There are people who believe that convicting the occasional innocent person is inevitable

[xiphias]

In the United States, and probably everywhere else since civilization was invented, there is a constant argument about standards of proof in criminal justice. One of the questions basically boils down to alpha errors versus beta errors -- false positives vs false negatives, or, falsely convicting innocent people, and falsely exonerating guilty people.

Obviously, in ANY system, you want to reduce the number of BOTH kinds of errors, but, in general, when you're setting up a test, the kind of test you do tends to skew one way or another -- you could do manufacturing quality control that lets a few bad things through, but throws out hardly ANY working models, or one that throws out some perfectly fine things, but lets almost NO broken things through. If the things are expensive, and the consequences of failure are low, you might go the first way, and just make sure to have a policy of cheerfully replacing any broken product -- the broken ones you're replacing are ones where they should have been thrown out at the factory anyway, so you're not really out that much money, but throwing out perfectly good ones would cost quite a bit. If the cost of failure is high, though, you'd go the other way -- better to throw out a dozen perfectly good brake pads than have one serious car crash because you let faulty ones through.

Now, there is a school of thought, mostly among conservatives, at least in the United States, that false positives in the criminal justice system are less serious than false negatives -- that is, that it is better to convict innocent people than to free guilty ones. It's not an idea that I agree with -- I think that a justice system needs to be tempered with mercy, and that too high a false conviction rate is a symptom of too little mercy. But I nonetheless appreciate the logic -- if you consider the body politic to be an organism, it's worth killing off some healthy cells in order to make sure that you've killed off the disease. I get that idea.

And, for some people, this idea extends to the death penalty -- having the occasional innocent person executed is a cost that you pay to make sure that you eliminate all the guilty ones.

I don't agree with the logic, obviously, but I understand it. It's a more Draconian view of the world that I'm comfortable with, but, well, it's important to remember that Draco the Lawgiver's system was actually an improvement over what Athens had before.

But, even under that logic -- it's wrong.

See, the idea here is that convicting, and even executing an innocent person is how you make sure that the guilty don't escape.

But convicting an innocent person lets a guilty person free.

That's what I want to point out to, for instance, Rick Perry. If you convict an innocent person, a guilty person goes free. If you let an innocent person be executed, a murderer gets away with murder.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Dunno, but one of my most memorable experiences was late one night when the bride, the other bridesmaid, the matron of honor, and I were sitting up chatting in the hotel the night before the wedding.

Somehow child molesters and the Matron of Honor's opinion that the death penalty should apply as they're not rehabilitatable came up. Rather than engage in that conversation, I instead addressed the death penalty in general and chose what I thought was the most milquetoast objection to the death penalty I could come up with -- that it's final and the justice system is not infallible, and look at how Illinois just exonerated a bunch of their death row.

I'd thought that would maybe steer conversation to fallibility of the justice system, or intriguing weirdnesses ni eyewitness testimony* but I was not at all prepared for

You can't take away my right to execute someone just because someone innocent might die.

At that point I gaped for a sec, realized that on this topic Matron of Honor and I shared no common reality space, declared myself tired and went off to bed in the next room.



* my mind's eye filling in a bunch of visuals I know for a fact I've not seen has clinched my feelings about eye witnesses.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lol, I think at that stage mentioning chemical castration probably isn't worth it. (Not that chemical castration wouldn't be a pretty awful thing to happen to someone who was innocent too.)

If they can't even accept that an innocent individual being murdered by the state is a bad thing, the conversation is pretty much over.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Chemical castration led directly to Alan Turing's suicide.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* Long-term imprisonment can lead to suicide too.

I saw a programme on TV where they were showing examples where the behaviour of sex offenders had apparently changed dramatically for the better because they had been chemically neutered (or at least that was what I thought the treatment was). Far from seeming depressed (and I know that sort of thing isn't always obvious) they were apparently happily contributing to their community and really enjoying life.

I can't speak for the truth of that documentary though. There's often bias. I'm just going by what I've heard. Certainly I was only pointing it out as a possible route for discussion once it's recognised that there are alternatives to "kill 'em all".

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Do you know who Alan Turing was and why he was chemically castrated?

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

The only thing that was coming to mind was the Turing test.

Was he gay? Naturally that wasn't at all what I had in mind (nor what that documentary had in mind) when I said "sex offenders".

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Alan Turing was, in fact, the person who came up with the concept of the Turing test, yes. He was also a mathematician who was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code and thereby winning WWII.

And, yes, he was gay, and chemically castrated to "control" his "illness." And he committed suicide. The debt that the non-Nazi world owes to the man didn't become public until decades after his death.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

A couple other points:

In many ways, mentioning Alan Turing is something of a red herring -- ANYTHING they did to him short of giving him public medals for saving England, and a wedding to his lover, would have been unfair. The fact that the form of injustice they subjected him to included chemical castration is almost irrelevant to that.

However, micheinnz's comment does point out that chemical castration is NOT without cost, and quite potentially severe cost.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

That would be the point I am making, yes.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

All I was saying was that, in the case of sex offenders (involved in non-consensual sexual assault i.e. rape), there are alternatives to state-sponsored murder.

I wasn't even remotely justifying what happened to Turing.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Yes, he was gay. He was tried and convicted for it, and given the choice of chemical castration or prison. He chose chemical castration so he could continue his work. It made him suicidally depressed, and then he killed himself. It was a fucking tragedy and an incalculable loss to humanity.

You may not have meant gay when you said "sex offenders". Some people do. Because of cases like Alan Turing's I have a large a gut "NO!" reaction to chemical castration as I do to the death penalty.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

You may not have meant gay when you said "sex offenders". Some people do.

