The Death Penalty is a Good Thing

[Gawd]

My_wan, your logic is greatly flawed.

[my_wan]

My_wan, your statistics are really contrived.

Another raw claim that fails to even attempt an explanations of what is "contrived". Certainly I don't know the exact number of innocent people, so plug in what you think it is and it makes no real difference. The fact is, no matter how conservative you go on the false convictions the extreme distortion of the presumed "risk" persist. Go with whatever false conviction rate you want, then compare the odds that judge is killing an innocent person compared to the average Joe's risk of being murdered.

Certainly, I don't want to see these murderers go free, and if it was actually effective at preventing murder, over and above life imprisonment, I would accept a lot higher differential. Only it's no more effective than a gang passing out death penalties to a rival gang is in preventing that rival gang from obtaining recruits. It's not effective, period.

In fact, it was also argued that killing people would be more sympathetic than to lock them up for life. So if death is preferable to the murderers than life in prison, this argument should result in life in prison being a greater deterrent than the death penalty. So, in fact, the pro death penalty arguments made here is trying to have their cake and eat it to, by calling the death penalty a lesser punishment AND a greater deterrent.

[my_wan]

My_wan, your logic is greatly flawed.

So explain....

[Gawd]

1. A person that commits a crime is likely to have committed or will committ more than one crime.

2. You don't consider homicide, assault with bodily harm, grand theft, or any other serious crimes that a person can committ.

3. You should multiply the false conviction rate by the murder rate in your flawed logic (which will still be flawed).

QED

[my_wan]

1. A person that commits a crime is likely to have committed or will committ more than one crime.

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

2. You don't consider homicide, assault with bodily harm, grand theft, or any other serious crimes that a person can committ.

A: Are you suggesting that all these crimes should also get the death penalty?
B: Your still implicitly operating under the assumption these people will get out of jail to commit these crimes. Not so, unless the innocence project, or something similar, demonstrates their innocence.

3. You should multiply the false conviction rate by the murder rate in your flawed logic (which will still be flawed).

I took similar shortcuts with my numbers
I would ONLY multiply such odds (times about 200) if I was judging "beyond a reasonable doubt", such as a jury considering guilt. But again, we are only discussing "sentencing", not guilt, as the conviction has already occurred. Thus sentencing has the choice between death or life in prison, not going free to risk any form of recidivism. Hence there is no murder or recidivism rate to multiply by, as they are in jail the rest of their life. You can NOT base your "risk" assessment on the recidivism of someone who is never getting out of jail again.

So since they are already convicted and never getting out of jail again (without demonstrable innocence), the only thing left for me to consider when choosing sentencing is, what are the odds I'm putting an innocent man to death if I choose the death penalty over life imprisonment, and how much higher is that risk than the average Joe's risk of being murdered? The answer: Something in the neighborhood of 10,000 times more likely I'm killing an innocent man than the average Joe has of being murdered, even if I prorate over a lifetime.

Now, can you offer a better explanation of what is "flawed", that doesn't implicitly depend on the presumption the criminal is going to walk free to do it again? Because that implicit assumption of recidivism is a massive flaw in your argument above.

[Trolldor]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

[Pappa]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

We should probably just find a big, mostly empty continent, teeming with venomous snakes and spiders and send all our criminals there.

[sandinista]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

lolno

[Coito ergo sum]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

We should probably just find a big, mostly empty continent, teeming with venomous snakes and spiders and send all our criminals there.

Didn't the Limeys used to call that place, "Australia?"

Limeys!

[JimC]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

At least in Australia, the number of prisoners who are in jail with life sentences (or at least 25 years +) for murder would represent a tiny proportion of the total prisoner population. Even in a country like America, abolishing the death penalty would have a miniscule effect on overcrowding in jails, especially given the length of time such prisoners spend on death row anyway. I suspect that a much more significant reduction in prison overcrowding could be produced by relatively small changes in laws relating to drug offenses.

So, the "overcrowed prisons" argument is not a good argument for those wishing to retain the death penalty.

