I don’t see how it’s more likely that those differences are causes by a lack of information than a different mindset. There’s no shortage of information in the US. Whether it’s healthcare, religion, guns, the penal system or just measurin’ stuff, Americans do it differently. They’re not short of information on metres and kilograms; they just don’t use the metric system, and on some level that makes the whole thing slightly distasteful to some Americans. I imagine telling them all how much better the metric system is will only send a lot of “amused but apathetic” over to the “fuck the metre” camp.
As I’ve said before, focusing on the current scheme and labeling it “the death penalty” in the most general way, as if it’s the ONLY way the death penalty could be administered creates a false dichotomy.
As I’ve suggested before, it could be carried out only when there’s significant evidence, and thus appeals are limited (which saves money). The commenters at Reason.com always raise this proposal
you probably shouldn’t use disbelief in global warming as evidence of “stupid americans”
There are millions of proposals to spend trillions of dollars advanced by the global warming people, and yet they’re against the one solution that their own science says would be the only way to stop global warming: going to as much nuclear power as possible and encouraging China And India to also do so. Even if we bankrupt ourselves (as is proposed we do) with stupid “green tech” investments, China and India are growing rapidly, and our reduction of emissions would be a drop in the bucket. China’s building a new coal power plant, what was it again, once every two weeks or so?
Yeah, you can why we don’t believe the global warming people
I wish you wouldn’t hijack the thread with this kind of utter garbage that doesn’t pertain either to the subject of the thread thread or to anything that anyone in it has said. And I especially wish you would refrain from putting in quotes something that neither I nor anyone else ever said.
I wasn’t implying a “lack” of information, but rather that there exists a strong undercurrent of disinformation that influences public opinion. It’s true that there are cultural factors that create a particular mindset, such as being politically far to the right of most countries, and one can argue that either way based on values. But culture doesn’t account for – and is no excuse for – believing things that are factually incorrect, like the remarkable examples about evolution or the attribution of climate change.
The preponderance of beliefs fueled by various misconceptions is the only explanation for a fundamentally broken justice system that favors lengthy incarcerations and death penalties, one that closely parallels an equally broken, cruelly unjust and stunningly inefficacious health care system that is at the same time ridiculously expensive. None of those things seem to me to be rationally supportable, and I certainly reject the notion I was replying to that the “American people” are wise enough to ignore the “cool kids” in Europe and reject the learnings of other nations. 
…[Never had my pocket picked. Been to Paris a few times, Brussels, Copenhagen - didn’t happen to me…
[/QUOTE]
There we have it-there is no crime in Europe.
A lot of good posts, but here’s another question from a recent news story I read http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/08/03/fresh-doubts-over-a-texas-execution/
Is the death penalty wrong if it means the execution of at least 1 innocent man? No doubt in the past there have been wrongful execution and death row prisoners have been exonerated while serious doubt has been casted on many others. Do we have the power and right to take away life if we cannot always be sure of guilt?
Those European countries have no judicial death penalty, they do however allow regular, non-specialist police to summarily execute people.
The UK, Norway and the Irish Republic are better, but still, even there, lethal shootings have occurred.
Since we’re in GD and not The Pit, Cite?
In many of “those European countries”, the majority of cops don’t even carry guns.
Keep in mind that innocent people will die if we don’t execute.
I am currently reading thru Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebrations of Violence by Bill James (ignore the reviews - this is an excellent book, engaging and well written even when he is mistaken). James mentions a case that can be used to counter the case to which you linked even if you assume that Willingham was innocent.
James describes the case of Gary Tison and Randy Greenawalt. Both men were in prison, serving life sentences for murder - Tison for killing a prison guard in an earlier escape attempt, and Greenawalt for the murder of two truck drivers in order to steal from them. Neither man was paroled - they escaped. During their time at liberty, they kidnapped and murdered a family of four in order to steal their car. The family consisted of a husband, his wife, their niece, and their two year old child. Tison and Greenawalt herded the family into a broken down car and shot them. When Tison noticed that the two year old was still twitching, he leaned into the window and shot the child in the head. Eight days later the pair murdered a newlywed couple on their honeymoon, also in order to steal their car.
So that’s six innocent lives lost because we did not employ the death penalty. As opposed to (perhaps) one, if you believe the NY Times when we did. So if use of the DP is morally offensive if we can find one possible example of an innocent being killed in the last forty years, is not failure to use it six times worse, since we know of six innocent lives lost, and in a case where there is no doubt at all?
