Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Childrens Author

[KipWellsFan]

If the life of a human being is sacred, there are no asterisks.

 

And as for the deterrent value, I'm sure that Gacy wouldn't have been a threat to teenagers locked in a prison either.

 

Unless he had a handsome young brother who would be willing to have himself arrested...

[LowerCaseRepublican]

So you would rather a form of justice that allows monsters like John Wayne Gacy to still sit in his cell, painting his clown art, sending his perverse letters to the families of the victims.  I am pretty convinced that he was guilty.  And if you dont believe it, maybe you can figure out where the 28 bodies appeared in his crawl space.  Or the victims rings, necklaces why they were up on his dresser like a trophycase.  Some of these monsters are guilty, and some of them should be killed.  What we should do is work better on the science of forensics to help guard against evidence issues, and work on the appeals process so attorneys do not have the ability to scratch this out for decades.   

 

And as for the detterent value, I am sure that Gacy is no longer a threat to anymore teenagers.

 

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110 -- List of people freed from Death Row for the little fact of being innocent of the crime.

 

And let's get philosophical with Camus (tips hat to ChiSoxy): Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

 

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall stated: "The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment...It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant, and the underprivileged members of society."

 

A recent study of death sentences in Philadelphia found that African American defendents were almost FOUR times more likely to receive the death penalty than were people of other ethnic origins who committed similar crimes.

 

Over 80% of people executed since 1976 were convicted of killing white victims, although people of color make up more than half of all homicide victims in the US.

 

A defendant who can afford his or her own attorney is much less likely to be sentenced to die. 95% of all people sentenced to death in the US could not afford their own attorney.

 

In 1987, McCleskey v. Kemp, a Supreme Court case brought forth the famous Baldus study that revealed facts that proved the following: "(1) defendants charged with killing white victims in GA are 4.3 times as likely to be sentenced to death as defendants charged with killing blacks; (2) 6 of every 11 defendants convicted of killing a white person would not have received the death penalty if their victim had been black; and (3) cases involving black defendants and white victims are more likely to result in a death sentence than cases featuring any other racial combination of defendant and victim. This case was defeated by a 5-4 vote given the reason by Justice Powell:

"McCleskey's claim, taken to its logical conclusion, throws into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system."

 

How true. McCleskey can't be correct or else the whole system would be incorrect.

[EvilMonkey]

(2) 6 of every 11 defendants convicted of killing a white person would not have received the death penalty if their victim had been black;

And just how do you prove that? Ask all the jurors when the case was over? "Hey, juror #4! If the defendant had killed a brother instead of a cracker, would you still have wanted to fry his ass?"

[LowerCaseRepublican]

And just how do you prove that?  Ask all the jurors when the case was over?  "Hey, juror #4!  If the defendant had killed a brother instead of a cracker, would you still have wanted to fry his ass?"

 

Look up the Baldus study and read for yourself.

 

The Baldus study was actually not one study, but two sophisticated statistical analyses of more than 2,000 Georgia murder cases. What the Baldus studies showed was that, even after taking account of 39 nonracial factors, defendants charged with killing white victims were 4.3 times as likely to receive a death sentence as defendants charged with killing black victims. The capital sentencing rate for all white victim cases was almost 11 times greater than the rate for black victim cases. Blacks who killed whites were sentenced to death at nearly 22 times the rate of blacks who kill blacks, and more than 7 times the rate of whites who kill blacks. In addition, prosecutors sought the death penalty for 70 percent of black defendants with white victims, but for only 15 percent of black defendants with black victims. Keep in mind that during the period of time involved in the Baldus study only 9.2 percent of Georgia homicides involved black defendants and white victims.

[Texsox]

Its funny how you allude to the 3 strikes laws in your post as the 3 strikes for more minor felonies have been a huge factor in the dramatic drop in crime which has occured since the early 1990's.  Indeed locking up people for a long period for multiple minor offenses has the effect of serving as a strong deterrent from committing more of those offenses, but in getting them off the streets it keeps them from graduating to far more serious crimes as happens so often with repeat offenders.

 

Tex.  With reference to the death penalty.  If it was imposed in a uniform manner ( say everyone guilty of Murder 1, Rape and Child Molestation ) and the sentences were carried out swiftly ( lets say within a year at the very most ) then there would be a true deterrent effect on serious crimes.

 

Again, please describe someone who isn't murdering someone because of the punishment? There are no differences in the murder rates in states and even countries that have the death penalty and those that don't.

 

We cannot turn back death. We can release someone from a cell down the road if our justice system makes a mistake. Can anyone here honestly say our justice system is so perfect we should use it to put someone to death?

