Here are a few links I've been collecting:
1. You know you're having a bad day at the gym when the exercise machine shoots you out like a slingshot.
2. I had a visitor looking for information about flatulence in Beethoven's Second Symphony. (It's not as strange as it sounds; listen to the fourth movement.) So I followed his search link and discovered that it's really the choral movement of the Ninth that's flatulent. So says an op-ed in the NY Times from last December. I'm serious. Check it out.
3. In light of that, scientists have strapped plastic bags to Beethoven's back to measure the effect of his flatulence on global warming. Sorry, it's Argentinian cows who have to suffer this indignity. Photo at link. (Hat tip: fee simple)
4. The headline says it all: "Gummy Bears That Fight Plaque" (via HotAir)
5. The Snickers ad: How to be retro and edgy at the same time.
6. As a follow-up to my post from last September on the same subject and the same "scientist," I'm giving you this article on "breast biomechanics." (via Ace)
7. The Maryland Death Penalty Abolition Dog And Pony Show (MDPADAPS) is now underway. I'm on the edge of my seat wondering what the commission's conclusion will be.
8. Soccer Dad deals with Obamoid stupidity so you don't have to. Or is "stupidity" the new "uppity"?
9. If the carnivores can do it, so can the vegetarians. A veggie "hot dog" eating contest, I mean. Except for the fact that Tofurky sucks major eggs. And don't neglect to click to read the waiver required of participants. (On The Red Line)
10. Mark Newgent takes on more left-wing economic idiocy. (See here for my own post from last week.)
11. Mightily pissed off (and more dubious language) because an editor removed the indefinite article formerly the penultimate word in his column. (via Three Sources)
Showing posts with label death penalty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death penalty. Show all posts
July 29, 2008
Tuesday evening linkfest
July 10, 2008
Stacking the deck against the death penalty
Governor O'Malley has firm views on what's wrong with the death penalty, but he apparently lacks the guts (and the votes) to push for its abolition.
So instead, he's set up a commission to "study" it, and has stacked the deck with a chairman who's on record against it. Another day in Maryland politics.
Benjamin Civiletti, a prominent Baltimore lawyer and former U.S. attorney general who once called for a national moratorium on capital punishment, will head a state commission studying the death penalty in Maryland, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Thursday.Oh, sure, there are members who support the death penalty, like the Baltimore County state's attorney, but we all know where this is headed. Why go through this elaborate ruse of impartial inquiry?
The commission begins its deliberations as O'Malley, a staunch death-penalty opponent, has moved toward ending Maryland's de facto moratorium on executions by ordering the drafting of procedures for the use of lethal injection. O'Malley, a Democrat, made that decision on the advice of legal counsel after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injection protocols that are virtually identical to Maryland's.
Established this year by the General Assembly, the commission is charged with examining a number of issues including disparities in the application of the death penalty, the cost differential between litigating prolonged capital punishment cases and life imprisonment, and the impact of DNA evidence.
O'Malley appointed 13 of the 23 commission members, and death penalty proponents had raised concerns that the governor would stack the panel with like-minded opponents. Civiletti, who was attorney general during the Carter administration and now focuses on commercial litigation and white-collar crime, said he hasn't represented anyone charged with a capital offense. He declined to share his personal opinion on the subject Thursday.
June 26, 2008
Amnesty International imitates Code Pink
Taking a page from the old Code Pink wacko book, Amnesty International has beclowned itself by setting up a see-it-for-yourself fake model of a Guantanamo cell. And where did this occur? Why, naturally, on the National Mall in Washington.
From the article in the Washington Post:
Amnesty International USA, the human rights group, set up the cell to dramatize its opposition to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where since 2002 the United States has kept hundreds of prisoners, many of them terror suspects. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this month that Guantanamo prisoners have the right to go to federal court to challenge their detention.And if you think I'm joking about Code Pink, check this out: "Dressed in orange prison jumpsuits, Amnesty International staff members such as Jason Disterhoft, 32, posed for photographs inside the cell, apparently not minding the temperature, which approached 90 degrees."
Amnesty International has taken the cell on the road, displaying it in Miami, Philadelphia and Portland, Maine, to educate Americans about what it contends are human rights violations that the United States is committing at Guantanamo.
Compare and contrast. Here is Amnesty International:
Here is Code Pink, last month:
And by the way, do you know what else in on Amnesty's plate these days? The answer is: Decrying the execution of a Virginia man for murdering and nearly beheading a convenience store clerk. That's right; they're once again on the side of the murderers.
Key paragraph: "Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of Amnesty International USA's campaign to abolish the death penalty, said Yarbrough's execution 'marks a grim milestone for the state of Virginia. As evidence mounts that this country's death penalty system is flawed beyond repair, Virginia has become a virtual racetrack for capital punishment.'"
June 23, 2008
Monday mini-linkfest
1. Isn't this always true about men? "Doubts Raised Over Whether Md. Inmate Will be Committed" (Well, that was the headline when I first linked the story, anyway.)
