Think of the big picture. The one person, locked up, not able to continue his work. Millions of people die from a disease he had been on the verge of curing.
Good point. It always depends on the specific case, though. In a situation like this, who's to say he can't continue his work in prison? Or have someone else take it up.
In a situation like this, it makes very little difference if he's innocent or guilty, however. A solution in which he is able to continue his research for a cure for this disease would always be advantageous.
Let me ask my question, again: what if it were ten innocent men and one guilty?
Much more difficult question. Probably "No, let them all go free", but it all depends on the crime.
If eleven men stand trial for burning down an entire hotel with hundreds of people in it, you
know that ONE of them did it, and that the others are innocent, but
cannot tell who is guilty, what do you do? Are you reasonably sure that executing the arsonist is the only reliable way to prevent him from doing it again? Are you reasonably sure that aquitting him would cause him to burn something else down?
If so, it would make the most logical sense to execute all of them. Or stick them in prison, whichever you prefer.
What if it happened to me? If I was one of the suspects, and I was, y'know, fairly sure I hadn't done it, how would I feel? Devastated, of course, sad that my life was about to end. But courts have to be objective. Unemotional.
Lawful Neutral.
No matter how good you are, no matter how carefully you make your conclusions, there will always be the slight chance you are mistaken. That, alone, should be enough to convince anyone that the death penalty is a mistake. Consider: lots of people have been exonerated while on death row. I am sure at least one has been wrongly executed.
Of course, this happens. At the moment. But I am still convinced that this could be avoided if the legal system was less lazy, and properly investigated every possibility.
Or, if not avoided, at least minimized. And again, I believe it is better to have a few innocents convicted than a lot of guilty people aquitted. (To simplify, Many Bad People Free Equals Many More Good People Dead)
But where do we draw the line? At 5 innocents, 6 criminals? I honestly don't know. But again, everything is relative. It depends on the case.
Why? The death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment (because of all the appeal processes), it's less humane, it's irreversible... There is simply no reason the death penalty should be used instead of life imprisonment.
Imagine, a psychotic murderer goes to prison instead of the chair. While in prison, he immediately starts bumraping and murdering people who were there for three months because they stole a loaf of bread to feed their family.
Also, he could escape. Execution is the only way to
ensure that this doesn't happen.
And if you make the prisons so secure that escape is practically impossible (each prisoner given a 4x4 cell, given food three times a day, never let out, ever), then what the hell is the point in living for that prisoner? I dare you to name one person who would prefer that to execution. How would that be more humane than execution?
And how is execution less humane in the first place? Lethal injection with insufficient anesthesia is worse than decade after decade in prison? At most a few minutes of agony versus fifty years of agony?
Seriously, execution is only less humane than lifetime if the convict is innocent. And even then it's debatable. What would you prefer? Sitting in prison for the rest of your life, knowing you're innocent but having no way of proving it, until the day you die? Or just dying on the spot?
