Right wing conservatives are evil? Well, I have evidence that they are.

Um, look it up yourself. I already gave you the government website for vital statistics.

Well, I'll compile those data later just for you. I am a college student, you know. These data analysis don't grow on trees. It would be really nice if you compile these data yourself

Mr. Gotti writes:

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A lot of media were reporting "half were exonerated." This is not the case. Half received unfair trials.It doesn't mean half were innocent.

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Incorrect.The problem was not that they received unfair trials. The problem was that they DID NOT DO THE CRIME. They were, indeed, innocent. Not just "guilty of a lesser charge" or "not deserving of capital punishment."THEY DID NOT DO THE CRIME.Of 24 people on death row in Illinois, 13 were INNOCENT.How do we know they were innocent in the end? They were released from jail.

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As a juror, I would have no problem sentencing Tim McVeigh to death.

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And what makes you think that the person you're condemning to death is going to be McVeigh? Just because you can find an example of someone whom everyone, including the person, thinks is deserving of his punishment doesn't mean that everyone who is facing the death penalty deserves it.If you truly want to "err on the side of life," wouldn't that require abolishing the death penalty? Or are you saying that it is better that thousands of innocent people die in order to ensure that all guilty people die?Some of us think that it's better for guilty people to go free in order to ensure that the innocent don't get punished.It isn't that there aren't people who are worthy of the death penalty. It's that there's no way to make sure you never, ever apply it to an innocent person.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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How do we know they were innocent in the end? They were released from jail.

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Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the reason we know they were innocent was because the evidence showed them to be innocent, not that they were released from jail?

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Some of us think that it's better for guilty people to go free in order to ensure that the innocent don't get punished.

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I would actually rather that guilty people spend the rest of their lives in jail (for murder, etc.), not set free (and not put to death), in order to ensure that the innocent are not killed by the state.I think that a perfect system in which innocent people are not wrongly imprisoned isn't possible.So, I am against the death penalty for almost the same reasons you are.

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Um, look it up yourself.

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Um, why so snotty?

Sorry, Troy. I didn't mean for my post to sound as it did. I meant it to imply that I understood that you only have so much time on your hands. The data you have supplied is pretty provocative -- I may have to do some research myself. When I have time. (I'm the dude who's grading your homework and tests.)

Sorry if I sounded provocative. I've been through 3 days with about 6 hours of sleep. Gettinng a little cranky. Not to mention that I have a wedding to go to this weekend...Anyway, the data I presented was pretty self explanatory. However, it only included rates of homocide. I will look up other violent and non-violent crimes later. In the mean time, you could fish around for more data if you want.

Well, at least you aren't making me writing everything upside down.

Thanks - that's very compelling...Now to see where I can poke holes in it... hmmmm...

I agree and am against the death penalty. I see no reason why the prison system couldn’t maintain all of the current practices for death row, (i.e. 23 out of 24 hours per day in a small cell, tight security, etc), just don’t kill them. It seems to me this treatment of solitary confinement would be a deterrent to a murderer continuing a murder spree in prison. Or, put it another way, it would be a significant enticement for them to behave in order to rejoin the general and less restrictive prison population.But there will always be those nut cases who cannot avoid the compulsion to kill. In that case, keep them in solitary for life.Mr Gotti, I don’t know your experiences, but if you had seen first hand how prisoners in maximum security prisons are treated and in particular those in solitary, then your comment Is that all??? might be------rephrased.Solitary in a max security prison is no picnic and represents a significant difference in lifestyle from the type of prison life one has in the general prison population.

Trust me, there are holes you can poke right through. Even though I was playing the devil's advocate when I put together the data and graph, I made damn sure that I was able to make counter arguments against it. If it was indeed perfect, I would have become a pro-CP a long time ago.Anyway, I'm gonna stick my nose up high now and wait for someone to make an argument against my graph. Hehe

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If it was indeed perfect, I would have become a pro-CP a long time ago.

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Really? Even if it could be proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that capital punishment reduced murder rates, I would still oppose it on moral grounds.And I doubt that I am unique in this. My guess is that most (and I mean most, not all) people who are are pro-capital punishment support it not really because it supposedly deters crime, but because murder, rape, disagreeing with a conservative president, and other crimes are heinous enough to justify capital punishment on principle alone.That's why I am not spending a lot of time seeing if I can verify or refute your data, Troy -- to me, it's largely irrelevant. (Especially when I know there are other people on this board who are much better than me in hunting down data and presenting it.)

You know, it's me who has forgotten that you are at the end of your semester.Of course you're tired. How is it going?

This reminds me of one of the most frightening things I think I've ever seen on the news. A local newsperson was interviewing people congregating outside of a prison in the days leading up to an execution - some were protesting the execution, others were supporting it.The execution was particularly controversial because the public defender later admitted that he was drunk through much of the trial, and others had noted that he had fallen asleep several times during the trial - by all accounts it should have been a mistrial, but it was not.The newsperson asked one of the execution supporters how they felt about the fact that the man in all likelihood had a grossly inadequate defense. The pro-execution demonstrator, looking like an average middle-aged middle-income American woman, stated: "Look, a cop was killed in our community. Somebody has to pay."Justice wasn't important to these execution supporters - they simply wanted a sacrifice.Like I said, one of the scariest things I've seen on the news; and I think it is telling of the misguided reasons that people support and use the death penalty.

Hate world. Revenge soon.