Originally posted by Snrrub
Respectfuly, I think your premise (which I have italicized) is wrong. Incarcerated individuals haven't lost any time. An individual that has been in prison for 10 years has experienced the same amount of time that a free individual has during that period. Imprisonment doesn't rob an individual of time, it merely reduces the quality of their life during that time. That loss of quality of life is something that can, in most cases, be replenished in the form of monetary compensation or something similar.
That's completely fair - I think many (even most?) people would regard time spent alive in prison as tantamount to having been robbed of that time entirely, though - or perhaps even worse, as one sees the life they had prior degrade entirely (losing your spouse, having your position within the community divvied up/filled by others, etc.). The problem with the last part of this argument is that almost every single Western legal system (for various reasons, many of them good) does not recognize a right of action to compensate someone wrongfully imprisoned unless that wrongful imprisonment was due to deliberate or knowing misconduct on the part of the state. Should this be compensable? There's a pretty good argument, I think, that it should - but of course, that would be subject to all kinds of trade-offs in return as well (which could fill a book, much less a thread).

Clearly some sort of cost-benefit analysis is required, and perhaps we can investigate this more thoroughly in a dedicated thread, but I will leave you with this reference:
That was my whole point in pointing out the weaknesses of your one-line reply earlier. I don't necessarily disagree with you. How, when, and whether to apply the death penalty is obviously an argument so delicate and multifaceted on both sides that it borders on the irresolvable. I think the idea that extreme caution need be used, or that even it ought never be used for the possibility of type I error can never be eliminated, is legitimate. I just didn't think you had such a prima facie dominating argument that you could shut Rosuav down with one line and consider it done.