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| 5/23 |
| 2009/10/20-11/3 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/Crime] UID:53457 Activity:high |
10/20 "Ending death penalty could save US millions: study"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091020/ts_alt_afp/usexecutionjustice
"...... the cost to the state to reach that one execution is 30
million dollars"
I used to be pro death penalty because I thought it's cheaper than
life without possibility of parole (p.s. especially with the health
care cost of $40k/yr per prisoner that was in the news a couple months
ago). But now I'm not sure.
\_ It is clearly not cheaper. -tom
\_ It would be cheaper if we just got on with it already.
\_ But we can't and shouldn't, so it's clearly not cheaper. -tom
\_ We can and we should. See how easy that is?
\_ Yes, it's quite easy to execute innocent people. -tom
\_ if DNA proves guilt, kill. if not, life sentence.
\_ You think jailing innocent people for life is better?
Let's just not jail anyone in case we made a mistake.
\_ Plenty of innocent people "jailed for life" end up
being released after new evidence comes to light.
Hard to bring someone back to life though.
\_
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row
138 death-row inmates have been released since
1971. The failure cost of the death penalty is
much higher than the failure cost of prison. -tom
\_ I think I'd rather be wrongly executed than
rot in prison for 60 years after being wrongly
imprisoned. Jail and the people in it are that
unpleasant. What *really* sits wrong with
me is when criminals *beg* to be executed
and we don't do it. Let's execute those
people ASAP and set a reasonable period
where evidence can be brought to light for
everyone else: lets say 10 years. I don't
want to pay for some "death row" type guy
to be in prison from age 22 to 82. Charles
Manson should not be an expense to me
right now.
\_ If you had a 10-year limit, you would
only have executed 65 of the 138 innocent
people. Good job! -tom
\_ I'm not going to worry about 65 people
out of the 2.5 million in jail. As I
said, it's not any better to wrongly
rot in jail. It's not like you are
going to find all wrongfully
convicted people with or without the
death penalty. I believe the justice
system works and works better than
ever in this age of DNA evidence.
Your argument is that the justice
system makes a mistake 5% of the time
in capital cases. I _really_ doubt that
figure given the extensive appeals
process. BTW, the average length of
time between sentencing and
exoneration for those wrongfully
convicted is 7 years. So if you
think 10 cuts it too close let's
make it 20. I just threw a number
out there.
\_ At this point you're just trolling;
if you were really wrongfully
accused and had the option of 12
years in jail and instant death,
you would take death? The idea
is absurd. Let's leave it at,
the death penalty is more expensive
than life in prison and will remain
so despite the efforts of nutjobs
like you, so you can't argue that
the death penalty costs less than
the alternative. -tom
\_ The death penalty is only more
expensive because of nutjobs
like you who are concerned that 65
out of millions of convictions
over the last 30 years might
actually be innocent. You
waste a lot of money on such
statistical insignificance.
Accept that the justice system
works and stop wasting time
defending *tried and convicted*
death row inmates. If this
were 1709 I'd be right with
you, but the system is not as
corrupt as it used to be and
works very well as your own
numbers attest to.
\_ Millions were convicted of
murder? Probably not. I wonder
what the false positive rate
in convictions is. Any idea?
\_ The article doesn't say. Is it also so expensive in Texas, where
there do a lot of it?
\_ You know why California has a prison problem? Because of
fucking idiots like you who think it's cheaper to keep a
person alive than to execute them. I have a better
solution, just offshore the job to China. They can do it
far more efficiently. It really pisses me off seeing a
headline like this. Hand control of Oakland to China and
the crime situation will disappear and innocent people will
stop dying. Fucking US criminal justice system.
\_ California has 678 death row inmates; you could execute them
all tomorrow and we'd still have a prison problem. -tom
\_ My point is we should execute a lot more people. Like
the 10 or 20 who gang raped the Richmond school girl.
A bullet in their head is the best message we can
send to those fuckers in Richmond and Oakland.
Innocent people suffer and die when you have a
criminal justice system that doesn't get rid of
scumbags.
