death penalty and sentencing information in the united states 10/1/97 by dudley sharp the death penalty debate in the u.s. The culture of lies and deceit so dominates that movement that many of the falsehoods are now wrongly accepted as fact, by both advocates and opponents of capital punishment. If you are even casually aware of this public debate, you will note that every category contradicts the well worn frauds presented by the anti death penalty movement. There have been approximately 560,0 murders and 358 executions from 1967 1996 fbi's uniform crime report ucr amp bureau of justice statistics bjs.

2 approximately 5900 persons have been sentenced to death and 358 executed from 1973 96. 56 murderers were executed in 1995, a record number for the modern death penalty. The average time on death row for those 56 executed 11 years, 2 months capital punishment 1995 , bjs, 1996 , an all time record of longevity, breaking the 1994 record of 10 years, 2 months.

Dissertation Prospectus Definition

3 death penalty opponents opponents state that those who support the death penalty see it as a solution to violent crime. In reality, executions are seen as the appropriate punishment for certain criminals committing specific crimes. 4 opponents equate execution and murder, believing that if two acts have the same ending or result, then those two acts are morally equivalent. Is the legal taking of property to satisfy a debt the same as auto theft? both result in loss of property. Are kidnaping and legal incarceration the same? both involve imprisonment against one's will.

My Vote for Trees Essays

Is killing in self defense the same as capital murder? both end in taking human life. Opponents flawed logic and moral confusion mirror their factual arguments there is, often, an absence of reality. Opponents see no moral distinction between the slaughter of 12 million totally innocent men, women and children and the just execution of society's worst human rights violators. The risk of executing the innocent great effort has been made in pretrial, trial, appeals, writ and clemency procedures to minimize the chance of an innocent being convicted, sentenced to death or executed. Since 1973, legal protections have been so extraordinary that 37% of all death row cases have been overturned for due process reasons or commuted.

Indeed, inmates are six times more likely to get off death row by appeals than by execution. And, in fact, many of those cases were overturned based on post conviction new laws, established by legislative or judicial decisions in other cases. Opponents claim that 69 innocent death row inmates have been released since 1973. Just a casual review, using the dpics own case descriptions, reveals that of 39 cases reviewed sec. 12 21 , that the dpic offers no evidence of innocence in 29, or 78%, of those cases.

Incredibly, the dpic reviews recent cases of possible mistaken executions p 23 24 , wherein they list the cases of roger keith coleman, leonel herrera, and jesse jacobs 3 cases which helped solidify the anti death penalty movements penchant for lack of full disclosure and/or fraud. For the fourth case, therein, that of coleman wayne gray, the dpic makes no effort to claim innocence. Furthermore, the dpic and most opponents fail to review that the role of clemency and appeals in such cases is to judge the merits of death row inmates claims regarding innocence and/or additional trial error. Indeed, the release of those 69 inmates proves that such procedures worked precisely, and often generously, as intended. Also contrary to opponents claims, clemency is used generously to grant mercy to death row murderers and to spare inmates whose guilt has come into question. In fact, 135 death row inmates have been spared by clemency or commutation from 1973 95 ibid.

This represents 43% of the total of those executed during that time a remarkable record of consideration and mercy. In reviewing the dpics original 1993 study, finding 48 of the 69 innocent defendants on death row, the dpic states its debt for the . Professors michael radelet and hugo bedau p 1 in their miscarriages of justice in potentially capital cases.

The most significant study conducted to evaluate the evidence of the innocent executed is the bedau radelet study miscarriages of justice in potentially capital cases, 40, 1 stanford law review, 11/87. However, the study's methodology was so flawed that at least 12 of those cases had no evidence of innocence and substantial evidence of guilt. Bedau amp radelet, both opponents, consistently presented incomplete and misleading accounts of the evidence.

Protecting the innocent: a response to the bedau radelet study 41, 1 stanford law review, 11/88. The remaining 11 cases represent 0.14% of the 7,800 executions which have taken place since 1900. In addition, the innocents executed group was extracted from a bedau amp radelet imagined pool of 350 persons who were, supposedly, wrongly convicted of capital or potentially capital crimes. Not only were they at least 50% in error with their 23 innocents executed claim, but 211 of those 350 cases, or 60%, were not sentenced to death.

Bedau and radelet already knew that plea bargains, the juries, the evidence, the prosecutors, judicial review and/or the legal statutes had put these crimes in the no capital punishment category. Indeed, their claims of innocence, regarding the remaining 139 of those 350 cases, should be suspect, given this studys poor level of accuracy. Had a high school student presented such a report, where 50 60% of the material was either false or misleading, a grade of f would be a likely result. The bedau radelet study is remarkable not as retired supreme court judge harry blackmun seems to believe for demonstrating that mistakes involving the death penalty are common, but rather for demonstrating how uncommon they are. This study the most thorough and painstaking analysis ever on the subject fails to prove that a single such mistake has occurred in the united states during the twentieth century. Presumably, bedau and radelet would have selected the most compelling 23 cases of the innocent executed to prove their proposition.

Yet, in each of these cases, where there is a record to review, there are eyewitnesses, confessions, physical evidence and circumstantial evidence in support of the defendants guilt. Bedau has written elsewhere that it is false sentimentality to argue that the death penalty ought to be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed when the record fails to disclose that such cases exist. Another significant oversight by that study was not differentiating between the risk of executing innocent persons before and after furman v georgia 1972.