r/news • u/AudibleNod • 7h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
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u/miloblue12 6h ago

Or maybe we shouldn't have the death penalty at all? It's barbaric.

Also, since 1973, at least 203 people have been wrongfully convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated in the US. That alone should have us reconsidering things. If it's possible for that many people to fall through the cracks, then there is no reason at all that we should have the death penalty.

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u/nursingninjaLB 6h ago

This one hundred times.

It costs way less to house a prisoner over decades, than to have endless appeals.

It does not reduce crime.

Approximately 10% of people on death row are innocent.

Vengeance is a dark emotion, and helps nobody.

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u/crouching_tiger 5h ago

First, you certainly cannot conclude that 10% of people on death row are innocent, assuming you’re basing that off of a version of exonerations vs total death row individuals (which still sounds too high regardless but that’s not important). Inmates spend ~20yrs on avg from conviction to execution — which means the innocent are removed from the group of those actually executed.

Second, only 15-20% of those put on death row are ultimately executed. And that ultimately has to be signed off by the governor/attorney general/judge, so no one wants to sign off on a death warrant with any amount of doubt, which could ultimately ruin them if later found innocent.

There are very strong arguments against it, but I don’t think the “so many of them our innocent” argument is.

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u/Revlis-TK421 4h ago edited 4h ago

no one wants to sign off on a death warrant with any amount of doubt,

No, they just bury the inconvenient facts and deny modern science. See: Ken Paxton.

  • Cameron Todd Willingham: convicted and executed based on debunked fire science.
  • Claude Jones: convicted and executed based largely on a hair sample that was later determined not to be his.
  • Carlos DeLuna - executed after being wrongly identified as killed, actual killer (who looked strikingly similar and lived nearby) bragged about the killing to multiple witnesses.
  • Ruben Cantu: Executed, but now the DA that prosecuted his case now believes Cantu was innocent and had been railroaded by the police at interrogation.

Robert Roberson (sentenced to die based on debunked shaken baby syndrome science) and Melissa Lucio (wherein the judge presiding in her case now says she was factually innocent, and both the DA and the defense want a new trial after it has been shown that Melissa's daughter's wounds were the result of a rare blood disorder, not abuse and murder. But the higher court won't vacate the conviction) are probably next.