In 2015, Billingsley was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with 16 years suspended, after he pleaded guilty to a first-degree sex offense, court records show.
The Maryland sex offender registry shows he was released from prison in October. The registry classified him in “tier 3,” which includes the most serious charges and requires offenders to register for life.
So… wouldn’t the same thing occur for innocent people who die in prison? Nothing can ever be done to make it right. It’s the same as sentencing them to death, only much slower and more expensive.
I don’t know. I see most people against the death penalty saying that they don’t support the death penalty because of some lofty “the government has no right to kill its citizens” principle. Not really based on anything, but it ‘sounds nice’ so I guess people go for it.
It doesn’t need to be. It’s at least possible to execute people for a cheaper price than imprisoning them. We just choose not to do it.
The essential difference is the ability for new evidence to come to light that exonerates the prisoner.
Simply put, there exist a non-trivial amount of people who were wrongfully imprisoned and later freed that would be dead now if we were looser with the death penalty. Some righteous bloodlust is not more valuable than their lives.
More simply, if you were wrongfully imprisoned, you’d probably be quite thankful for how hard it is to actually apply the death penalty. It’s really that simple.