 

Money buys great defense. A lack of money buys a public defender who is willing to work for relatively low wages. We all know that justice can be bought.

 

One year Nuke? Are you elminating appeals? Shouldn't we be absolutely certain we haven't made a mistake?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Again, please describe someone who isn't murdering someone because of the punishment? There are no differences in the murder rates in states and even countries that have the death penalty and those that don't.

 

We cannot turn back death. We can release someone from a cell down the road if our justice system makes a mistake. Can anyone here honestly say our justice system is so perfect we should use it to put someone to death?

 

Money buys great defense. A lack of money buys a public defender who is willing to work for relatively low wages. We all know that justice can be bought.

 

One year Nuke? Are you elminating appeals? Shouldn't we be absolutely certain we haven't made a mistake?

 

 

Tex. You dont have to keep repeating to me that the death penalty in its current form is not a deterrent to anything. I agree. Its a joke. And you are also absolutely right that states and countries that do have it are no different than other states or countries with regard to murder rates.

 

 

Like I said in my earlier post. To create a deterrent effect the death penalty needs to be administered in a uniform fashion for serious violent crimes ( Murder 1 , rape, etc ). That way it doesn't matter how much money a guy has, he's gonna get his appointment with ol sparky if he crosses a certain line. Additionally you need to limit the number of appeals to 2 and thats all. Most of the time death row inmates spend there is spent in frivolus appeal after frivolus appeal presenting basically the same BS argument they presented before with a minor change here and there.

 

Im also not a fan of your "lets be sure" argument either. If you wanted to you could make the same argument for not even incarcerating them. "What if we're wrong???? We're gonna ruin this guys life." Im surprised criminal advocate groups haven't tried that line yet.

Edited October 31, 2005 by NUKE_CLEVELAND

[Mercy!]

And we're in such good company!

 

Death Penalty Permitted

 

Afghanistan

Antigua and Barbuda

Bahamas

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belarus

Belize

Botswana

Burundi

Cameroon

Chad

China (People's Republic)

Comoros

Congo (Democratic Republic)

Cuba

Dominica

Egypt

Equatorial Guinea

Eritrea

Ethiopia

Gabon

Ghana

Guatemala

Guinea

Guyana

India

Indonesia

Iran

Iraq

Jamaica

Japan

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Korea, North

Korea, South

Kuwait

Kyrgyzstan

Laos

Lebanon

Lesotho

Liberia

Libya

Malawi

Malaysia

Mongolia

Nigeria

Oman

Pakistan

Palestinian Authority

Philippines

Qatar

Rwanda

St. Kitts and Nevis

St. Lucia

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Saudi Arabia

Sierra Leone

Singapore

Somalia

Sudan

Swaziland

Syria

Taiwan

Tajikistan

Tanzania

Thailand

Trinidad and Tobago

Uganda

United Arab Emirates

United States

Uzbekistan

Vietnam

Yemen

Zambia

Zimbabwe

[Texsox]

Tex.  You dont have to keep repeating to me that the death penalty in its current form is not a deterrent to anything.  I agree.  Its a joke.  And you are also absolutely right that states and countries that do have it are no different than other states or countries with regard to murder rates.

Like I said in my earlier post.  To create a deterrent effect the death penalty needs to be administered in a uniform fashion for serious violent crimes ( Murder 1 , rape, etc ).  That way it doesn't matter how much money a guy has, he's gonna get his appointment with ol sparky if he crosses a certain line.  Additionally you need to limit the number of appeals to 2 and thats all.  Most of the time death row inmates spend there is spent in frivolus appeal after frivolus appeal presenting basically the same BS argument they presented before with a minor change here and there. 

 

Im also not a fan of your "lets be sure" argument either.  If you wanted to you could make the same argument for not even incarcerating them.  "What if we're wrong????  We're gonna ruin this guys life."  Im surprised criminal advocate groups haven't tried that line yet.

 

You can open the jail and let them out. You can't open a coffin and bring them back to life. It's that simple.

 

Money buys a not guilty plea. It buys reduced sentences. It buys better expert witnesses.

 

Again, describe to me the person who would not kill someone if they knew it meant the death penalty instead of life in prison? (I don't care if it is 6 months of 6 years) Who is it deterring? An angry spouse? A gang member? Someone with road rage? Co-worker on a rampage?

 

And you don't like the let's be certain before killing them? Are you certain you don't want to rethink that one? If that is really what you believe, I can't even begin to tell you how little I think you value human life. Prisons have walked free from death row through new evidence. If you have so little regard to human life to not believe that certainty is important, there is no need to continue. On one hand you bring up the innocent victims, yet value so little a process that as close as humanly possible tries to assure the state doesn't create another innocent victim.