Originally Posted by tankdriver

Working backwards:

Currently we are having a heat wave. It's 105ish with the heat index, and pretty humid. It feels like I'm back in DC in August. I don't know how long it'll last, but last year's August was reasonable - mid/high 80's for the most part.


A source is a source. There's no real way to have a dialogue if the information is contested. Is there anything factually wrong from them?




These were pulled from a debate about the DP:
"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 1990

The numbers to go along with it:

Since 1976 (the year the moratorium was lifted), there have been 220 interracial murderers put to death.

In 12 cases, a white man received the death penalty and was executed for killing a black man.
In 218 cases, a black man received the death penalty and was executed for killing a white man.

Here's one example that doesn't involve any complicated numbers:

In preparing for the penalty phase of an African-American defendant's trial, a white judge in Florida said in open court: [B]"Since the n****er mom and dad are here anyway, why don't we go ahead and do the penalty phase today instead of having to subpoena them back at cost to the state." Peek was executed and his appeal denied [Peek v. Florida, 488 So.2d 52, 56 (Fla. 1986)]


"The researchers examined a large sample of the murders which were eligible for the death penalty in the state between 1983 and 1993. The researchers found that, even after controlling for case differences, blacks in Philadelphia were substantially more likely to get the death penalty than other defendants who committed similar murders. Black defendants faced odds of receiving a death sentence that were 3.9 times higher than other similarly situated defendants." (David Baldus, George Woodsworth, published in the Cornell Law Review, Fall of 1998)



My biggest concern, and I think it should be everyone's, is that the DP may be misapplied. I think it should be sought in fewer cases.

Originally Posted by Botnst

That is a standard even higher than reasonable doubt, which must therefore include, unreasonable doubt. Am I wrong?

B

Originally Posted by MTI

I believe your are confusing the standard of proof for conviction with the punishment. Conviction of crime, does not directly correlate to the punishment, and in particular, the inability to correct a state enacted execution when exculpatory evidence is shown.

Originally Posted by Botnst

But if your standard is that no innocent person could possibly be executed under any circumstance whatsoever, then we have to raise the standard of guilt to include circumstances that a reasonable person might not consider.

B

Originally Posted by tankdriver

If the standard is that no innocent person could possibly be executed under any circumstance whatsoever, then you don't execute anybody. Problem solved, and we don't have to re-tool doubt standards.