Justices Abolish Death Penalty For Juveniles.

[no1tovote4]

So what amount of "punishment" is good enough for a murderer, then? Why should their victims be dead, and their families be without, while they live, get clothed, housed, fed, and in your scenario, allowed access to exercise equipment?

If your spouse, parents, or children were one of the victims, would you be satisfied knowing this monster is still alive and well, while you're lacking one of the most important people in your life?

Oh, and I would be far more satisfied to know that he will be suffering for the rest of his life in conditions that humans find almost inhumane than to think that he got a nice restful death while my child, parent, wife, etc was killed horribly.

 

[Shattered]

Oh, and I would be far more satisfied to know that he will be suffering for the rest of his life in conditions that humans find almost inhumane than to think that he got a nice restful death while my child, parent, wife, etc was killed horribly.

...which they have the right to appeal, and cite "cruel and unusual punishment" which sucks up yet more money and resources that could be put to better use.. As it stands now, if they live, there's always some small chance they will be let back out in to society again, and even that small chance is too much of a chance.

 

[Bonnie]

Scalia, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES


No. 03—633

DONALD P. ROPER, SUPERINTENDENT, POTOSI
CORRECTIONAL CENTER, PETITIONER v.
CHRISTOPHER SIMMONS
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF
MISSOURI
[March 1, 2005]

Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.

In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people’s representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since “[t]he judiciary … ha neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, “bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them.” Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today’s opinion makes of Hamilton’s expectation, announcing the Court’s conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years–not, mind you, that this Court’s decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to “the evolving standards of decency,” ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people’s laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people’s laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: “n the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.” Ante, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation’s moral standards–and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.

I

In determining that capital punishment of offenders who committed murder before age 18 is “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment, the Court first considers, in accordance with our modern (though in my view mistaken) jurisprudence, whether there is a “national consensus,” ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted), that laws allowing such executions contravene our modern “standards of decency,”1 Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958). We have held that this determination should be based on “objective indicia that reflect the public attitude toward a given sanction”–namely, “statutes passed by society’s elected representatives.” Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 370 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted). As in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 312 (2002), the Court dutifully recites this test and claims halfheartedly that a national consensus has emerged since our decision in Stanford, because 18 States–or 47% of States that permit capital punishment–now have legislation prohibiting the execution of offenders under 18, and because all of four States have adopted such legislation since Stanford. See ante, at 11.


“The history of the death penalty instructs that there is danger in inferring a settled societal consensus from statistics like those relied on in this case. In 1846, Michigan became the first State to abolish the death penalty … . In succeeding decades, other American States continued the trend towards abolition … . Later, and particularly after World War II, there ensued a steady and dramatic decline in executions … . In the 1950’s and 1960’s, more States abolished or radically restricted capital punishment, and executions ceased completely for several years beginning in 1968… .

The Court’s reliance on the infrequency of executions, for under-18 murderers, ante, at 10—11, 13, credits an argument that this Court considered and explicitly rejected in Stanford. That infrequency is explained, we accurately said, both by “the undisputed fact that a far smaller percentage of capital crimes are committed by persons under 18 than over 18,” 492 U.S., at 374, and by the fact that juries are required at sentencing to consider the offender’s youth as a mitigating factor, see Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 115—116 (1982). Thus, “it is not only possible, but overwhelmingly probable, that the very considerations which induce [respondent] and [his] supporters to believe that death should never be imposed on offenders under 18 cause prosecutors and juries to believe that it should rarely be imposed.” Stanford, supra, at 374.

It is, furthermore, unclear that executions of the relevant age group have decreased since we decided Stanford. Between 1990 and 2003, 123 of 3,599 death sentences, or 3.4%, were given to individuals who committed crimes before reaching age 18. V. Streib, The Juvenile Death Penalty Today: Death Sentences and Executions for Juvenile Crimes, January 1, 1973—September 30, 2004, No. 75, p. 9 (Table 3) (last updated Oct. 5, 2004), http://
www.law.onu.edu/faculty/streib/documentsJuvDeathSept 302004.pdf (all Internet materials as visited Jan. 12, 2005, and available in the Clerk of Court’s case file) (hereinafter Juvenile Death Penalty Today). By contrast, only 2.1% of those sentenced to death between 1982 and 1988 committed the crimes when they were under 18. See Stanford, supra, at 373 (citing V. Streib, Imposition of Death Sentences for Juvenile Offenses, January 1, 1982, Through April 1, 1989, p. 2 (paper for Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, April 5, 1989)). As for actual executions of under-18 offenders, they constituted 2.4% of the total executions since 1973. Juvenile Death Penalty Today 4. In Stanford, we noted that only 2% of the executions between 1642 and 1986 were of under-18 offenders and found that that lower number did not demonstrate a national consensus against the penalty. 492 U.S., at 373—374 (citing V. Streib, Death Penalty for Juveniles 55, 57 (1987)). Thus, the numbers of under-18 offenders subjected to the death penalty, though low compared with adults, have either held steady or slightly increased since Stanford. These statistics in no way support the action the Court takes today.

