The Death Penalty feat. PragerU

hello everyone today we're going to be talking about the death penalty or capital punishment and we all know what that is right when someone is killed by the state as punishment for a criminal act and I want to talk about this for a few reasons firstly while most countries around the world have either abolished capital punishment outright or only use it in very specific and through circumstances much of the world's population still lives in countries that retain the death penalty also in countries that have abolished the death penalty it can remain popular and its reintroduction is often argued for a 20-17 YouGov survey found that more than half of brexit leaf voters in the UK for instance think that the death penalty should be brought back another reason I want to talk about the death penalty today is because I've noticed that frequently when discussing the pros and cons of the death penalty people tend to have the wrong argument and for an example of this we're going to take a look at a typical pro-death penalty argument such as the one offered by Dennis Prager of Prager you in his video is the death penalty ever moral which I will link below in the video description in this video Dennis Prager argues that criminals who do sufficiently horrible things should be put to death and he uses as an example the 2007 Cheshire Connecticut home invasion murders during which two criminals broke into a family's house and murdered three people in a particularly brutal manner dennis prager 'he's argument in favor of executing these men is an emotional argument and he appeals directly to the feelings of his audience talking about things like a sense of justice the pain inflicted on the loved ones of those murdered and asks whether torture is rapists murderers and evil men like them deserve to keep their lives and this sort of appeal to emotion is the main thrust of many pro-death penalty arguments now whether someone can forfeit the right to life with a sufficiently horrible action or series of actions is a moral question it's a philosophical question and it's not a question that I'm going to be answering today if you believe that people who commit terrible crimes such as Dennis Prager describes deserve in turn to use their lives I am NOT going to argue with you here in fact we can proceed as if that is definitely true if you like because regardless of how you feel about that question it doesn't actually have anything to do with what we'll be talking about today which is whether the death penalty as a practical process should actually be carried out is it possible for someone to lose the right to life is a different question to should society have the death penalty and I'm going to be arguing that no matter how you feel about the former question the answer to the latter question is no and if you disagree with that right now all I ask is that you stick around for the rest of the video and hear me out now before we start it is worth pointing out that many anti-death-penalty arguments also appeal to emotion and I'm going to be trying to avoid those arguments going forward reading or watching anti-death-penalty arguments you will often hear about for example how the difficulty of securing the chemicals for lethal injections means that inferior chemicals can be used which can lead to drawn-out and painful or botched executions and so on now regardless of how any individual feels about that I don't see it being all that much of a convincing argument to someone who is currently in favor of the death penalty since if you think a criminal did something so bad that they should be killed you probably don't care too much if they get hurt on the way out right so as much as possible today I'm gonna be trying to avoid the emotional arguments and stick to the facts and to begin with here let's stay with dennis prager video for a while he opens his video by asserting that he just doesn't understand people who oppose the death penalty the Gulf is unbridgeable he says between those of us who believe that some murderers should be put to death and those who believe that no murderer should ever be put to death later at the end of the video he calls back to this opening paragraph stating but if you really do believe these people deserve to keep their lives well as I said at the outset I don't understand you now these two quotes illustrate perfectly the disconnect I talked about a minute ago in the opening Dennis Prager is talking about the process of people being put to death but at the end he's talking about the philosophical question of whether those people deserve to keep their lives two different questions which he's treating as if they're the same in doing this what Dennis Prager is missing is the possibility that someone could believe that criminals who do the sorts of evil things he describes do deserve to lose their lives but that the death penalty is separately - that still a bad idea oh well the first thing is there's crimes that the proper penalty is obviously death obviously like and I've read a lot about serial killers for example ID law read a lot of brutal material you know I was very interested in criminology and antisocial behavior as well as political pathology it's like there are guys like I think was John Wayne Gacy who yeah you don't want to know about him I think he begged the judge for the death penalty he knew himself is like there is no coming back from where he went hmm so but that's not the issue for me the issue is do you give the state that much power and I would say practically no I think this is a very callous way of looking I think in the United States it cost 20 million dollars to put someone to death it's like why well because the state shouldn't just be able to do that and easily and they make mistakes like a lot of mistakes and so maybe you just never want the state to have that much power and I think that's a reasonable argument not that that's reasonable width out that's what the where I'm at with it I just don't want to give the state that powers that was Jordan Peterson they're expressing to Dave Rubin his opinion that people can deserve to be killed but that he just doesn't trust the state to wield that much power and this is a common anti-death-penalty argument made by anti-big government folks I picked a clip of Jordan Peterson there because he has been the narrator of multiple Prager u videos so if Dennis Prager would like to understand an anti-death penalty argument I suppose he could just ask Jordan