Gallup Poll Suggests Continuing Strong Support For the Death Penalty in U.S.:
Gallup's latest poll on American support for the death penalty has some very interesting results.
When asked, "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?," 69% of respondents replied "yes" and 27% replied no. That matches up with results from a May Gallup poll on the morality of the death penalty: in that poll, 66% said that that the death penalty was morally acceptable, 27% said that it was morally wrong, and 5% said it depended on the circumstances.
I was particularly interested in the results of the more specific poll question on whether the death penalty was imposed too often, not often enough, or about as often as it should be. The results: 49% said it should be imposed more often, 21% said it was imposed too often already, and 26% said it was imposed about as often as it should be. (There are various ways to understand the slightly different numbers among the different questions; one possibility is that the question, "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" is interpreted by some respondents as being a preference for capital punishment for all murderers rather than just some.)
For more discussion of the poll, see Crime & Consequences and Sentencing Law & Policy.
When asked, "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?," 69% of respondents replied "yes" and 27% replied no. That matches up with results from a May Gallup poll on the morality of the death penalty: in that poll, 66% said that that the death penalty was morally acceptable, 27% said that it was morally wrong, and 5% said it depended on the circumstances.
I was particularly interested in the results of the more specific poll question on whether the death penalty was imposed too often, not often enough, or about as often as it should be. The results: 49% said it should be imposed more often, 21% said it was imposed too often already, and 26% said it was imposed about as often as it should be. (There are various ways to understand the slightly different numbers among the different questions; one possibility is that the question, "Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder?" is interpreted by some respondents as being a preference for capital punishment for all murderers rather than just some.)
For more discussion of the poll, see Crime & Consequences and Sentencing Law & Policy.
I don't think any discussion of support for the death penalty is complete absent this alternative because the effect of adding LWOP to the mix has been so consistent over time in reducing support for death.
Does "too often" mean that the respondant wants to see the death penalty used in capital cases where murder is premeditated, but not in other cases? Or does "too often" mean the respondant believes the death penalty is being applied so indiscretionately that potentially-innocent people are on death row?
And likewise for "not enough", only the other way around -- getting away with murder and such.
WL gave us the abolitionist spin, and Crime and Consequences gave us the other: "A better measure of support for current death penalty law is a question that Gallup has only asked since 2001, 'In your opinion, is the death penalty imposed -- [ROTATED: too often, about the right amount, or not often enough]?' By asking how often, rather than yes or no, this question avoids the issue of specifying a single punishment for the entire class of murders. The sum of about right and not enough represents people who support the death penalty in its present form or want it tougher, and this sum has been fairly steady at 71-77 since 2001. In the latest survey, 49% said not enough, 26% said about right, 21% said too often, and 4% had no opinion."
I think both are spin. The question being examined isn't whether death is the most preferable sentence. The question is whether people support it as one of many penalties. I.e., can it be put on the table? I prefer chocolate ice cream, but I like vanilla ice cream, too. Asking me: "Do you like vanilla ice cream?" is going to elicit a different response from: "Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream?"
You can't say, "Mike said he prefers chocolate ice cream. Therefore, he doesn't like vanilla ice cream." But that's what WL is trying to do.
C&C's point is spin because most Americans have no underlying data supporting their opinions. Asking them whether a sentence is imposed often enough when they don't know how many death sentences are imposed each year just invites uninformed speculation. Without underlying comparative data, asking a person whether he thinks "enough" people are sentenced to death each year has the same value of asking them to opine on the speed of light.
FWIW, I would think that most Americans believe the death penalty is used much more often than it is. It's in the news a lot, but in recent years only about 60-70 individuals a year have been executed.
Because they look not so much at the proportion of people on each side of an issue as the number of people who are likely to let a candidate's stand on an issue influence my vote.
To take an issue that doesn't generate too much emotion-- I would favor eliminating any Federal subsidies for growing sugar cane, and so would almost everyone. But only the sugar cane growers (and some other people whose livelihood is dependent on Louisiana sugar cane farmers) would change their vote based on a candidate's stand on this issue.
My sense is that to the extent that people regard the death penalty as a drop-dead issue (pardon the pun) it is opponents and not supporters.
I’d be curious what the comparison is between the number of people who are actually executed in the United States versus the number who are killed by someone who has already been convicted of homicide who either (a) released, (b) escaped or (c) killed someone else while in prison.
