bronco78 wrote:Honestly.. my personal opinion...... NO, it does not deter a potential murder from murdering.
Yet, in this case, it may have deterred a murder. The suspect in this case actually admitted that he only went ahead with the murder after learning Illinois has no death penalty. One can assume by that admission that, if Illinois did have a death penalty, he would not have committed the murder.
Personally, I agree that the death penalty, in most cases, does not deter murderers from committing their crime. However, as this instance shows, it may deter a small number of people. We'll never know how many, though, since those who are deterred do not commit the crime.
“I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.” - Frank Lloyd Wright
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms" - Aristotle
...there is a verse in the Bible that says roughly this: Because judgement against an evil work is not executed speedily, the heart of the people is fully set to do evil...
...if the execution followed the trial quickly enough that the public still connected the crime to the punishment...it would be a great deterrent...if it's going to happen 10 years later, most of the deterrent factor is gone...the public hanging got the point across real clearly...our current system with years of delays and appeals...not so much...
I heard my grandfather (a retired trooper) say many times that he couldn't prove the death penalty deterred crime, but it certainly reduced the chance of a repeat offense.
NRA Benefactor Member "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance..."
- John Philpot Curran
Kythas wrote:Yet, in this case, it may have deterred a murder. The suspect in this case actually admitted that he only went ahead with the murder after learning Illinois has no death penalty. One can assume by that admission that, if Illinois did have a death penalty, he would not have committed the murder.
You're trying to make sense of the statements of a person who clearly is mentally ill (I won't venture to guess with what).
He is from Canada. If he wanted to murder a woman in a place that did not have the death penalty, he had all of Canada, Europe, and most of the rest of the world.
Also, fewer than half of murders result in a murder conviction. Many serial killers kill multiple victims before they are caught, and some never are caught. The chance of getting away completely or getting a lighter sentence for a charge like aggravated assault are better than roulette.
I have entertained a fantasy for a long time. This fantasy could probably never become reality, but I wish it could. When a person commits a heinous murder and is convicted and sentenced to death, the state would create a realistic depiction of the crime, including the events immediately preceding the crime, the victim's horror and screams and the actions of the murderer in all their gory detail. This depiction would be in 3-D surround sound. Then we take a person who is adamantly opposed to the death penalty, and we put them in a room where the depiction is played out in front of them like a hologram. In their hand they hold a device with a button on the end. If at any time the violence becomes too much for them to bear, they can push the button and end the depiction. But, at the moment they push the button, the murderer is administered the lethal dose of drugs that ends his or her life. The person observing the depiction is aware of this.
Personally I think it would stop all this silliness about ending capital punishment. Those who oppose capital punishment do so in a clean, sterile, mental environment free of any of the details of the crime. Were they to be immersed in the crime and fully understand the actions of the murderer, in my opinion they would view the crimes quite differently.
It's easy to be in favor of gun control when you've never been victimized.
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. James Madison
NRA Life Member Texas Firearms Coalition member
The following refers to a research studying showing how death penalties deter crimes. I apologize for my sketchy recall on all this.
At least five years ago (probably more) after a headline-grabbing Texas execution, I think it was the Wall St. Journal that ran a story citing some criminologist's research showing a decrease in certain crimes in states where the death penalty was actually applied (excluding those states where it's on the books but rarely applied). The crimes they measured were "rational" economic crimes like robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault, etc. where the criminal had a further choice about murdering the victim to silence them.
The "headline-grabbing Texas execution" involved a guy who murdered his victim in a Houston store parking lot, as I recall. The guy vigorously denied his guilt, and went kicking/struggling to the death chamber.
“Always liked me a sidearm with some heft.” Boss Spearman in Open Range.
baldeagle wrote:Personally I think it would stop all this silliness about ending capital punishment. Those who oppose capital punishment do so in a clean, sterile, mental environment free of any of the details of the crime. Were they to be immersed in the crime and fully understand the actions of the murderer, in my opinion they would view the crimes quite differently.
You don't know my mental state or anyone else's except your own. You cannot attribute my position to ignorance or naivete.
The question is whether the death penalty is a deterrent.
What you are talking about is retribution, which is a different issue.
In fact, only a few murders are eligible for the death penalty. Those are generally speaking murder of a public servant or child, multiple murders, or murder committed in combination with another violent felony (usually rape or robbery).
The punishment is unrelated to the degree of hideousness of the act of killing. Quite a few capital convictions are for shooting a police officer or multiple victims within seconds, not for a gruesome protracted killing like the BTK killer committed.