Peterson Peterson's argument also reveals a contradiction in Prague is position and it's to do with the size and role of the government we all know how Prager u feels about the government right and by the way when does the government do a good job at fixing anything bigger the government the smaller of the citizen why is the government so bad at health care the government is killing small businesses killing them with excessive taxes over-regulation and complicated compliance the worst environmental offenders have been big repressive socialist governments people in government will sell government influence for personal and political gain it's mired in bureaucracy and it's fraught with waste the more government tightens its grip the lessen economy grows so what's the solution less government not more yes the government is big bloated slow corrupt mired in red tape and regulations it's not fit to run the DMV let alone a health care system and this is the government that Dennis Prager trusts to competently decide who deserves to live and die why the same state bureaucracy that his other videos described as inefficient and corrupt is suddenly perfectly competent when it comes to sentencing the death penalty is having the power to end the lives of its citizens not the ultimate example of big government not a wonder off topic too much here but this is an example of how most of the time when people complain about the size of the government their arguments usually have very little to do with the actual size of the government in a less silly world if someone claimed to be against big government we might assume that they support things like decreasing military spending ending was demilitarizing the police reducing the number of people in prison and relevant for us here being against the death penalty if you don't trust the government and want it to be smaller you probably shouldn't also want it to have an enormous army an armed police force and power of life and death over its citizens too often though people who complain about big government love all that stuff and what they actually mean when they say big government is solely government health care and welfare programs anyway to get back on track Dennis Prager has decided to break with Prager you tradition and now totally trusts the government to judge and implement the death penalty fairly and ack he saves the number of innocent people who might be wrongly executed is infinitesimally small thanks to DNA testing and other advanced forensic tools which make executing an innocent person virtually impossible the chance of executing an innocent person is of course one of the most common and strongest arguments against the death penalty because obviously if it comes to light that someone was wrongfully imprisoned they can be let out of prison but if it comes to light that someone was wrongfully executed that's it they're dead dennis prager steps around this argument by saying our modern forensic tools make it virtually impossible to execute an innocent person but he's missing something there he's making a rather big assumption now before we get into exactly what he is missing here let's first imagine an airtight murder case let's say a husband and wife are walking down the street when they're approached by a mugger armed with a gun and in the process of robbing the couple he shoots and kills the wife the police are called and based upon the description of the criminal given to the police by the husband they pick up a suspect near the scene of the crime when they bring the suspect to the husband he says yes that's him he's the person who shot my wife the police then arrest the suspect and when they later questioned him he admits to the crime and signs a written confession saying yes I did it I'm the person who shot that woman so case closed right we have a positive identification of the murderer from a witness who was a foot away when the crime was committed and a signed written confession from the murderer saying that they did it few cases get more clear-cut than that so this case was an actual case the crime happened in May of the year 2002 tourists from Georgia that's the state not the country were staying at a Ramada Inn in Jacksonville Florida outside of their hotel they were approached by a criminal who in the process of mugging them shot and killed Mary Ann Stevens her husband James Stevens identified Brenton Butler who was picked up nearby by the police as the killer and Butler confessed to the murder during questioning however as I imagine many of you already suspect there is more to this case than meets the eye firstly the husband of the victim was mistaken in his identification of the criminal he just got the wrong guy and this is a thing that happens witnesses make mistakes particularly witnesses who were just involved in a very traumatic experience but why you might wonder did the wrong guy confess to the crime well during the trial Brenton butler alleged that the police physically abused him into confessing they allegedly again my lawyers reminding me to say physically intimidated him and hit him several times until he confessed to the crime this is all the subject of a very interesting documentary called murder on a Sunday morning which I would highly recommend if you want to know more about this case the film follows Butler's defense team to public defenders called Patrick McGuinness and Ann Fennell as they put together the case for butler's innocence and they rarely tear the police apart in the courtroom and exposed their awful and incompetence investigation which is very satisfying to watch the police for example didn't even search Brenton butler's house looking for the items he supposedly stole or interview his family members with regards to his whereabouts at the time of the crime you know you didn't have a gun you knew you didn't have a purse you knew you didn't have any money you know you didn't have a fisherman's hat right that's all right okay did you ask Brent can I go search your house your room no sir did not did you get a search warrant for his house no sir I did not you'll wanted to find a gun and a purse and bloody clothes and everything else right yes sir would have been nice so why not go search for it well we just didn't give her a tour and it's not that hard to imagine what allegedly happened here a tourist was shot and killed outside a hotel that is not a great headline for attracting more tourists to your town so there's a lot of pressure on the police to solve that particular