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More innocent people have died of terrorism than the death penalty.
Why are we so concerned on stopping the death penalty?
Group Gives Up Death Penalty Work in Frustration
By ADAM LIPTAK Published: January 4, 2010
WASHINGTON
Last fall, the American Law Ins ute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us...gewanted=print
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This sounds like it could be significant for stopping the death penalty yet-another ed-up US system, the legal system.
More innocent people have died of terrorism than the death penalty.
Why are we so concerned on stopping the death penalty?
the death penalty is an economic failure
LOL Blake
LoL The Death Penalty was formed to boost job growth.
who says that the death penalty was formed to boost job growth? you?
LOL Blake
LoL The Death Penalty was formed to boost job growth.
or are you implying that's what I'm saying?
Is there a difference between LOL and LoL?
Like you implying that the death penalty was ins uted for economic reasons.
and yes.. LoL has a smaller o.
I wasn't implying that.
ah.and yes.. LoL has a smaller o.
LoL Ignignokt
i didn't get that he was implying that at all. seems to me more like what igni inferred.
I'm surprised you're defending him.
It's pretty stupid to argue the economic merits of the death penalty since it doesn't heighten or lower its value. Nobody gives a , about that, that's like arguing the economic value of rape.
Blake is a moron, that's all.
I'm open to hearing good moral reason's why the death penalty should be eliminated.
gtown does that all the time. Whatever free association he has on your post, he thinks you posted.
just saying what i got out of the statement. i read it as he was stating that for those who claim that it is too expensive for the state to keep such prisoners alive for a lifetime that the cost of the death penalty appeals have been just as if not more costly. i just assumed this was the only economic aspect of the death penalty he could have been referring to.
Last edited by rjv; 01-04-2010 at 05:28 PM.
one of the best moral arguments against the death penalty i have ever read is by albert camus in his essay The Rebel. it is a fair argument in so much that it correctly assumes that there "once was a time where crime was put on trial. now it determines the law".
TMZ is in the house.
using that logic wouldn't we care only about stopping that which kills the most innocent people?
Sometimes you barely make sense, gtown.
I was being facetious. Paying hommage to bouton's death by statistics style in the Christopher hitchen's thread.
nice going guy.
"economic merits of the death penalty"
Whoa, this is AMERICA. EVERYTHING in monetized.
If it can't be monetized, it has no value, so Americans don't care.
I read where the average execution costs, end to end, about $1M.
At $25K/month per prisoner, $1M is only 40 months of incarceration.
So death penalty is "cost effective" and saves tax dollars (but reduces revenue to Prison Industrial Complex).
Let's Do It.
Too many people look to the death penalty as a criminal deterrent.
It's not.
It's Justice.
Is it justice when it turns out to be the wrong guy?
I can't understand why people don't use google before posting. It makes failing that much harder.
I like how "hanging and firing squad remain as alternative methods."Study: States can't afford death penalty
updated 4:04 a.m. EDT, Tue October 20, 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- At 678, California has the nation's largest death row population, yet the state has not executed anyone in four years.
But it spends more than $130 million a year on its capital punishment system -- housing and prosecuting inmates and coping with an appellate system that has kept some convicted killers waiting for an execution date since the late 1970s.
This is according to a new report that concludes that states are wasting millions on an inefficient death penalty system, diverting scarce funds from other anti-crime and law enforcement programs.
"Thirty-five states still retain the death penalty, but fewer and fewer executions are taking place every year," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "But the overall death row population has remained relatively steady. At a time of budget shortfalls nationwide, the death penalty is turning into an expensive form of life without parole."
His group commissioned the study released Tuesday.
A privately conducted poll of 500 police chiefs released with the report found the death penalty ranked last among their priorities for reducing violent crime. Only 1 percent found it to the best way to achieve that goal. Adding police officers ranked first.
The death row population in 2007, the most-recent statistic available from the Justice Department, was 3,220. It was at 2,250 two decades ago, but the numbers have not grown significantly since 2000.
Forty executions have occurred so far in 2009 in 10 states, all by lethal injection. That total is up from 37 for all of last year, but less than half of the high of 98, from 10 years ago. The Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
Ohio recently suspended lethal injections after corrections officials were forced to cancel the execution of Romell Broom last month, when a suitable vein could not be found after two hours of trying.
Virginia plans a Nov. 10 execution for John Allen Muhammad, the so-called Beltway Sniper, convicted of randomly killing 10 people in 2002 with a high-powered rifle.
The Death Penalty Information Center study found that death penalty costs can average $10 million more per year per state than life sentences. Increased costs include higher security needs and guaranteed access to an often lengthy pardon and appellate process. The group is an information resource on capital punishment, and opposes its application as unworkable, inefficient and prone to mistakes.
Florida, where two men have been put to death this year, spends an average of $24 million per execution. That average has remained consistent since 2005, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Many death penalty proponents say part of the problem is that states have added unnecessary, time-consuming delays, and have been reluctant to carry out the death penalty that their own legislatures have enacted. They say states should carry out the wishes of judges and juries that weighed evidence and imposed death on the worst murderers.
Death penalty supporters acknowledge that states outside the South have been reluctant to impose the punishment, even in the face of rising big-city crime rates.
"I think we need to build support for the death penalty and need to impose it more regularly where it is warranted," Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Sacramento, California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation told CNN earlier this year.
Having the death penalty can offer powerful incentives in plea bargaining, Scheidegger said, and could provide states with large savings in trial and incarceration costs.
His group conducted a study earlier this year comparing murder cases resolved by guilty plea with those that went to trial.
In states with the death penalty, the average county obtained sentences of at least 20 years in almost 51 percent of cases in which the defendant was charged with murder and convicted of murder or voluntary manslaughter. Those sentences were reached through a guilty plea in about 19 percent of the cases.
In states without the death penalty, sentences of at least 20 years were obtained in 40 percent of those cases, but only 5 percent were guilty pleas, about one-quarter of the number in the death penalty states.
That study relied on U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 33 large urban counties.
One example cited by Scheidegger of the plea bargaining effect involved Shaun Earl Arender. He confessed this year to the sexual assault and murder of 6-year-old Hanna Mack in Texas, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for avoiding the death penalty. Texas consistently leads the nation with the most executions.
Eleven state legislatures have considered repealing the death penalty this year. New Mexico has banned it, and Maryland has narrowed the criteria under which it can be used.
Kansas, New Hampshire and the U.S. military are the only jurisdictions that have death penalty laws but have not conducted any executions since 1976. Lethal injection is used in the vast majority of executions, but electrocution, the gas chamber, hanging and firing squad remain as alternative methods.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/20/...lty/index.html
Note to CNN: no they don't.
If a murderer is behind bars for life, then why is killing him morally better?
The cost of the death penalty is obviously a strain on tax dollars and if the moral reasoning for the death penalty cannot be proven beyond all doubt to be that much more necessary than a life sentence, then the economics of it come in to play.
I'm open to hearing good moral reasons why the death penalty is worth an extra $10 million per year per state.
Since the consensus seems to be that you are a moron and most likely a worthless troll, I doubt you have enough to justify it.
I don't know the death penalty seems like a pretty good deterent.
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