Breaking: Angie Zapata's Killer Sentenced To 60 Additional Years

[DarkLady]

Nowdays we have a clear evidence that the Capitol punishment has killed too much innocent people. The US is nearly only western democracy using it currently. Lot of countries have totally abolished it from any law.

[lisagurl]

57 countries maintain the death penalty in both law and practice

[tekla]

Its been put to a vote in several places, and tends to win.

Contrary to popular opinion, there does not seem to be any link between using the death penalty and deterrence, as states with the death penalty have higher murder rates then those that do not, even when the states are next to each other.  However, it sure does stop that particular offender from repeating.

Nine out of the top ten states with the highest murder rates have the Death Penalty.  Alaska I think is the odd one out, with a high murder rate (though given a very low population, that might be skewed) but no death penalty.

The rational argument is that the DP has no deterrence in murder because A) the crime is often one of passion and rational thought does not enter in, and B) the event (being executed) is too far in the future to affect the present behavior.   

[Annwyn]

Contrary to popular opinion, there does not seem to be any link between using the death penalty and deterrence

I have an entire paper written out on this, a few pages long, lemme dig it out and post it before you get away with lies like that.

[tekla]

Dig away, I wasn't arguing against it, just saying that it does not seem to have that effect.

[Annwyn]

Please pardon any copy-paste errors.  It's like a 4 year old document I think.  Some freshman class I had to do.


Capital punishment, or punishment by death, is an age old tradition for dealing with the most heinous crimes possible in society.  It started in the eighteenth century BC with King Hammaurabi of Babylon (Capital).  In the seventh century BC, death as punishment was still common policy (Capital).  Even a politically correct nation such as Rome, in the fifth century BC, executed criminals (Capital).  Britain has kept capital punishment as a common method of dealing with extreme criminals since the 10th century AD (Capital).  In fact over 2/3 of the planet still uses capital punishment, and the locations that don't have done so in the past (Capital).  The history regarding the method of execution is vast and brutal.  In Medieval Europe being burning alive, cooked in boiling tar, and impaled were all common place.  Currently accepted methods include lethal injection, hanging, firing squad, electric chair, and gas chamber (Capital).  Death by lethal injection is a three step process ensuring a painless death of the accused.  Death by hanging breaks the neck quickly.  Death by firing squad instantly kills the accused.  Death by electric chair sends the criminal out of life at the speed of light.  Death by gas chamber is quick and painless (Capital).  Opposition to the death penalty argues that it is cruel and sought after simply for revenge.  They argue that it does not deter crime.  They also argue that it is not an evenly distributed punishment (Jackson).  Capital punishment is not for revenge, it is an effective crime deterrent, it is blind to any forms of discrimination.
   The death penalty is not for revenge.  "Legalized Murder" is a popular article stating that the death penalty is nothing but legalized murder (Ring).  In the article, other ridiculous claims are made, such as capital punishment being a worse crime than kidnapping, raping, and murdering a five year old boy.   The author represents a widely held view that capital punishment is for revenge only and serves no moral purpose.  The people who say this have not suffered the loss of a loved one.  They haven't had to suffer through knowing that someone they deeply cared for was brutally raped then stabbed to death, or met with any other fate just as horrible.  The people who say this  don't care about justice.  Justice is what it's all about though.  America is a country of laws, and laws are enforced by punishments.  The punishment must match the crime; this is an age old doctrine that has been recognized for millennia (Capital).  How can anyone possibly say that anything short of death is appropriate for a vile and immoral murderer!  The death penalty ensures that the criminal cannot commit crime again.  This gives peace of mind to the families, who are suffering bad enough already without the added worry of being the next target.  The death penalty is not an outlet for revenge, but a natural process of keeping justice balanced crime.
   The death penalty is an effective crime deterrent.  Studies show that there is more murder in states with the death penalty than those without it (Capital).  Studies can show anything, especially when they are inconsiderate of cohort effects.  The death penalty was established in 38 US states to combat already high murder rates.  Even with the death penalty, it's ridiculous to expect that highly populated areas would have less crime than rural areas.  Culture reflects the enforcement, or lack of enforcement, of capital punishment.  Edward Koch, former mayor of New York City, said:
Had the death penalty been a real possibility in the minds of...murderers, they might well have stayed their hand. They might have shown moral awareness before their victims died...Consider the tragic death of Rosa Velez, who happened to be home when a man named Luis Vera burglarized her apartment in Brooklyn. "Yeah, I shot her," Vera admitted. "...and I knew I wouldn't go to the chair." (Pro)
The effectiveness of anything depends on the consistency with which it is used.  The attitude towards the death penalty is that it is rarely given.  How can it be expected to work if people are too busy trying to get rid of it, then complaining that it doesn't do any good?  If the argument is that executions don't deter crime, then why doesn't the opposition also go against imprisonment, seeing as that doesn't seem to deter crime either?
   To support both the effectiveness of capital punishment and how using it regularly would benefit America, take history a lesson from the Bureau of Criminal Justice.  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.  In the year 1975, after six more years without executions, 20,510 murders occurred rising to 23,040 in 1980 after only two executions since 1976.  The rate of murder per person doubled!  So murder went up as executions went down (Pro).  Dudley Sharp of the criminal-justice reform group Justice For All said:
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. (Pro)
All of this and more shows clearly that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime.
   The death penalty is not biased.  Those opposed to capital punishment often tote that there are more black people on death row than anyone else.  It is true that African Americans make up only 11% of the population but 45% of the criminals on death row (Color).  It is also true that blacks commit 85% of crime in the USA, while crime committed by whites only constitutes 15%. Blacks are 39 times more likely to commit violent crimes than whites.  Blacks are 15 times more likely than whites to be in a gang (Color).  Studies done by the FBI show that black people are not targets of police bigotry.  They are actually 27% less likely to be arrested over any other ethnicity, most likely because police have become sensitive to the constant stereotypes of racism (Color).  A 1991 Rand Corporation study by Stephen Klein found that white murderers received the death penalty slightly more often (32%) than non-white murderers (27%) (Pro). Who is being discriminated against in this country?
   To summarize, the characteristics guiding people's opinions on capital punishment are severely incorrect.  This leads to flawed viewpoints that are costing the lives because of inaction to enforce punishments.  To say otherwise is in defiance of both logic and fact.  Capital punishment is not biased against who it's sentenced to.  It's time for America to stop its human rights nonsense and start keeping the lives of its own citizens in mind.  The protection of Americans takes priority over the petty concerns over the lives of those who would take the life of others.  Justice is justice.













