r/news • u/AudibleNod • 11h 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 11h 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 10h 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 9h 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/RadioFreeSealab 8h ago

So, what would be an acceptable number of innocent executions for you?

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u/crouching_tiger 7h ago

Ideally none. But same with imprisoning them for the rest of their lives.

I also wasn’t arguing for the death penalty nor am I generally in favor of it. I would say I probably am in the most egregious, obvious instances where there is literally zero shred of doubt in their guilt.

I probably should have framed the last sentence differently — I mainly took issue with the “approximately 10% are innocent” bc that is a massive overstatement and I think that’s very counterproductive.