(June 19, 2011 at 5:11 am)Napoleon Wrote:(June 18, 2011 at 7:23 pm)Minimalist Wrote: But then an innocent person is not killed by the state.
That makes a difference how?
I'm taking it as as comment, but back to my argument; we can be wrong with absolute state of the art impunity. An appeal to getting it right doesn't go to the fallibility of the justice system, and invoking this argument begs the question of it being a double edged sword. Opponents of the death penalty have to accept the certainty of releasing the guiltiest imaginable party as much as supporters have to accept killing the wrong people. For this reason I don't think fallibility should constitute the heart of either side's argument.
Ignoring fallibility momentarily, let's take an example already cited; Timothy Evans, now accepted to have been hung for one of his neighbor John Christie's murders. Christie murdered at least four more times (not including Evans himself) before he was caught. Regarding this as a result of the penalty rater than prosecution, how do support feel about the state becoming Christie's accessory? With Evans alive in jail there was at least some possibility of his evidence leading to further investigation. For opponents, those four more murders Christie got off? Even if he'd been imprisoned, he could have killed again.
