Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonlady
I wonder what would happen if the people who prosecuted were held liable for an innocent persons execution? Everyone, from the original prosecuting attorneys, to those who fought against an appeal. PERSONAL liability - no having the city/county/state take your punishment.
Would they be any more careful?
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Do you believe an innocent person has been executed since 1976, and that we can prove that they were innocent (not just nebulously “not guilty”) today?
I am always skeptical of efforts to solve systemic issues (and the application of the death penalty in America certainly is one of those) with calls to keep on doing things like normal, only find a way to punish the lowest level actors within society possible for any mistakes. Then it’s no longer “society’s” fault or “the state’s” fault that “bad thing” happened, it’s just a few “bad apples” that need to be punished (whether or not they actually are punished is of course, far from certain, particularly when you start hashing out the details of just how to prove what is alleged) and so nothing ever changes. We just put all our sins into the societal scape goat, and chase them off a cliff if we can. Or *shrug* maybe they manage to elude the precipice. Either way, it’s not *our* fault something terrible was done in our name according to our laws, it’s the fault of our functionaries within the system, right?
Bad idea. Not that we shouldn’t hold functionaries accountable for misconduct or negligence, but then the sort of mistakes that may lead to misapplication of the death penalty (and I use that specific wording for a reason—it is specifically not synonymous with “executing the innocent” because the question of guilt or innocence is not the sole factor at issue when it comes to capital punishment, nor should it be) are not necessarily due to misconduct or negligence, provable or otherwise.
For instance, is the DA who always seeks the death penalty for black defendants, but never white defendants, going to be “punished” under your system of liability? Or will the fact that these black defendants who were executed were of certain guilt—not at all innocent—make it so this DA gets to keep on doing his or her job, even if what we can prove is that even worse murderers (those with more victims or who acted with greater depravity) were spared the death penalty—and all of those spared just happened to be white?
The death penalty is not about guilt or innocence. It hasn’t been de jure for decades at least, really never was (even when it was mandatory for certain offenses), and, FWIW, never should be. The factors apart from mere guilt or innocence (or “not guilt” if you prefer), what those factors are and the extent to which they can or should be applied, is where the true debate lies.
FWIW, I think the idealized “execute the most dangerous and worst offenders who truly need to be killed to keep us safe” concept of the death penalty is a fine idea, but not one that can be implemented in practice. So I guess I’d be okay with eliminating the death penalty.