Works Cited
"Capital Punishment"  Wikipedia.  27 November 2007.  Wikipedia Foundation.  27 November
2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty#Global_distribution_of_death_penalty>
"History of  the Death Penalty"  Death Penalty Information Center.  2007.  Death Penalty
Information Center.  27 November 2007 <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=15&did=410#IntroductionoftheDeathIntrodu>
Jackson, Andrew.  "Abolish Capital Punishment."  BlueNC 2 February 2007 27 November 2007
<http://bluenc.com/abolish-capital-punishment>
"Pro Penalty." Williamette University.  1996.  Williamette University.  27 November 2007.
<http://www.willamette.edu/cla/rhetoric/courses/Life&DeathArguments/DeathPenalty/cp.html>
Ring, Michal.  "Legalized Murder."  The Tech 17 October 1997 27 November 2007
<http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N51/ring.51c.html>
"The Color of Crime"  New Century Foundation.  2005.  New Century Foundation.
20 November 2007. <http://www.amren.com/colorofcrime/color.pdf>

[tekla]

First of all murder rates are not done by individual stats but by per capita rates (its the only fair way) so X murders per 1000 people, or something like that.

The South executes far more convicted murderers than any other region yet has a homicide rate far above the national average. Texas' murder rate is slightly above average, despite the state's peerless deployment of the death penalty.

The devil really is in the lack of details. The national murder rate has been declining for a decade and a half – in states with and without the death penalty. But the drop has been faster in states that reject capital punishment. At best, evidence for a deterrent effect is inconclusive, and shouldn't officials be able to prove that the taking of one life will undoubtedly save others? They simply have not met that burden of proof, and it's difficult to see how they could.

The only murders the death penalty unarguably deters are those that might have been committed by the executed. But we shouldn't punish inmates for what they might do. Besides, society has an effective and bloodless means of protecting itself from those who have proved themselves willing to murder. It's called life without benefit of parole. In a previous editorial, we called this "death by prison."

That's what happened here.  And Colorado has a DP, so why was it not used in this (and other) cases, largely for cost reasons, and because it seems to make conviction less, not more likely.

Moreover, its more expensive to pursue DP cases, and it takes longer too.  It may even make it harder to get a conviction, as everyday people, when faced with having to do it themselves, to make that decision, find it a lot harder to come to.

A study found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life (Cook & Slawson. 1993). On a national basis, these figures translate to an extra cost of over $700 million dollars spent since 1976 on the death penalty.

What many Americans do not realize is that the death penalty is more costly than incarcerating an inmate for life. A murder trial takes much longer when the death penalty is being pursued. The taxpayer is paying the salaries of the judges, prosecutors, public defenders, court officials, and the cost of briefs. "A 1982 study showed that if the death penalty were reintroduced in the state of New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more then double the cost of a life term in prison" (Bright, 1996). The Duke University study estimated that a death penalty trial takes about four times longer than a non-capital murder trial (Bright, 1996). And, of course, not every death penalty trial results in a death sentence. Based on the experience in North Carolina, the authors found that less than a third of capital trials resulted in a death sentence.

Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution (Miami Herald). It costs six times more to execute a person in Florida than to incarcerate a prisoner for life with no parole. In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years (Dallas Morning News). The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total incurred at the trial level (Sacramento Bee). The New York Department of Correctional Services estimated that implementing the death penalty would cost the state about $118 million annually. To illustrate the cost, it is estimated that the money it would take to implement the death penalty in New York for just five years would be enough to fund 250 additional police officers and build prisons for 6,000 inmates (Lacayo, 1987).