2. Next time you're lost in the Alps and need to be rescued, try attaching your bra to a logging cable line. Especially if it's a size 36 DD. [UPDATE: Regrettably, the bra size has been debunked. Via Ace.]
3. Remember the Obama campaign office with the Che flag? Turns out that the woman who mans that post has been prohibited from talking about it.
4. And speaking of Che and Obama, I realize this has been around the 'sphere, but here's the office of the Ohio judge who overturned the state's death-penalty procedures.
5. We'll soon see, perhaps as early as Wednesday, whether this prediction is right. SCOTUSblog figures out that the Supreme Court's gun-control decision soon to be released in the Heller case is going to be written by Justice Scalia. The blog has a good track record. In April, it correctly predicted that Justice Kennedy would write the opinion in Boumediene, the Guantanamo case.
May 27, 2008
Ending the moratorium on the death penalty
Capital punishment in Maryland has been on a see-saw of late. With Governor O'Malley in Annapolis, it's tended to be a little more saw than see.
Kenny Burns writes that Governor O'Malley is about to take steps to restore the death penalty. O'Malley is not enthusiatic about it, but he's proceeding, anyway, which is far more than I expected.
Kenny cites a report on WBAL that explains:
Governor Martin O'Malley says he will reluctantly move forward with getting Maryland's execution protocol approved.Of course, actually carrying out the punishment is all somewhat theoretical, because Maryland has few inmates on death row, and the largest jurisdictions in the state are reluctant to bring capital cases. There have been only two executions in Maryland since 1998 (and one in November 1998).
Maryland's highest court ruled in late 2006 that the state could not hold another lethal injection until a legislative committee gives proper approval to the rules about how executions are carried out.
O'Malley is adamantly opposed to capital punishment, and has waited to see how legislation to repeal the death penalty fared in the General Assembly. Repeal legislation has failed two years in a row.
O'Malley says he won't stand in the way of the law and will direct the state's corrections agency to start developing the new protocols.
November 19, 2007
More on death and deterrence
For reasons known only to the New York Times, that paper has run major articles on the death penalty for the past two days.
Yesterday, a front-page article explained that "[a]ccording to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented." This is a remarkable thing to read in the Times. Sure, people contest these studies, saying they're based on "faulty premises, insufficient data and flawed methodologies." But, there they are.
Today, an article discussed efforts in the New Jersey legislature to abolish the death penalty, which one may fairly characterize as moribund, the state having not executed anyone since 1963. The move is symbolic for supporters of abolition, who have a good deal of backing for the measure (including that of Gov. Corzine). Yet, there are those studies again: "But supporters of the death penalty have as ammunition a number of recent academic studies backing one of their principal arguments: that executions do have a deterrent effect on the murder rate."
Yesterday's article quoted an opponent who seems to have been moved by the studies:
"The evidence on whether it has a significant deterrent effect seems sufficiently plausible that the moral issue becomes a difficult one, said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has frequently taken liberal positions. "I did shift from being against the death penalty to thinking that if it has a significant deterrent effect it's probably justified."What makes this pair of articles very strange to me is that I remember writing about this same topic back in June: "Death and deterrence." And everything here is already there in my post, including good old Prof. Sunstein. Just scroll down. (The abolition proposal in New Jersey is new, but I think that's it.) I used my post in June to distinguish between moralists and practicalists on both sides of the death-penalty debate. I argued that moralists on both sides would be largely unmoved by studies on deterrence, no matter what the results.
I'm not sure what's revved up the Times' death-penalty engines, but I'm glad to see the studies on deterrence may be having an effect on others, even if, as a moralist, I don't consider them very relevant to me.
November 04, 2007
What he didn't say
You may have read that in an interview with Jeffrey Rosen, published in the New York Times magazine in September, Justice Stevens explained the origins of his skepticism about the death penalty:
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941, Stevens enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, hours before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He later won a bronze star for his service as a cryptographer, after he helped break the code that informed American officials that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was about to travel to the front. Based on the code-breaking of Stevens and others, U.S. pilots, on Roosevelt’s orders, shot down Yamamoto’s plane in April 1943.I didn't read the original article, but I read about this revelation here.
Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, he said, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “I was on the desk, on watch, when I got word that they had shot down Yamamoto in the Solomon Islands, and I remember thinking: This is a particular individual they went out to intercept,” he said. “There is a very different notion when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.” Stevens said that, partly as a result of his World War II experience, he has tried on the court to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death penalty and to ensure that it is imposed fairly and accurately. He has been the most outspoken critic of the death penalty on the current court.
In today's New York Times Magazine, Justice Stevens has a letter about this article. (I'll have to add the link later if it becomes available, because it's not right now.)
What's interesting about the letter is that Justice Stevens feels the need to correct two matters: first, "the impression that I claim credit for helping break the Japanese naval code that enabled our forces to shoot down Admiral Yamamoto," and second, the statement that he turned down an offer to teach at Yale Law School.
