A list of every Inmate Executed in Texas, and their last words.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > A list of every Inmate Executed in Texas, and their last words.

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Caros posted:

That this sort of 'mistake' is inevitable. People are going to end up in jail for crimes they did not commit, this has happened as long as we've really had a justice system that put people in jail. The difference is that a person put in jail can be released. It might be ten, twenty, thirty or even more years too late and it might be a wholly inadequate solution but at the very least we can attempt to right the wrong that we have committed by freeing people who have been unjustly imprisoned. If you execute them this will never, ever happen.

I'm against the death penalty, but I don't think this argument works. We can't give someone 30 years of their life back if we imprison them for 30 years, and we can't give someone their life back if we take it. Imprisoning an innocent person for 30 years and then releasing them is surely a less bad scenario than killing an innocent person, yes, but so is fining an innocent person a less bad scenario than imprisoning an innocent person for 30 years, yet we wouldn't argue prison is bad. I've yet to see a consistent framework that lets us think of death as categorically different from other punishments.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 22:05

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 06:05

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Caros posted:

The death penalty is categorically different because it is final.

This is wrong. Imprisoning someone for any length of time is final, because time can not be reversed. Fining someone for any amount of money is final because time can not be reversed. People can be released from prisons, and fines can be repaid, yet still the length of time where those conditions were applied can not be undone.

Caros posted:

The difference is that there is no remedy for someone who is exonerated after we murder them.

I can work with this, but it's not clear to me why "Our punishments must possess remedies" is a valuable goal for a justice system. People who are punished and die before their innocence can be found lack a remedy, but it doesn't seem to delegitimize the concept of punishment.

quote:

The difference between your fining someone and imprisoning them for thirty years is that those aren't comparable options.

You're all over the map, this is why I said "consistent framework", you've got a bunch of unrelated arguments. Also, of course they are comparable options, we can compare them. You can argue one is good or bad, but it doesn't alter physics to prevent us from comparing them.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 22:23

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

You can attempt to compensate somebody for being wrongfully imprisoned, to put them back in the position they would have been if they had not been wrongfully imprisoned. You cannot attempt to compensate somebody who has been executed.

Right, please see where I asked why punishments with remedies is a valuable goal. Sometimes we punish innocent people, sometimes those innocent people will get remedies, sometimes they will not, this is intrinsic to all punishments.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 22:35

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

Because in civilised societies we believe that it is wrong to punish somebody for no reason. This means that if we do accidentally punish somebody for no reason, we attempt to compensate them to put them in the position that they would have been in had they not been punished for no reason. Sometimes we are not able to adequately compensate a person who has been punished for no reason, but this does not mean that our belief that it is wrong to punish somebody for no reason is not sincere, or that we do not consider that persons punished for no reason should be compensated.

The death penalty, however, means that it will never be possible to adequately compensate a person if they have accidentally been punished for no reason. This is not consistent with the belief that it is wrong to punish a person for no reason, and is therefore rejected by civilised societies.

Whether we punish people for no reason, and whether we compensate incorrectly punished people are completely unrelated concepts, so please go ahead and drop that line of rhetoric.

Caros posted:

Really, you don't see why the justice system needs the ability to correct its mistakes in the inevitable instances where it discovers them? The death penalty eliminates any possibility of later exoneration and release, it is entirely possible that a person sentenced to life in prison may not be exonerated, but it is absolutely certain that a person killed will never be. I'd rather we leave open that chance.

As I've pointed out, the justice system is fundamentally incapable of correcting its mistakes. Time can not be undone. We can sometimes offer remedies, but only sometimes. Once we embrace that people will only sometimes be remedied, what argument do you have against sometimes applying a punishment without remedy? I need for you to directly state why you think we should only employ punishments with remedies, instead of just saying you'd rather have that. (edit: I mean you can adopt "We should only apply punishments with remedies" as an axiom, but it doesn't make for a convincing argument)

quote:

I mean there are plenty of other arguments against it, Cruelty, Cost, Pointlessness and so forth... I'm just expanding on this one in particular.

As I've said, I'm also against the death penalty, I'm just pointing out that death as a special category due to finality doesn't work as an argument.

twodot fucked around with this message at 23:06 on Jan 1, 2015

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 22:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

Do you think people who are wrongfully punished should be compensated? If so, why?