[sandinista]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

At least in Australia, the number of prisoners who are in jail with life sentences (or at least 25 years +) for murder would represent a tiny proportion of the total prisoner population. Even in a country like America, abolishing the death penalty would have a miniscule effect on overcrowding in jails, especially given the length of time such prisoners spend on death row anyway. I suspect that a much more significant reduction in prison overcrowding could be produced by relatively small changes in laws relating to drug offenses.

So, the "overcrowed prisons" argument is not a good argument for those wishing to retain the death penalty.

I was going to point that out, but thought it was a simple enough concept that everyone (except TMH) knew that.

[Trolldor]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

At least in Australia, the number of prisoners who are in jail with life sentences (or at least 25 years +) for murder would represent a tiny proportion of the total prisoner population. Even in a country like America, abolishing the death penalty would have a miniscule effect on overcrowding in jails, especially given the length of time such prisoners spend on death row anyway. I suspect that a much more significant reduction in prison overcrowding could be produced by relatively small changes in laws relating to drug offenses.

So, the "overcrowed prisons" argument is not a good argument for those wishing to retain the death penalty.

It's more than that. You'd have an increase in incidents of crime, according to research.

[JimC]

TMH wrote:

It's more than that. You'd have an increase in incidents of crime, according to research.

If what in particular happened, or was changed? Do you mean if the death penalty were abolished in places that still have it?

(lost the connection between your over-crowding post and earlier stuff...)

[my_wan]

True, but if they spend the rest of their life in jail it's a moot point.

No, it's not. Prison over-crowding.

Prison overcrowding doesn't mean people with life without parole walk free. Need room? Turn loose the 750,000 marijuana 'only' crimes now serving time. Sometimes with longer sentences than people convicted of murder.

We have the more information about false convictions in capital crimes than any other crime category. Here is a good analysis of that information:
[pdf] http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/p ... ar_doc.pdf

A conservative estimate puts the minimum rate of false capital murder convictions at 2.3%. In 2007 Michael Risinger did a study on capital rape-murder cases involving DNA exonerations, thus essentially guaranteeing "actual" innocence, and found 3.3% of those defendants (sentenced to death) "actually" innocence.

So I was being way more than conservative using 0.5% to get my 10,000 fold increase in the odds of a judge sentencing an innocent man to death than the average Joe has of being murdered.

Now, if this number of "actually" innocent people are later found to be innocent, what percentage of "actually" innocent people do you think will ever get the evidence they need to 'prove' their innocence? Has an innocent person, once convicted, got a better chance of later proving their innocence than the odds that an innocent person is convicted in the first place? Given what I know about the way the system works, and the reversal of the presumption of innocence, I don't think so. We should be getting some better numbers on rape cases soon, at least for Virginia, as several hundred boxes containing closed rape files from 1973 through 1988 were discovered.

Fred Zaine, one single police serologist, falsified test results in at least 134 cases in West Virginia before going to Texas to do the same thing. We also have the 'Tulia scandal', 'Rampart Scandal', and the 'Dallas Sheet Rock Scandal' involving authorities framing a large number of people. The number of "framed" people that were actually guilty is unknown, but most certainly not more than 95%. Yet still, the vast majority of false convictions overall come from witness misidentification and false confessions.

The fact that I will lose no sleep over a murderer getting the death penalty does not absolve me of neglecting these innocent people.

[Trolldor]

TMH wrote:

It's more than that. You'd have an increase in incidents of crime, according to research.

If what in particular happened, or was changed? Do you mean if the death penalty were abolished in places that still have it?

(lost the connection between your over-crowding post and earlier stuff...)

Harsher sentencing - of which the death pentalty is included - decrease incidents of crime itself. More lenient sentencing has the adverse effect.

The abolition of the death penalty may increase incidents if the alternative - life in prison - is not seen as an equal deterent, resulting in a number larger than those that currently represent the present 'death row' population.

This is unlikely to be a permanent effect, but then again the death penalty in countries where it is employed has a very different psyche to those countries where it is not.