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Post by trubble on Jul 10, 2011 4:24:44 GMT -5
NY TImes Op-Ed
Death Penalty, Still Racist and Arbitrary
By DAVID R. DOW Published: July 8, 2011 Extracts: LAST week was the 35th anniversary of the return of the American death penalty. It remains as racist and as random as ever.... ... Nationwide, blacks and whites are victims of homicide in roughly equal numbers, yet 80 percent of those executed had murdered white people. ... Since 1976, Texas has carried out 470 executions (well more than a third of the national total of 1,257). ... You can count on one hand the number of those executions that involved a white murderer and a black victim and you do not need to use your thumb, ring finger, index finger or pinkie. Well, you might need the pinkie. On June 16, Texas executed Lee Taylor, who at age 16 beat an elderly couple while robbing their home. The 79-year-old husband died of his injuries. Mr. Taylor was sentenced to life in prison; there he joined the Aryan Brotherhood, a white gang, and, four years into his sentence, murdered a black inmate and was sentenced to death. When Mr. Taylor was executed, it was reported that he was the second white person in Texas executed for killing a black person. Actually, he should be counted as the first. The other inmate, Larry Hayes, executed in 2003, killed two people, one of whom was white. The facts surrounding Lee Taylor’s execution are cause for further shame. John Balentine, a black inmate, was scheduled to die in Texas the day before Lee Taylor’s execution. Mr. Balentine’s lawyers argued that his court-appointed appellate lawyer had botched his case, and that he should have an opportunity to raise issues the lawyer had neglected. Less than an hour before Mr. Balentine was to die, the Supreme Court issued a stay. Lee Taylor’s lawyers watched the Balentine case closely; their client too had received scandalously bad representation, and, they filed a petition virtually identical to the one in the Balentine case. But by a vote of 5-to-4, the justices permitted the Taylor execution to proceed. If there were differences between the Balentine and Taylor cases, they were far too minor to form the boundary between life and death. But trivial distinctions are commonplace in death penalty cases. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., one of the five justices in the McCleskey majority, retired from the court in 1987. Following his retirement he said he had voted the wrong way. If Justice Powell had changed his mind a year sooner, Warren McCleskey, who was executed in Georgia in 1991, would still be alive. And because of a vote from a single Supreme Court justice, John Balentine lives while Lee Taylor died. When capital punishment was briefly struck down, in 1972, Justice Potter Stewart said the death penalty was arbitrary, like being struck by lightning... >>Full Article<<
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Post by iamjumbo on Jul 10, 2011 4:58:23 GMT -5
another ignorant rant by an abjectly stupid boohooer. unfortunately, because of furman and gregg, the death penalty is arbitrary. the supreme court made it that way. before 1972, most states had a mandatory death penalty, no arbitrary about that. it was scotus who struck down the mandatory sentences, not the states. the "death penalty is racist" stupidity would be comical if it weren't so pathetic. the simple FACT is that it IS racist, since more than twice as many whites have been executed as blacks
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Post by trubble on Jul 10, 2011 5:25:12 GMT -5
Really? Do you have a link to that stat? I googled for one but all I got was a stat pertaining to North Carolina since 1961.
Here's the stat from NY Times: Nationwide, blacks and whites are victims of homicide in roughly equal numbers, yet 80 percent of those executed had murdered white people.
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Post by fretslider on Jul 10, 2011 6:17:13 GMT -5
They aren't worried that the DP is state sanctioned killing, they just worry about the tally of black and white.
Sad
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Post by fretslider on Jul 10, 2011 6:18:16 GMT -5
"the "death penalty is racist" stupidity would be comical if it weren't so pathetic."
Indeed, the "death penalty is barbaric.
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Post by iamjumbo on Jul 10, 2011 14:38:57 GMT -5
Really? Do you have a link to that stat? I googled for one but all I got was a stat pertaining to North Carolina since 1961. Here's the stat from NY Times: Nationwide, blacks and whites are victims of homicide in roughly equal numbers, yet 80 percent of those executed had murdered white people. the fact is that the race of the victim has absolutely NO relevance to anything whatsoever. one of the complaints before furman and gregg was that more blacks were executed than whites, and that was pretty much true. of course, the fact that blacks commit almost sixty percent of all crime in the country would lead to that in the first place. here you go. 56% of those executed since 1976 have been white, while only 35% have been black. ONLY the most abjectly stupid would even consider trying to claim that the death penalty has anything to do with race www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/race-death-row-inmates-executed-1976
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Post by iamjumbo on Jul 10, 2011 14:41:09 GMT -5
"the "death penalty is racist" stupidity would be comical if it weren't so pathetic." Indeed, the "death penalty is barbaric. of course, those of us who think with our head instead of our heart know that is totally false
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Post by trubble on Jul 10, 2011 15:15:27 GMT -5
They aren't worried that the DP is state sanctioned killing, they just worry about the tally of black and white. Sad You don't need to either agree or disagree with the principle of the DP to evaluate anything else about it, from allegations of prejudice to methods of execution. Would you recoil from a debate, for example, about whether a series of injections is a more humane method of execution than ..say..oh.. any of these: listverse.com/2007/09/12/top-10-gruesome-methods-of-execution/ ? Barbaric or not, why add an extra barbarism by making one ethnicity more liable to it than another? Or allowing an arbitrary system to choose who should die or not?