crime very quickly and here you have an eyewitness who has already identified someone in your custody they say did the crime and that someone is a teenager who you just need to get to sign a piece of paper to put this case away quickly so you make him sign the paper allegedly and you don't go around investigating other things that you know will make the case against him weaker so you don't search his house for the stolen items that you know aren't there you don't interview potential alibis who could get him off the hook you just pin everything on the witness ID and the confession and hope that that's enough to get the case across the line so you might ask why I am talking about this particular case in a video about the death penalty Butler was too young to be given the death penalty anyway even if he was found guilty so that wouldn't apply here and even if he was found guilty the real killer was later caught when someone tipped the police off to who it was so Butler probably would have been let out anyway even if he was wrongly convicted but my point here is to show a case in which the criminal justice system or part of it in this case the police force could have a motivation to deliberately allow an innocent person to be convicted of a crime they did not commit this is what dennis prager misses when discussing investigative techniques and forensic tools because yes in many cases we do have very powerful forensic tools but you also have to be able to trust the people with those tools not to lie and also to actually use the tools I suppose what Prager leaves out is the human element the police will sometimes for example plant evidence there was a case just recently in New York where an officer was caught on camera appearing to plant drugs in a car and this is similar to a case from last year when a Florida police officer was arrested after an investigation showed he repeatedly planted meth on people during traffic stops police will sometimes take bribes from criminals they will lie in court cover-up for the crimes of other officers beat confessions out of innocent people and so on even if all cops are bastards is a little too absolutist for you you have to admit that sometimes some cops are bastards and some judges are bastards and some lawyers a lot of lawyers our bastards or incompetent or lazy or corrupt or just apathetic the accuracy of a particular investigative technique or forensic method is only one part of the calculation we have to do when determining odds of someone being innocent we also have to trust the justice system not to lie or cheat or just have made a mistake you can say DNA analysis of a piece of evidence is almost perfectly accurate but it cannot tell you whether or not that piece of evidence was planted at the scene of a crime now I'm not saying that's necessarily going to be a very common occurrence don't get me wrong but it is a possibility we have an imperfect justice system run by imperfect people no one type of evidence is ever going to be flawless even video evidence dennis prager in his video says opponents of capital punishment opposed the death penalty even when there is absolute proof of the murderers guilt if there were a video of a man burning a family alive opponents of capital punishments would still oppose taking that man's life now the implication there is that a video would be absolute proof of guilt but is it really this is a statement that's going to be less and less true over time and that's simply because technological advances mean that video is getting easier and easier to fake it is getting harder to spot videos that are authentic and videos that were created in a computer many of you will remember this video from a few years ago of a fake Barack Obama that was created in a computer using an AI video tool now the more observant folks in the audience might still be able to tell this is fake you can see something seems a little off about it right however it is already eerily similar to the real thing is it not and before long it's going to be very difficult indeed to tell the difference between authentic videos and fake videos like this one and if you were led by my prompting there to believe that this is a fake video of Barack Obama then we are already at that moment because this is not a fake videos Barack Obama this is a real video of Barack Obama I just put a real video on that the headline describing the fake one anyway me being a smartass aside while faked videos aren't a huge problem for the legal system right now as the technology gets both more advanced and easier to use it very well could be a problem in the future and even with a non fake video we can still imagine perfectly possible scenarios in which executing a man based on video evidence of him committing a crime would be a bad idea what if the man had off-screen accomplices in his crime if you kill him you've got less of a chance of finding them right what if the person doing the crime was someone who was coerced or forced into it by some other person what if someone threatened to murder his family unless he did the horrible thing on their behalf again as with a bribe to judge you're planted evidence I'm not saying that these things will be happening every day just that it is a possibility and no matter how unlikely if you execute enough people you will eventually kill an innocent person so the pro-death penalty argument has to be that killing the occasional innocent person is an acceptable risk because that risk is outweighed by the positives that come from having the death penalty so what are the positives to having the death penalty one you will often see proposed is cost why should the taxpayer pay to feed and clothe some horrible murderer who might live for another however many decades right it would be better and cheaper to just kill them outright well in practice this isn't actually true in the United States for instance it is vastly more expensive to execute people than to imprison them for life executing someone is a very complicated and slow legal process some inmates spend more than 20 years on death row before being executed it's so slow because there are various stages of review and appeal before the death penalty can actually be carried out now the obvious counter-argument to this is to say well what if we just sped that process up a little if we just executed people right after they were found guilty that massive expense would not exist right an execution would be the cheaper option and the counter-argument to this