\_ I think we should get out the guilloitine and start
chopping off the heads of all of Goldman Sachs and
the CEOs of AGI, Bank of America and all the other
the CEOs of AIG, Bank of America and all the other
fools who have caused much more suffering than the
Richmond rapists. But I am not holding my breath
for the world to come around to my point of view.
\_ http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14699746 |
| 5/23 |
|
| news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091020/ts_alt_afp/usexecutionjustice CNBC by Lucile Malandain Lucile Malandain - Tue Oct 20, 1:43 am ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, a study released Tuesday found. "It is doubtful in today's economic climate that any legislature would introduce the death penalty if faced with the reality that each execution would cost taxpayers 25 million dollars, or that the state might spend more than 100 million dollars over several years and produce few or no executions," argued Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center and the report's author. "Surely there are more pressing needs deserving funding," he wrote, noting that execution was rated among the least effective crime deterrents. In just one death penalty trial "the state may pay one million dollars more than for a non-death penalty trial. But only one in every three capital trials may result in a death sentence, so the true cost of that death sentence is three million dollars," the study's author said. "Further down the road, only one in ten of the death sentences handed down may result in an execution. Hence, the cost to the state to reach that one execution is 30 million dollars," Dieter added in the report entitled "Smart on Crime." The center's goal of ending executions may still be an uphill battle. The report comes just a week after a new poll found that 65 percent of Americans still favor the death penalty. Legal in 35 of the 50 US states and used regularly in about 12 or so, the death penalty has been reconsidered recently in 11 states, largely because of the high costs associated with its use. Colorado came close to eliminating execution but New Mexico was the only state to abolish it, in March. "There is no reason the death penalty should be immune from reconsideration, along with other wasteful, expensive programs that no longer make sense," Dieter stressed, noting that most US states that pay to maintain a system to execute inmates have in the past three decades put to death only a handful of convicted criminals. "The same states that are spending millions of dollars on the death penalty are facing severe cutbacks in other justice areas. Courts are open less, trials are delayed, and even police are being furloughed," Dieter said. In Pennsylvania, 200 police posts sit unfilled, and in New Hampshire trials were put on hold for a month to save money. Dieter says that keeping execution while reducing its costs is not realistic. If less money is spent on appeals, he argues, the risk of executing an innocent person will increase. He said that ultimately, execution does not deter crime as its supporters hope. Capital punishment has been abolished in most western democracies, and after it was eliminated in the US state of New Jersey in 2007, the state saw its murder rate decline. Dieter cites a poll of 500 local police chiefs, which was paid for by the DPIC and released on Tuesday, showing support for ending capital punishment. The survey found that the police chiefs see the death penalty as the least effective tool in deterring crime. They suggest more efficient use of resources -- such as boosting funding for drug and alcohol abuse programs. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse. |
| www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row Last case added October 6, 2009 For Inclusion on DPIC's Innocence List: Defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either- a) their conviction was overturned AND i) they were acquitted at re-trial or ii) all charges were dropped b) they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence. excerpt below from an article in the Baltimore Sun by Dan Rodricks regarding the use of the term "exonerated." The list includes cases in which the release occurred 1973 or later. Paris Powell OK B 1997 2009 12 Charges Dismissed Average number of years between being sentenced to death and exoneration: 98 years Number of cases in which DNA played a substantial factor in establishing innocence: 17 *The list is ordered by the year of the inmate's release. Occaionally new cases of earlier releases are discovered. Thus, the number assigned to a person above may differ from his or her number in various published DPIC reports. Innocence Project's (Cardozo Law School, NY) criteria for whether a post-conviction exoneration was the result of DNA testing. The Innocence Project requires that both: a) DNA testing played a role in the defendant's reversal, AND b) the results of the testing were central to the inmate's defense and to the identity of the perpetrator. Sources: DPIC uses a number of resources when adding cases to the above list, including court opinions, media coverage, and conversations with those directly involved in the cases. The earlier cases in the list are based heavily on the research of Hugo Adam Bedau and Michael L Radelet. Use of the term "exonerated": Columnist Dan Rodricks of the Baltimore