This question is a lot more complex than you realize. First of all, there are many people who have been wrongfully punished who fundamentally can not be compensated. Should we do an impossible thing? I'm not even sure what that question means. Should we compensate wrongfully punished people when we are able? Yes, not only is it probably important for people to have faith in the justice system, it also creates incentives for the government to not wrongfully punish people.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 23:19

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Sharkie posted:

You can end a prison sentence. You can't end a carried-out death sentence.

Ok, so you are also adopting "We should only apply punishments which can be stopped" as an axiom? Is there a reason why punishments which can be stopped are good? Frankly the concept for preferring an ever lasting punishment over a limited one is kind of bizarre to me. (edit: A carried out prison sentence also can't be ended, so I'm assuming you are in favor of imprisoning people for all of eternity, so that we possess the capability to some day end their ever lasting sentence)

twodot fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jan 1, 2015

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 23:27

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

So you agree that it is wrong to punish people for no reason, and that where possible we should seek to compensate those who have been wrongfully punished. You also acknowledge that these are, in fact, related concepts. This is a good start for living in a civilised society.

No, these are unrelated concepts. They are both true, but that doesn't make them related. If you still think they are related, feel free to directly state their relation.

quote:

You would presumably, therefore, agree that modes of punishment where compensation is literally impossible and could never be possible under any conceivable circumstance - as opposed to modes of punishment where compensation is conceivably possible, although not necessarily in all cases - are fundamentally less desirable since they are fundamentally inconsistent with the general principle that people ought not to be punished for no reason, and if they are, should be compensated if possible?

No.

Caros posted:

That it is morally repugnant?

Right, you're taking this as an axiom then. That's a fine thing to do, it's just not an argument.

quote:

Are you loving serious? Death is a 'limited' punishment?

Are you prepared to argue that death is an eternal punishment?

quote:

Punishments that can be stopped are good because they can be loving stopped. Even if it is not a perfect remedy it is better than doing nothing at all.

And therefore all punishments should last forever so that we always possess the capability of stopping them?

twodot fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 1, 2015

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 23:34

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

We compensate people for being wrongly punished (i.e. punished for no reason)

Ah, here's your problem. Wrongly punished people were punished for a reason.
edit:
Also why the gently caress would you bother talking to ELIZA with autism? That seems like a stupid thing to do.

twodot fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jan 1, 2015

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 23:40

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Pohl posted:

Yes they were, but somehow you are twisting that reason to be their fault. Your complete line of reasoning is flawed. Just stop.

I never said it was their fault. Nude Bog Lurker just doesn't understand how words work.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 23:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Sharkie posted:

Yes it can. You can end it by letting them out of prison.

Sorry you misunderstand, someone goes to prison for a year, after a year they are let out of prison, at this point their prison sentence can't be stopped. They can not be let out of prison again. If you oppose sentences that can't be stopped, you are opposed to finite prison sentences. Also fines.

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

You literally see no moral difference between the state fining a wrongfully convicted person and executing them.

Cool straw man, but I started this thread directly stating I'm opposed to the death penalty, so try again:

twodot posted:

I'm against the death penalty, but I don't think this argument works.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2015 23:50

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Pohl posted:

You do realize that you are essentially arguing that the death penalty as it is is fine, because otherwise we may hold an innocent person in prison for life. Welp, they are hosed anyway!

Actually, what the gently caress are you arguing?

I at no point argued that death penalty is fine. What I've been arguing is that the death penalty is not special in the way people are saying. Punishments carried out can not be revoked. Time can not be undone. The death penalty is bad, but not because it is uniquely irrevocable. Also:

Pohl posted:

I don't know, somehow the death penalty cases seem different. Why would that be?

Literally because people let their emotions or team identity override their reason, and then backwards justify their beliefs.
edit:

Sharkie posted:

Dude there's a difference between stopping something and retroactively causing it to never have happened.

