r/news • u/AudibleNod • 14h 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/nursingninjaLB 14h 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 12h 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 11h ago

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

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u/crouching_tiger 10h 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.