II

Of course, the real force driving today’s decision is not the actions of four state legislatures, but the Court’s “ ‘ “own judgment” ’ ” that murderers younger than 18 can never be as morally culpable as older counterparts. Ante, at 9 (quoting Atkins, 536 U.S., at 312 (in turn quoting Coker, 433 U.S., at 597 (plurality opinion))). The Court claims that this usurpation of the role of moral arbiter is simply a “retur[n] to the rul[e] established in decisions predating Stanford,” ante, at 9. That supposed rule–which is reflected solely in dicta and never once in a holding that purports to supplant the consensus of the American people with the Justices’ views7–was repudiated in Stanford for the very good reason that it has no foundation in law or logic. If the Eighth Amendment set forth an ordinary rule of law, it would indeed be the role of this Court to say what the law is. But the Court having pronounced that the Eighth Amendment is an ever-changing reflection of “the evolving standards of decency” of our society, it makes no sense for the Justices then to prescribe those standards rather than discern them from the practices of our people. On the evolving-standards hypothesis, the only legitimate function of this Court is to identify a moral consensus of the American people. By what conceivable warrant can nine lawyers presume to be the authoritative conscience of the Nation? 8

The reason for insistence on legislative primacy is obvious and fundamental: “ ‘n a democratic society legislatures, not courts, are constituted to respond to the will and consequently the moral values of the people.’ ” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 175—176 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (quoting Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 383 (1972) (Burger, C. J., dissenting)). For a similar reason we have, in our determination of society’s moral standards, consulted the practices of sentencing juries: Juries “ ‘maintain a link between contemporary community values and the penal system’ ” that this Court cannot claim for itself. Gregg, supra, at 181 (quoting Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 519, n. 15 (1968)).

Today’s opinion provides a perfect example of why judges are ill equipped to make the type of legislative judgments the Court insists on making here. To support its opinion that States should be prohibited from imposing the death penalty on anyone who committed murder before age 18, the Court looks to scientific and sociological studies, picking and choosing those that support its position. It never explains why those particular studies are methodologically sound; none was ever entered into evidence or tested in an adversarial proceeding. As The Chief Justice has explained:

“[M]ethodological and other errors can affect the reliability and validity of estimates about the opinions and attitudes of a population derived from various sampling techniques. Everything from variations in the survey methodology, such as the choice of the target population, the sampling design used, the questions asked, and the statistical analyses used to interpret the data can skew the results.” Atkins, supra, at 326—327 (dissenting opinion) (citing R. Groves, Survey Errors and Survey Costs (1989); 1 C. Turner & E. Martin, Surveying Subjective Phenomena (1984)).

In other words, all the Court has done today, to borrow from another context, is to look over the heads of the crowd and pick out its friends. Cf. Conroy v. Aniskoff, 507 U.S. 511, 519 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).

We need not look far to find studies contradicting the Court’s conclusions. As petitioner points out, the American Psychological Association (APA), which claims in this case that scientific evidence shows persons under 18 lack the ability to take moral responsibility for their decisions, has previously taken precisely the opposite position before this very Court. In its brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U.S. 417 (1990), the APA found a “rich body of research” showing that juveniles are mature enough to decide whether to obtain an abortion without parental involvement. Brief for APA as Amicus Curiae, O. T. 1989, No. 88—805 etc., p. 18. The APA brief, citing psychology treatises and studies too numerous to list here, asserted: “y middle adolescence (age 14—15) young people develop abilities similar to adults in reasoning about moral dilemmas, understanding social rules and laws, [and] reasoning about interpersonal relationships and interpersonal problems.” Id., at 19—20 (citations omitted). Given the nuances of scientific methodology and conflicting views, courts–which can only consider the limited evidence on the record before them–are ill equipped to determine which view of science is the right one. Legislatures “are better qualified to weigh and ‘evaluate the results of statistical studies in terms of their own local conditions and with a flexibility of approach that is not available to the courts.’ ” McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 319 (1987) (quoting Gregg, supra, at 186).