One usual response is just to say that we should improve the process so that murderers never escape. Why don’t we just improve the process so that the innocent are never executed? We already have improved the appeal and evidence collection process via the introduction of tools like DNA. That seems a lot more effective and humane than clamping down on the sentences of lifers such that they never see the light of day and can therefore never escape.
Regards,
Shodan
Do I need to cite that police have used their firearms on perps and civilians?
They do not get years of trials and a defence lawyer like the people on America’s “death row” get, it’s just a on the spot decision by police.
I think European countries with routinely armed police have no moral right to criticise the USA on this matter.
No, that is irrelevant. The death penalty simply does not work. No life has been saved because a murderer was afraid of being executed. Ever. Violent people will be violent, desperate people and crazy-ass sociopaths will kill because they believe they can get away with it. The threat of capital punishment is never enough to prevent the deliberate taking of a life.
In the case of an innocent person being executed, the difference between that or having their life destroyed by a prison sentence is vanishing. But at least they have a remote chance of getting some piece of it back.
Your original post makes it sound as if cops in most European countries are as trigger happy as a Charles Bronson character, when actually my experience on the ground is that any time a cop fires his weapon in the line of duty it’s national news.
I repeat, CITE?
Is it the specific threat of being executed that does not deter murder? It appears from your line of reasoning that a murderer who does not believe he will be punished will not be deterred by the threat of life without parole, life with parole, twenty five years, or a small fine and a stern lecture. IOW no one, ever, has ever been prevented from committing murder by any law.
That seems problematic to me (as well as to others who have studied the issue), but let’s assume it is true. We then no longer need to worry about what deters and focus on what prevents. We can establish with a fair degree of certainty that the DP prevents murder more effectively than life in prison, since (cite, PDF) 1.2% of murderers go on to commit another murder within three years of their release. Whereas we see that the percentage of murderers who commit further murders within three years of their execution is approximately 0%. And as argued above, the number of innocents who die if we don’t execute murderers exceeds the number of innocents who die if we do, the most morally acceptable system is one in which we accept that, occasionally, we might execute an innocent convict rather than one in which we accept that, rather more often, innocent people will be murdered by those who should have been dead a long time ago.
And again, we ought to do what we can to minimize the mistakes. However, since both a system with the DP and one without it are going to be set up, run, and administered by human beings, they cannot be made perfect and guaranteed mistake-free. We should, therefore, choose the system that allows the lowest number of innocent deaths. I.e. we need to execute murderers whether it deters others, or not.
Regards,
Shodan
You asserted that the police are allowed to engage in summary executions, which is a very different and specific claim from just that cops have guns and sometimes use them. In what European country is it legal for police officers to engage in summary executions?
That is essentially correct. We have laws proscribing murder, with penalties attached, and yet murders occur. The laws and the punishments clearly fail to prevent deliberate homicide. It happens, and it appears to be an inevitable fact of human society. We are left to deal with the result. You appear to believe that quid pro quo is the best approach, I disagree.
large list of actual studies (not very conclusive in sum)
more recent data (pdf – link that actually works)
Two points to be made here. First, I failed to see the part where it stated that murderers go on to murder again, only that they reoffended at fairly high rates. Interestingly enough, among the stats for recidivism based on offense, it looked to me like murderers had a lower rate of reoffense than the overall average.
You toss out this 1.2% figure, while others in this thread have placed the error rate for conviction as high as 4%. A person who is wrongly convicted, however, is still an innocent victim. Whether the wrongful death occurs on the street or in an execution chamber is a distinction I cannot see, one way or the other, a wrongful death occurs. It looks like the overall rate of wrongful deaths is lower without capital punishment.
The problem appears to be recidivism itself. The '05 numbers place it slightly higher than the '94 numbers, and as high as 75% at the 5 year mark. This strongly suggests that criminal justice is a fundamentally flawed concept badly implemented. It fails to deal with offenders in sensible ways that allow them to reintegrate into society, and its overall impact on reducing crime is not evident (we cannot measure against a control, we can only guess).
If that were what you were claiming…no. I think us non-death-penalty countries can pull our attention away from “liberal pansy monthly” long enough to get that in our pretty little heads
Aha…but this…yes, for this you definitely need a cite. You are trying to say that when we do want someone killed (and everyone wants someone killed sometime right?) we don’t bother with a legal system, we just dispatch Constable Savage and his trusty service revolver.