counter argument is that the slow appeal and review process exists for a very good reason if you fought my proposed scenarios a minute ago as to how an innocent person could end up being executed sounded like ridiculous million-to-one shots then what you need is a real-life example so let's talk about the rather infamous case of Timothy Evans something I imagine some of you will know about already so Timothy Evans was a Welshman who lived in London in 1949 with his wife and child and in November of 1949 he went to the police and informed them that his wife Beryl Evans had died and the story he told police was that his wife was pregnant but since the couple thought they could not support another child they had taken up the proposal of their downstairs neighbor John Christie who had offered to perform an abortion Christie apparently botched the abortion and accidentally killed Beryl Evans Christie then persuaded Timothy Evans to go and stay with relatives in Wales while he disposed of Beryl Evans body and made arrangements for a couple to look after their daughter so Timothy Evans went to Wales only to a few weeks later decide to go to the police and tell them what had happened only when he first told the story to the police he left Christie out of it saying that he himself had been the one to dispose of his wife's body and the one who arranged for his daughter to be looked after in response to this account the police searched the place where Evans said he had disposed of the body which was in a sewer drain only to find there was no body there and that lifting the drain cover would have been physically impossible for a single man so Evans when we questioned changed his story and this time included Christie stating that he had previously been trying to protect Christie by not mentioning him so Evans told the police that Christie was the one who hid the body and arranged for his daughter to be looked after in response to this new account police searched the building where both Evans and Christie lived and discovered in the wash house in the back garden the bodies of not just Beryl Evans but also her daughter with Timothy Evans both had been strangled to death when he was informed that his wife and daughter had been strangled Timothy Evans confessed to the crime or did he his questioning by the police produced a confession though he later stated in court that this confession was made because he feared being subjected to violence by the police so from the perspective of the police here a man came in and said his wife was dead and then he told them multiple contradictory accounts of how it happened most of the time he is going to be the killer however Timothy Evans was not the killer his wife and daughter were killed by John Christie there was no botched abortion or arranging for the daughter to be sent elsewhere to be looked after John Christie murdered them both because he was a serial killer the things he told Timothy Evans about what had happened where lies however John Christie was also a former war reserve police officer this coupled with the police clearly believing that Timothy Evans was obviously the killer led them to carry out an incredibly lazy investigation they know it's Timothy Evans so there's no need to investigate the crime scene all that well and we can take John Christie at his word since he used to be a copper just like us and if Timothy Evans won't confess to the crime we can just persuade him to confess to the crime if you know what I mean wink this led the police to missing that John Christie had bodies of his prior victims buried in shallow graves in his back garden so shallow that a dog was able to dig up one of the skulls and a PHY bone was later apparently found propping up his fence he also had multiple criminal convictions for theft and assault including attacking a woman with a cricket bat which was seemingly overlooked by the police because of the police's rubbish investigation and Timothy Evans temporary confession to the crime however that came about Evans was put on trial for murder on the 11th of January 1950 and was found guilty he was executed on the 9th of March less than three months later so the state executed an innocent man and this sounds like a ridiculous million to want right what if it wasn't the husband and the downstairs neighbor is actually a scheming serial killer it sounds like paranoid fiction and it is incredibly unlikely but things like this do happen and there are multiple things we should take into account regarding this case firstly it is a very good example of why it is an incredibly bad idea to execute people quickly all those slow reviews and appeals exist to catch exactly these sorts of mistakes Christie was caught three years later in 1953 for instance at which point if Timothy Evans had not already been executed he could have been let out of prison so yes the justice system could kill people faster but if you do that you're going to make more mistakes so you have to be okay with killing more innocent people in order to make the process cheaper I guess so you're basically killing innocent people for money at that point which sounds like the opposite of something the justice system should be doing next up killing an innocent person is only half the crime here because the justice system got the wrong guy the actual killer was still out there and John Christie killed four more people before he was caught Timothy Evans could have been a witness that helped to bring Christie for justice years earlier than he was instead he was wrongfully executed and Christie went on to kill again so this is my answer to the cost of the death penalty you can do it quick cheap and bad or you can do it slow and expensive the question is how many innocent people you're willing to risk accidentally killing according to the death penalty information center in the United States for instance more than 160 people on death row were later found to be wrongfully convicted and were exonerated and they're just the ones who have been found remember the actual number of wrongfully convicted people is likely much higher than that and let's look at some of the reasons for those exonerations false or misleading forensic evidence official misconduct perjury or false accusation inadequate legal defense mistaken witness I identification these supposedly very unlikely scenarios happen much more often than we might like to admit anyway the next pro-death penalty argument I want to take a look at is deterrence the death penalty is