Even putting aside questions of methodology, the studies cited by the Court offer scant support for a categorical prohibition of the death penalty for murderers under 18. At most, these studies conclude that, on average, or in most cases, persons under 18 are unable to take moral responsibility for their actions. Not one of the cited studies opines that all individuals under 18 are unable to appreciate the nature of their crimes.

Moreover, the cited studies describe only adolescents who engage in risky or antisocial behavior, as many young people do. Murder, however, is more than just risky or antisocial behavior. It is entirely consistent to believe that young people often act impetuously and lack judgment, but, at the same time, to believe that those who commit premeditated murder are–at least sometimes–just as culpable as adults. Christopher Simmons, who was only seven months shy of his 18th birthday when he murdered Shirley Crook, described to his friends beforehand–“n chilling, callous terms,” as the Court puts it, ante, at 1–the murder he planned to commit. He then broke into the home of an innocent woman, bound her with duct tape and electrical wire, and threw her off a bridge alive and conscious. Ante, at 2. In their amici brief, the States of Alabama, Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia offer additional examples of murders committed by individuals under 18 that involve truly monstrous acts. In Alabama, two 17-year-olds, one 16-year-old, and one 19-year-old picked up a female hitchhiker, threw bottles at her, and kicked and stomped her for approximately 30 minutes until she died. They then sexually assaulted her lifeless body and, when they were finished, threw her body off a cliff. They later returned to the crime scene to mutilate her corpse. See Brief for Alabama et al. as Amici Curiae 9—10; see also Loggins v. State, 771 So. 2d 1070, 1074—1075 (Ala. Crim. App. 1999); Duncan v. State, 827 So. 2d 838, 840—841 (Ala. Crim. App. 1999). Other examples in the brief are equally shocking. Though these cases are assuredly the exception rather than the rule, the studies the Court cites in no way justify a constitutional imperative that prevents legislatures and juries from treating exceptional cases in an exceptional way–by determining that some murders are not just the acts of happy-go-lucky teenagers, but heinous crimes deserving of death.

That “almost every State prohibits those under 18 years of age from voting, serving on juries, or marrying without parental consent,” ante, at 15, is patently irrelevant–and is yet another resurrection of an argument that this Court gave a decent burial in Stanford. (What kind of Equal Justice under Law is it that–without so much as a “Sorry about that”–gives as the basis for sparing one person from execution arguments explicitly rejected in refusing to spare another?) As we explained in Stanford, 492 U.S., at 374, it is “absurd to think that one must be mature enough to drive carefully, to drink responsibly, or to vote intelligently, in order to be mature enough to understand that murdering another human being is profoundly wrong, and to conform one’s conduct to that most minimal of all civilized standards.” Serving on a jury or entering into marriage also involve decisions far more sophisticated than the simple decision not to take another’s life.

Moreover, the age statutes the Court lists “set the appropriate ages for the operation of a system that makes its determinations in gross, and that does not conduct individualized maturity tests.” Ibid. The criminal justice system, by contrast, provides for individualized consideration of each defendant. In capital cases, this Court requires the sentencer to make an individualized determination, which includes weighing aggravating factors and mitigating factors, such as youth. See Eddings, 455 U.S., at 115—117. In other contexts where individualized consideration is provided, we have recognized that at least some minors will be mature enough to make difficult decisions that involve moral considerations. For instance, we have struck down abortion statutes that do not allow minors deemed mature by courts to bypass parental notification provisions. See, e.g., Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622, 643—644 (1979) (opinion of Powell, J.); Planned Parenthood of Central Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 74—75 (1976). It is hard to see why this context should be any different. Whether to obtain an abortion is surely a much more complex decision for a young person than whether to kill an innocent person in cold blood.


More

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/...roper simmons&url=/supct/html/03-633.ZD1.html

 

[no1tovote4]

...which they have the right to appeal, and cite "cruel and unusual punishment" which sucks up yet more money and resources that could be put to better use.. As it stands now, if they live, there's always some small chance they will be let back out in to society again, and even that small chance is too much of a chance.