Yes, and? Someone is in prison, we possess the capability of stopping their sentence. We let them out of prison, at which point we lose the capability of stopping their sentence. Is letting them out a good idea? Of course it is, which means that the ability of a punishment to be stopped isn't a useful thing to talk about.

twodot fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jan 2, 2015

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:00

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

You accept that people should not be punished unless they have committed an offence for which that punishment is the prescribed penalty (or, as neurotypicals might understand it, 'no reason').

You accept that where a person has been punished when they have not committed an offence for which that punishment is the prescribed penalty, the state should seek to compensate that person.

You grudgingly accept that the reason that the state should seek to compensate that person is that people should not be punished unless they have committed an offence for which that punishment is the prescribed penalty.

Despite this, you see no issue with the state prescribing penalties for which no compensation is possible. You see no inconsistency between this and the principle that where a person has been punished when they have not committed an offence for which that punishment is the prescribed penalty, the state should seek to compensate that person.

This is because you are not as clever as you think you are, and rather than face up to this you are going to dance around this post with another tedious attempt at junior attorney reasoning rather than engage with the substance.

I was going to dance around this post, but there isn't an actual argument to dance around. You appear to want me to engage with substance, but the only thing in here is you poorly characterizing what I believe. Where's the substance? Do you seriously expect me to argue with myself?

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:12

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Sharkie posted:

Friend, you're attempting to show off your logic judo but in the process you've just managed to tie your legs in knots and punch yourself in the groin. At this point you're not making sense. It is a good thing to stop a wrong punishment. This can be done with a prison sentence, but not with a carried-out death sentence.

The ability of a punishment to be stopped is useful to talk about because you have innocent people in prison who would very much like their punishment to be stopped. I'd sincerely love to see you tell them to their faces that their desire to have their punishment stopped "isn't a useful thing to talk about."

You aren't paying attention. You can't stop the prison sentence of someone out of prison. You can't stop the payment of a fine that's already been paid. We shouldn't evaluate the justness of punishments on the basis of whether or not they can be stopped.

Caros posted:

Because the death penalty is final you pedant. Here I'll lay it out for you with a goddamned example:

Death Penalty Abolished State - Prisoner A is sentenced to life in prison. Fifteen years after his sentence begins DNA evidence comes to light proving his innocence and he is released.

Death Penalty State - Prisoner A is sentenced to death. He is executed after fourteen years. One year later DNA evidence comes to light proving his innocence and he is released.

In both cases, the applied punishment is final, you can not unwind 15 years.

quote:

Of course not. But if we are talking the difference between life without parole or the death penalty the latter is clearly the worse option when it comes to correcting miscarriages of justice.

Right, but I already explained that if we apply this reasoning generally, we would conclude that fines would preferable to imprisonment.

quote:

Eternal is a better qualifier as limited since limited would imply that it would end.

I suppose this depends on what you consider the punishment. The execution certainly ends, and I don't believe we can punish dead people, but you could consider the eternity of death to be the punishment. In either case, it doesn't really affect the argument that our capability to stop a punishment isn't an interesting metric in the justness of the punishment.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:20

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

So you seriously think that there's nothing wrong with the state adopting punishments for which it cannot compensate somebody if they have been wrongly inflicted, even though you also think that the state should seek to compensate those wrongfully punished?

Honestly, at this point I'm just trying to work out what you actually think.

What? I've directly stated what I actually think multiple times. The death penalty is bad, but not because it is uniquely irrevocable (all carried out punishments can not be undone). You're trying to corner me into a poorly constructed logic trap, for reasons I don't understand.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:28

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Caros posted:

The person that is released gets to live the rest of his life as a free man. The person that got the death penalty is dead and does not get to live the rest of his life at all, free or not. Do you seriously not understand that the ability to provide relief by ending the punishment is a good thing for our justice system to have. Hell, I'll ask again since you didn't reply last time, do you think we should have an appeals process? Because the whole point of our appeals process is to provide relief in cases, but apparently that isn't interesting so should we just scrap it?

Yes, we should have an appeals process. I never suggested otherwise.

quote:

No, because there are plenty of other reasons why we need to use incarceration, such as public safety. And according to you fines wouldn't be preferable because fines are 'final' too and somehow can't be corrected either.