worth its various downsides it's argued because it deters crime now the big problem with this argument is that there isn't any evidence for it for instance comparing between states within the u.s. that have the death penalty in those that don't there is no positive correlation between having the death penalty and a lowered rate of crime and for countries that have abolished the death penalty there is no evidence that doing so caused the crime rate to rise so that's it for this argument right there's no evidence however leaving things there would be a bit of a mistake there is a relatively good death penalty argument to be made here with regards to deterrence and I compiled this from various sources but primarily from the pro-death penalty arguments contained within the book debating the death penalty so let's do the relatively good death penalty argument and if I appeared on camera during these videos this is the point where I'd burst through the door wearing a hat and a fake mustache and proceeded to argue with myself in character but since I'm not much of an actor we'll all just have to use our imaginations so the argument goes like this the death penalty deters crime to which the response is no it doesn't there's no evidence for that but we respond the death penalty would that crime it would had it not been so weakened there's no evidence of deterrence under our current system sure but under our current system only very small amounts of crimes are eligible for the death penalty only a very small number of those cases actually result in a death penalty sentence many of those are later overturned and the legal process between arrest and execution takes years of course that system isn't the tearing anyone because the odds of getting executed a too low it happens too slowly it's too abstract to be a good deterrent if we want the death penalty to discourage anyone it needs to be used more often faster and for a wider variety of crimes for instance will execute someone for killing one of the person in a robbery but not a banker who defrauds thousands of people or a politician who starts a war that kills hundreds of thousands now the obvious response to increased use of the death penalty as we talked about just previously is that you're gonna execute more innocent people and to that we say the state accidentally kills innocent people all the time if we build the new fire station then on a long enough time scale someone is eventually going to be hit by one of its fire trucks and killed if we build a new motorway between two cities there will inevitably be a fatal traffic accident on it the innocent people killed by the death penalty are no different to which the response is that those things provide useful societal benefits we accept the downsides because they're outweighed by the positives to which we say so will the death penalty with all the crime it will definitely deter if only you loosen up a little and start using it appropriately by which we mean a lot I like this arguments because it's at least honest about the fact that the death penalty will kill innocent people and I find the bit about the bankers particularly persuasive unfortunately it falls apart upon examination so here's why I don't agree with it the more substantial response to the accidental societal Deaf's arguments is that with regards to the potential benefits of the death penalty the burden of proof is on the people arguing for it it's easy to prove that having a fire department for instance is a good idea with obvious societal benefits if we want the death penalty to be seen in the same way it's on us to prove it with something so final as the state killing a person you can't just say it might have benefits without the evidence to back that up and faced with a lack of evidence we may as well take the course of action that is later reversible rather than the one that is permanent we can let innocent people out of prison but we can't raise the dead additionally another big problem with the deterrence argument is that it assumes a lucid murderer the sort of calculating criminals you see killing for small profits and shows like Columbo and so on in reality though not many would-be killers are sitting in front of a spreadsheet working out the odds of getting caught and the punishment they're likely to face versus the benefits of doing a murder hitmen may be but they're not actually all that common most murders are unplanned and carried out impulsively without thought for the future and for many of the worst criminals say mass killers serial killers and the likes they either fully expect to be killed by the police or themselves or they think they'll never be caught or they don't care about being caught no legal punishment is going to deter those people if we do assume a lucid calculating criminal though the sort of criminal who would think well I don't mind doing life in prison but I really don't want the death penalty then we run into a contradiction when we propose expanding the death penalty to crimes other than murder and it's a rather dangerous contradiction you see the problem is if we make the penalty for robbery say the same as for murder then are calculating criminal who just robbed someone will think well since the punishment is the same either way I may as well just murder them now because I have less chance of getting caught if the witness can't identify me on account of being dead expanding the death penalty to other crimes will turn a lot of those crimes into murders assuming are calculating criminals exist anyway hardly anyone thinks like this of course but the fact that hardly anyone thinks like this is why the deterrence argument doesn't really work most murderers aren't thinking logically about the future because most murderers aren't thinking logically if they were they probably wouldn't be murdering someone there is also a problem with the idea of expanding the death penalty to financial and corporate crimes as nice as that might sound and the problem is wealth inequality money can buy better legal representation you can say this or that crime should have the death penalty but it's still the poor who are going to be the ones receiving the majority of the death penalty's remedying that problem would take doing away with economic inequality which fun enough would definitely do a lot more to lower the crime rates than any possible punishment would do more equal societies have a lower crime rate after all anyway to loop back to Dennis Prager here he doesn't make the