The 2006 numbers show that states with a DP had higher rates of murder than those without.  However, its easy to note that those states with the highest murder rates are almost all Southern, and those with low rates tend to be the upper midwest, so perhaps that is cultural.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/death-penalty-facts/the-death-penalty-and-deterrence/page.do?id=1101085

I mean, if the DP was some sort of deterrence deal, why did he kill her in the first place, sure didn't deter him now did it?

[Syne]

Glad that he is going away forever. Would not have stood in the way of him being put down either.

Why would one do a murder when CP may come into play? Because they always think they are smarter than the society they are preying upon. Fortunately when it comes to violent crime they are usually wrong.

[DarkLady]

For lisagurl: look western democracies in Europe, Australia, NZ, Canada.
Seems to me that the US is only real western democracy nowdays using the Capitol punishment.

[V M]

Speaking of the death penalty, how 'bout those fine countries that still stone women to death because some guy violated her. What's up with that stuff?

[DarkLady]

Death penalty does not include in modern democracy. Full stop. Besides the USA big users are countries like Iran, Saudi-Arabia, China, North Korea...

[tekla]

I think the first 'western democratic' type place to ban the DP was the State of Michigan. 

It's not like he's getting out, or that the defense worked, or that any number of laws, including a DP, but also life without parole plus 60 years, acted to deter him either.

[TamTam]

What I find interesting is that even in states that do carry the death penalty, murders and rapes still happen.  So if the death penalty really was that much of a deterrent, why would those crimes still happen in such large numbers?

Also, in terms of punishment matching the crime, I've heard of so many inmates who would rather die 'painlessly and easily' than spend the rest of their life in jail.  Let them rot, why give them the easy way out?  I do see the death penalty as the easy way out.

The number of innocents murdered via death penalty also makes me not support it.  In my opinion the system isn't working when even one person is falsely convicted and killed.  When an inmate with a life sentence is found innocent, they can return to whatever is left of their life and at least have a chance.  What happens when someone who's already been killed is found innocent after the fact?  Their family gets an apology.  That is wrong.  We shouldn't be killing innocents here for the sake of being able to kill the guilty.  Just letting them rot in jail is safer all-around, it means that our margin of error [and we DO have a margin of error] is not murdered unjustly for crimes they did not commit.  That alone makes the death penalty unsuitable for a modern society.

[Annwyn]

Speaking of the death penalty, how 'bout those fine countries that still stone women to death because same guy violated her. What's up with that stuff?

We're currently deployed in two of those countries.

[V M]

How 'bout the tribal violence that is run ramped in various parts of the world. I'm sure we must be responsible for that since we Americans are such heathens 

[Annwyn]

It wouldn't make much difference where we put our troops, they'll be unappreciated anyways.  People have made it a hobby to spit on heroes rather than thank them for risking their lives to deliver humane practices to parts of the world void of such commodities. 

[V M]

I see were we're screwin' up...We're actually trying to help while everyone else is playing hate mongers on parade.

[Julie Marie]

life plus 60 years

OK, this is where all this stuff gets absurd.  So what exactly is a 'hate crime enhancement" worth?  He already got life without parole, meaning he is going to die in jail.  Then what, he spends an extra sixty years there after he dies?  Sixty years tends to be a lot more time then the standard 25 to life that is the penalty for murder.   

The law says when someone is accused of a crime there has to be a punishment (sentence) attached to the crime.  If a person kills 50 people and is given a life sentence for each killing that could add up to 1000 years in some states.  We all know no one lives that long.  But a person who is found guilty of multiple crimes cannot "get off" being sentenced just because the length of his/her sentence ensures he/she will die in jail. 

In the multiple murder example the sentencing attached to the first five or so murders will mean the criminal will die in jail but the families of the other 45 victims might need to hear the criminal is being punished for killing their relative.  In other words, the judge isn't saying, "Well this guy is gonna die in prison anyway so we're not going to bother sentencing him for the other murders."  The families may need closure.

And since we do that in one instance, we have to do it in all.  Every criminal must be punished for every crime he/she committed.  Besides, with the leniency we too often see, it's somewhat comforting to know the parole board will have a tougher time letting people like this back out into society.

As far as hate crime enhancement, it's been proven the pendulum has to swing way to the other side before people start getting the message.  You have to beat it into their head with tougher penalties.  When it's generally accepted it's wrong to kill trans people we can let go of the hate crime enhancement.

Julie

[Annwyn]

Funny.

Over 20% of all rape, murder, and assault is inter-racial.  Of that 20%, 90% of the victims are white.  I hardly think it isn't in coincidence  with ghetto raised populace like Ice Cube to educated black elite such as Dr. Kamau Kambon all professing a deep hatred of white people.

Where's the hate crime being prosecuted there? 

But when it happens to a trans person, we bitch and whine and throw a fit over it.  Only loyal to our own kind I suppose.

[DarkLady]

Still in case here would be practiced still death penalty I would be first ones to get it. In normal times only crimes that waskind of I was accused brought the death sentence, not murder or rape.