If they cannot appeal the Death Sentence on Cruel and Unusual, they cannot appeal Supermax. Especially since many of the worst offenders are already in Supermax and they have won no appeals on that particular argument already.

My point is to change the laws to insure that they will not be released at all unless they are proven to be innocent of the charge for which they are convicted. They have more of a chance to be released on technicalities, etc from the automatic appeals process from the Death Penalty than they do with being convicted of a true life sentence.

Another point is I simply do not think Death as enough punishment for somebody that would do that to my child. Death will find them eventually as they suffer for what they have done.

 

[Shattered]

If they cannot appeal the Death Sentence on Cruel and Unusual, they cannot appeal Supermax. Especially since many of the worst offenders are already in Supermax and they have won no appeals on that particular argument already.

My point is to change the laws to insure that they will not be released at all unless they are proven to be innocent of the charge for which they are convicted. They have more of a chance to be released on technicalities, etc from the automatic appeals process from the Death Penalty than they do with being convicted of a true life sentence.

Another point is I simply do not think Death as enough punishment for somebody that would do that to my child. Death will find them eventually as they suffer for what they have done.

We'll have to agree to disagree, then. I see no purpose in allowing them to suck up the very air that I breathe to live. I see no purpose to putting clothes on their backs, and food in their mouths.

Once you've killed another, you have no right to life.

And as stated earlier, a bullet is a *very* cheap alternative.

 

[no1tovote4]

We'll have to agree to disagree, then. I see no purpose in allowing them to suck up the very air that I breathe to live. I see no purpose to putting clothes on their backs, and food in their mouths.

Once you've killed another, you have no right to life.

And as stated earlier, a bullet is a *very* cheap alternative.

That would be fine if they didn't have a right to the appeals process, by the time they got the bullet they will have spent more money to attempt to save their lives than it would cost to keep these people in a little box the rest of their lives.

 

[Bonnie]

Black robes and betrayal
Tony Blankley


March 2, 2005


The United States Supreme Court has struck again -- this time overturning by a 5-4 decision, all statutes that apply the death sentence to 16- and 17 year old murderers.

As a former prosecutor I am convinced that from time to time juries find before them 16- or 17-year-old defendants who understand full well the vicious nature of their murders and deserve -- after receiving the full panoply of due process -- to be fried, gassed, hanged, shot, injected or otherwise sent promptly to hell.

Even if you are of a sympathetic nature and believe that the little 17-year-old darlings deserve to be rehabilitated, you might still find this Supreme Court opinion stomach turning for its sheer disdain of logic, public attitudes and American law.

But first: The crime, as described yesterday by Justice Kennedy in Roper v. Simmons, writing for the majority:

At the age of 17, when he was still a junior in high school, Christopher Simmons ... committed murder ... There is little doubt that Simmons was the instigator of the crime. Before its commission, Simmons said he wanted to murder someone. In chilling, callous terms he talked about his plan with his friends ... Simmons proposed to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, tying up a victim and throwing the victim off a bridge. Simmons assured his friends they could "get away with it" because they were minors.

A few hours later, he proceeded to do just that, breaking into a home, covering the victim's head in a towel, wrapping her up in duct tape and tying her hands and legs together with electrical wire. Then he drove her to a bridge and threw her off into the water, where helpless, she drowned.

The question before the Supreme Court was whether this presented a case of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment to our Constitution. No, the court was not concerned with whether being assaulted in your home, wrapped in a towel, duct tape and electrical wire, and thrown off a bridge was cruel and unusual punishment. That's OK. The Court is only concerned with whether it was cruel and unusual to execute the strapping 17-year-old murderer who did it.

The gist of the majority's analysis is that whether the crime is constitutionally "unusual" depends on whether "evolving standards of decency" have reached the point in our history when such punishment has been clearly rejected by society.

It happens that only 15 years ago, the Supreme Court found that the kind of statute in question was constitutional. But, rather than overturning that case, yesterday, the court found that in the last 15 years, a national consensus against such punishment had emerged.

The majority based that conclusion on the fact that "18 states -- or 47 percent of states that permit capital punishment -- now have legislation prohibiting the execution of offenders under 18," and four of those states have adopted such legislation since the Supreme Court's ruling of 15 years ago.

As Justice Anton Scalia fumed in his dissent: "Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50 percent of death penalty States can constitute a national consensus. Our previous cases have required overwhelming opposition to a challenged practice, generally over a long period of time." In this case, a majority of relevant states approve the practice.

