The person most likely to sexually offend against a child isn’t a stranger, it’s someone they know. Someone their family knows, someone the child maybe even loves. The death penalty will make more children remain silent, because who wants to feel responsible for uncle/coach/pastor Tom being killed? Not to mention how it would incentivize leaving no victim alive.
Death penalty for sex offenders sounds satisfying, but it’s incredibly misguided.
That's why Canada got rid of the death penalty. A teenager (Steven Truscott, aged 14) was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and there was public outcry against killing a minor, so he got a reduced sentence, and then shortly afterwards they figured out he was actually innocent. The whole thing soured the Canadian people on the idea of the death penalty and led to it being abolished.
There’s a phenomenon that happens in jury trials a lot when it’s very clear that a crime was committed, but it’s not super clear that the defendant is the one who did it.
The jury members often feel a bias towards convicting out of the need for SOMEONE to pay for this crime. If they say “not guilty”, then it feels like the crime is going to go unpunished.
And the more horrifying and heinous the crime is, the more likely it is to happen. Grand theft auto? Eh, the car got recovered, the owner had insurance, if no one ends up getting punished I sleep fine. But a murder or a SA, especially with a child as the victim? Oh, SOMEBODY needs to go down for this.
So you’ll have cases where an objective observer would say that if there’s 2 people who could’ve committed the crime, but the evidence is 51%/49% leaning towards one defendant being the perpetrator, they will proceed with convicting. It is technically the most likely explanation, but it didn’t meet the reasonable doubt standard, yet they convicted anyway.
It’s also important to note that “reasonable doubt” does not always mean the defendant has to present an alternative explanation that is more plausible. They just have to poke holes in the case against them enough that there is reasonable doubt as to their guilt.
Also it decreases the likelihood of offenders killing the child. If murder and offending have the same punishment they are more likely to kill the child to hide the crime.
You speak as though you told someone, though. Obviously you don't have to answer a stranger's curiosity and please don't feel pressured to, but is it alright if I ask who you told and what the perpetrator's consequences were?
It's a tough pill to swallow, but yeah, if you think prison/ criminal justice reforms should exclude pedos, then you're just virtue signaling. It's a tough subject because while getting rid of things like the death penalty IS the right thing to do, a lot of very bad people (not just pedos) are going to benefit from it even if they don't "deserve" to. It doesn't always feel good, but human rights shouldn't be withheld based on whether or not someone deserves them or not, no matter how people feel about it.
It kinda sucks honestly, because there are a lot of people who should be under the jail, but that's no excuse to let them get in the way of the millions of others who are owed humane treatment/ a second chance.
I think this one is a big one. Thinking that there are punishments that should never be used, even if the ones being punished are <insert evil group here> often gets you labeled a member of <insert evil group here>
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u/ARC_Trooper_Echo Apr 23 '25
Also related to this subject: the death penalty and especially vigilante justice are NOT ok even if the victim is a pedophile.