I don't know certain if capital punishment is a deterrent or not. The study results that Jumping Frog posted are certainly interesting. But even if it were provably a deterrent beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would argue in favor of it as retribution. I agree, btw, that not all homicide is deserving of this punishment and that there must be a place for the consideration of mercy in it's dispensation.
Whether or not a society employs capital punishment is a moral decision, because Justice cannot exist absent morality. So for a moral compass, I take my cue from The Owner's Manual—the Bible. It doesn't say "thou shall not kill." What it says is "thou shall not murder. In other passages, it clearly distinguishes between the various degrees of homicide, and the permissible retributions AND protections for the perpetrator. Indeed, some of those principles continue to inform our laws today. And finally, when Jesus Himself was hanging on the cross, he did not rescue the thief next to Him from the earthly consequences of his life of crime; but Jesus did rescue him from the spiritual consequences of his fallen condition. Thus, even Jesus recognized the right of the state to impose a death penalty in the course of seeing Justice done.
If there turns out to be a deterrent effect, then that's all the better. But I don't think that ought to be the primary motivation for it. Justice should be the primary motivation.... ...while the retributive aspect is paramount, neither is there any justice in requiring the taxpayers to support the life of a non-rehabitable or non-repentant prisoner for the rest of his life at a cost of $50K-$60K per year per prisoner.
Last edited by The Annoyed Man on Fri Apr 15, 2011 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
All of those in favor of outlawing the death penalty please contact the state/Federal government and let them know you would like to donate MORE of your paycheck to support these terrible folks behind bars the rest of their lives. Why do certain folks have the need to look at this from the CRIMINAL'S viewpoint? Their victims have been deprived of whatever amount of their life they may have had ahead of them. That can NEVER be repaid, true. But, does the one who took it upon themselves to do these heinous actions somehow deserve their time upon this earth more? I do NOT try to make myself out as any sort of saint...there are plenty of folks I would be quite happy to not have on this earth. BUT, I don't take it upon myself to go, search them out, and end their lives, FOR MY OWN PERSONAL REASONS. I always see pictures of all those nice young ladies, the little children, the old folks, the young men with lives ahead of them, whose clocks were stopped DUE TO NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN, or who didn't deserve death for some transgression...it is a collective punishment against society to be forced to fund the continued lives of the type of folks who think that THEY are somehow more important, to the point of being able to end another life FOR THEIR OWN BENEFIT. Of course, someone will say how much it costs to put someone to death...a certain element of society has MADE it cost more than it should. We are supposed to have a justice system to ensure that punishments are not meted out to the wrong folks. I don't advocate the death penalty lightly...only for those whose actions are the most reprehensible and vile. If this sounds harsh, so be it. You've got your opinion, I've got mine.
An accurate answer is impossible to know, because we're hypothesizing on the number of murders that would've taken place if the death penalty didn't exist.
I can be fairly confident that the total number of murders successfully deterred by the death penalty is somewhere between 0 and infinity.
Thankfully, I don't think capital punishment's value is measured in its ability to be an effective deterrent. The way a society deals with murderers reflects its overall valuation of individual and "innocent" life.
baldeagle wrote:Personally I think it would stop all this silliness about ending capital punishment. Those who oppose capital punishment do so in a clean, sterile, mental environment free of any of the details of the crime. Were they to be immersed in the crime and fully understand the actions of the murderer, in my opinion they would view the crimes quite differently.
You don't know my mental state or anyone else's except your own. You cannot attribute my position to ignorance or naivete.
That wasn't what I was trying to say, and I'll admit, I worded it rather poorly. What I meant to say is philosophical discussions about the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment will lead some to oppose capital punishment when, if they were confronted with the details of the crime, they might feel differently.
Or, to put it another way, it's one thing to say that you are opposed to capital punishment. It's another thing entirely when your wife has been raped and your children murdered. It's sort of the same problem as gun rights. Unless you've been attacked, you really can't understand why self defense is so important a concept, unless you're just inclined to think that way to begin with.
Is that better? Or does my explanation still suck?
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. James Madison
NRA Life Member Texas Firearms Coalition member
baldeagle wrote:Or, to put it another way, it's one thing to say that you are opposed to capital punishment. It's another thing entirely when your wife has been raped and your children murdered.
I'm not a pacifist. If someone harmed my family, I would would want to hack him up with a machete an inch at a time.
However, the rule of law prohibits that. The victim or survivors of the victim are not allowed to determine guilt and deliver punishment. This isn't my personal opinion. It is one of the principles of our legal system.
(Incidentally, if you ever are involved in a self-defense case, you had better be glad it is that way. The family of the criminal will generally be whining about what a choirboy their relative was and how terrible you are for harming him.)
The question in this thread is whether the death penalty deters crime, not whether it is a just punishment.
