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Four Charged in Alleged Synagogue Bomb Plot
Men Allegedly Bought Stinger Missile, C-4 Explosives Through FBI Informant
Four men who allegedly plotted to blow up a New York synagogue and shoot military planes at an upstate New York Air National Guard base were arrested tonight by the FBI on charges including plotting to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States.
Four Charged in Alleged Synagogue Bomb Plot - ABC News
I do not understand our laws. These guys are simply facing life in prison. They should be facing execution. Why keep them around for tax payers to cover the bill for maintaining their worthless lives.
Executions in this country are more costly than life sentences.
Damn FBI infringing upon the rights of this oppressed minority to murder Jews, hopefully the ACLU will be providing them with the best representation money can buy.
That is only due to the appeal system. Reform is much needed.
It doesn't matter what the reason is. What we have is what we have, so it's cheaper to feed and clothe them than it is to off them.
It doesn't matter what the reason is. What we have is what we have, so it's cheaper to feed and clothe them than it is to off them.
Buried way down below all the so called facts, behind these outrageous costs, is the element of innocent people being put to death, just often enough, to keep the "appeal process laws", some of the most powerful and expensive laws on earth.
It doesn't matter what the reason is. What we have is what we have, so it's cheaper to feed and clothe them than it is to off them.
What is ignored in those calculations is the fact that the death penalty has a significant deterrent effect.
Even if we agree that executions "cost" more than life without parole, is that extra $1m saved worth the loss of 3-18 lives?
There is also a classic economics question lurking in the background, Professor Wolfers said. “Capital punishment is very expensive,” he said, “so if you choose to spend money on capital punishment you are choosing not to spend it somewhere else, like policing.”
A single capital litigation can cost more than $1 million. It is at least possible that devoting that money to crime prevention would prevent more murders than whatever number, if any, an execution would deter.
....
The available data is nevertheless thin, mostly because there are so few executions.
In 2003, for instance, there were more than 16,000 homicides but only 153 death sentences and 65 executions.
“It seems unlikely,” Professor Donohue and Professor Wolfers concluded in their Stanford article, “that any study based only on recent U.S. data can find a reliable link between homicide and execution rates.”
The two professors offered one particularly compelling comparison. Canada has executed no one since 1962. Yet the murder rates in the United States and Canada have moved in close parallel since then, including before, during and after the four-year death penalty moratorium in the United States in the 1970s.
From that article:
Not sure what you think that proves.
There were twelve independent studies conducted by people who were not exactly death penalty advocates and they unanimously found a significant deterrent effect. I don't see how one article written by pissed off law profs means anything, especially with such a tenuous argument.
It means that saying the death penalty may deter homicides is fallacious and irrelevant because:
1. There is over 45 years evidence to the contrary from our northern neighbors.
2. Money that can be saved from removing capital punishment can be used for 'policing' and stop more homicides that may or may not have been deterred by the application of capital punishment.
This relies on several enormous assumptions
a) that homicide trends in Canada are directly tied to homicide trends here
b) that if not for the death penalty, the trends would remain exactly the same
c) that the statistical analysis of these two angry profs is unassailable despite being undisclosed
I just think it's laughable to use Canadian homicide trends to try to prove something about the success of US policing tactics.
Again, this relies on additional unsupported assumptions.
As the article notes, there are around 65 executions per year. Even if we take the "$1m savings" number at face value, do you really think that $65m is going to have even the most infinitesimal impact on homicide rates across the country? That will just about pay for some new radios and community awareness training for the cops in some podunk town.
The idea is the death penalty deters homicides, which is what you asserted.
Do we see the death penalty deterring people from killing each other? No.
Each one of those studies followed only two variables.
Where did I say that? I said we don't physically see it deterring homicides.You're kidding me, right? Because people still kill each other, the death penalty doesn't work?
You asserted it here, by which I mean you brought it up here.Further, I didn't assert **** - a dozen independent statistical analyses asserted this. Where did you get the idea that these studies followed only two variables? Did you read the article?
Where did I say that? I said we don't physically see it deterring homicides.
That article said each variable they looked at, # of executions by location and homicide rates over time in the same location.
The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.
What it doesn't tell you is that homicide rates in non-death penalty states have remained consistently lower than in death penalty states, with the gap growing in difference over the past two decades.
I find it laughable you think studies by economists on false premises have a proper role in political and criminal science.
See, there is your problem, feeding and clothing them. Lock them up securely, then just ignore them, and they'll go away.It doesn't matter what the reason is. What we have is what we have, so it's cheaper to feed and clothe them than it is to off them.
Don't laugh too hard. IIRC... Right has a Law degree. He certainly knows the legal stuff and is excellent at providing pertinint citations.I find it laughable you think studies by economists on false premises have a proper role in political and criminal science.
No, the fact that the rate of homicide is and has been growing lower in non-death penalty states. Should I make the claim that life imprisonment deters homicide more than the death penalty? I am only presenting evidence that doesn't support a faulty a premise.RightinNYC said:What are you basing this conclusion on? The fact that people still kill each other?
How would you expect to "physically see" it deterring homicides?
I've read most of them. All it is a few pro-death penalty trying to stir up something before the Supreme Court makes the decision next year on lethal injections.RightinNYC said:It's not just plotting an x and y chart - there's a bit more to it than that. Read a few of the actual studies.
Great rhetoric. I didn't expect anything better when presented with evidence against the death penalty deterring homicides.RightinNYC said:You say that as if it means something.
RightinNYC[ I'm just amazed that you don't seem to understand why the things you keep bringing up are non-responsive to the studies I referenced.[/quote said:I'm just amazed you think studies on faulty premises is worthy evidence for the death penalty deterring homicides.
Don't laugh too hard. IIRC... Right has a Law degree. He certainly knows the legal stuff and is excellent at providing pertinint citations.
He's not the only one
No, the fact that the rate of homicide is and has been growing lower in non-death penalty states.
Should I make the claim that life imprisonment deters homicide more than the death penalty?
I am only presenting evidence that doesn't support a faulty a premise.
I've read most of them. All it is a few pro-death penalty trying to stir up something before the Supreme Court makes the decision next year on lethal injections.
“I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a deterrent effect.”
“I am definitely against the death penalty on lots of different grounds,” said Joanna M. Shepherd, a law professor at Emory with a doctorate in economics who wrote or contributed to several studies. “But I do believe that people respond to incentives.”
“The evidence on whether it has a significant deterrent effect seems sufficiently plausible that the moral issue becomes a difficult one,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has frequently taken liberal positions. “I did shift from being against the death penalty to thinking that if it has a significant deterrent effect it’s probably justified.”
Professor Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, a law professor at Harvard, wrote in their own Stanford Law Review article that “the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive, especially in light of its ‘apparent power and unanimity,’ ” quoting a conclusion of a separate overview of the evidence in 2005 by Robert Weisberg, a law professor at Stanford, in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.
“Capital punishment may well save lives,” the two professors continued. “Those who object to capital punishment, and who do so in the name of protecting life, must come to terms with the possibility that the failure to inflict capital punishment will fail to protect life.”
(Also, what you had made bold - not quoted above - are all variables they eliminated. Thanks for proving my point on this controlled study.)
Great rhetoric. I didn't expect anything better when presented with evidence against the death penalty deterring homicides.
I'm just amazed you think studies on faulty premises is worthy evidence for the death penalty deterring homicides.
I do not understand our laws. These guys are simply facing life in prison. They should be facing execution. Why keep them around for tax payers to cover the bill for maintaining their worthless lives.
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