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Post by trubble on Jul 10, 2011 15:19:25 GMT -5
Thank you. I'll take a good look. Somehow, I find that counter-intuitive. Maybe not today, but maybe 30 years ago (and certainly prior to that when black people had lower status and less civil rights than white people) I think racism would have played quite a large part in many cases. Don't you?? And a history of it might mean some of that attitude is still floating around, even at a sub-conscious level. Possibly??
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Post by trubble on Jul 10, 2011 15:30:06 GMT -5
Jumbo, while I try to sort out what that page is telling me, I see a big statement being flashed across the screen that says: "In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks." - United States General Accounting Office, Death Penalty Sentencing, February 1990That appears to be unambiguous. Here's another quote from another page on that site. www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-black-and-white-who-lives-who-dies-who-decides#Conclusionn investigation of all murder cases prosecuted . . . from 1973 to 1990 revealed that in cases involving the murder of a white person, prosecutors often met with the victim's family and discussed whether to seek the death penalty.
In a case involving the murder of the daughter of a prominent white contractor, the prosecutor contacted the contractor and asked him if he wanted to seek the death penalty. When the contractor replied in the affirmative, the prosecutor said that was all he needed to know. He obtained the death penalty at trial. He was rewarded with a contribution of $5,000 from the contractor when he successfully ran for judge in the next election. The contribution was the largest received by the District Attorney.
There were other cases in which the District Attorney issued press releases announcing that he was seeking the death penalty after meeting with the family of a white victim.
But prosecutors failed to meet with African-Americans whose family members had been murdered to determine what sentence they wanted.
Most were not even notified that the case had been resolved.
As a result of these practices, although African-Americans were the victims of 65% of the homicides in the Chattahoochee Judicial District, 85% of the capital cases were white victim cases. Well, it seems to me that this site is nailing its colours to its mast. It's a shame that this page is out of date. Still, it's not that much out of date.
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Post by fretslider on Jul 10, 2011 16:11:01 GMT -5
They aren't worried that the DP is state sanctioned killing, they just worry about the tally of black and white. Sad You don't need to either agree or disagree with the principle of the DP to evaluate anything else about it, from allegations of prejudice to methods of execution. Would you recoil from a debate, for example, about whether a series of injections is a more humane method of execution than ..say..oh.. any of these: listverse.com/2007/09/12/top-10-gruesome-methods-of-execution/ ? Barbaric or not, why add an extra barbarism by making one ethnicity more liable to it than another? Or allowing an arbitrary system to choose who should die or not? Why not put a stop to the barbarity? The very idea of humane execution is.. well read for yourself, www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/opinion/14mon2.html
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Post by trubble on Jul 10, 2011 16:14:23 GMT -5
Why not use its ''arbitrary'' and ''racist'' nature as an argument/tool to put a stop to it?
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Post by fretslider on Jul 10, 2011 16:21:46 GMT -5
Why not use its ''arbitrary'' and ''racist'' nature as an argument/tool to put a stop to it? But its not being used as a tool to put a stop to it.
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Post by biglin on Jul 10, 2011 17:16:17 GMT -5
If the death penalty is used right - to punish murder - then it's neither racist nor arbitrary.
The strange thing in America is that you're more likely to be SENTENCED to death if you're black but more likely to be EXECUTED if you're white.
As for the "gender gap," that's crazy.
Why the likes of Christa PIke are still breathing air is beyond me.
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Post by pipsqueak on Jul 10, 2011 17:26:09 GMT -5
If the death penalty is used right - to punish murder - then it's neither racist nor arbitrary. it happens often enough that people are found not to have committed crimes after they have been found 'guilty' - sometimes years later with someones life having been wasted unecessarily incarcerated. i'm afraid i don't have faith in the justice system, where it mostly depends on how good ones brief is, as to the verdict. too many cockups occur and one execution for a crime not committed it one too many. it is a barbaric and inhuman system that puts people to death and it should be abolished.
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