Eronarn wrote:
IcyMonkey wrote:
Eronarn wrote:
IcyMonkey wrote:
H-Kat wrote:
... And what does that have to do with Bush?
-Kitty
Well, he's supporting an institution that kills people and is unfairly biased towards blacks. Like I said, he killed 152 people when he was governor of Texas.
Icy, stop being retarded. He didn't kill 152 people. The courts killed 152 people. Did you sleep through your American Government class or whatever they call it where you are?Part of a governor's job is to review cases. Every single execution essentially had to be okayed by him before it could go through. Therefore, he is responsible for the deaths of those people.
Hastur forbid that the courts actually did their job and fairly decided that these men were supposed to die, nooo, THAT won't happen in US government, better spend the entire term reviewing cases that have already been reviewed several dozen times! Look, I'm not saying whether it should be his job, but reviewing cases
was his job, and judging by his performance of that job, he's very pro-killing people. Saying what you're saying is like saying the president shouldn't have veto power because the congress should be able to make intelligent legislative decisions by themselves. If the president fails to veto a law I dislike, I can comment on it. Similarly, if the governor of a state okays an execution I am opposed to, I can comment on this.
Besides, the original point of my initial comment was simply to point out that, by his actions, it was clear that Bush was indeed
for killing certain people.
The Man In Black wrote:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article ... =5&did=184Blacks make up (according to this website) 34% of the people on death row as of July 1, 2004. They make up approximately 13% of the population - that makes them ~2.61 times more likely to be on death row than their % of the population implies. However -
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htmThey in fact, make up over
51% of the homocide offenders every year, and whites 46.4%. Combine this with the fact that whites make up 57.4% of the population on death row, and we see a startling picture here.
So, using your logic, the justice system in regaurds to the death penalty is indeed racist -
towards whites.
Uhm, 51%? Where exactly did it say that on that site? I'm guessing you extrapolated it from some of the numbers (not percentages) they offered, but which ones?
Besides which, using statistics from two seperate sources, compiled in two seperate years (2000 vs. 2004) is never a good idea.
There are other factors to take into account. You have to keep in mind that many black people may be in states that don't use the death penalty orvdon't use it often. Also, the Death Penalty is not given out for all homocides, but only very particular types. I'm mainly discussing the case of Texas in particular. I tried to look for crime statistics for the state of Texas sorted by race, but I couldn't find anything. Any help would be appreciated.
Quote:
You have no data, Icy, just what fatty moore tells you. Let me give you a hint: fatty moore lies.
Dude, I haven't even seen Fahrenheit: 9/11. I believe Moore as much as your average educated conservative believes Rush Limbaugh. He's funny, and I enjoy his Bush-bashing, but I'm not going to consider him a source of information. For stuff like that I'd go to Chomsky or Christopher Hitchens.
Also, I've found an interesting report from the web site that you got your first statistic from. I'd recommend checking it out.
The Death Penalty in Black and White - This report basically makes the case that blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites charged with similar crimes.
Quote:
Blatant racism is seen and heard too often in courtrooms around the country. In death penalty cases, the use of derogatory slurs kindles the flames of prejudice and allows the jury to judge harshly those they wish to scapegoat for the problem of crime. A few examples illustrate the intensity of this racism:
- "One of you two is gonna hang for this. Since you're the nigger, you're elected."3 These words were spoken by a Texas police officer to Clarence Brandley, who was charged with the murder of a white high school girl. Brandley was later exonerated in 1990 after ten years on death row.
- In preparing for the penalty phase of an African-American defendant's trial, a white judge in Florida said in open court: "Since the nigger 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."4Anthony Peek was sentenced to death and the sentence was upheld by the Florida Supreme Court in 1986 reviewing his claim of racial bias.
- A prosecutor in Alabama gave as his reason for striking several potential jurors the fact that they were affiliated with Alabama State University -- a predominantly black institution. This pretext was considered race neutral by the reviewing court. 5
- During the 1997 election campaign for Philadelphia's District Attorney, it was revealed that one of the candidates had produced, as an Assistant D.A., a training video for new prosecutors in which he instructed them about whom to exclude from the jury, noting that "young black women are very bad" on the jury for a prosecutor, and that "blacks from low-income areas are less likely to convict."6 The training tape also instructed the new recruits on how to hide the racial motivation for their jury strikes.
- In Missouri, Judge Earl Blackwell issued a signed press release about his judicial election announcing his new affiliation with the Republican Party while presiding over a death penalty case against an unemployed African-American defendant. The press release stated, in part: "[T]he Democrat party places far too much emphasis on representing minorities . . . people who dont' (sic) want to work, and people with a skin that's any color but white . . . ."7 The judge denied a motion to recuse himself from the trial. The defendant, Brian Kinder, was convicted and sentenced to death, and Missouri's Supreme Court affirmed in 1996.8
These examples are symbolic of a more systemic racism, and they provide a sense of how damaging racial prejudice and insensitivity can be when someone is facing execution. Empirical studies which provide the national evidence of racism in capital punishment are critical to understanding that this problem goes far beyond individual examples of prejudice.
Quote:
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.
Keep in mind, this is from the same site that you got your first statistic from.