I do think the current legal system is FUBAR. I would like to see a single habeas appeal from state court to a federal Court of Capital Appeals that would review cases on a uniform basis, with further appeal only by cert to the SCOTUS.
Often, sadly, that is the case. But that doesn't validate those questions, imho. Here's my thinking. It's one think to ask: "Do you think people who murder children should be sentenced to death?" That is a moral judgment that every person is entitled to make under the usual principles of egalitarianism we follow. There is no way to quantify whether death is appropriate for child murderers. It's just guts.
Now, if we ask, "Are not/enough/too many child murderers sentenced to death each year?" we need more than guts to answer that. We need some actual data. Answering the question presupposes that we know something.
To use a different example: "Should the government provide health insurance?" is a different question from, "Are too many Americans living without health insurance?" One asks for a moral judgment; the other asks for a judgment made after some sort of quantitative analysis. If everyone, after all, had health insurance, the person would have to answer differently than if no one would have health insurance. So if no one knows how many people have health insurance/how many or what percentage of child killers are sentenced to death, no one can give an intelligible answer.
I realize, of course, that you recognize the distinction. And that your main point was that, "Well, Mike, polls ask for uninformed opinions all the time. What's the big deal here?" But I think such poll questions are so ill-designed that their results are inherently suspect - if not inherently invalid. I gave those examples to explain why I think they are invalid.
"If you support the death penalty, what do you consider an acceptable margin of error in the conviction process for capital crimes?"
Gallup used the right terminology in their question. "A person convicted of murder."
But I bet most people read "convicted of murder" and think "murderer."
Mistakes happen, they're rare and we do our best to prevent them, but they still happen.
The appropriate question is what percentage of people who support the death penalty for a "murderer" would also support the death penalty for someone who "In 95% or 98% probability committed a murder."
Like someone commenting above, I don't oppose the death penalty in principle. In fact, I actually think it ought to remain on the books in many cases.
But strictly talking about enforcement of the death penalty, I think there are three things that ought to be balanced.
1. the outside benefit of the death penalty, deterrence etc. (if you have one that's never enforced and everyone knows it's never enforced, it loses effect)
2. The cost of enforcing the death penalty. (is anyone going to disagree that individuals convicted deserve every chance to appeal they can?)
3. The potential probability of a mistake in the system as a whole.
If the concern is innocent people dying, let's make it the number of innocent who are executed. As far as a) I think that the danger of releasing convicted murderers has a solution short of killing them. I would look at the number of wrongful executions vs the number of people killed either in prison by someone worthy of the death penalty (though not those cases where the victim was also worthy of the death penalty) or by an escapee worthy of the death penalty.
Personally I don't think that you can give the deaths on both sides of the equation equal weight, since that would seem to endorse any policy that killed innocents in an attempt to prevent the death of a greater number of innocents.
It's not that simple. Some opinions are more valid than others. For example, in a democratic country, I think everyone is entitled to make certain moral judgments, e.g., that the death penalty is a just punishment.
On the other end are things we can quantify, e.g., the percentage of killers who are sentenced to death. If a person does not know the % of killers sentenced to death, then that person's opinion is per se invalid. That seems an easy conclusion to reach.
The gray area comes when discussing things that aren't quantifiable, but that require more than guts to answer. For example, "Is Global Warming caused by humans?" You can't give any numbers there. And you would actually need to study the science to reach an informed opinion. Answering that question with your guts would be reckless. But in democratic system, I think you have to recognize even uninformed opinions as somewhat valid. The alternative, being ruled by people like Al Gore, is less attractive than letting the hoi poi have their opinions.
Thus, my problem is with polls that compare actual numbers. If you don't know the numbers, you can't draw any comparisons. Thus, your opinion on such matters is invalid.
Mistakes happen. Whether they are rare or not is unclear, depending in part on your dfeinition of "rare." I don't think we do our best to prevent them, if by "do our best" you mean make sure that a capital defendant has access to the resources and information needed to to defend himself.
Like many, I do not oppose the death penalty in principle, but have grave reservations as to its application in the US.
Would it be appropriate to then follow-up with a question that includes the number of people on death row who were exonerated or taken off of death row for procedural or legal infirimities, and then ask the same question again?
I don't know the answer here -- I am certainly not a pollster. I know that most pollsters ask questions that, when related back in a vaccuum, appear to indicate a strong public position for a certain policy. Push-polling is the classic example of this. So what would be a fair and illuminative poll question on this matter?
