by Zack Beauchamp
Connecticut's House passed a bill banning the death penalty yesterday. Ari Kohen celebrates:
I watched a couple of hours of the discussion in the House yesterday and one thing was made very clear: Opponents of this bill had no argument whatsoever to back up their opposition. They told horror stories about murders in their districts; they said they believed the death penalty was a deterrent; they claimed that the death penalty was less expensive than life imprisonment; they claimed that there was no bias in capital sentencing; and they worried that life imprisonment wouldn’t actually mean life imprisonment. Most of this is just false.
Jacob Williamson compares capital punishment to solitary confinement:
[W]hilst [death] is deemed to be too ‘inhumane’ and ‘degrading’ to be an excusable punishment for any human in any circumstance, they deny the same applies to the prospect of life imprisonment alone in a windowless room for 23 hours a day with no opportunities for any form of expression or real human contact. Or, in other words, rendering your existence entirely meaningless and forcing it to extend well into the future is fine, and definitely not torture. But executing such people? That would be vile.
The Dish 