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TotalProfessional391 t1_j06r379 wrote

Reply to comment by Comprehensive-Leg752 in Oregon governor commutes all 17 of state's death sentences by Slavic_Dusa

6 years ago I did a little story on a man who had spent 26 years in prison, sentenced to death row, for a crime he didn’t commit.

His mother died while he was in jail believing that the state was going to murder her innocent son.

He was eventually exonerated when the sole eyewitness that the state relied on to convict him recanted his testimony 26 years later as he was dying and had told his pastor that he made the whole thing up.

These guys were just 16 when it all happened. You can guess the race.

Death penalty may feel like a just solution, but the system isn’t mature enough to handle it. Innocent people do get put to death and that fact alone demands abolishment.

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j_sholmes t1_j06s92f wrote

Couldn't you logically apply this to any punishment though?

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CdrJamesCool t1_j06ue8a wrote

You can, yes. However, if an innocent person has been put to death, that’s it. They’re dead.

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j_sholmes t1_j0bidfc wrote

Yes, but we all know that the sentence isn't carried out a week from now...the process takes decades in most cases.

How many people have lived their entire lives behind bars...why aren't we talking about that as well?

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TotalProfessional391 t1_j06vc3j wrote

Sure but none are as severe or irreversible as killing someone.

There are a number of other reasons the death penalty is a poor and a antiquated system:

It costs taxpayers up to 50% more (than a life sentence) to convict a death penalty case and to run the system.

Many states find it hard to source reliable drugs to administer the deaths, since manufacturers increasingly refuse to be associated with state-sponsored murder. This can lead to botched executions and longer stays on death row, again taxing the system.

While there are many cases in which a murderer may not seem fit to rehabilitate, there are many cases in which they could. Like in the case if Kwame that I posted, even if he had been guilty he was 16 and grew up in a neighbourhood where children are prone to gang violence. It could be argued that the money spent to maintain death row could rather be spent on inner city programming to help prevent violence in the first place.

But if you’re someone who’s loved one was murdered none of these will matter. That’s why we need to come to these decisions as a society and not as the individual.

None of this is as compelling a case for abolishment in my eyes than the fact that innocent people are on death row.

Over 300 people have been exonerated from death row. That’s a fucking genocide.

Edit: I forgot to mention that there are no federal or state reintegration programmes for exonerated people. I guess because they means the gov would have to admit that they get the death sentence wrong.

So if you’ve spent 30 years on death row only to be proven innocent, you’re thrown out on the streets with not so much as even bus money to go.. where?

The US is so fucked.

Disclaimer: I’m Canadian.

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