cost argument in his video nor does he make the deterrence arguments and that is a smart decision on his part both of those arguments are easily countered with evidence after all the death penalty is very expensive and there is no evidence of it deterring crime these are things that you can show with like statistics so Dennis Prager wisely pins his whole case for the death penalty on the one argument which is difficult to disprove with statistics which is how do you feel about it when someone does something terrible don't you feel like they should face some equally terrible consequence and what about the pain inflicted on the loved ones of those murdered for most people their suffering is immeasurably increased knowing that the person who murdered their family member or friend and who in many cases inflicted unimaginable terror is alive and being cared for of course putting the murderer to death doesn't bring back their loved one but it sure does provide some sense of justice so this is the other argument for the death penalty the closure argument the death penalty provides the victims loved ones with a sense of justice or closure or healing or so on but is this actually true now you can't speak for every victim's family and friends of course different people are going to react differently Dennis Prager uses the example of one man who wants the death penalty for the man who killed his family members for instance on the other hand it is trivial to find examples of murder victims families who oppose the death penalty for instance the organization murder victims families for Human Rights who well you know you get it from the title I imagine their family members of murder victims who oppose the death penalty and that organizations website says having all suffered a tragic loss murder victims families for human rights members have come in different ways and times to understanding that the death penalty does not help us heal and is not the way to pursue justice for victims the death penalty as a sentence does not provide closure it's not carried out for a very long time for a start someone sentenced today might not be killed until 2040 that's decades of them being alive and cared for as Dennis Prager put it and rather than providing a sense of finality it is easier to imagine a death penalty sentence giving a sense of uncertainty because it isn't a certain thing that the murderer will be executed many sentences are later changed to life imprisonment after all and remember that lengthy review and appeal process where the case is reexamined and often retried how would you imagine loved ones of murder victims are gonna feel about that particularly if they were witnesses to the crime which means they're gonna have to be directly involved in that whole process having all the details brought up over and over again and so on with a sentence of life in prison the families of victims know where they're at immediately but with the death penalty they really don't they're in four years of wondering what's actually going to happen rather than providing a sense of closure the death penalty actually delays that closure and I'd like to briefly mention a study just to back this up someone assessing the impact of the ultimate penal sanction on homicide survivors a to state comparison and let's briefly read the summary of that study numerous studies have examined the psychological ramifications that result from the murder of a loved one except for the death penalty however sparse attention has been paid to the impact of the murderous sentence on homicide survivors well being given the steadfastness of the public's opinion that the death penalty brings satisfaction and closure to survivors it is surprising that there has been no systematic inquiry directly with survivors about whether obtaining the ultimate punishment affects their healing this study used in person interviews with a randomly selected sample of survivors from four time periods to examine that totality of the ultimate penal sanction process and its longitudinal impact on their lives moreover it assessed the differential effect of two types of ups by comparing survivors experiences in Texas a death penalty state and Minnesota a life without the possibility of parole state comparing states highlights differences primarily during the post-conviction stage specifically with respect to the appeals process and in regard to survivor well-being in Minnesota survivors of adjudicate cases showed higher levels of physical psychological and behavioral health this study's findings have implications for trial strategy and policy development so at least in the case of this study it looks like the death penalty is not providing the sense of closure that people might expect it to and I'll post a link to this below in case anyone wants to read it in more detail Dennis Prager ends his video by saying that he does not understand the other side of the death penalty arguments which you know should have gone without saying really but I'd like to end today by saying that I do understand the pro-death penalty argument I understand the desire for some sense of ultimate justice with regards to the sorts of awful murder as we've been talking about I live in England where we do not have the death penalty but I imagine that if someone murdered my family or friends I would in that moment want that person to suffer every possible punishment up to and including the death penalty but that's just what I would personally want in the moment nothing would have changed with regards to anything else we've been talking about today instituting the death penalty because I wanted in the one case would set the precedent for the state to execute people for all the reasons that I might not agree with and it would reopen the door to the possibility of innocent people being wrongfully executed and that is ultimately a worse crime than me as an individual not getting what I want thanks a lot for watching folks what do you think about the death penalty be sure to scroll down to the comment box and write all of your opinions in a youtube comment which I will definitely be sure to read thanks as always to my backers over on patreon some of whom should scrolling by right now thanks to them not only for their financial support but also for all of their very useful feedback and if you'd like to help me out in making more videos like this consider having a peek at the patreon link I will leave below right that's all from me today folks I'll see you next time

