ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST POLL: Americans now favor life over death penalty

[pbrower2a]

Well, there have been a couple of recent examples of botched executions, which I imagine skewed things somewhat against capital punishment. That and lower crimes rates and less media emphasis on the issue of crime. If states start switching to a less accident prone form of execution than lethal injection, or if crime rates (or media panic over crime rates) rise, then I imagine support for the death penalty will go right back up.

The death penalty is little deterrent. Most who are convicted of a capital crime

(1) think themselves so clever in the commission of a crime that they will go undetected
(2) are so desperate and reckless that they don't care
(3) are stupid enough to take a loaded gun to a robbery

There have been offenders who have gone from a non-capital state to a capital-punishment state and committed a capital crime in the capital-punishment state.  Just think: cold winters were more of a deterrent to Ted Bundy, who while on the lam went from Michigan to Florida.

If the death penalty were a real deterrent we would see evidence of it in warnings. Just think:  A state with the death penalty could post warnings  "For your safety, XXX has the death penalty for first-degree murder, perhaps with a depiction of the apparatus of execution" on highways crossing state lines, at airports and bus terminals, tail stations, seaports, and even yacht clubs (in case one of the social elite visiting from out-of-state should be thinking of committing an armed robbery at a liquor store with the possibility of shooting someone there).    

Sure, there are people convicted of capital murders and subsequently executed who have college education or have been somewhat successful in business -- but the bulk seem to be toward the low end in formal education and vocational achievement.

[pbrower2a]

Michigan has life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder (premeditated murder, murder committed during a felony), and  life with the possibility of parole after 25 years for second-degree murder or for armed robbery (rationale: every armed robbery is a potential first-degree murder) and some drug offenses. 

[pbrower2a]

Well, there have been a couple of recent examples of botched executions, which I imagine skewed things somewhat against capital punishment. That and lower crimes rates and less media emphasis on the issue of crime. If states start switching to a less accident prone form of execution than lethal injection, or if crime rates (or media panic over crime rates) rise, then I imagine support for the death penalty will go right back up.

The death penalty is little deterrent. Most who are convicted of a capital crime

(1) think themselves so clever in the commission of a crime that they will go undetected
(2) are so desperate and reckless that they don't care
(3) are stupid enough to take a loaded gun to a robbery

There have been offenders who have gone from a non-capital state to a capital-punishment state and committed a capital crime in the capital-punishment state.  Just think: cold winters were more of a deterrent to Ted Bundy, who while on the lam went from Michigan to Florida.

If the death penalty were a real deterrent we would see evidence of it in warnings. Just think:  A state with the death penalty could post warnings  "For your safety, XXX has the death penalty for first-degree murder, perhaps with a depiction of the apparatus of execution" on highways crossing state lines, at airports and bus terminals, tail stations, seaports, and even yacht clubs (in case one of the social elite visiting from out-of-state should be thinking of committing an armed robbery at a liquor store with the possibility of shooting someone there).    

Sure, there are people convicted of capital murders and subsequently executed who have college education or have been somewhat successful in business -- but the bulk seem to be toward the low end in formal education and vocational achievement.

Oh, I wasn't talking about how effective the death penalty was as a deterrent (although I'd argue it probably has more value as a detterent than life without parole), I was simply suggesting that if people feel more afraid then they are more likely to support harsher penalties for criminals (and the death penalty is, on the face of it, a harsher penalty than life imprisonment).

Of course.

Capital punishment is a deterrent only if one thinks of it all the time as a prospect for oneself-- and I doubt that anyone can.  Offenders rarely think much of it until they are on Death Row, when it is too late to save themselves from having to think about it all the time. It might be a deterrent to drug trafficking in a country with plentiful billboards that proclaim "Dadah (illegal drugs) is DEATH" with a noose to the side with a mandatory death possession for drug offenses.   

I am going to guess that some clever offender for which capital punishment is most intended, Scott Peterson, did everything possible that he could to avoid detection altogether and avoid criminal sanctions for murdering his pregnant wife. He sought to avoid punishment altogether. His regret may now be that he failed to dump the body offshore far enough, where currents would have carried it to some place where it would have never been found.  The usual person who gets the death penalty wasn't thinking of much aside from getting away with a crime. A long prison term is usually enough of a deterrence to someone who knows that he can't get away with such crimes as rape, robbery, bar-room brawls, cop-killing, prison escape, or drug trafficking.

Just think -- William Joyce, a/k/a Lord haw Haw, would have never made his infamous taunts from Hitlerland if he were sure at the time that Britain would prevail. When he started making those treasonable broadcasts he was sure that at the end of the war the nooses would be around the throats of such 'war criminals' as Sir Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Wladislaw Sikorski. When caught he was scared, and rightly so. But that was long after the most objectionable of his pronouncements.

[pbrower2a]

This is a perfectly valid question. After all, this is the basic question that jurors are asked during the penalty phase in a capital murder trial.

This is indeed a good poll result. Hopefully, it is able to be enacted as law throughout more of the country. I'm really hopeful that California voters will have another attempt at finally ending the death penalty and commuting the country's largest death row to life in prison.

I once made the calculation that on the average a person has a chance of being executed while sentenced to death in California is one in 73 years. So far those executed in California are as a rule the Worst of the Worst. The California death penalty has become a sick joke.

Michigan has life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder (premeditated murder, murder committed during a felony), and  life with the possibility of parole after 25 years for second-degree murder or for armed robbery (rationale: every armed robbery is a potential first-degree murder) and some drug offenses.

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True. Aside from having no death penalty, Michigan is tough on violent offenders and drug criminals.