So you would be in favor of the death penalty if there were other reasons to support it, such as public safety? You realize the people who are in favor of the death penalty, will absolutely argue that we need it just as badly as we need incarceration.

quote:

Why is it not interesting? Because you autistically argue that unless we can rewind time people don't gain any benefit from being set free after fifteen years as opposed to being dead and in the ground?

Because it's nonsensical! Can you stop a fine already paid? A prison sentence already served? Of course not, yet we regard those as just punishments.
edit:

Caros posted:

So why do you think the death penalty is bad Captain Autism?

My go to argument would be that it's pointless and costly.
edit:

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

What you've oh-so-cutely avoided saying is that you don't think a person can be compensated for being imprisoned. I presume you have avoided saying this because you realise deep down that this position is incompatible with every modern system of justice.

It's unambiguous that it's impossible for anyone to be adequately compensated for being imprisoned, especially in the American prison system. This is unrelated to anything I've said in this thread.

twodot fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Jan 2, 2015

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:35

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

If I take your money as a fine, I can never make this right.

We can conceivably compensate you, but we can never give back the loss opportunities missed because of the punishment (otherwise it would not be a punishment).

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:39

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Sharkie posted:

You can prevent them from serving the remainder of their sentence, which is not possible for with an executed person. We recognize that the justice system can make mistakes, so it's better to make a mistake which can be ended than one that can't. Yes it sucks that we can't rewind time to make the lost years never exist, but it's better to mistakenly take away 10 years of a person's life than to take away every year of life they could ever have.

Yes it is better to mistakenly take away 10 years of a person's life than to kill them, please see where I already addressed this argument, that following this reasoning implies an infinite regression of softer and softer punishments for the fear of being mistaken.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 00:44

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Caros posted:

Your posts sure do. What does the appeal matter, we can't give these people back the time we've taken from them, and clearly future prospects don't figure into your equations.

We need a consistent set of laws, if individual courts were allowed to have their own interpretations of law, it would lead to madness pretty quickly. There's a reason why the Supreme Court prioritizes Circuit splits.

quote:

I'm going to start beating you with this pipe around fifteen times. Now would you like me to stop, or would you prefer I just kill you? You are arguing that there would be no real difference between the two because I've already beaten you with the pipe.

No, I'm arguing that beating some with a pipe and killing them are not categorically different due to one being more final than another. In each case they happen, and the consequences of them happening can not be avoided. I never said there was no real difference, just that your stated reason for treating death and prison differently doesn't work.
edit:
There should be a clear difference between "Your reason for thinking these things are categorically different is wrong" and "These things are not categorically different", especially after I made sure my first words were to express that I do believe these things to be categorically different.

twodot fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Jan 2, 2015

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 01:06

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Caros posted:

... did you just troll wikipedia for a random sentence and post it here? This has nothing to do with what I was asking.

No? You asked why I think appeals matter, and I told you. I don't understand why you think it's not related.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 02:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Nude Bog Lurker posted:

Do you think appeals should be allowed on questions of fact?

Eh, I'm pretty torn on this one. I'm not really convinced that judges have the capability to analyze whether, likely years after the case, the original jurors would react one way or another to new evidence. There is a solid argument that on appeal there is no right to a jury anymore, but the reasoning behind that is uncomfortable, why create such a right at trial and not appeal? We could of course modify the appellate process to include a jury, but that is a major change, and hard to reason about. In terms of symmetry, it'd be nice for new evidence to be handled by pardons (and have the appellate courts exclusively rule on law), but not only has that failed at least federally (basically all federal pardons are for people who already served their terms), also Burdick v. United States complicates the notion of pardoning an innocent person. In our existing system, I think the balance falls on allowing questions of fact, but our system is far from perfect.

twodot fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jan 2, 2015

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 02:38

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 06:05

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Ytlaya posted:

In case he's actually autistic, I would advise him to think about the issue in terms of the net quality of a person's entire life span. While a person who spends 20 years in prison and is released and a person who spends 20 years in prison before being put to death both have the same net value for years 0-20*, the net quality of of the entire lifespan would generally be higher for the person who is released and given millions of dollars in compensation.

I'm opposed to the death penalty, how could you possibly think this is a necessary exercise given I've directly stated multiple times I'm opposed to the death penalty? Also stop putting words in my mouth. If I've said something you want to object to, quote it.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 17:49

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