Summary
Vietnam’s High People’s Court upheld the death sentence for real estate tycoon Truong My Lan, convicted of embezzlement and bribery in a record $12 billion fraud case.
Lan can avoid execution by returning $9 billion (three-quarters of the stolen funds), potentially reducing her sentence to life imprisonment.
Her crimes caused widespread economic harm, including a bank run and $24 billion in government intervention to stabilize the financial system.
Lan has admitted guilt but prosecutors deemed her actions unprecedentedly damaging. She retains limited legal recourse through retrial procedures.
Why, though? The usual reasoning for abolishing the death penalty is the argument that we might make a mistake and mistakenly sentence innocent people to death. But what about crimes like this, where the crime is entirely on paper, fully documented, and with no risk that you’re prosecuting the wrong person?
Edit: I’m not sure why I’m getting downvoted with no replies. I’m asking an actual question here, if you disagree why not state your opinion?
I want to point out that this is already the standard for conviction. The finder of fact must find the accused to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt before convicting them. So from a legal perspective, everyone convicted of a crime already has been proven guilty to the highest possible standard. If there is any shred of doubt at all about the guilt of the accused, they’re supposed to be acquitted. It’s only possible in retrospect when new evidence emerges that exonerates the accused that it can be determined that the original guilty verdict was incorrect. You can’t really “force” this evidence to emerge with any amount of policy changes. It just happens over time.
For example, witnesses lie. Maybe five years after the fact they feel bad about lying and retract their testimony. Maybe some of the investigators assigned to the case just made up some evidence to get the accused convicted in court because they just thought there was no way he could be innocent and they just needed to cook up the evidence to get them declared guilty, and they can only admit that when the statute of limitation passes. Or maybe, three years later, a convenience store manager deleting old footage happens upon a CCTV tape giving the accused an alibi. Or maybe still, the accused was actually framed and their framers only got caught ten years later doing some other crime, and it turned out that they forged the accused’s signatures on those documents and used their computer to send those e-mails without their knowledge. I could go on.
So if your proposed standard is applied, it would not actually exclude anyone from execution because everyone who’s been convicted has already been proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
I think it’s a valid question. I wouldn’t say that the only reason for abolishing the death penalty is because we might make a mistake… that definitely factors into it, but there’s more to it.
Ask yourself what purpose does it serve to put someone to death? They’re already in jail/prison and no longer a threat to society. Deterrence? Is the death penalty any more of a deterrence than a life sentence?
The only purpose I can think of for the death penalty is that it’s for “Revenge”. It doesn’t actually fix anything in of itself. It doesn’t resolve disputes, it doesn’t really solve anything.
Because we’ve always said that we won’t make any excuses for the terror when our turn comes.
Can you expand on this?
Either you replied to the wrong comment, or you’re clearly thinking of some context that I’m not, or it’s related to some saying that I’m not familiar with.
