Re. number of people killed by cars v number killed by courts, a question: The comparatively low number (1,500!) makes it ok, does it?Count Lucanor wrote: ↑March 27th, 2021, 9:25 pmTo solve brakes problems in cars you fix the brakes, you don't eliminate cars completely. Defective cars kill hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people every year, which by far exceeds the number of executions carried out in the US. In 45 years of capital punishment, around 1,500 people have been put to death, and even if a high percentage of them were based on wrong verdicts, it would be a ridiculous amount compared to the number of innocent people dying because of defective cars. These deaths are surely preventable if cars were banned, but no one thinks that's a reasonable solution.That amounts to saying that intention plays no role in the moral assessment of an act. That's unreasonable. I know the New York times might not agree lately.Robert66 wrote: ↑March 27th, 2021, 7:13 pm As for your contention regarding the term 'wrongful execution', I would say that it is just as appropriate to describe the execution of an innocent person, and that your extra words 'deliberate evil intention' are merely a transparent veil thrown over an immoral and unnecessary feature of some justice systems.Here you are again arguing similarly to banning the manufacturing of cars, since it is guaranteed that innocent people will die because of it. It is guaranteed that medical procedures will kill innocent people by mistake. It is guaranteed that road traffic will kill innocent people. It is guaranteed that the existence of police forces will kill innocent people. None of these, just as legal procedures, were designed to kill innocent people, but no human design is infallible. There will be anomalies, mistakes, a range of failures for which there can be set a tolerance threshold. If too much cars, if too much medical procedures, if too much legal procedures fail, surpassing the reasonable limits of error, then one might expect a serious look into them to the point of considering their banning. So no, I have not made any argument for you.Robert66 wrote: ↑March 27th, 2021, 7:13 pmHere you have concisely made my argument for me. Thank you. A system which includes the death penalty is guaranteed to kill innocent people. Killing an innocent is injustice. Correcting the problem suggests itself - it is fruit which hangs almost as low as a peanut.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑March 16th, 2021, 10:11 pm No, I haven't condoned such thing. The process is not designed to kill innocent people and it doesn't kill innocent people every time, and most likely it doesn't kill them most of the time. I also said that if systemic failures are found, in other words, if the process as designed is guaranteed to produce injustice, then a moratorium should be established until the problem is corrected. I'm not aware that there are such systemic failures specific to the legal procedures of capital punishment.If one chooses b), one is choosing the option which includes the possibility that the author of a heinous crime against one of our loved ones, gets away with it without justice being served.Robert66 wrote: ↑March 27th, 2021, 7:13 pm The point is not that errors will occur, it is that many could be avoided altogether. Not just any errors, errors which cost lives. If your answer to the question "Which state would you rather reside in - a) one with the death penalty, or b) one without?" - is a), then you are choosing the option which includes the possibility of being wrongfully executed.Unlike cars or medical procedures, weapons are specifically designed to kill people and coercive institutions such as police forces and soldiers are allowed to exercise lethal actions against people. Even regular citizens are given the right to decide on the lives of other people under certain circumstances, such as self-defense, which implies that these societies find tolerable the death of people by the hand of others, given the circumstances. All of this, outside the courts of law and execution facilities. Controls might be set up, but everyone accepts that there will be mistakes, malpractices, accidents, that will kill a lot of innocent people. The one and only domain where you will get a fairly due process, involving complex procedures and proper controls before a fatal outcome, is precisely the death penalty.
Re. Intention: your initial statement was 'A wrongful execution is a term more appropriate to describe an act where there is a deliberate evil intention to kill an innocent person.' I merely pointed out that any execution of an innocent is a wrongful execution. This does not 'amount to
saying that intention plays no role in the moral assessment of an act'.
Re. processes which kill: the difference, with the death penalty, is that the killings may be avoided - there is no requirement for the death penalty to exist within a justice system.
Re. 'If one chooses b), one is choosing the option which includes the possibility that the author of a heinous crime against one of our loved ones, gets away with it without justice being served.' Exactly how does the abolishment of the death penalty mean that 'the author of a heinous crime ... gets away with it'? On the contrary, the fact of many wrongful executions, resulting from unsound convictions, means precisely that the authors of many heinous crimes have gotten away with those crimes.
Re. 'everyone accepts that there will be mistakes, malpractices, accidents, that will kill a lot of innocent people.' No-one should accept even a single death of an innocent, if such a death is easily avoidable.