As a matter of disclosure, I believe that the death penalty is not unconstitutional, but we'd be better off with LWOP instead. For me, the "should there be more executions" questions pretty much misses the real point.
Except when people like Al Gore are wrong. One thing about the "hoi poi," as you call them, is that public opinion can change quickly when evidence is revealed, while elitist opinion is slow, or impossible, to change regardless of the evidence. After all, you still have Paul Ehrlich trying to defend statements he made in "The Population Bomb." A genius indeed.
I suppose I've fallen prey to the same uninformed speculation that people are talking about the pollees making.
I really have no idea what the error rate in convictions is, nor am I sure there's any way to determine the true error rate.
Mainly I was basing it off my own personal perception that most prosecutors won't continue the prosecution of someone they believe to be innocent. But of course ego plays a role there and that's a problem even in non-capital cases.
That is a fair and frequently asked question. I have repeatedly read statements by proponents of the death penalty that there has never been even one proven case of an innocent person being executed. Earlier this year they exhumed the body of a person who was executed and had sworn he was innocent even at the last second. He seemed so believable that his cause was championed by many in the clergy. After exhumation his DNA matched that found on the victim. The snide comment made was it was shocking that a murderer would actually lie.
Except that public opinion can also be static in the face of overwhelming evidence. (See, e.g., the public's long-held belief that the US spends orders of magnitude more money on foreign aid than it actually does.)
And Rick Perry skews the data considerably:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=1666
I oppose the death penalty on principle, and often vote for candidates who do not agree. The abolitionist position requires political courage, which is in short supply on a whole range of issues.
Do you think citizens who express reluctance to impose the death penalty should be excluded from the jury in death penalty cases?
Death qualification has always struck me as the biggest travesty in our death-penalty jurisprudence, and I'd be genuinely curious to know whether the public supports it.
The death penatly, for me, is only morally and ethically defensible as a State sanctioned punishment if the following two simple criteria can be met: 1) 100% accurate conviction rate (i.e, no wrongful convictions, ever) 2) the death penatly is shown to be a crime deterrent.
If one or the other cannot be met, it is morally and ethically indefensible to rely on a death penatly regime. Thus far, as the innocence project demonstrates a few times a yr, number 1 above is not met. Regardless, even if scientific and medical/DNA technologies made 1 above a reality (which is doubtful- - humans can always tamper with evidence) if the death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime, then we have to ask what is the goal being served by keeping it? Is it revenge? Eye for an eye? For the sake of the crime victim's family? Because we have had it for hundreds of years and we dont want to change? Because polls show people favor it for certain crimes and politicians will whore themselves out for the "tough on crime" votes?
I have seen little evidence that the death penatly is a meaningful deterrent for any violent crimes, but am open for alternative evidence. If it does not deter violent crime, whats the point of keeping it? What end does it serve that mandatory life without possibility of parole (a delayed death sentence in itself) cannot?
Why do you single out the death penalty? Most people would concede that the death penalty is applied considerably more carefully and fairly than any other penalty, including life imprisonment. If careless, unfair application of punishment is really your beef, then wouldn't virtually any target other than the death penalty be more appropriate?
Americans are surprisingly conservative on most issues when the poll wording is properly done and ignorance is eliminated with filter questions. Based on polling data the current Democrat party would be as much history as the Know-Nothings and Whigs were it not for a lingering and misplaced party loyalty and MSM imposed ignorance.
I think murders by persons who were released from prison are very rare. In the past 43 years I can recall only one case where a person sentenced to LWOP in Iowa was released (they were able to prove misconduct on the part of the prosecution) who then killed another person.
Escapes by persons serving LWOP are not very common most escapes are walk-aways from residential work release facilities. Much to the embarrassment of the Iowa DOC two lifers escaped last year who were quickly recaptured. Escapes by lifers are possible but on a national scale they are rare.
The prison homicide rate in 1980 was 54 per 100,000 prisoners and today it is about 4 per 100,000 prisoners and it has been that low for more than ten years. They give data about victims of homicide but they don't provide any particulars about the perpetrator. I think it is safe to say that the number of persons executed is larger than the number killed by persons who had a previous conviction for a homicide. OTOH a substantial fraction of persons serving a LWOP sentence had a prior incarceration.
