Assume the justice system is perfect and only guilty people are executed. However, by law for every five or ten guilty executions, a random innocent civilian is also executed.
That system is obviously abhorrent and unjust. However, that's how the system works right now. For every N truly guilty people executed, there's a truly innocent person executed. The only difference is we justify it by calling that person guilty even if they aren't.
This is true of any punishment, though: if we want to hold people in prison, we're going to have innocent people in there too. Why draw the line specifically at "death"?
With capital punishment, we remove the possibility of fixing our mistake if someone is innocent. But if we lock someone up for 30 years, they have the opportunity for justice to be served, and we have mechanics to _try_ to make it right.
Right? Like if you run with the argument that people are making then we can't give people a life sentence because they may die in jail when they're innocent.
So, it's better to potentially completely ruin the life of an innocent instead of killing him.
From a humanity standpoint the first option is much more barbaric.
Besides, what is the chance an innocent gets out if he was convicted in the first place?
I believe it's so low that the mistake is not giving a decent out (and avoiding large costs to society) to problematic peoples on the off chance that you might get an innocent released 10 years earlier.
If he was truly innocent, his life is ruined already, he would have to live with the consequences for the rest of his life...
Assume the justice system is perfect and only guilty people are executed. However, by law for every five or ten guilty executions, a random innocent civilian is also executed.
That system is obviously abhorrent and unjust. However, that's how the system works right now. For every N truly guilty people executed, there's a truly innocent person executed. The only difference is we justify it by calling that person guilty even if they aren't.