Moussaoui

[DavidV]

There should be no taxes. All prisons should be supported either through donations, fees, fines, or the labor of prisoners.

And if prisoners can't (or refuse to) pay their keep, sell their bodies for medical scrap!

[Yes]

Because that's what he wants. He's made it clear that he wishes to die a Martyr. I'd rather see him slowly lose his sanity in a concrete cell. That would seem to be the greater punishment.

He should be remanded to a Maximum security penitentiary, where he may meet the same fate as Jeffrey Dahmer.

There is no guarantee that, when among fellow rapists, hoodlums, and murderers, he would survive.

Edited May 5, 2006 by Yes

[The Wrath]

So, the original statement, which was a universal one, is false. The original statement also referred to the death penalty. It did not say the cost of defending a death sentence. The death penalty itself, the actual killing of a prisoner, need not cost much at all: Pay another prisoner $100 to march the condemned man out into an empty field and shoot the condemned man in the back of the head with a shotgun.

I have read that here in Oregon the average cost for incarcerating violent criminals is about $30,000 per year -- not the $10,000 figure you mention. If that is true, then imprisonment for 30 years would be $900,000. And that is not even under "supermax" type conditions, which -- judging from recent news reports -- seem still more expensive.

But even that higher figure does not include the costs of additional trials for crimes committed while in prison. Nor does it include the cost of dealing with appeals to abandon or reduce the life sentence -- or, for that matter, the cost of a new trial, say, years from now, if a court decides the first one was tainted.

There is no question in my mind that the U. S. system of justice is very expensive. Even if there were no other reason for doing so, this is a reason for making sure that government enforces only laws dealing with aggression and fraud.

Uh, okay, when I said the death penalty, I didn't mean only the actual carrying out of the sentence. Since it is impossible to isolate the actual execution, I don't think there's anything unreasonable about including court proceedings as part of the phrase. And by your logic, saying "men are physically stronger than women," is incorrect because it is not true in all cases. There are times when it should be assumed that someone is speaking in generalities.

I have a criminal justice journal article buried somewhere in the depths of my school files that explains why the death penalty is more expensive, but I really don't feel like looking for it, especially since I'm at work. I'll try to find something later that will back up my claim. However, assuming that your $30,000 figure is accurate, which is very well may be because I don't remember the specifics, it would take more than 60 years to equal $2 million. I'm pretty sure the appeals cost more than that, and most people sentenced to life in prison are not going to live an additional 60 years.

Monetarily, that may be so. But the death penalty works much better as a deterrent than life witout parole. That is worth the additional price.

Also, the only rational objection I've ever come accross regarding capital punishment is: what if an innocent man (innocent of a capital crime at any rate) is unjustly sentenced to death? One way to avoid it, is to grant all those sentenced to capital punishment a thorough appeal process. And that, too, is worth the price.

I am all for the death penalty, because I believe in justice. But it has been consistently shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent. All the criminological literature stipulates that a punishment has to be "swift, certain, and severe," to act as a deterrent. The death penalty takes decades to be enforced and it is anything but a certain punishment for murder. The only one of those three that it has is "severe."

And if prisoners can't (or refuse to) pay their keep, sell their bodies for medical scrap!

I've thought about this before, actually. Something else I've thought, is that the military should have special "death row battallions" that are composed entirely of convicted murderers. Send them to the front lines of whatever war we're fighting, and use them up. That way, if they turn on their fellow soldiers, they're only killing other convicted murderers.

Edited May 5, 2006 by Moose

[DavidOdden]

But the death penalty works much better as a deterrent than life witout parole. That is worth the additional price.

I have seen no factual evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent, and I have a hard time imagining that it would be one. Consider the circumstances of murder. First, there are crimes of passion -- a person gets into a rage and blows up his wife. This man is not thinking, and is not rationally calculating "Should I blow her up, or just divorce her? Hmmm, well, if I blow her up, I might get executed, so maybe I should just divorce her". For such people, deterrence has no effect because reason has fled them. Related to those people are the panic-murders, idiots doing armed robbery who aren't planning on killing (but kill nonetheless). There are professional murders -- deterrence has no effect on them because they are morally certain tat they will not get caught, much less get punished. Now we have a new class of murderers, Islamicist terrorists, who are not only not deterred by the thought of execution, they actually relish the idea, as their means of securing entry into Paradise. While I understand that it might "make sense" in a game-theoretic to expect people on the moral edge to refraining from murdering because of the greater risk, I want to see concrete evidence that execution actually has this consequence.