If the policy is not to parole persons who are a threat to public safety they are released on expiration of sentence unsupervised and nobody has the responsibility to protect their potential victims . There have been cases where the prisoner was released and went to the home of the victim and killed them (usually a wife or ex-wife). In my view this is a much larger risk than that posed by lifers.
I think it depends on what is meant by “reluctance.” If by “reluctance” you mean “cautious” or even “overly cautious” such as the case of a juror who is going to examine and double-check every element in the guidelines before supporting a death sentence and would probably err on the side of not imposing it, then I’d say it probably isn’t grounds for excluding them.
If on the other hand, if you have someone who is so strongly opposed to the death penalty that they will not impose it regardless of the instructions they receive from the judge, then I’d say such a person is probably unable to fulfill their oath (much like the supporters of “jury nullification”) and a judge should probably excuse them.
Kevin. From time to time, people will claim, based on various statistical techniques, that the DP reduces the number of murders.
For the sake of argument, let's assume you are convinced that is true. You would then accept the DP as legitimate?
We execute a LOT of people in Texas, compared to any other state. We tend to execute a lot of the fringe cases (young when they committed the crime, mentally retarded, represented by a sleeping lawyer, etc).
As a Texan, I'd more supportive of the death penalty as practiced in other states than in my own.
Add in elected judges -- I'm really sick of seeing people running for a judicial position on the strength of how eager they are to execute criminals. ("Tough on crime", here in Texas, means you're all for frying everyone convicted of more than jaywalking).
The problem isn't so much prosecutors pursuing people they believe are innocent. Though I'm sure that happens in extremely rare cases in capital crimes, I believe it's rare. The problem is that prosecutors who have already had someone jailed for 7 or 10 or 20 years are extremely hard to convince otherwise. The common answer when new DNA evidence proves that the DNA on the victim's body (or under the victim's fingernails or whatever) is not the person convicted is that they must have been an accomplice.
True. But if applied wrongly, the death penalty cannot be corrected later. Someone convicted wrongly and given LWOP can be exonerated later.
Temp Guest: "She found that if you analyzed poll results based on the wording of the question about 80% of Americans polled opposed abortion on demand with no restrictions, i.e., opposed the current interpretation of Roe v. Wade."
No, neither Roe v. Wade nor the current interpretation of it has allowed unrestricted abortion on demand. Roe made the pregnancy a sliding scale, from "woman's choice" to "government's interest in preservation of life," over the course of time. The later the pregnancy has progressed, the more restrictions are allowed.
Here is another potential problem with how that question was worded. Is it refering to the actual number of convicts who are given the death penalty? Or is it refering to the the time frame in which death row inmates are actually executed? I am generally comfortable with the amount of people who are actually given the death penalty, given what their underlying crimes were and the amount of evidence to support their conviction. However, I think the process between the sentence and the actual execution is far too long. In that sense, I would definitely like to see it "imposed more often".
JDB: A question with the exact same kinds of polling problems as the one under discussion. What are people "counting" as foreign aid? For example, when US citizens saw television images of a US aircraft carrier and thousands of US military personnel providing relief to tsunami victims, how many of them said "oh, right, defense budget -- I should keep that in mind in case a pollster calls" versus the number who filed it away under the "foreign aid" folder tab?
The prison homicide rate in 1980 was 54 per 100,000 prisoners and today it is about 4 per 100,000 prisoners and it has been that low for more than ten years.
John: What is the difference in the per-capita incarceration rate between 1980 and 1990-present, and is any of that decline in prisoner homicides explainable by an increase in the number of non-violent offenders incarcerated (e.g., minor drug crimes), rather than a reduced likelihood of a violent inmate committing murder?
True enough. Yet I claim that the entire application of any lesser punishment--including LWOP, and taking into account all post-conviction exonerations--is still less fair and careful than the application of the death penalty. Do you disagree? And if not, why do you focus on the death penalty rather than other, less fairly, less carefully applied punishments?
The presence of other more pressing disparities may be an argument against spending more scarce resources on the death penalty, but it's hardly an argument in favor of the death penalty.
Why do you assume that I am singling it out? The post is about capital punishment, so I commented on capital punishment.
93% said the morality of the death penalty doesn't depend on the circumstances.
I can understand the 27% who say it is always wrong, but are the 66% who think it is always right regardless of circumstances (or if the May question was similar to the latest poll, always right for those convicted of murder) even thinking?
