Gabon and Uzbekistan now more civilized than the United States

Southern Man said:
The graph speaks otherwise. Since we know it is a deterrent, to not use it is to sentence future innocent victims to death, and not by painless lethal injection either.
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YOur graph compares apples to oranges. my site compares state by state those with the DP and those without. With the exception of ONE state every state without the death penalty has a lower than national average murder rate. If the death penalty was absolutely a deterent that could not be the case. Every state that engaged in execution would have a lower murder rate than states that don't. If you ask men on death row which they fear more, life without parole or death they will overwhelmingly tell you LWOP. But that question is always asked after the fact. The type of person that would commit a murder that would be punishible by death does not think about the possibility of punishment. I worked for two years for the Kansas Death Penalty Defense unit and NONE of those guys would have been detered by the knowledge that they would be put to death if convicted.
 
And your graph also shows a NATIONWIDE murder rate and a NATIONWIDE number of executions. The fact that a bunch of people got executed in Texas Virginia and Florida does not cause the murder rate in the other 47 states to go down as well. If you look at each state then perhaps you can make a case for that state.
 
We have never had the Death Penalty in this country.

A Death Penalty means that, if you commit such-and-such a crime that the law says you should get the DP for, you stop breathing pretty soon after you're found guilty and sentenced, after a reasonable interval in which you can try to show the verdict was wrong.

But in this country, people spend more than fifteen years, on average, between their sentence and their execution. More people who get the death penalty, die of old age than of execution, after the state generously supports them for the rest of their lives. Some deterrent.

A country that offers such slight deterrent to people who commit particularly horrible crimes like premeditated murder of its innocent citizens etc., is hardly "civilized".
 
Socrtease said:
YOur graph compares apples to oranges. my site compares state by state those with the DP and those without. With the exception of ONE state every state without the death penalty has a lower than national average murder rate. If the death penalty was absolutely a deterent that could not be the case. Every state that engaged in execution would have a lower murder rate than states that don't. If you ask men on death row which they fear more, life without parole or death they will overwhelmingly tell you LWOP. But that question is always asked after the fact. The type of person that would commit a murder that would be punishible by death does not think about the possibility of punishment. I worked for two years for the Kansas Death Penalty Defense unit and NONE of those guys would have been detered by the knowledge that they would be put to death if convicted.
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I have lived in 4 states and every one has a different crime and murder rate, as well as laws to deal with them.
 
Little-Acorn said:
We have never had the Death Penalty in this country.

A Death Penalty means that, if you commit such-and-such a crime that the law says you should get the DP for, you stop breathing pretty soon after you're found guilty and sentenced, after a reasonable interval in which you can try to show the verdict was wrong.

But in this country, people spend more than fifteen years, on average, between their sentence and their execution. More people who get the death penalty, die of old age than of execution, after the state generously supports them for the rest of their lives. Some deterrent.

A country that offers such slight deterrent to people who commit particularly horrible crimes like premeditated murder of its innocent citizens etc., is hardly "civilized".
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The entire European Continent has eradicated the death penalty and has far less violent crime than the US. The truth is the civilized world has abandoned capital punishment. It is only the uncivilized world and the US that continue to use the power of the state to take the lives of its citizens.
 
This page contains a list of people that have been exonerated after having been convicted of an offense that carries the death penalty. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110

The AVERAGE time that all 126 of these individuals spent on death row was 9.5 years. But if little acorn had his or her way they would have been put to death shortly after their convictions. Few if any if these people would have made if to freedom. That doesn't mean that those who opposes the DP are going to quit investigating the innocence of people. And one day we will prove that the system has killed an innocent man and that will be the end of it. Because all of you that support the DP live in a fantasy world that innocent people are not convicted and have not been executed.
 
Damocles said:
Most of that is the "War on Drugs" which needs to be either totally ended or totally revamped so that non-violent offenders are not spending their lives in prison rather than raising their kids.
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The war on drugs is obviously the greatest injustice going on at the moment, and dwarfs all others. Except for, possibly, states like mine that provide little support to the (mostly black) defendants, and takes people (mostly black) off voter rolls for life for casting bad checks.
 
Southern Man said:
The graph speaks otherwise. Since we know it is a deterrent, to not use it is to sentence future innocent victims to death, and not by painless lethal injection either.
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It is not a detterrent. I could construct 10 more graphs using the misleading methods of that graph to show a correlation between death penalty and murder rate. It's just total and complete bullshit.
 
Southern Man said:
No. All states are different, and deal with crime in different ways.
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Then why is the murder rate so much lower in states that don't have the death penalty?

It seems like the states that abolished the death penalty are almost entirely responsbile for any decrease in the murder rate seen.
 
AssHatZombie said:
Like "New and Improved Watermark, Now with More EMO and a self lubricating joystick!"
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If you had ever taken a class in statistics you'd understand why that graph is such bullshit. For one thing, a REAL statician would NEVER draw a line like that, to make the correlation look like more than it is. I could draw the line however I wanted, to make it look more or less. This one example does not prove that any real correlation between the level of barbarism a society practices and it's murder rate, especially whenever there is such a vast sea of counter-correlations.
 
Watermark said:
Then why is the murder rate so much lower in states that don't have the death penalty?

It seems like the states that abolished the death penalty are almost entirely responsbile for any decrease in the murder rate seen.
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Put up some valid links and we'll discuss. I don't argue with "it seems like".
 
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