Sun asked DPIC about its list of exonerated individuals. DPIC's Executive Director Richard Dieter responded, and that response was reprinted in Mr Rodricks' column, July 5, 2009: With respect to your question about our list of exonerated individuals, we use very strict and objective criteria for inclusion of cases on this list. Basically, the list is determined by the decisions of courts and prosecutor offices, not by our subjective judgment. As we state in a number of places on our Web site and in our reports, the criteria for inclusion on the list is: Defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either- a) their conviction was overturned AND i) they were acquitted at re-trial or ii) all charges were dropped b) they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence. The list includes cases where the release occurred in 1973 or later, which was the time that states resumed sentencing people to death after the US Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty. The list originated from a request from Congress asking us to identify the risks that innocent people might be executed. The original list that we prepared was published as a Staff Report of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. The list has been favorably referred to by Justices of the US Supreme Court and other federal courts, as well as by many public officials around the country. We believe the term "exonerated" is entirely appropriate to refer to the individuals on this list, which now numbers 133 individuals. Exonerate means to clear, as of an accusation, and seems to come from the Latin "ex" and "onus" meaning to unburden. The defendants were convicted, given a burden of guilt, and then that burden was lifted when they were acquitted at a re-trial or the prosecution dropped all charges after the conviction was reversed. These are not individuals who received a lesser sentence or who remained guilty of a lesser charge related to the same set of circumstances. All guilt was lifted by the same system that had imposed it in the first place. Our justice system is the only objective source for making such a determination. This notion of innocence, that an individual is innocent unless proven guilty, is a bedrock principle of our constitution and our societal protection against abusive state power. One does not lose the status of innocence merely because a prosecutor or other individuals retain a suspicion of guilt. Of course, it is true that this list makes no god-like determination of knowing exactly what happened in the original crime. Such perfect knowledge of past events is impossible, either to absolutely prove that a person did or did not do an act. We do not try to make a subjective judgment of what we think happened in the crime. We are merely reporting that in a great many cases the justice system convicted an individual and sentenced them to death, but when the process that arrived at that conclusion was reviewed, the conviction and sentence were thrown out. The individual, who often came close to execution, could not even be convicted of a traffic violation. Surely, that should be a cause of concern in applying the death penalty. |
| www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14699746 United States Capital punishment From arson to politics Oct 22nd 2009 | AUSTIN From The Economist print edition Why has Texas's governor derailed a death-penalty investigation? THE sad case of Cameron Todd Willingham began two days before Christmas in 1991. He was alone with his three daughters--one toddler and two baby twins--when their house in Corsicana, a small town south of Dallas, began to burn. Mr Willingham later said the house was so thick with smoke he could not find any of the girls before escaping. But at his trial, investigators testified that based on the burn patterns in the house, the fire had been arson. Mr Willingham was quickly convicted and sentenced to death. Years of court challenges came to nothing and in 2004 Mr Willingham was executed. "The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man--convicted of a crime I did not commit," he said from the gurney. Shortly before he was executed, an arson expert from Austin faxed a report to the governor, Rick Perry, arguing that the 1991 investigation was based on bad science and that there was no proof of arson. Half a dozen additional experts have come to the same conclusion. In August another report came from Craig Beyler, who had been hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC), an oversight board. Mr Beyler's report gave a blistering assessment of the original investigation, saying its conclusions were "nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation." Two days before the commission was due to hold a hearing on the Beyler report, on September 30th, Mr Perry announced he was replacing three of his appointees to the TFSC, including its head, Sam Bassett. "It certainly is bad timing for the continuity of these investigations," says Mr Bassett, a criminal defence attorney in Austin. Had the commission concluded that the evidence did not point to arson, Mr Perry would have been faced with the grave possibility that Texas had executed an innocent person. Kay Bailey Hutchison, his chief opponent for the Republican nomination, announced that the business with the commission was just "giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty". |