- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to expand the use of the federal death penalty, including through the deployment of firing squads.
The announcement on Friday was part of a policy document issued by the Department of Justice, setting out the legal argument for various methods of execution.
It touted steps for “restoring and strengthening” the death penalty as integral to the pursuit of justice.
“The Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences — clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals,” the Justice Department said in a news release.
Who would do the actual shooting though? For me this presents a problem. It can go two ways:
Or even worse…
That’s actually why it’s a squad.
A single executioner would be more than capable of delivering a killing shot. Hell, they could just shoot them in the head with a handgun.
The squad means that no one member knows if they’re the one that actually delivered the killing shot.
I get it. Its an attempt at plausible self-deniability, but all the people that fired know that one (or more of them) could be the killer. For someone that doesn’t like killing people, I wouldn’t think that’s enough.
It doesn’t even make sense in my opinion. In my mind, all of them are the killers, no matter whose exact bullet it was, and I don’t get how you could convince yourself otherwise.
It also comes from the military, when you’re executing one of your own as a traitor. So there’s a mitigating factor in there somewhere.
Theoretically any given soldier could deliberately miss too, relying on there being at least one other squad member to make a killing shot.
I mean, not killing people under any circumstances is better.
ACAB
Select one person from the jury that convicted and assign them the role of carrying out their judgment.
I thought about that too, but juries usually don’t decide the sentence (in this case, execution). Juries just determine guilty or not on the charges. Sentencing is usually decided by the presiding judge after the jury renders its verdict on the charges and are already dismissed.
Honestly: While it may feel wrong, and requires some emotional distancing, if you start thinking about it rationally you’ll find that there isn’t really a fundamental problem with this one. Note that you gave an argument why the first case is bad but not for the second.
If we think things through, the main issue we have with killing is that people whom we don’t want to die die; [while I reject capital punishment in the vast majority of cases](https://fiona.onl/positions.html#no-death-penalty-for-individual-crime), the assumption here is that we have made a decision that we want someone to die, so causing that person to die is within the deployed ethical framework not unethical.
And if there is someone who wants to perform an act that is usually highly unethical, but in some instances is, according to the accepted ethical framework, not, then there isn’t really a clear issue to let that person do that thing in those cases, especially if others don’t want to do it.
The issue here is the framework in which the death penalty is a commonly available punishment itself, not that some things feel wrong within that framework.
I mean image recognition is one of the things AI is actually good at… Just sayin…
That’s…actually worse than the two scenarios I posted earlier. State built and controlled AI rifle-toting killbots doesn’t seem like a good idea to encourage.
I don’t know, we’re already well down that path already - in this context I think its actually one place where it makes sense if you agree with the death penalty I personally do not.
2022 for reference: https://youtu.be/OcgXru3Z3GQ
I’m not claiming the technology doesn’t exist, I’m saying that I don’t want the society I live in to fund its expansion and employment by the state against its citizens. Once deployed, it would be trivially easy to employ against not only “the convicted” but any other group the state wanted killed. Even proponents of state level death penalty probably don’t want that.
You and I agree on this. I might be onboard with it if we have a way of enforcing it without ever executing an innocent person, and also equal enforcement across groups. The historical data doesn’t like. The death penatly is disproportionately applied to people of color, so the system is broken. This means we cannot rightfully have a state level death penalty.
ah, the way you said “encourage” led me to believe you meant that it was not available, and that discussion of which would encourage its development further. The slippery slope debate about its use elsewhere is valid, but I think it is also valid to discuss it as an alternative when discussing viable death penalty executioners, and it is part of my reasoning for why the death penalty is wrong across the board.
If you think this sort of technology won’t be deployed the moment a serious civil uprising occurs, well then I envy you because I would love to live under that belief - but I don’t.
Sure… for static photos of inanimate objects image recognition its ok. It is easily fooled by false perspectives, weird lighting and odd angles but whatever.
The problem is that AI is a shit show as soon as you try to adapt it for real world use. The capability of these things are beyond exaggerated because tech bros lie and bias test results (because it makes them very rich).
Such speculation of using AI for this or that is part of the scam. Best not to do it.
I mean this discussion is centered around static location and a target that can be color primed for recognition, so I think most of your points fall flat.
Sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending it is fully worthless is not a productive take, but I understand it is the cultural zeitgeist around here - I’m willing to go against a wave when I think its partially wrong.