AceOfSpades wrote:
I don't remember mentioning anything about deterrence so nice strawman and I'm loving the condescending tone. I am well aware that deterrence is only effective if it is immediate and certain rather than if it is in some vague, uncertain, and distant future. This is why crooks fear armed citizens more than cops. Impulsiveness, lack of foresight, and egocentricism are very common traits among crooks, especially violent crooks so obviously the death penalty doesn't do much to deter but it will stop them from committing more crimes permanently whether it is murdering other inmates in prison, raping other inmates and contributing to spreading even more STD's than we already have these days, and calling shots from behind bars to kill people on the outside. As for the costs, I'm in favour of cutting down on the number of appeals but the justice system also has to stop relying so heavily on the testimony of filthy rats who are willing to point the finger at innocents so they don't pay the full price for what they did. The jury should also somehow notified about the fallibility and shakiness of DNA evidence as it isn't anywhere near as crystal clear as CSI makes it out to be.
I referenced deterence for two reasons.
- 1. I was anticipating your responses.
- 2. While I named names when debunking Pro-State Execution arguments, that post started off as a general rebuttal of all the Pro-Death Penalty arguments and sentiments being expressed.
And I'd really like evidence that most life-imprisoned convicted murderers are calling the shots. Maybe some gang members might get away with it, but generally I understand that murderers aren't exactly highly placed in a prison hierarchy (they're above pedophiles, for sure, who regular get the sh*t beaten out of them, for sure).
Most peer jurors are horrendously ill-equipped to judge many cases. Sophistic lawyers can generally run circles around an average jury of one's peers, many lay juries have next to zero understanding of science and a very crude understanding of formal reasoning, and furthermore tend to overestimate memory as a reliable source WAY too much (memory has proven extremely fallible when it comes to crime).
The Economist wrote:
AN EYE for an eye, or at any rate a death for a death, is the type of justice that most states still embrace. Only 14 of the 50 states have banned capital punishment. But that may change with the recession. As state governments confront huge budget deficits, eight more states have proposed an unusual measure to cut costs: eliminate the death penalty.
...
Studies show that administering the death penalty is even more expensive than keeping someone in prison for life. The intensive jury selection, trials and appeals required in capital cases can take over a decade and run up a huge tab for the state. Death row, where prisoners facing execution are kept in separate cells under intense observation, is also immensely costly.
A recent study by the Urban Institute, a think-tank, estimates that the death penalty cost Maryland’s taxpayers $186m between 1978 and 1999. According to the report, a case resulting in a death sentence cost $3m, almost $2m more than when the death penalty was not sought.
In an age of austerity, every million dollars counts. Proponents of the abolition bills describe the death penalty as an expensive programme with few benefits. There is little evidence that the death penalty deters. In fact, some of the states that most avidly execute prisoners, such as Texas and Oklahoma, have higher crime rates than states that offer only life in prison without parole. There is also the danger that innocent people may be put to death. So far, more than 130 people who had been sentenced to death have been exonerated.
http://www.economist.com/node/13279051 Skeptical Juror wrote:
I was inspired to pursue this quantification effort by a paper entitled "Estimating the Accuracy of Jury Verdicts." It was written in April of 2006 and modified one year later by Bruce Spencer.
...
The table shows that the jury convicts a factually innocent person in 5.4% of the trials, and the judge (based on his or her vote) would convict an actually innocent person in 10.5% of the trials. Those are not, however, quite the numbers we are looking for. We want to know the number of wrongful convictions per conviction, not per trial. To arrive at that number from the table, we would divide the percentage of wrongful convictions by the percentage of convictions. In the case of the jury, that's .054 / .689 = .078 = 7.8%. The corresponding number for judges is 12.9%.
Another shocking number from the table is the probability of an actually innocent person being convicted. Spencer's analysis indicates that 27% of the defendants are actually innocent of the crime for which they are charged. If those innocents face a jury, they have a 20% chance of being convicted. ( .054 / .27 = .20 ) That's bad enough. If those innocents instead elect for a bench trial, they have a 39% chance of being convicted. ( .105 / .27 = .39 )
http://www.skepticaljuror.com/2010/11/o ... apter.htmlNYT wrote:
The report, expected to be released Tuesday by the Death Penalty Information Center, says that 69 prisoners who were awaiting execution have been released since 1973. Those 69 constitute nearly one of every 100 prisoners sentenced to death, said the group, which opposes capital punishment.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/14/us/ne ... tions.html
While the source isn't impartial (the Death Penalty Info Center), it's one of the few calculations I've seen. I know that, generally, wrongful verdicts are quite common in courts, so an around 10% rate of error doesn't seem too unreasonable an estimate. And, no, I'm not willing to let that slide as an "acceptable margin of error" when it comes to fighting a "war on crime". Ruveyn talked about "friendly fire", but the real analogy is killing captured enemies who've long since be subdued.
31 Jul 2011, 4:08 pm
