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Thread: Capital Punishment Studies

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Capital Punishment Studies

    Experts Can't Figure Out If Death Penalty Deters Murder

    Ohio executed one death-row inmate yesterday and has 11 executions on the books over the next 20 months. The AP notes that could once again make the state one of the country's busiest executioners. So is all that capital punishment deterring murders there? Who knows? That's basically the finding of experts brought together to research the question on behalf of the National Research Council. NPR reports that they considered only the science, not the morality, of the death penalty, by reviewing dozens of studies on the topic.

    The committee uncovered flaw after flaw in the studies, leading it to determine that those studies should not be used to guide lawmakers. Among the issues it uncovered: The studies didn't consider how punishments like life in prison may alter the homicide rate. They also assumed that murderers are able to determine their risk of execution; "in reality, this is very difficult to do," said the committee's chair. The report, released yesterday, does say better studies can be designed—with difficulty.

    http://www.newser.com/story/144374/e...rs-murder.html
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  2. #2
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    I'm not a GW Bush fan but he was right when he said those executed can't kill again and the victims' families are safe from them!

  3. #3
    jaycube
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    Death penalties are coming to end in the whole world laws, but now the trend has been changing regularly

  4. #4
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    What?? Is english not your native language or something?

  5. #5
    Nikolai
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    It cant hurt, even if it doesnt deter everyone. But Im pretty sure it has been in the mind of at least one potential murderer who decided against murder.

  6. #6
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    A 2 percent death penalty? Capital sentences are concentrated in just a few counties, report says

    Only 2 percent of the counties in the United States have been responsible 52 percent of the executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Similarly, only 2 percent of U.S. counties are responsible for 56 percent of today’s death-row population, the report (PDF) says. Eighty percent of the counties in the U.S. currently have no one on death row. The Los Angeles Times has a story and a press release summarizes the findings.

    “Contrary to the assumption that the death penalty is widely practiced across the country,” the report says, “it is actually the domain of a small percentage of U.S. counties in a handful of states.”

    The top 10 counties among the 2 percent responsible for more than half of the nation’s death row population are: Los Angeles County, Calif.; Harris County, Texas; Philadelphia County, Pa.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; Riverside County, Calif.; Clark County, Nev.; Orange County, Calif.; Duval County, Fla.; Alameda County, Calif.; and San Diego County, Calif.

    A different set of counties executes the most inmates, likely because of differences in the appeals courts that hear the appeals, the Los Angeles Times says.

    The top 10 counties among the 2 percent of counties responsible for more than half of the executions since 1976 are: Harris County, Texas; Dallas County, Texas; Oklahoma County, Okla.; Tarrant County, Texas; Bexar County, Texas; Montgomery County, Texas; Tulsa County, Okla.; Jefferson County, Texas; St. Louis County, Mo.; and Brazos County, Texas.

    http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic...n_just_a_few_/
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  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
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    This report needs deeper analysis. Unless you compare the murder rates of all counties with the counties that institute death-penalty trials, the report is useless IMO. The way this article is written makes it appear the murder rate is uniform across all U.S. counties, but that only a single-digit minority of county prosecutors seek the death penalty in murder cases.

    In Maryland, the case was made that all state residents were paying for death-penalty trials and executions, when the far majority of death penalty cases originated in Baltimore. Maryland voters decided to end the death penalty based on economic considerations, knowing their counties had far lower murder rates. So IMO this report isn't worth the effort it took to produce it. It's only another smokescreen from the anti-DP gang. You'd think people claiming to be humane would at least tell the whole truth when making their arguments.

  8. #8
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    Florida Prosecutors Take Issue With National Death Row Report

    More than a third of the nation’s death sentences were given out in just 1 percent of counties last year —and three of the top-sentencing districts are in Florida. That’s according to a new national study. But prosecutors from one of those Florida districts say the study is misleading.

    National media have picked up the report, titled “The 2 Percent Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All.” In it, researchers at the nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center say a fifth of the nation’s counties have produced all current death row inmates.

    Death Penalty Information Center Director Richard Dieter says, “We look at some of the problems and we have been critical of the death penalty, but we don’t take a position on the death penalty itself.”

    He says the unequal application of death sentences calls into question the fairness of capital punishment. And Florida International University law professor Steven Harper agrees that’s a cause for concern.

    Harper says, “There’s a huge difference in how prosecutors seek the death penalty, what their policies and procedures are, and that leads to, again, more randomness and more arbitrary and capricious imposition of the death penalty.”

    Harper says Florida offers some good examples of randomness: “In Duval County, the prosecutor does not have written guidelines and seeks the death penalty in many more cases than the prosecutor does in Miami-Dade County.”

    The study cites Jacksonville’s county, Duval, as having one of the largest death-row populations in the country. Its three-county judicial district is also singled out for originating almost 30 percent of the state’s recent death sentences, although those counties have just 6 percent of the state’s population.

    But Jacksonvillle Assistant State Attorney Rich Mantei says,“If we’re going to have these debates, they’re probably healthy and should be encouraged, but I wish that people would be more up front about their agendas.”

    Mantei says death sentences are given for murders, and most murders happen in densely populated areas.

    “There are 67 counties in Florida. Twenty-nine of them, over the last two years, have had either one murder in them or zero murders. So right off the bat, you’re talking almost 50 percent of Florida’s counties don’t even have crimes committed in them,” he says.

    Mantei says he also disagrees that prosecutors who pursue death sentences are passing the cost on to all state taxpayers.

    “The reason they are so costly has nothing to do with the trial and the merits and the seeking of the penalty,” he says. “It is the endless state and federal appellate work for which all of us have to pay.”

    In other words, he says most of the cost of capital litigation comes after sentencing when convicts appeal.

    Bernie de la Rionda is another longtime prosecutor in Jacksonville. He says it shouldn’t matter whether state attorneys in Florida’s 20 judicial circuits each have different death-penalty guidelines because Florida law already lists death-worthy factors.

    “What did the victim have to go through?” he says. “And unfortunately in Jacksonville, I’ve had a bunch of death penalty cases in which person that was killed was killed by using a hammer, in which somebody just brutally beat the person over and over with a hammer. Those cases kind of cry out for the death penalty.”

    But some researchers say state sentencing guidelines have expanded to include a troubling number of factors deemed worthy of death. Mark Schlakman, with the Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, says it’s way past time for Florida to reexamine the entire system. Schlakman coauthored a 2006 American Bar Association report calling for Florida’s self-evaluation.

    “The Florida Bar’s Board of Governors’ call for a comprehensive review of Florida’s entire death penalty process by all branches of government: that goes to the administration of justice,” he says.

    The report cited several areas for concern, including Florida’s highest-in-the-nation number of death row exonerations – those people whose charges were dropped or they were acquitted or pardoned based on new evidence.

    http://news.wfsu.org/post/florida-pr...ath-row-report
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  9. #9
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #10
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    I think some of these statistics are wrong. How could only 33% want the DP. The last poll in Canada in 2012 put 61% in favour of reinstating the DP
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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