There's a little bit of circularity or question begging or inclarity, since it's not clear which homicides are included in the "murder" that these hypothetical people have been convicted of. I don't think it's universal across states, Murder-1 certainly isn't.
I don't buy (2), which suggests that killing people is a good idea if we can get good results thereby. Let's leave that one to wars.
A criminal should be executed where his murder is sufficiently heinous that we can't understand how he couldn've done it and thus have no idea how he could ever be rehabilitated. (This is not of course the legal standard, it's the Anderson Standard, which of course is far superior.) Like, say, the BTK killer -- how's he ever going to be let out? He's not. I would've voted for his execution.
(How this theory applies to other crimes, say pedophilia, I leave as an exercise to the reader.)
That's true--but then, the person who complained about the careless, unfair application of the death penalty insisted that he/she had no objection to the death penalty in principle--just with its careless, unfair application. Hence I didn't feel any need to defend the death penalty in general--just the fairness and care with which it's applied. I did so by pointing out that the death penalty actually compares favorably with other punishments whose application was implicitly conceded to be acceptably fair and careful.
Mind you, even if the objection had been to the death penalty in general, rather than to its application, I would likely have used essentially the same counterargument. Critiques of the death penalty almost always apply similarly to any other punishment, and are specifically targeted at the death penalty only because it's the most severe punishment currently being administered. I have every confidence that if it were abolished, then the same arguments would be trotted out against LWOP, or whatever became the new "ultimate penalty".
In fact, that's exactly what happened in Canada. As soon as the death penalty was abolished for good in 1987, the replacement (life imprisonment, with a 25-year minimum sentence before parole) immediately came under attack, and the Supreme Court soon mandated a special parole hearing after fifteen years in jail. And why not? Whatever argument you can make against the death penalty can also be made against life imprisonment, or a 25-year term, or a $50 fine.
Once you recoil from the ugly necessity of harsh punishment, any punishment starts looking unacceptably severe.
At least then we could point to a specific beneficial (to society at large) aspect of keeping the death penalty. Lord knows it ain't cheaper! It only applies to those we are 100% positive committed the predicate offense and it has the added benefit of reducing the number of violent crimes to society overall.
Of course, in the real world, there never will be 100% accurate conviction rate - (confessions are made up or extracted by force, DNA evidence is tampered with or just ignored, cops/prosecutors/medical examiners sometimes just lie, eye witness testimony is not as reliable as we think, juries are sometimes just racist or lazy or misinformed, public defenders sometimes provide ineffective assistance, or are too overworked so dont care, whatever). So to answer your question, Yes, I am for the death penatly if and only if the two conditions specified are met. Given that these two conditions will likely never be met in conjunction, i am effectively against the death penatly for all intents and purposes.
I am still curious though, what if we were to assume the opposite and take as fact that the death penalty does not deter violent crime. If we assume that, what then does a defense of the death penalty rest upon? And more importantly, could the answer to that question, (whatever the answer might be) ever justify the taking of an innocent person's life by the State?
I assume for purposes of my argument, rather safely I think, that errors are and will continue to be made - that the criminal justice system is at present overtaxed and that humans, which are a necessary componet at all stages of the current system, are fallible and will make mistakes and innocent people will die at the hands of the State. If we assume that, and we asusme the death penalty does not work as a deterrent, what is an acceptable number of innocent executions that can be tolerated before the other purposes behind the death penalty are seen as insufficient when weighed against the ramifications of state sponsored killings of innocent citizens??
No offense, but on a blog that is purportedly libertarian and hence distrustful of State power I am surprised that more people are not asking for the abolishment of the ultimate symbol of State power - the power to take our life. *this last paragraph was not addressed to you but to the general tone of most comments*
As far as the death penalty I could be made to support it IF it was deployed in a manner that actually achieved important deterrence ends not as it is now where it is mostly a punitive measure. Maybe there is some positive effect from applying the death penalty to people who kill police officers but I would want to see some studies.
Where I think there is a good case for the death penalty is in prison violence. There is a horrible problem of prison rape and even murder but it is difficult to stop exactly because the offenders often are immune to normal punishment. Given that often these murders are caught on video we could make a law that says any murder committed in a prison and caught on video automatically gets the death penalty.
Any application of the death penalty to prisons has to be more or less automatic (with the jury allowed to overrule it but don't have to recommend it) otherwise deterrence will be underminded by the jury taking into account the likability and so forth of the defendant and the sympatheticness of the victim. Given prison victims are almost always convict I think it would be unlikely for juries to apply the death penalty enough to create real deterrence.