One way to avoid it, is to grant all those sentenced to capital punishment a thorough appeal process. And that, too, is worth the price.

This would be a complete waste of money. The problem is false convictions in the first place, and dragging the appeals process out worse than it already is would not help. The fundamental problem is epistemological, specifically, we do not have a rational foundation for assessing guilt and for coping with error. Most notoriously, juries do not understand the requirement encapsulated in the expression "beyond a reasonable doubt". My proposed cure for this is jury training: a jury must be taught chapter 5 of OPAR, and the official jury instructions must recapitulate the distinction between "arbitrary", "possible", "probable" and "certain". Then the jury must be charged to convict if and only if they are each certain that the defendant did the deed. Dragging out the appeals process cannot change the fundamental flaw in how decisions are reached: the juries decision is in a legal black box, so the only basis for appeal is that someone followed the wrong ritual procedure.

If it is certain that the defendant committed the murder, then execution could be justified as a matter of justice.

[The Wrath]

I like Japan's death penalty. They throw you in solitary confinement with no human contact. You have no idea when you will be executed. Then, one day, they come and get you, and lead you away to be executed.

[Lathanar]

All in all, I don't see the point in life sentences without parole. Why is this different then a death sentence. If we could actually turn the prisons into private companies where the prisoners become the work force to pay off their debt to society, then that would be punishment. Here's a good one, should a prison simply be a place to punish those commiting crimes or what we have now, 'rehabilitation' centers that are supposed to teach them the error of their ways and turn them into law-abiding citizens?

[D'kian]

I am all for the death penalty, because I believe in justice. But it has been consistently shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent. All the criminological literature stipulates that a punishment has to be "swift, certain, and severe," to act as a deterrent. The death penalty takes decades to be enforced and it is anything but a certain punishment for murder.

It can be amde certain. I agree that today most criminals wouldn't necessarily know in advance whether a murder would get them the elctric chair or life in prison.

Making it swift is another matter. I do favor the exhaustion of all appeals as a safeguard against wrongful convictions. The quality of the judicial system notwithstanding, there's alway the possibility of error. In the case of an execution, finding a wrongful conviction after the sentnece has been carried out is worse than useless.

Whether it would still serve as a deterrent is hard to say.

[BurgessLau]

I have a criminal justice journal article buried somewhere in the depths of my school files that explains why the death penalty is more expensive, but I really don't feel like looking for it, especially since I'm at work. I'll try to find something later that will back up my claim.

Rather than seeking something which will back up your claim, why don't we look for facts of what the situation is?

I started a casual search for "prison costs" and found a bunch of not very reliable looking statements. The figures range from about $17,000 per prisoner (presumably averaging the whole prison population at the state level) for all states, taken together, compared to about $24,000 for New York State, compared to over $30,000/prisoner for California for drug law violators alone -- saying nothing about the cost for max security incarceration of convicted killers, which surely would be far higher.

I don't trust my search skills. Nor do I trust undocumented statements by "think-tanks" that have an axe to grind, one way or the other. So maybe those figures are no good. Likewise I will not buy any argument that moves against the death penalty because of unproven claims about supposed higher costs.

If it is true, this wins the prize: In one account -- http://www.ncpa.org/ea/eaja92/eaja92h.html -- the writer said that the ratio of staff to prisoners in New York State was 1 to 2!

Mind-boggling, if that figure is anywhere near accurate.

Edited May 5, 2006 by BurgessLau

[The Wrath]

I wasn't using it as an argument against the death penalty. Some people do; I don't. I was just stating what criminological research has shown. Mind you, this is not research conducted by "think tanks," but by university professors from all parts of the political spectrum. I've even had a professor who supports the death penalty who states that it is more expensive.

Is it more expensive? Yes. Should it be? Debatable...I, for one, would not want to take away the automatic appeal if it would mean putting even one innocent man to death.

[DavidV]

I've thought about this before, actually. Something else I've thought, is that the military should have special "death row battallions" that are composed entirely of convicted murderers. Send them to the front lines of whatever war we're fighting, and use them up. That way, if they turn on their fellow soldiers, they're only killing other convicted murderers.

I think in a modern army, you want your best soldiers on the front, not your worst. "Using up" was something the Soviet army did when it sent millions of unarmed men to be mowed down in a desperate attempt to slow down the Nazis.