Recognizing that they were arguing a rather weak set of facts regarding a national consensus, the majority supplemented its argument with the self-aggrandizing assertion that "In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment." Outrageously, the court asserts such power because, as Justice Scalia characterized, "juries cannot be trusted with the delicate task of weighing a defendant's youth along with other mitigating factors." This assertion, of course, undermines "the very foundations of our capital sentencing system."

The majority, still sensing its arguments to be rather feeble, went on to try to buttress their case further by citing a menagerie of international treaties and foreign laws, claiming: "The opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions."

In support thereof they cited, inter alia, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty before signing which the United States Government expressly reserved "the right ... to impose capital punishment on any person (other than a pregnant woman) ... "


http://www.townhall.com/columnists/tonyblankley/printtb20050302.shtml

 

[Bonnie]

That would be fine if they didn't have a right to the appeals process, by the time they got the bullet they will have spent more money to attempt to save their lives than it would cost to keep these people in a little box the rest of their lives.

So maybe a streamlining of the appeals process might be in order?

 

[no1tovote4]

So maybe a streamlining of the appeals process might be in order?

If it is a right, how can it be streamlined? I believe that as much streamlining that can take place pretty much has. Federal sentences have a shorter period of appeals, if you look at Timothy McVeigh he was killed rather quickly. Places such as California basically have a Life Sentence even though some people are sentenced to Death, there are over 400 people on Death row and they have killed 1 in 20 years. You would need to change law in 50 states to match in order to insure what you are talking about takes place.

One Federal Law that makes Supermax the end result of a Murder Trial would resolve it quickly, and create a much more fitting punishment. Even if it is Supermax until the Death Penalty is enforced.

Changing the laws that allow any person convicted of Murder to ever walk the street again is first priority. Even if it is the Death penalty (which I only oppose on my opinion that Death is preferable to the scenario which I propose). Nobody that has taken the life of another unjustly should walk the streets a free man.

 

[Bonnie]

Couldn't states limit the number of appeals for death penalty cases?

 

[no1tovote4]

Couldn't states limit the number of appeals for death penalty cases?

You would have to convince each state. Do you think that California and Mass. would be easy to convince? Is the death penalty a punishment in Mass.?

 

[Adam's Apple]

There was just a report on the news today that a 15-year-old in Tennessee shot his bus driver (a woman) to death. Are we going to be hearing more frequent news like this as a result of the Court's ruling?

 

[Bonnie]

There was just a report on the news today that a 15-year-old in Tennessee shot his bus driver (a woman) to death. Are we going to be hearing more frequent news like this as a result of the Court's ruling?

I wondered the same thing?

 

[Shattered]

There was just a report on the news today that a 15-year-old in Tennessee shot his bus driver (a woman) to death. Are we going to be hearing more frequent news like this as a result of the Court's ruling?

Yes, I'd bet we are.. There's already two cases of teenagers saying basically "let's do it - they can't fry us".

Complete, and utter bullshit!

 

[Bullypulpit]

Why? Why is a 17 year old unable to face the death penalty, but an 18 year old can? Same body, same brain, same everything. The only difference is at 18 they can legally buy their own damn weapons, whereas at 17 they have to break yet another law and steal them. This is the biggest line of shit I've heard in a looooooooooong time, and it actually makes me *angry*.

Because the powers that be say so. And the fact that the death penalty serves no genuinely useful purpose also weighs in against executing anyone, let alone juveniles.

So don't get your panties in a bunch dearie. The only BS around here is the kind you're spreading.

 

[musicman]

... the fact that the death penalty serves no genuinely useful purpose also weighs in against executing anyone, let alone juveniles.

.

I assume you mean "deterrent value", or lack of. How the hell would we know that?

I submit that, until a man sentenced to die in 2005 is in the ground by 2006, we can't know the true deterrent value of the death penalty. True justice is swift and sure, Bully.

 

[Bonnie]

Because the powers that be say so. And the fact that the death penalty serves no genuinely useful purpose also weighs in against executing anyone, let alone juveniles.

During the temporary suspension on capital punishment from 1972-1976, researchers gathered murder statistics across the country. In 1960, there were 56 executions in the USA and 9,140 murders. By 1964, when there were only 15 executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and 1975, after six more years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred rising to 23,040 in 1980 after only two executions since 1976. In summary, between 1965 and 1980, the number of annual murders in the United States skyrocketed from 9,960 to 23,040, a 131 percent increase. The murder rate -- homicides per 100,000 persons -- doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University said:

"While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the...[data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction."