I am also half-tempted to support the death penalty for littering, because it's hard to deter and it drives me CRAZY!
My Crim Pro professor (big ACLU guy who seemed determined to convince his students that they weren’t entirely evil) actually tried to make an argument that he was being tougher than supporters of capital punishment (about half the class) by supporting life without the possibility of parole and asked us why we didn’t support that as an alternative.
I told him (amazing how free you feel to speak when you have an anonymous exam number rather than a name on your final) that frankly the reason we didn’t support it is because we didn’t believe the people who said that we’d replace it with LWOPP and that if the day would ever come that capital punishment were abolished in the United States, the same people who pushed for ending the death penalty would then try to do the same to LWOPP.
The fact is that the arguments against death penalty can just as easily be made against LWOPP with the sole exception that the death penalty has a finality to it which means the possibility of endless reviews, hearings, motions, and lawsuits. Think the death penalty is expensive now? Wait until LWOPP gets the same level of review as capital cases and capital cases will start to look cheap by comparison.
First, I'm not sure who implicitly conceded that other sentencing disparities are acceptable. There are many aspects of the criminal justice system that I would like to change, several of which I think are higher priorities than the death penalty -- but I still oppose the death penalty.
Second, the acceptable level of unfairness depends on the severity of the punishment and the alternatives that are available. What is acceptable in traffic court isn't acceptable in a robbery trial, and what is acceptable in a robbery trial isn't acceptable in a capital case. And while by all accounts the death penalty can be eliminated at a relatively small cost (many would argue at no cost at all) to public safety, prison cannot. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable to oppose the death penalty on fairness grounds while accepting a similar level of unfairness in non-capital sentencing.
To say that "[o]nce you recoil from the ugly necessity of harsh punishment, any punishment starts looking unacceptably severe" completely begs the question. The question being whether the death penalty is necessary.
The proposition that LWOP is a worse punishment than the death penalty seems pretty obvious to me. I think Manson is worse off suffering in prison for 40+ years before he dies rather than him dying back in the '70s. And, incredibly, it's cheaper for us this way as well. Win-win, really.
Another sign of the sickness - the DOJ is hiring in SF and looking for "capital litigation experience" in CHIP Unit lawyers. CHIP means Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property. I kid you not. USAJOBS Control Number 992478.
We train our prosecutors to want capital cases, to make their resumes shine. Want to move from a state job to an AUSA spot? Move from Indiana to SF? Get some capital case experience - and DOJ is not looking for experience in capital defense work, I suspect. The sort of optional pre-meditated killing, of the sort condoned in Texas for failure to get to court by 5PM, is simply wrong from a Kantian perspective (using dead bodies as stepping stones to AUSA jobs or to get to the golf course by 5:30 PM).
Outside a true self-defense or defense of other context, killing to draw a paycheck as a sanctimonious prick of a TX judge or to get an AUSA job is immoral and properly abolished.
I think you are confusing deterrence with prevention. For example, your point seems to be that if the convicted murderers would have been executed the first time instead of released, they couldnt have killed again saving that 17% of victims. The deterrent effect most people speak of in the criminal justice/punishment context is the deterrent effect on the criminal when choosing between two possible courses of action: A or B, where one course, A, can lead to a possible death sentence and where B does not. If the criminal decides not to choose A because of the existence of the death penalty, we would say the DP had a deterrent effect.
Under your analysis, merely not releasing the criminal, such as with life without parole, would be just as effective at saving that 17% of lives, and we could make the same argument that LWP "has a very deterrent effect, to the tune of saving several thousands lives a yr." At the same time, you seem to assume that the death penalty would or could have been imposed on those who were released that would have prevented the second killings. I am aware of no State that executes for manslaughter convictions, or even for most murders wherein there are not aggravating circumstances.
I guess if we simply executed all criminals, recidivsm rates would plummet to zero and we could point out the magical deterrent effect our punishment policy has on crime rates :)
Eugene "Slippery Slope" Volokh, call your office...
This comes from their lawyers. At the trial level, most defendants don't get it - they think death is the worst possible outcome. Once they're actually on Death Row, they realize they're better off than guys who got LWOP because they get an automatic appeal, new counsel, and years of hope. (And I do mean years.) The worst outcome for guys on Death Row is reversal of the penalty only and affirmation of the conviction, because then they're in prison for good, with no further appeal. Some guys even try to prevent their appellate lawyers from raising penalty-phase issues at all for that reason and insist that they concentrate on guilt-phase only.