[DavidOdden]

All in all, I don't see the point in life sentences without parole. Why is this different then a death sentence.

The most important difference arises when a person is unjustly convicted. When that fact is realized, the person in prison can be released, but the person who has been executed can not, at present, be un-executed.

[The Wrath]

I think in a modern army, you want your best soldiers on the front, not your worst. "Using up" was something the Soviet army did when it sent millions of unarmed men to be mowed down in a desperate attempt to slow down the Nazis.

Well, yeah, I'm half-facetious when I suggest that. I realize there would be some pretty serious tactical issues with such a practice...such as having to make inmates into officers and whatnot, but if it could be done in a reasonable manner, I can't think of a better use for convicted murderers.

[dark_unicorn]

He got a life sentence, he hardly escaped punishment. If the jurors really felt he 'wasnt responsible for his actions' I assume he'd have been found innocent or got a couple of years maximum.

I'm actually opposed to the death penalty, the sentencing wasn't the issue, as I explained in my post, my issue was how they came to their decision. Court precedents can filter into future decisions.

@DavidOdden - I am aware that it is required by law to consider such things, but the law does not command them to give it credence. But in either case, I don't support the laws as they exist, so knowing that, my objection still stands. Besides, the same public education system produced the morons who originally came up with such laws.

[DavidOdden]

I am aware that it is required by law to consider such things, but the law does not command them to give it credence. But in either case, I don't support the laws as they exist, so knowing that, my objection still stands. Besides, the same public education system produced the morons who originally came up with such laws.

I don't exactly know what you mean be "give it credence". The law requires these factors to be considered and applied in making a decision about execution, though the law does not require that is the defense alleges such-and-such aggravating circumstance that the jury has to accept that such-and-such is true: in other words, the jury must decide whether the circumstances required under the law (including the lack of sufficient mitigating circumstances) are present. It is entirely analogous to the requirement of the type "if you find that the defendant acted with malice aforethought, then you must find a verdict of guilty".

I don't personally know whether the alleged mitigating circumstances do indeed rise to the level described by the "you must not execute" language, so before I go blaming runaway jurors for not upholding the law, I would like to see the evidence that they did not uphold the law. On the point regarding the law as it exists, that is where I think any blame really lies.

Now on the point about this being the product of public education, I find that contention dubious (and at the very least unsupported). Data on grade school patterns is hard to find but indicates no correlation with public school attendance (Rehnquist, a dissenter, went to public school; Stewart, in the majority, attended a private academy). In fact only White (in the majority) attended a public university as an undergraduate, and all went to elite private law schools. The real determining factor is not private vs. public, it is the ubiquitous Kantian philosophy that permeates education at all levels.

[RationalBiker]

I am all for the death penalty, because I believe in justice. But it has been consistently shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent. All the criminological literature stipulates that a punishment has to be "swift, certain, and severe," to act as a deterrent.

I don't really care whether it's a deterent or not personally. It's punishment on par with depriving someone of ALL their rights. Any "deterence", a somewhat dubious and hard to quantify concept, after that is merely a secondary bonus.

[softwareNerd]

I remember some information in the "Freakonomics" book that showed harsh penalties are a deterrent to crimes to which those penalties apply. To summarize what I read (RationalCop, correct me if I'm reading the wrong books)...

Generally harsh penalties will not deter crime in general. Career criminals tend to know the specifics of the law. If, for instance, there is a significant difference in the penalty for committing a certain crime with and without a gun, criminals will take that into account and one would see a higher proportion trying to use a different weapon.

Some murders are not comitted by routine criminals. (I wonder what the ratio would be.) I doubt that people like Scott Petersen and O.J. would think very much in terms of the penalty being death vs. life. However, when it comes to career criminals, the evidence seems to indicate that they are cognizant of the law and take it into account in their actions.

[The Wrath]

I don't really care whether it's a deterent or not personally. It's punishment on par with depriving someone of ALL their rights. Any "deterence", a somewhat dubious and hard to quantify concept, after that is merely a secondary bonus.

I agree completely. As long as we're at it, however, we might as well maximize deterrence.

Edited May 7, 2006 by Moose

[Qwertz]

In an update, Moussaoui has now petitioned to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he lied on the stand during his trial. The withdrawl comes despite a Federal rule prohibiting it.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/05/08/moussaoui.ap/index.html

-Q

[D'kian]

How long before the left begins a movement to free this innocent jihadi from prison?