Feral Youths: 6 teens beat man because "they were bored"

[Superman]

Really pause to think about this for a moment:

• Each execution prevents 5 murders from occurring.
• Each commutation increases murders by 5.
• Removal from death row to life in prison increases murders by 1.

The study shows that deterrent effect even when these people are sitting in prison for 8-10-15 years before being executed. I have to believe that cutting the wait time down to 6 months and performing the executions publicly would both serve to increase the deterrent effect on the number of homicides prevented. I am all for going back to public hangings in the town square.

Preach on!!

[VMI77]

Hate crimes are stupid and shouldn't exist. Period. For anyone.

When one premeditates the perpetration of a crime with the intent to harm another race, religion, sexual preference... yes, hate crime punishments should exist.

Watch out what you ask for.....punishing crimes based on class and group characteristics is the very soul of collectivism. There is absolutely no reason for an African American to be punished more severely for assaulting an Asian American, because he hates Asians, than for assaulting another African American because he dissed him. In this example, more severe punishment for attacking the Asian American devalues the assaulted African American. In both instances, it is one individual attacking another individual, and each victim has the right to expect his attacker will not get a lesser punishment because of whatever racial or entitlement group he belongs to.

Do you not agree with first degree murder vs. capital murder either? Is an on duty police officer's life more valuable than if he was off duty? Hate crimes can be murky. But punishments are meant to deter. Statistics show that when executions are up, heinous crime rates drop the following year. I want Black, White, Other supremacist organizations (individuals) to know when they seek to injury the others they openly despise, the charges will be trumped.

Apples and oranges. In both cases it's an individual being charged with murdering an individual and the difference in charges is a difference in the nature of the crime, not which special protected group the victim belonged to. I don't believe there should be any difference in penalty for killing a police officer and anyone else, whether he is on duty or off duty. Why is the life of a LEO more valuable than the life of my son or wife? There is no equal protection under the law as required in the Constitution if one person's life is legally considered more valuable than another because of what group they're a member of.

Furthermore, I don't really care what is intended by hate crime laws, I care about the Constitution and the principles on which the country was founded: individual rights, not group or collective rights. As they say, the road to you know where is paved with good intentions.

As far as any deterrence effect is concerned.....think about what you're saying......which is essentially that it is more important to deter a crime against a member of a protected class, say a homosexual, than some other person who isn't part of a protected class. Why? It also leads to logical absurdities. So, someone who, say, hates African Americans, decides he's going to rob and kill only African Americans; while some other criminal doesn't care one way or the other and just robs and kills opportunistically. Just what is the logic of punishing the former more harshly than the latter? Effectively you're punishing him because he had less disregard for life than the latter who didn't care who he killed. Also, our legal system is supposed to try people based on a presentation of evidence. What's the evidence for a hate crime....what a person says or thinks? So essentially, a hate crime is just a thought crime. Hate crime laws have primarily a political purpose, not a moral one. They're designed to curry political favor with certain groups, and embed the principle of collectivism.

Finally, while I won't say there is no deterrent effect from the death penalty I doubt it's all that significant. In the first place, most criminals live in the moment and act on impulse. That's one of the reasons they're criminals...they're incapable of extrapolating the consequences of their immediate actions into the future. For there to be a deterrent effect the actor must be rational. Do you seriously believe a rational person is going to think to himself, I wouldn't kill so and so because of the death penalty, but since I'll probably only get life in prison he's toast? But there is one certain deterrent effect: once a murderer is executed it is a certainty he's not going to kill again.

To me, whether or not the death penalty is a deterrent is irrelevant. The death penalty is a just punishment for certain kinds of crimes such as 1st degree murder, and frankly, I don't think it's used anywhere near enough.