• InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I have to agree, if only because the Southern states just use it as a legal way to kill black people.

      If we could actually do it fairly it would be a possible option, but the way things are, it’s just lynching with more steps.

      • GiddyGap@lemm.eeOP
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        2 months ago

        Capital punishment is not an option, ever. Life in prison is the more severe punishment. The government should not be murdering people in an act of revenge.

        There’s a reason why every other developed country in the world has abolished the practice. It’s downright disgusting.

        • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Also the fact that there’s always going to be falsely convicted people getting murdered. I can’t think of a greater injustice than sentencing someone to death for a crime they didn’t commit. I’ll rather have multiple murderers walk free than sentence an innocent man to death.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It is an option, and this isn’t the government murdering people (well, ideally), it’s society gathering to decide a person has crossed a final threshold and we must all send a clear message.

          I don’t think it’s practical, I think we can’t do it now, and probably might not be able to do it again, but I do not consider it categorically unacceptable, merely unacceptable at the current time with our current political structure, and less viable as society advances.

          • bastion@feddit.nl
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            2 months ago

            I don’t have problems with murderers being killed. I just don’t have faith in the system to prevent false positives.

            • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Exactly. Like the execution just a few days ago of Marcellus Williams in Missouri. Where there was alleged bias in jury selection and contamination of the murder weapon prior to trial. Even the current State Prosecutors in the same office that convicted him were calling for it to be stopped. Only the Attorney General’s office wanted it to continue.

              Or how about Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah a week ago in South Carolina. There was no forensic evidence, and video only showed two masked men. Where the only major evidence linking him to the crime was a witness testimony, which was provided only in exchange for leniency and later recanted stating that he had hidden the actual shooter’s identity fearing for his life, and that Allah hadn’t even been present. Again with the Attorney General’s office being the only ones insisting it be continued. Where prosecutors told the jurors they could convict him for murder simply if they believed he was present during the robbery, so the jury didn’t even have to find that he actually committed the murder.

              That’s twice in a week that Southern Republican states have executed probably innocent men, at the insistence only of the State AG… Which is a very political position, regardless of what they may want to claim.

              • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                So, personally I do not believe Southern states should be allowed any authority over criminal justice, and I suggest withdrawing their authority over civil matters as well.

                It’s like gun rights, I think some people are capable of handing the responsibility properly, I would trust most New Hampshire residents with low-yield fuel-air bombs.

                I wouldn’t trust southerners with pointy sticks, their entire history is of slavery, genocide, torture, and a complete lack of any form of civilized humanity.

                We do not give guns to animals, we should not give legal authority to southern states period.

                And this isn’t republican vs democrat, they were equally evil as dixiecrats enforcing Jim Crow, the Democrats were brilliant in following Civil Rights policies helping purge the dixiecrats from their ranks.

            • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I don’t either.

              I just object to a categorical judgement that capital punishment is never an option.

              It could theoretically be an option in the right circumstances, which we absolutely do not have anywhere near.

          • GiddyGap@lemm.eeOP
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            2 months ago

            it’s society gathering to decide a person has crossed a final threshold and we must all send a clear message.

            Yet, the United States, the only western country allowing capital punishment as a form of punishment, is doing significantly worse on violent crime than all other western countries. It doesn’t work.

            • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I think one could make an argument that socioeconomic variables abound complicated correlation.

              More to the point I propose capital punishment has a great deterrent effect in smaller societies where one can point to the clear example of someone known by society, not merely an industrial level of deterrence and retribution such that we have now, where they simply become meat for the machine.