They're called dickheads. And that's me being relatively polite on this matter.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't presume that I'm a homophobe. When I said "sex offender" I thought I could take it for granted that I didn't have consensual sexual partners in mind.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I wasn't presuming anything about you, and I apologise for the impression that I was.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Apology accepted.

Sorry if I appeared to be overreacting.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's why I want to get THIS point out there. Yes, the Matron of Honor's world is a much scarier place than mine is.

But do you think she would have been convinced by, "If you execute a person who's INNOCENT of being a child molester, it means that there's a GUILTY one out there who got away with it"?

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I was going from thinking that death penalty for child molestation was way the hell out there, but rather than have that discussion i'd just pick an unassailable reason to be squeamish about death penalty in general.

I don't really think there is an analogy there with child molesting. I really doubt there's ever any situation where Guy A gets picked up for something Guy B did* as opposed to Guy A gets convicted for something that didn't happen in general or really shouldn't be classed as that level of molestation or is or isn't likely to be recidivist.

Not sure if I'm making sense. Just I think innocence if it's molestation ONLY (not involving someone dead) isn't likely to imply someone else did it unless you're talking infants, at which point you've likely got something more than verbal evidence or the case wouldn't have been made.


*(mommy mommy i forget who touched me?)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You're not dealing with rational arguments here. You're dealing with emotional ones. To argue against an emotional position, you need to understand the emotion that is driving it, and to provide a counterargument that either triggers a more powerful emotion, or triggers the same emotion even more powerfully.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Hm.
Thing is, “look, killing an innocent person means you’ve let the real killer go free” re the death penalty in general kinda invites “ok, so if we later find the real killer we’ll kill him, too.”

I see it as a compelling argument for keeping DNA evidence and allowing new evidence to be submitted and such, but I don’t see it as likely to sway anybody from supporting the death penalty.

And if you bring it up in a situation where it’s just not a likely outcome it won’t be given thought.

So re MH in that specific conversation, I don’t see it as having had any effect re her feelings about molesters, but perhaps some effect on continued appeal, though, honestly, perhaps only post mortem.

[clarification: Clarification: whether or not you want to make sure you don’t miss any guilty parties doesn’t fully overlap with whether or not you care about killing people who are innocent. DOES have bearing on the Perry thing as TX is blocking further investigation re the fire. ]

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Again, we're not entirely dealing with a logic-based argument. What you're saying is logically true, but not emotionally compelling.

And, in practical terms, if you've found a guy and convicted him, well, case closed. If it turns out that the guy is innocent, then you can re-open the case.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I'm a little unclear about what you and I are disagreeing about.

I /think/ what I'm disagreeing with you on is whether it's an argument against the death penalty that every innocent person executed means that probably someone else who did commit the crime goes free.

I don't see that as any different from someone rotting in jail for a decade.

If you're talking about denying appeals and destroying evidence after conviction I might be with you, but again, no different from someone being jailed.

In fact, there are more appeals allowed on death row than if someone's got life in prison; one could argue that one is /more/ likely to later ifnd the real killer if the innoccent man is on death row.

And if someone considers a few innocents in the death toll to be acceptable collateral damage then that person would likely be perfectly fine with finding out later that someone now dead wasn't the killer, so long as the real killer is later found.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

What we're disagreeing about isn't whether my argument makes sense -- it's whether someone like Matron of Honor would be persuaded by it.

Your point is that my argument doesn't, logically, negate her argument. And that's true. My point is that my argument DOES, emotionally negate her argument. You're a person who tends to like to base your opinions on, y'know, facts 'n shit like that, so the observation that my argument doesn't actually address any of Matron of Honor's actual points, well, that jumps right out at you.

But odds are that Matron of Honor doesn't KNOW what her points are: her argument is [FEAR] [BAD PERSON] [DESTROY BAD] [EXTERMINATE] [not so bad person, destroy? not so bad] [DESTROY BAD].

So, MY argument comes down to [NOT SO BAD PERSON+DESTROY == BAD PERSON ALIVE CAN HURT ME FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR]

Emotional arguments are hard to put together for logical people. Because they don't make sense. If they made sense, they'd be logical arguments.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

> "ok, so if we later find the real killer we’ll kill him, too."

But the problem with convicting and executing the wrong person (aside from the collateral damage aspect) is that having found someone to pin the murder on, the system quits looking for anyone else. So unless the real murderer steps up and confesses, we don't get a chance to kill the right person.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Or, as has come to light in this Texas case, the real killer remains free to kill more people. True, therewas willful suppression of exonerating evidence from the get-go, and it wasn't death penalty, but it does highlight that there is harm to far more than the convicted.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/28/150996459/free-after-25-years-a-tale-of-murder-and-injustice

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I really doubt there's ever any situation where Guy A gets picked up for something Guy B did*

You'd think so, wouldn't you? And if you're talking about multiple assaults by a close family member, probably not.* But it's been documented several times with assault by strangers--even with adult victims.

Anyone who's pro-death-penalty should be forced to sit in the front row of an Intro Psych class while they talk about reconstructive memory, repeatedly, until they get the point.

*Although there's always the possibility of, "But dear Uncle Albert couldn't possibly have done that! Tell me who *really* hurt you." Ask often enough...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

good points.

in her defense, i think what she had in mind was more an "i can change i won't do it again' person rather than 'no i didn't do that' person.

re reconstructive memory, scroll down in the above link to the part where i talk about the very clear visuals i have of things i never saw.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

> You can't take away my right to execute someone just because someone innocent might die.

*blink* Oh my. I'm suddenly tired too.