You're right, H-Kat. Why should we be debating issues like this in Debate Club?
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Forevergrey wrote:
Icy was trying to excuse the crime of the 'black community' cause they continue to exist in a self-inflicted culture of poverty. Thats bullshit. If you steal my car cause your poor, bored and stupid doen't make it any less of a crime. ITS. STILL. A. CRIME. FUCKTARD.
Of course it's still a crime. Killing innocent people, no matter what the reason, is a horrible thing to do, and all murderers should be sent to jail for rehabilitation. (
[flamebait]Even President Bush.
[/flamebait]) I am very anti-killing people, believe me.
Abunai! wrote:
You were, and are, attempting to ignore the point: we're talking about the death penalty. You'll notice that it has been said repeatedly that in deciding whether or not a case deserves the death penalty, motive (e.g. whether the murderer shot the old man for his wallet or cut the little girl so he could watch her bleed to death) is always considered. You denied that this mattered. Icy stated blacks in the US primarily committed crime because of poverty. Most courts do not kill you for such an offense. Yet, more blacks (in proportion to their number) are sentenced to death.
Now, since I already said all that, and it went right over your head, I'll point out what I should not have to: I am not debating whether or not blacks are poor because "the man" or because they are generally incapable of ending the cycle of poverty and ignorance. I am not saying a crime commited because of poverty is not a crime. I am saying your missing or ignoring the point, stuck in a cycle more pitiful than that of the minority we're discussing.
What he said.
Now, since everyone seems to have totally ignored the report I posted which was taken from the same source whence MiB got one of his statistics, I'll repost some of it here. Keep in mind that disputing the reliability of this source means that Mibby used an unreliable source as well. Unless of course you want to analyze the particular methods each study used and determine the validity of each based upon that. You're more than welcome to, if you have the time/energy.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=45&did=539 wrote:
The first step in determining the presence of racial discrimination in the death penalty is to look at the raw data:
from among the eligible homicides, how often are black defendants sentenced to death and how often are others sentenced to death?
The raw data of death sentences in Philadelphia between 1983 and 1993, provide the first piece of disturbing evidence that race discrimination may be operating.
The rate at which eligible black defendants were sentenced to death was nearly 40% higher than the rate for other eligible defendants. A sentencing rate is simply a ratio of the number of death sentences for a particular group compared to the total number of cases of that group which would be eligible for a death sentence. In the chart below, a death sentencing rate of .18 for blacks means that for every 100 eligible black defendants, 18 will be sentenced to death. For other defendants, only 13 out of 100 will be similarly sentenced.
Racial disparities can result through prosecutorial selection of which cases "deserve" the death penalty, or from the action of juries in determining the final sentences, or from both. But before a disparity due to race can be established, a researcher must measure the race effects for crimes of similar severity committed by defendants with similar criminal histories.
(emphasis mine)
Quote:
In order to determine whether race influences death sentencing, the researchers turned to the same techniques used in medical research to determine whether cigarette smoking causes cancer, or frequent exercise and good diet reduces heart attacks. Murder cases become death eligible through the existence of certain aggravating factors which make one murder "worse" than another. In deciding whether the death penalty should be sought, the prosecutor is supposed to consider the presence of such factors as whether a murder was committed with grave risk to the life of others, whether the murder was committed in the course of another serious crime such as robbery or rape, whether torture was used in the commission of the murder, or whether the defendant had a significant violent history. The jury is similarly told to consider such factors when deciding whether the sentence should be life or death, once a guilty verdict is rendered.12
Through an analysis of murders in which the death penalty could have been sought, it is possible, through an analysis of the defendants that were and were not sentenced to death, to assign a predictive score, or coefficient, to various aggravating factors to measure how heavily each influences the likelihood of a death sentence. The researchers screened hundreds of factors, statutory and non-statutory, to develop models to explain how the system works. All statutory factors, and those non-statutory factors which significantly correlated with the outcome were included.
Comparing the coefficients permits an average assessment of how much reliance was placed on the factor by the decision-makers. For example, the fact that the murder was committed in the course of another felony has less impact than the fact that the defendant caused great harm, fear or pain. Statistically, in this study committing another felony had a relative predictive value of 0.8. On the other hand, if the murder was accompanied by torture, that factor was very significant and registered a predictive value of 1.9. A murder committed with grave risk of death to others had a relatively high predictive value of 1.5. A factor which had no apparent effect would have a value of 0. The study looked at a large class of such variables. 12
The race of the defendant is not supposed to influence whether a person is sentenced to death, but in Philadelphia it clearly does. (See Chart above.) Murders by blacks are treated as more severe and "deserving" of the death penalty because of the defendant's race. Being a black defendant merits a score of 1.4 in predicting whether a death sentence will ultimately result. This extra burden for black defendants is comparable to such legitimate aggravating factors as torture or "causing great harm, fear or pain," which earned scores of 1.9 and 1.0 respectively, in predicting the sentence. Stated differently, in Philadelphia, the capital sentencing statute has operated as though being black was not merely a physical attribute, but as if it were one of the most important aggravating factors actually justifying the death penalty.
The race of the defendant is a much stronger predictor that a case will result in a death sentence than the fact that the crime was committed along with another felony (0.8) or that the defendant killed with multiple stab wounds (0.9). Either when the prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty in a particular case, or when the jury decides that death is the appropriate sentence, on average, black defendants are considered "worse," regardless of the other factors in their case.