this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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If your only real evidence is witness testimony the death sentence should be fully off the table. It's insane that we're putting people to death based on someone's words. If you don't have absolutely full proof evidence that someone commited a crime there is absolutely no justification for erasing their existence. I am absolutely sick and ashamed to be an American when I read these stories.
I'm not altogether opposed to the death penalty for certain crimes, but I think the evidence, chain of custody, record keeping, etc. needs to be absolutely immaculate to an almost cartoonishly paranoid extent before the death penalty can be on the table.
Like if the suspect was off camera for even a moment between the moment the crime was committed, that's enough to make it intelligible for the death penalty because you can't be absolutely certain they weren't swapped for a body double when they stepped out of frame.
And that's before you even get into the absolute insane security and storage requirements needed for that footage to ensure it couldn't have been tampered with.
If there is any theoretically possible scenario, no matter how absurdly unlikely it may be, where the person in custody isn't the same person who committed the crime, then you can't seek the death penalty.
People don't commit murder because they're making a careful decision and figure the penalty of life in prison is worth the risk, but death might not be.
IMO the death penalty is only useful for social murder. The CEO who signs off on the reduction of safety protocols at a baby formula plant, resulting in numerous infant deaths or the pharma exec who raises prices of a lifesaving drug on the other hand is likely to weigh risk vs reward.
I don't care about the death penalty as a deterrent. I care about it as a way to deal with certain people who will continue to pose a threat to others and for whom there are no other viable or humane options to rehabilitate them or otherwise render them safe to be around other people.
You can deal with a greedy pharma exec by seizing assets, injunctions against them participating in the pharmaceutical industry or serving in particular roles, stricter laws, regulations, and oversight on the pharma industry as a whole, etc.
You can't just regulate someone out of being dangerously emotionally disturbed, and if they can't be rehabilitated, what other viable options do you have left to keep them from harming others? You can lock them up in solitary, or perhaps take some drastic medical interventions like sedating them, lobotomizing them, or I guess chopping off their arms and legs, and at the point you're considering those sorts of options, the ethics of just killing them start to sound much more attractive.