Notes Dudley Sharp of the criminal-justice reform group Justice For All:
"From 1995 to 2000," "executions averaged 71 per year, a 21,000 percent increase over the 1966-1980 period. The murder rate dropped from a high of 10.2 (per 100,000) in 1980 to 5.7 in 1999 -- a 44 percent reduction. The murder rate is now at its lowest level since 1966. "
The graph below drawn by the Bureau of Criminal Justice gives a general overview of the murder rate compared to the number of executions that had taken place in the US up to the year 2000:


And that's not all.

The most striking protection of innocent life has been seen in Texas, which executes more murderers than any other state. According to JFA (Justice for All), the Texas murder rate in 1991 was 15.3 per 100,000. By 1999, it had fallen to 6.1 -- a drop of 60 percent. Within Texas, the most aggressive death penalty prosecutions are in Harris County (the Houston area). Since the resumption of executions in 1982, the annual number of Harris County murders has plummeted from 701 to 241 -- a 72 percent decrease.

http://www.wesleylowe.com/cp.html

 

[Shattered]

Because the powers that be say so. And the fact that the death penalty serves no genuinely useful purpose also weighs in against executing anyone, let alone juveniles.

So don't get your panties in a bunch dearie. The only BS around here is the kind you're spreading.

Have you anything of value to add that's not centered around insults? I thought not.

Because they "said so"? Outstanding reasoning, to be sure.

 

[ReillyT]

Trying to show the deterrent effects of the death penalty by matching the number of executions to the number of homicides per year (or decade) might be misleading if it doesn't account for other variables. For instance, in general, all crime increases during periods of low economic growth (perhaps b/c police forces are reduced in difficult economic times, perhaps b/c of the incidence of greater economic crimes, perhaps b/c large numbers of unemployed persons generates a pool of potential criminals), but if a study doesn't attempt to account for this (and other variables), the results might be misleading. There are also a number of studies that show there is no deterrent effect to capital punishment. See:

Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Examining the Effect of Executions on Murder in Texas . Authors John Sorenson, Robert Wrinkle, Victoria Brewer, and James Marquart examined executions in Texas between 1984 and 1997. They speculated that if a deterrent effect were to exist, it would be found in Texas because of the high number of death sentences and executions within the state. Using patterns in executions across the study period and the relatively steady rate of murders in Texas, the authors found no evidence of a deterrent effect. The study concluded that the number of executions was unrelated to murder rates in general, and that the number of executions was unrelated to felony rates. (45 Crime and Delinquency 481-93 (1999))

Deterrence, Brutalization, and the Death Penalty: Another Examination of OklahomaÕs Return to Capital Punishment. In this study, author William Bailey speculated that if executions had a deterrent effect in Oklahoma, it would be observable by comparing murder rates and rates of sub-types of murder, such as felony-murder, stranger robbery-related killings, stranger non-felony murder, and argument-related killings, before and after the resumption of executions. Bailey examined the period between 1989 and 1991 for total killings and sub-types of killing. After controlling for a number of variables, Bailey found that there was no evidence for a deterrent effect. He did, however, find that there was a significant increase in stranger killings and non-felony stranger killings after Oklahoma resumed executions after a 25-year moratorium. (36 Criminology 711-33 (1998)).

The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America . Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood studied differences in homicides and violent crime in 293 pairs of counties. Counties were matched in pairs based on geographic location, regional context, historical development, demographic and economic variables. The pairs shared a contiguous border, but differed on use of capital punishment. The authors found no support for a deterrent effect of capital punishment at the county level comparing matched counties inside and outside states with capital punishment, with and without a death row population, and with and without executions. The authors did find higher violent crime rates in death penalty counties. (Rowman and Littlefiled Publishers, Lanham, MD (1997))

I just got this information in a two minute search on the internet. There may be many more studies that back these up, and I am sure there are some studies on the other side, as well. I don't honestly know if there is a deterrent effect to capital punishment, but it is going too far to say that it has been established.

 

[ReillyT]

I should have told you where I got those blurps. It was on the website

http://www.tora.us.fm/tokxot/onj_mwt/mxqr_hrtaa_1.html