Here's an interesting group to consider when dealing with the death penalty-the criminal's family. There was a very compelling article in a newspaper up here recently about one family's struggle with a loved one on death row.
Red Chocolate, I was going to blast you earlier, but decided not to. The point is Refman and Trader_Jorge have summed up what I feel so there is no need to be redundant. And I really don't feel like getting into a flame fest with such a "scholar" like yourself. But since you asked for my "thoughts", here goes nothing... Just because you wrote a damn research paper on this, do you think your the #1 source on this??? What a joke. Hell, you probably have no clue who Edmund Kemper, David Berkowitz, and Dahmer are. BTW - not that it matters, they are white. My whole point, which I obviously did not convey too well to someone who is so talented as yourself, is that I favor the death penalty when you have guys out there like the ones I named above killing people in the double digits. Do you understand that, Chocolate?? Whether they are white or black is something I don't care. My point of getting annoyed with you is that the discussion is going good and then you have to play the race card. Believe it or not, not all "whiteys" are out to get black people. I'm out to get people who pose a threat to people's livelihood. Since you love research so much, buddy, why don't you look up Richard Speck and try to find the story of him being in prison and having another inmate giving him a blow job while the whole time he is bragging about the "good life" he has in prison? I wonder what the families of the 8 or 9 nurses that he killed in Chicago that night thought about that?? I wonder what they would think if you thought that the death penalty was racist?? If you do that, then maybe you'll understand where I'm coming from. At any rate, it doesn't do me any good or the board to argue with someone who 1) has a chip on the shoulder 2) has tunnel vision 3) can't put two and two together How is that for "thoughts"??? Did I pass your stringent requirements, oh great scholarly one?? That is all for me...I'm out of this thread, and I advise you Red Chocolate that if you want to discuss this further with me to email me at jfyoung@charter.net.
I have not distored any facts. So it costs a little more to give those who deserve death what they deserve. The extra appeals are worth the extra money so that we try and avoid innocent death. I still say if they are PROVEN guilty and have exhausted all appeals, and the punishment for the crime commited is death. Then give it to them. If it cost more to put them to death so be it if that is what they deserve.
Manny Ramirez, Where did I say that I was the #1 expert on the death penalty? I merely said that to give myself the proper objectivity on the subject. Secondly, I never 'played the race card.' If you read the posts after Trader_Jorge's, you would have realized that his statisics were not viable in respects to our conversation. What I was saying is that a disproportionate amount of blacks are put on death row compared to white people. That is not an opinion, that is a FACT. I don't know what you're getting so worked up about.
VooDoo, You distorted the facts by saying that it costs taxpayers more to lock a person up for life than to execute them, which is not true.
What about raising the burden of proof for the death sentance from beyond a reasonable doubt to "beyond any doubt"? like Charles Ng, who video taped himself killing and torturing families
Yes he did, in fact according to the Texas Dept of Criminal Justice website it costs $32/day to house an inmate in a state run prison and $28/day to house an inmate in a vender operated prison. So that puts the yearly cost to house an inmate in Texas at somewhere between $10,220 and $11,680. The cost to house someone on Texas Death Row is $53/day or $19,345/year. As you can see, even just to house a death row inmate costs nearly twice what it costs to house other inmates. So $8-9k/year per inmate and there are currently 454 people on Death Row. That's $365,000 per year down the drain just on inmate housing so we can be "tough" on crime. Oh that's wonderful.
This is what you said first....then after I proved you wrong, you changed it to: I frankly don't know what to believe anymore. I'm not sold on the cost argument. I think we're comparing apples to oranges here. The claim has been made that it's cheaper to lock someone up for life than to execute them. I challenge this. Yes, the daily rate is higher to house someone on death row than house them in the general population, but that person also is housed for a much shorter period of time. A large percentage of the executed are in their late 20's or early 30's. Locking them up for life would increase their prison stay anywhere from 30-50 years. Yes, the court costs and lawyer costs are higher because of the greater number of appeals for people on death row, but are they large enough to cancel out the cost of housing an inmate for an additional 30-50 years? Can someone please explain this?
Well if you go by this estimate of the costs... In Texas, the Dallas Morning News concluded that a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. At $11,680/year to house a regular inmate, it'd be $584,000 for 50 years. If at 2.3 million, it's about three times the cost then you figure total costs for non-death row life time imprisonment and court costs/appeals is about $850k, give or take. So 454 inmates at $2.3 million comes to $1,044,000,000. Yes, one beeeeeeelllllllion dollars. If you just gave them life in prison it comes to 454 x 850,000= $385,900,000. That would be a savings of $658 meeeeeeeeeeeeeellion. Imagine what the state could do with an extra $658 million. Wow...