And to Mike&, I wasn't giving the "abolitionist spin." I was commenting on the results of numerous polls in the past, which show that the percentage of people expressing support for death goes down when the alternative of LWOP is made part of the question.
That doesn't mean that there isn't strong support for death; it only means that some percentage of the people who are willing to support the death penalty prefer LWOP when it's offered as an alternative.
It's not that uncommon for people to think LWOP is the harsher penalty, either. I've seen it come up in voir dire over and over. So without an additional question asking what the poll respondents view as the "tulimate penalty," we can't know whether the people whose support for death wanes when they're given the LWOP option are being merciful or even tougher.
I'm not confusing deterrence with prevention. I'm simply pointing out that a serious argument can be made from a pro-Capital Punishment perspective that there is an immediate tangible benefit, above the deterrent effect, to be had from any reasonable application of the Death Penalty. Too often people approach the DP/LWOP debate from the perspective that no one can determine the deterrent effect of the death penalty. Some go so far as to say it has no deterrent effect at all. I'd like to point out that if one looks at a chart of homicide rates per 100,000 (located here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/hmrt.htm) you'll notice that there's a huge increase in homicides corresponding to the declining use of the Death Penalty in the late 60's and becoming more pronounced following the SCOTUS's moratorium on it's use entirely. From 1976 to 1984 only 10 people were executed in the entire United States. Note also that as the death penalty became more commonly used in the late 80's and early 90's, the homicide rates dropped to pre-Death Penalty levels. One can attribute that in part, to the very real benefit of reducing subsequent homicides due to recidivism. However there's no denying that a majority of that drop is due to the deterrent effect of the Death Penalty itself. Put simply, bad guys don't want to die and LWOP, as bad as it is, ain't death.
Also you err in your conclusion that not releasing the criminal would be just as effective when it came to reducing homicides due to recidivism. The fact is that those retained within the system would still have a population to prey upon, each other. Inmates killing other inmates and corrections officers happens even now, imagine if we started increasing the dead-ender population by 60+ inmates every year. We don't have enough space to house them now, and prison overcrowding is already blamed for much of the violence in high security facilities. Adding another 60+ dead enders to the roles would only exacerbate the problem. So while some lives would be saved, I gather it would be somewhat less than the 17% that one would save through use of the DP in the first place. Although from one perspective, as long as the cons are only killing other cons it could be considered a wash.
Also, you are correct in that the numbers I am citing are for both non-negligent manslaughter and murder. It should be noted that non-negligent manslaughter accounts for about a third of all homicides. It should also be noted that even if one were to remove those numbers from the calculation the impact is still sizeable.
Also, I'm not actually recommending we execute everyone convicted of manslaughter and above, I'm certainly not advocating that we simply execute all criminals, that's a strawman of a different color. I'm simply pointing out the statistical rate of recidivism among felons convicted of non-negligent manslaughter and murder and it's not so insignificant impact on innocent people. I'd also like to point out that there is an inherent fallacy in the LWOP argument, and that is that it assumes the felon will accept the sentence and sit quietly in their cell until they die. That is hardly the way it goes. Most inmates fight to get their sentences appealed, and while I am unsure of the numbers, if even 1 in 100 with a life sentence succeeds then that means that the LWOP approach would effectively release back into society 3 times as many murderers as the Death Penalty dealt with last year, and at least 1 in 6 of those released back into society will eventually kill again.
The Candian Supreme Court had nothing to do with this. Parliament mandates these hearings in s. 745.6 of the Criminal Code.
Now that we have two sources for the origin of the attack on LWOP, let's think about it.
There is an attack on the LWOP right after the DP went away. That's the important thing. It demonstrates that, unless Canada is very different from the US,we will see a similar attack on the LWOP instantly the DP is ended.
And the voters know it.
Where in Canada the impulse for such a change manifests itself is interesting, but arguing where it is manifest does not obscure the fact--unfortunately for some--that the impulse actually exists and is a lesson for us.
Anyway, if you "see a similar attack on" the sentence that replaces the death sentence in the US as we saw in Canada, the result will be that you'll have essentially the same punishment 20 years from now, with some proposals to toughen sentences which aren't passed because of a lack of interest.
