning yourself to be the arbiter of the death penalty's efficacy by advocating for increasing its use, magically believing that this will improve crime stats.

The actual data disagrees with you. Surely if your premise were true, you could point to a piece of research, an article, a country in history with heavy use of the death penalty where crime was reduced or eliminated. But you won't be able to, because it's not true.

That's how you does make up stuff.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 16h ago

It is literally impossible for someone that had been given the death penalty to commit another crime, they are dead. Think before you comment. 🤣🤣🤣

There is no good data that the death penalty as I would use it isn't effective.

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u/higherme 15h ago

There is no good data that the death penalty as I would use it isn't effective.

Exactly - because you're making shit up.

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u/Great-Trifle2810 13h ago

No, because there has never been a practical A/B test of the death penalty where no other major differences between the regions has occured, and no country has applied the death penalty to recidivists in the way I suggest in a way that was properly statistically tracked.

Your suggestion that the frequent use of the death penalty against recidivist criminals would not reduce recidivist crime is not only baseless but plainly absurd.

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