That is what you are saying right? because I cannot fathom what other point you are trying to make. So yes, cite please.
So the UK can criticise yes? good, because I do often and will continue to do so.
Seriously though. Yours is possibly the weakest defence of the death penalty that I’ve yet to see. It amounts to a “you’re no angel yourself!” defence which is ludicrous in it’s simplicity.
Let me shock you. I, as a UK citizen can legally own a weapon and use it with deadly force and not serve a single day in jail. Yup, I can kill a man and it is perfectly fine. Of course I have to believe I’m in mortal danger but that being the case, no problem.
What I can’t do is kill someone when that danger has passed. That applies both to the police, state and the individual. Hence no death penalty and no shadowy police “assassinations”
I stated that, according to the study (this one)
On the other hand, murder is a far more serious offense than parole violation. And it is no more comforting to the family of a murder victim to say “Don’t fret, this kind of thing doesn’t happen as often as arresting burglars for more burglary” than it is comforting to say to the family of an executed innocent “this hardly ever happens, so cheer up”. IYSWIM.
We aren’t talking about conviction - we are talking about actual execution. A person wrongfully convicted and sentenced to LWOP and later released on appeal is not significantly worse off than someone who is released from death row on appeal, as the Innocence Project has accomplished.
Except, of course, for the fact that anti-DP activists seem to be less interested in moving heaven and earth to secure acquital for those in prison for life than they do those on death row. It is possible, therefore, that the anti-DP folks will lose their enthusiasm for justice if we ever eliminate the DP.
Did you read my previous post, about Tison and Greenawalt? They killed seven innocent people.
So, suppose you have a group of 1000 murderers. Two of them are Tison and Greenawalt, and another is innocent. Statistically, we expect 1.2% of these to kill again within three years. That’s twelve murders. We can send them all to prison for life, or we can execute them.
If we execute them, presumably the chance of anyone of them commiting another murder is quite low. However, one of them is innocent. If we execute them, therefore, that is one innocent death. If we don’t execute them, we can expect twelve murders. Tison and Greenawalt (both of whom were serving their sentence of life - as mentioned Tison killed a guard trying to escape, and then the two of them killed six other innocents in a subsequent escape. (We are not counting the orignal murders that got Tison and Greenawalt sent away for life, since those could not be prevented by executing them before the fact. Tison killed a policeman - he apparently had issues with authority - and I mentioned Greenawalt killed a couple of truck drivers, shooting them in the back with a rifle.)
So, we can execute them, saving seven innocent lives at the expense of one, or not execute them, thus saving one innocent life at the expense of seven.
I think I agree with you - the idea of rehabilitating murderers vs. executing them is a flawed idea. We save more lives, overall, if we execute than if we try to rehabilitate and then release - we can expect a failure rate of 1.2% or thereabouts.
Keeping also in mind that the notion of rehabilitating Tison and Greenawalt wouldn’t have prevented the seven murders even if it were going to work - they escaped. So even if we say “Let’s keep them in custody until we are sure they won’t kill anybody - that’s better than executing them” it still would have cost us seven innocent lives.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, well, go ahead and ignore the chart on the following page (9). Murderers released in '94, over the course of the study, were responsible for about 53 additional murders. Horrifying. Unless you look closer at the numbers: robbers and thugs (locked up on assault charges) were each responsible for more than five times that many murders, and the rate for car thieves was double the rate for murderers, they were re-arrested for around 227 murders in the same period. Released murderers are more likely to be re-arrested on another charge than for another murder. Killing murderers may satisfy your inner neanderthal, but it will not cut back on people getting killed by ex-cons.
That is just idiotic. Yes, I get what your point is, but the fact that I get it does not make it less idiotic.
Yes. Now continue: provide me with the stories of every person in the last 25 years who has been sentenced to not-death for murder, so I can view the Tison-Greenawalt story in proper perspective.
No, you do not. Not at all. By your standard, we should execute robbers, thugs and car thieves because they will be more likely to cause more wrongful death than murderers.
My point is that “justice” fails on the front end, where it is supposed to prevent chaos, as well as on the back end, where it is supposed to rehabilitate criminals into tolerable citizens. There is no easy fix. We must make broader social changes than simply tweaking the punishment system a little in order for the justice system to have any value. Right now, I am having my doubts that its positives even outweigh its negatives.
You rock. .