Did a quick search and didn’t see any other related threads, so here goes.
Say you have your heart set on murdering someone. You’re going to do it but you don’t particularly care who you kill. Let’s say that you’re even planning on turning yourself in right afterwards and confessing to the crime.
Taking into consideration maximum and minimum penalties, prison systems, chances of parole, and any other factors you may want to consider, what would be the absolute best state and the absolute worst state to commit your murder in?
Best meaning the state where you’ll spend the least amount of time in prison, or have the best stay in prison, or whatever you want it to mean, really. Worst, presumably, would be a state that has capital punishment and uses it regularly (probably Texas, eh?).
Note: This is purely hypothetical and NOT a needs answer fast! I am not encouraging ANYONE to commit murder, nor am I planning on any such thing!
[I ran this by a mod via PM and got permission to post this before posting it]
Good question - are you basically going for getting the experience of killing someone? Cause if you are gong to actually admit to premeditated murder - I think it is going to be a tough ride.
If you want to claim self defense, get into a bar fight - or something like that…
Looks like you might not have to go far…
Texas seems like you can get as little as five years.
But I don’t think a Texas prison would be that great. Also you could get the death penalty
I wouldn’t want to be black and charged with murder anywhere where you’d have a problem voting without ID.
You also have the whole prison gang situation to deal with - so I’d want to pick a state where that wasn’t as prevalent - which unfortunately (or I guess fortunately) I don’t know that much about.
My only source for this is a TV movie, but didn’t Ted Bundy once ask a lawyer where a murderer would have the best chance of being executed in the shortest amount of time? The answer he got was “Florida”.
If it weren’t for the confession part of the hypothetical, the death penalty would work in your favor, not against you. Once someone is found guilty and executed for your crime, the case would be closed, never to be re-opened, so you’d just have to lay low and wait a couple of years for that to happen and then you’d be scot-free.
A judge in North Carolina ruled: “A woman can murder her husband in Tennessee in cold blood before a dozen witnesses, and yet she cannot be punished or even tried for that murder.” (Explanation: A woman in North Carolina fires a bullet from a rifle over the state line into Tennessee and kills her husband. The woman never comes over into Tennessee.)
Maybe it has changed but a life sentence in Texas use to be 12.5 years hard time on good behaviour.
I think the conversion of time served for a life sentence might be the best place to look.
I was once incarcerated with a man sentenced for death in California before the repeal of the death sentence once it was repealed he was let out a year or so later served about 7 years. Might wanna look for a state that might drop the death sentence and get it in trial hoping for a repeal. It really mixes things up as there is no way to serve the sentence given in trial.
Interesting fact, the place where you are most likely to get sentenced to death is actually Delaware.Texas has a larger number of executions, but that’s with a much larger population. Delaware has far fewer murders, but a larger percentage of them result in a death penalty.
The OP, to me, becomes more interesting if the murderer attempts to avoid discovery. Then you can also look at different state’s likelyhood of arrest and enter that into the equation.
I’m not sure if this enters into the OP’s original equation or merely complicates it further, but there is probably a big difference in the jurisdictions within a state. It has to do with both the competence of the local police and the numbers of murders per capita and/or per investigator in that jurisdiction.
For instance, I once heard that at one point in time, only one in three murders in Baltimore (MD) ended up being prosecuted. Under then-mayor Martin O’Malley, they went through police comissioners at a very rapid pace, and one would infer that the department lacked effective leadership. And at the same time, they had a violent crime rate that was awful as well.
Texas would be among the worst for capital murder as the penalties are either death or life without parole, and unlike some states there is a very good chance you will be executed before you die of natural causes. However, not all murders will qualify under the capital murder statute - there have to be certain other factors in place, e.g. murder of a peace officer, murder during the commission or attempted commission of certain other felonies, murder of a child under 6, etc. Non-capital murder carries the same range of punishment as all other first degree felonies: either probation or 5 years to life in prison (enhancable to 25 to life if the person has priors), and even with a life sentence for murder the offender will be parole eligible in 30 years.
Worth noting: Texas DOES have the death penalty, but it DOESN’T offer a sentence of life without parole.
So, while a killer here risks death, he ALSO has a better chance of getting out of prison in 15-20 years than some murderers in states WITHOUT the death penalty.
In astorian’s defense, that was true until fairly recently - until 2005 Texas was the only death penalty state that didn’t have a life without parole option for capital murder, so any offender who didn’t get the death penlaty could have conceivably paroled out someday, which probably contributed to the number of death penalties juries handed out. The option of LWOP was opposed by many prosecutor’s offices, but when the Harris County DA’s office finally dropped its opposition the legislature finally added it to the statute.
