Two Death Penalty Questiosns

[David Sklansky]

Both of these questions are directed only to those who believe that the death penalty is sometimes warranted.

1. First assume that the death penalty is not a deterrent to other criminals. Many say that. I don't know if it is true. But if assuming that would make you opposed to the death penalty you are not eligible for this question. However there are other reasons, aside from deterrence, that some argue makes the death penalty an appropriate punishment in some cases. If you are one of those people I ask you:

What error rate would you tolerate? How many innocent people out of a thousand would have to be executed before you would change your stance and oppose the death penalty? Say those are your only two choices, accept the error rate or eliminate the punishment.

2. This question is for those who say deterrence is by far the most important reason for the death penalty. If so, a relatively high error rate could be tolerated if it could be shown that even more lives are saved because the death penalty scares off future murderers. Thus if 1000 executions save 25 people from getting murdered, it would seem worth it if eleven of those executions were of innocent men (though usually dirtbags). My question is do you think there is a one to one correspondance? If not, saving a hundred people from future murder is worth falsely executing how many people?

For those who are in favor of the death penalty for both deterrence and other reasons, I have no question for you. But if you want to pretend to be eligible for these questions, go ahead and answer them.