Channel: Shaun

Views: 1,000,603

Rating: 4.9121122 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: L30_hfuZoQ8

Length: 40min 18sec (2418 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Brooooook]

An awful lot of emotional arguments from the "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd.

[u/Mr-Koalefant]

Watching Shaun is almost therapeutic, unlike other videos where I’ll have often leave informed but still upset from having to hear about the awful things people do and say whenever I watch Shaun I still know I’m angry at people like Prager but I don’t leave feeling angry. Just his cadence and way of arguing and explaining a point in his monotone deadpan voice is sooo idk just calming. I could listen to him for hours

[u/Chemiczny_Bogdan]

Well researched and thought out video, classic Shaun.

[u/xtfftc]

Thanks a lot for watching, folks. What do you think about the death penalty? Be sure to scroll down to the comment box and write all of your opinions in a YouTube comment, which I will definitely be sure to read.

Shaun should be in the dictionary definition of deadpan comedy.

[u/DerClogger]

Shaun is the best. I finally sat down and listened to hid Bell Curve video the other day, and it was as great as I expected.

[u/Risc_Terilia]

TW: Jordan Peterson

[u/GreekKnight3]

Shaun's bread takes a while to bake but it's always factual and delicious

[u/pokeloly]

The documentary on the Brenton Butler case mentioned in the video

[u/TheRougeSkeptic]

I always love me some Shaun.