That's actually an interesting question. I'm Northern European, and my first thought was that the parent is right - that'd never happen here - our system is just and fair.
On closer inspection however I see a lot of my own bias:
- I'm not American, and so I believe that my system is better than yours.
- I read sites like Reddit daily, which is infested with stories of wronddoing, police violence and what have you. Since a lot of the userbase is from the US and the site generally is US centric I'll be exposed to a lot more US based wrongdoing which will bias my opinion.
- The US has a larger population than Northern Europe, which means that even if the two systems are exactly the same there will be more injustices done in the US.
So which is it? I don't know, but I do know that if I hadn't stopped to think I'd agree with the parent poster.
> At least we don't have death sentences where I live.
Are people more likely to die in jail than outside? If so, you have death sentences, you just don't admit that you're pulling the trigger.
Death penalty opponents claim that there are about 10 innocents who have been executed. (The actual claim is less, but 10, or even 100 suffices for our purposes.)
The vast majority of people who die in prison are not executed. Instead, they're killed by prison life, including life-without-parole. Unless you want to argue that the innocent are more likely to get death sentences than other sentences, you're stuck arguing that most sentences don't end in death. While true, that isn't enough to make the case.
Note that folks who get a death sentence get far more review and the like than folks who don't.
The numbers are pretty straightforward. Folks who yell about the death penalty killing innocents are either innumerate or care about the death penalty, not killing innocents. There's nothing wrong with the latter, when done honestly.
"Are people more likely to die in jail than outside?"
I don't know - do you? It seems very likely that they live longer even in jail than if they are being executed by death sentence, though.
Of course even being in jail as an innocent is a tragedy, but my personal feeling is that being executed is even worse.
I've never been to a prison and I don't know how the prison experiences vary by country. Somehow I have a hard time believing that in my country the infamous shower rapes are the norm. But I don't know.
I am surprised that the claim is only 10 innocents who have been executed. Even just casually reading I have a feeling that I read about more cases (and definitely about more cases who have been on death row but were freed in time, maybe because of the initiative of that law professor with his students?). Maybe you mean 10 innocents per year?
Perhaps it is also less likely that a case is being resolved after a death sentence, because there is less incentive to look into it. While people are still on death row, there might be more urgency to trying to prove their innocence.
I'm thinking point is that with a death sentence, there is a possibility that something will exonerate the person before they die in prison. If the person is sentenced to immediate death, there are no do-overs. If we find out that an innocent person was executed, who get the blame? No one.
> I'm thinking point is that with a death sentence, there is a possibility that something will exonerate the person before they die in prison.
Did you mean "life sentence"? If so, that's nice, but it doesn't happen.
> If the person is sentenced to immediate death, there are no do-overs.
There is no "sentenced to immediate death" in the US. The closest was Timothy McVeigh and his case was extremely special.
Texas, which is among the fastest, is currently executing folks convicted in the mid 90s. CA hasn't executed anyone since 2006.
> we find out that an innocent person was executed, who get the blame? No one.
Like I said, we kill innocents all the time. They die from "prison live", not being executed. They don't get any attention, which pretty much demonstrates that the death penalty is the issue, not innocents dying because of being wrongly convicted.
As I wrote, there's nothing wrong with being against the death penalty, but don't tell us you're against innocents dying because they were wrongly convicted.
No, I don't think it's really relevant. First, Switzerland is not in northern europe. Second, the program mentioned in the article appears to have been shut down more than thirty years ago. Third, it looks like the Swiss used to lock up troubled teens. While of course, teens are children, it does't read like they were locking up ten year olds to fold laundry.
On closer inspection however I see a lot of my own bias:
- I'm not American, and so I believe that my system is better than yours.
- I read sites like Reddit daily, which is infested with stories of wronddoing, police violence and what have you. Since a lot of the userbase is from the US and the site generally is US centric I'll be exposed to a lot more US based wrongdoing which will bias my opinion.
- The US has a larger population than Northern Europe, which means that even if the two systems are exactly the same there will be more injustices done in the US.
So which is it? I don't know, but I do know that if I hadn't stopped to think I'd agree with the parent poster.