Okay, I lied about being done with this thread. I went to some sites to see if what was being posted really jived. First site, I went to was the Bureau of Justice Statistics Homicide Trends in the US: Trends by Race For the years 1976-99 combined - Black victims are greatly over represented in homicides involving arguments or drugs. Compared with the overall involvement of blacks as victims, blacks are less often the victims of sex-related homicides, homicide by poison and workplace killings. Race patterns among offenders are similar to those among victims, except that black offenders are involved in a relatively large percentage of felony-murders (nearly six out of ten). Homicide Type by Race, 1976-99 Victims Offenders White Black Other White Black Other All homicides 51.2% 46.6% 2.2% 46.5% 51.5% 2.0% Victim/ offender relationship Intimate 55.5% 42.4% 2.2% 53.3% 44.6% 2.1% Family 59.6% 38.1% 2.4% 58.2% 39.5% 2.3% Infanticide 55.5% 41.8% 2.7% 55.2% 42.1% 2.6% Eldercide 68.3% 30.1% 1.6% 54.3% 44.2% 1.5% Circumstances Felony murder 55.3% 42.0% 2.6% 39.3% 59.1% 1.5% Sex related 67.0% 30.3% 2.7% 56.6% 41.6% 1.8% Drug related 36.6% 62.5% .9% 32.4% 66.6% 1.0% Gang related 58.1% 38.4% 3.5% 56.6% 39.3% 4.1% Argument 47.8% 50.1% 2.1% 45.7% 52.2% 2.2% Workplace 85.2% 12.0% 2.8% 70.4% 26.8% 2.8% Weapon Gun homicide 47.9% 50.2% 1.9% 43.8% 54.5% 1.7% Arson 59.6% 37.6% 2.9% 54.4% 43.3% 2.3% Poison 78.3% 18.4% 3.3% 74.4% 22.8% 2.8% Multiple victims or offenders Multiple victims 64.8% 31.8% 3.5% 58.1% 38.4% 3.6% Multiple offenders 55.7% 41.6% 2.8% 46.3% 51.4% 2.3% Although slightly less true now than before, most murders are intraracial From 1976 to 1999 -- 86% of white victims were killed by whites 94% of black victims were killed by blacks While 38% of intraracial murders involve offenders under age 25, half of interracial killings involve younger perpetrators Now here is a site on the Death Penalty from the Department of Justice... Persons under sentence of death, by race 1987 1997 White 1,128 1,876 Black 813 1,406 American Indian 17 28 Asian 9 17 Other 0 8 So, if we are to believe these 2 sites, they tell us this: Blacks commit more homicides than whites by roughly 5%; however, 56.3% of the population of death row in 1997 was white where 42.2% of the population of death row in 1997 was black. Then I went to this site.... In 1997, there were 34,218,000 blacks in the US and 191,791,000 whites. What does this mean?? It means that despite being over 70% of the population in the US, whites do not commit more homicides than blacks, a race that has less than 13% of the population. Now, I am not foolish enough to say that racism doesn't exist in this country, but I think it is an exaggeration to say that the death penalty is racist in itself when one race that is in the minority is shown to commit more homicides than a race that is in the majority.
Timing-- I saw that post earlier in the thread and disagreed with its logic. I believe it is comparing apples to oranges. I believe it is comparing: The costs of a death row stay, including lawyers fees, court costs, and room and board for the inmate vs. The cost of room and board for a non-death row inmate. I think you need to add the costs of legal fees and court costs to the total for the non-death row inmates. That is where the charges get racked up -- and over the course of 50 years, there exists the possibility for many appeals, and thus many hours of lawyers fees.
If my info is wrong, then I apologize, but I got it straight from death penalty web sites and books. As for my original statement, it was misworded on my part, but what it meant to say is that a black person is a lot more likely to get sent to death row than a white person, not that 3 times more blacks were executed. That statement obviously isn't true, sorry about that.
I would be willing to bet the amount of money spent on legal defense between blacks and whites is proportionately (or close to) uneven
I understand. That's why I broke it down for Texas what it costs to house an inmate and what the article says is the difference in costs, $2.3 million being nearly 3 times the cost. If I had the figures for the other states mentioned it might be easier to tell. You also have to remember plea bargains to a life sentence, nobody plea bargains to Death Row and you don't appeal plea bargains or guilty pleas for life in prison. Death Row has an auto appeal process I believe.
Everybody who is put to death, is found guilty by our justice system. If you think the death penalty is wrong, then you have a problem with our entire justice system.
A couple of comments. I haven’t read all the posts so I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but capital punishment is widely considered not to be a deterrent. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deter.html I think DNA evidence is a great too, but it’s a tool like any other and can be misused and abused. DNA evidence has such an invincible reputation these days that if there is a match can be found people tend to stop asking questions and assume guilt. If a semi-sophisticated criminal thought enough to plant DNA evidence from another likely suspect, hair for example, would anybody question the evidence? Or would the jury just say, “This hair was found at the crime scene. 4 people in a billion would match this DNA and this guy is one of them, therefore he must be guilty.” DNA is a powerful tool, but not a foolproof tool. Coincidentally, new murder statistics were just released in Canada today. http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/020925/d020925b.htm “[In 2001] two-thirds of the 485 people accused of homicide had a criminal record, consistent with previous years. The majority of these individuals had been previously convicted of a violent offence, including four for homicide. Of these four, three had completed their prison sentence and were living in the community, and one was in a correctional institution when the homicide occurred.” So although many of the accused had records for violent crime, only 4 out of 485 had murdered before, and one of these occurred in jail. So recidivism accounts for less than 1%. Yes, this is Canada not Texas, but the trends should be at least somewhat similar I would think. Other highlights- Population of Canada – 31,000,000 Total murders in 2001 – 554 Solved homicides – 429 No. committed by family members – 183 No. committed by acquaintances – 191 No. committed by strangers – 54
University is supposed to break you out of this black and white thinking Nomar. To admit that the system is not perfect is not the same as saying the whole system is wrong.