I appreciate the response - but I will admit i am rather skeptical at the raw data. For instance, homicide rates may have just as big a correlation with how the economy is doing than whether or not the death penalty exists. Or maybe we could tie the murder rate to which party controls congress - the idea being that some Congress' relax gun restrictions, thus giving gang bangers access to more guns (i dont believe this, just saying its just as possible). In other words, the raw numbers of murders each yr could be related to existence or non existence of the death penalty, or it could be completely independent, each case have its own particular facts, each region of the country its own reasons and each city or neighborhood or gang could have their own reasons for either increasing or decreasing violence. Its all rather speculative to me and necessarily relies on a multitude of factors, the existence or non-existence of the death penatly perhaps one of those factors.
What is equally speculative to me - is the idea that someone who is about to murder someone else will stop and ask themselves whether or not this is the type of crime for which they could be sent to death and then change their behavior accordingly. When i think deterrence, I think of what effect it has on behavior. Does the gangbanger doing a drive by at a crowded intersection think that if he hits two or more people he will be sent to death? Do these idiots even consider the possibility of themselves being caught - let alone executed? Tough questions - i happen to think not - but more importantly, the fact that the system itself is damaged and some innocent person could be executed is enough for me to reach the conclusion that it is morally indefensible as a State sponsored punishment.
Sometimes in these comments I find a real gem.
Thanks, NaG.
AP MIAMI — "A Florida man who left a 5-year-old girl to be eaten alive by alligators and tried to kill her mother was sentenced to death Monday.
Prosecutors said Harrel Franklin Braddy, 58, attacked Shandelle Maycock and daughter Quatisha after he was released early from prison in another case for good behavior. He tossed Maycock in his car trunk in 1998, drove her to a remote sugarcane field and choked her to unconsciousness.
Braddy then drove the girl to a part of the Everglades known as Alligator Alley and dropped her in the water beside the road, prosecutors said. Authorities found the girl's body two days later, her left arm missing and her skull crushed.
Maycock woke up bleeding and disoriented, and survived.
Wrong. I'd love to see this.
In fact, I'd love to see it applied to corruption by politicians and government employees generally, not just police.
I referred to the Canada abolishing the death penalty "for good" in 1987. The first abolition was in 1976, but it was extremely unpopular, and widely assumed to be headed for a reversal the next time Parliament took up the issue. A second vote was in fact held in 1987, and to the surprise of many, the abolition was confirmed, apparently settling the issue once and for all.
The Candian Supreme Court had nothing to do with this. Parliament mandates these hearings in s. 745.6 of the Criminal Code.
However, no such hearings were ever actually granted until shortly after the second vote in 1987. Coincidence?
So your slippery slope argument is that if we ban the death penalty we'll have to ban prisons too?
Not all at once, of course. Those who rail against the death penalty today will simply shift their attention to the most severe penalty available once it's abolished. This will continue until either no criminals are ever punished, or everyone notices that anti-punishment advocates only pretend to be bothered by the most severe penalty currently available, while using arguments that apply equally to any penalty.
I appreciate a healthy dose of skepticism but that and supposition are no substitute for actual data. Interestingly the period from 1967 to 1984, when we had the highest murder rate in history, there was only one part in control of Congress. Also that period cuts through both economic good times and recessions, so there appears to be little political or economic co-variance. The fact is that the raw numbers of murders each year show distinct trending with a clear and consistent application of the death penalty.
When the DP is restricted or minimized, murders go up. When the DP becomes more common and is applied more frequently murder rates drop. For years the murder rate in this country was around 4 to 5 per 100K. As the Death Penalty came into question and as abolition and prison reform movements gained strength in the late 60's, it climbed to over 9 per 100K, during the 12 years where it was either non-existent or used extremely sparingly, the murder rate "stabilized" at around 10 per 100k, twice the historic norm. Since 1984 the murder rate has steadily declined as the number of executions has stabilized between 55 and 60 per year. It's now around 5.6 per 100k, close to the historic norm. You can say it's speculative, you can look for answers in economics, politics, nature, nurture, what have you. Statistically there's only one obvious conclusion, a strict, rational, and well defined death penalty applied judiciously is effective in reducing the rate of homicide. Clearly someone agrees with me that the Death Penalty is a deterrent, because the homicide rate is half of what it was during the halcyon days when LWOP was the only option in this country.