alt Hacker News> In February, Forrest was officially declared innocent, and a few months later he was granted millions of dollars in compensation from the City of Austin. In August, he turned fifty, and his mom and the patrons of the Manchaca Springs Saloon threw him a big party. Sixty friends—many of whom he didn’t even know two years ago—toasted him, hugged him, and gave him raucous high fives. You would think Forrest would, finally, be happy.
I see the argument thrown around a lot that it's unethical to impose the death penalty because it can't be reversed.
This has never made any sense to me. If you put someone in prison for 40 years, you can't reverse that either. If you spread baseless rumors about someone being a murderer, never charge him with anything, and just quietly let everyone in the state shun and despise him for 40 years...
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Millions of dollars isn't a reversal of 40 years in jail or 40 years of humiliation, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.
I think it's very obvious why your argument is incorrect. All you have to do is apply it assuming it happened to you, then you'll understand the difference.
> If you put someone in prison for 40 years, you can't reverse that either.
If I walk past you on the street and accidentally sneeze at you, I can't reverse that either. But sneezing at you is less of a harm than putting a person in prison for 40 years, which, you know, is less of a harm than murdering a person.
If someone is falsely convicted we may not be able to rewind time but we can publish their innocence widely and give them monetary compensation, and whatever portion of their life remains is returned to them.
We cannot resurrect a dead person.