Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate

[Arrian]

How many?

How many is "ok" to you? 1? 10? 100? 1000?

I think we've all seen the stories of people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, including capital ones, DD. I don't have a link handy to an example of the excecution of an innocent. I do not think that means it hasn't happened - I'd be shocked if it hasn't.

Aw hell, a quick google search...

http://www.prisonerlife.com/deathrow/deathrow5.cfm (old - from 2002, doesn't provide backup documentation)

There have been people on death row who have been recently exonerated (likely mainly due to DNA testing) - which is great on the one hand, but also suggests pretty stongly that innocent people have been executed in the past. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that it still happens, even with DNA testing.

-Arrian

[DirtyMartini]

So, potential murderers say to themselves in the absence of the death penalty -- "I think I'll kill this guy, the worst that can happen is that I'll go to *** you in the *** prison for life. That's not so bad, I guess I'll go ahead and kill 'im."

But with the death penalty they say -- "I'd like to kill this guy, but they might kill me after my 20 years of appeals run out, so I guess I'll just go kick my dog instead. If all I had to do was go to **** you in the *** prison for life, I'd go ahead and kill him".

Really?

[Aeson]

Dude... if they'd just do away with the death penalty we could all just shoot each other willy-nilly!

[dannubis]

Originally posted by Whoha


I'm not seeing the evidence of innocence there.

Neither of guilt now do you Sherlock. That is the whole point.

[dannubis]

Originally posted by Aeson
Dude... if they'd just do away with the death penalty we could all just shoot each other willy-nilly!

If you are joking: good one

If not: I live in a continent where the dead penalty is not administered any more. And STILL WE HAVE A LOWER MURDER RATE THAN THE US !!!

[SlowwHand]

Someone should bop you on the head.

[dannubis]

Oh, you...

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Arrian
How many is "ok" to you? 1? 10? 100? 1000?

I'll go with one innocent person who was executed. To make it easier and to go with what you wrote, limit yourself to the time period since its reintroduction.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

We did this before: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=166857

I'm too lazy to reformulate my objections, so I'll just quote myself:

I really want to understand the methodology here. Specifically,

1) How do you document murders that didn't happen?
2) How do you assign causation to fluctuations in a crime rate over time?
3) In the specific case of Illinois, they mention "additional 150 murders over four years." Addditional -- over what? Over the number of Illinois murders in an alternative reality where Illinois has the death penaly? Who wrote the study -- Harry Turtledove?

Edit: Wait a minute. I just Googled Illinois' crime rate, and it fell in 2002-2004. It did rise in 2001, but so did the murder rates in Massachusetts (no death penalty for many years) and Texas (all death penatly, all the time), so that rise can be attributed to a larger national trend.

So these guys are basically claiming to know that Illinois' murder rate could have fallen even further with the dp still in place. That kind of statement usually comes from someone sitting in front of a crystal ball or a deck of tarot cards, not a reputable academic study.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by dannubis
Neither of guilt now do you Sherlock. That is the whole point.

I think having the Soviet Premiere,several KGB operatives, etc arguing over the scope of their contribution is pretty damning.

[Ramo]

The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.

Getting a little more explicitly than Rufus to the huge glaring hole in this idea: We have nearly no clue how to model crime, even in an area as homogeneous as the US (which looks to the scope of the studies). We do know that there are pretty substantial nonlinearities in the system with respect to things like the poverty density (see the huge decrease in the crime rate during the 90's or the urban riots that started in '64 and ended in '68), the initial value of the crime rate (see the "Broken Window Theory" which Bratton implemented). So any sort of normalization of this nature is going to be ridiculously tenuous.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I'll go with one innocent person who was executed. To make it easier and to go with what you wrote, limit yourself to the time period since its reintroduction.

You know that the Innocence Project lead to the rehabilitation of a number of dp candidates which would not have had a chance without private initiative to prove their innocence that late. To claim that the system by itself would have corrected these cases would be rather bizarre.
Errors in a judicial system will always happen, and there seem to be some variables (like having or not a good lawyer, or, let's say it: race) that influence the probability of becoming victim of wrongful conviction. It's absurd to think that death penalty cases are exempted from this rule.

About the case you want: You probably know the Jesse Tafero story and think about something that disqualifies this example in your eyes, so go ahead.

[DinoDoc]

Actually no, I hadn't heard of the case before. After a quick google search, I do have one question though. Was Jesse an accomplice to Rhodes (even if he didn't handle the gun) or was he an innocent bystander?

[dannubis]

Originally posted by Whoha


I think having the Soviet Premiere,several KGB operatives, etc arguing over the scope of their contribution is pretty damning.

Still, no documents that have shown they actually did it ?

A sentence in jail, yes... DP unless you are 100 % sure, no.

[MOBIUS]

I don't see why we can't have the dp for everything.

Shoplifting? dp!

No more crime.