He says nothing about the origins of his skepticism about the death penalty. Which is another way of confirming that the story is accurate.
August 28, 2007
Tex. Gov. to EU: Drop Dead
Gotta love this response from the Governor of Texas to a demand by the EU that Texas place a moratorium on capital punishment:
230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.(via Patterico)
August 26, 2007
Sunday linkfest
1. "[F]or 40 days and 40 nights, there has been no showering, no hair washing, no teeth cleaning and no deodorant."
Noah's Ark? No, just some moronic British chick who's decided to ditch all her toiletries, lotions, etc., to do "the first scientific experiment of its kind, designed to find out how she will look and feel without the aid of the avalanche of expensive modern beauty products."
Sure, people can overdo the make-up and "beauty products," but whatever happened to Aristotelian moderation? Is it always all or nothing? Extremism in the defense of poor hygiene is a vice in my book.
And from the "Way Too Much Information" Department: "Before starting her experiment, Nicky called in scientists from the Skin Research Centre at the University of Leeds. They took swabs from her armpits, mouth and groin to test levels of bacteria and yeasts, the results of which would be compared with identical swabs taken at the end of the six weeks." (via HotAir)
2. Normally, given my compulsion to write about the death penalty, this would have received its own post: "Private eye gets five years for fake documents in death row cases." But I'm afraid I'll have to leave the analysis to you. It's pretty self-evident, anyway. Oh, by the way, the fake documents were in aid of the murderer, just in case that wasn't clear. I wonder how many "innocent death-row defendants" are not so innocent, after all.
Bonus: Ken Starr makes an appearance.
(via Patterico, and check out some of the comments there)
3. A few weeks ago, my wife and I, who rarely watch TV, decided to watch a couple of cooking shows, including one with the famous Emeril character. We missed this one, which was mentioned in the N.Y. Times:
Ingrid Hoffmann, the latest arrival on the Food Network — her show "Simply Delicioso" is shown on Saturday mornings — seems to be quickly staking her claim as the country's pre-eminent cleavage cook.I'm struggling to avoid asking how you cook cleavage -- bake it, roast it, or simply warm it gently.
Anyway, I still haven't seen the show, but I did check the Food Network page about it. If you're really interested, go here and check out some of the short videos.
This is how I knew the Times article was written by a woman, without even checking the byline:
Ms. Hoffmann cooks with her whole body, as if every occasion to chop some cilantro were also an opportunity to show how well she might fare as a backup dancer for Rod Stewart. She appears less covered up to marinate a chicken than Ms. De Laurentiis does to go jet-skiing.And if you think I'm being mean, consider this and tell me I couldn't tell:
It is a hallmark of the contemporary cooking show, of course, that no failures are acknowledged. "Wow, I must have overdone this pork loin because it tastes like an old Volkswagen": that is the sort of comment we never hear emanating from TV kitchens. But even in this context, Ms. Hoffmann's self-regard is annoyingly hardy. It isn't simply that she finds fault with nothing. She finds everything she makes uniquely amazing, "yummy" and "delicioso." And yet it appears to the viewer as mediocre takeout.No man would ever write that about a woman. Am I right?
4. I thought this N.Y. Post headline about the Lisa Nowak case would be the best: "Space Gals in a Close Encouter," but Court TV's headline definitely had it beat: "Astronaut's lawyers want diapers, weapons in her car kept from jury."
Here's a description of the action in court. More: The detective who searched Nowak's car came under attack by her lawyer:
Detective Becton stood by his methods and said he had fully informed Captain Nowak of her rights. He called his hours with her the hardest interview of his career.Answering questions with questions, eh? Now I know why I've had visitors based on searches for "Lisa Nowak Jewish."
“I realized I was dealing with someone who was more intelligent than I was, and more educated,” he said, and added, “I felt like I was playing a game of chess” with an opponent who answered his questions with questions and tried just as hard to extract information from him.
August 05, 2007
Like father, like son
In a perverse way, this is impressive, sort of like Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. playing in the outfield together in Cincinnati Seattle:
Joshua W. Andrews, following in his father's footsteps, was sentenced to death yesterday.But in all seriousness, one can only say that "Junior" here is getting what he deserves.
He and an accomplice went to an apartment in Virginia to rob the occupants, whom he forced to strip naked and climb into the bathtub, where he shot them in the head. Two victims were killed and one survived. He and the accomplice then went to another Virginia location, where they shot and wounded a store clerk. Later, they headed to New York, where they shot and wounded two men. They were convicted in New York on two counts of attempted murder.
Considering that "Senior" was a convicted murderer, it will not surprise you to learn that Junior's upbringing was dubious, not to say totally demented. According to defense counsel:
When Andrews was a baby, his father was sentenced to death for his part in killing two people during a jewelry store robbery in Texas. Andrews grew up with a drug-addicted mother, who often left her three sons to fend for themselves, and an abusive stepfather. Andrews spent time in psychiatric facilities.But who really can feel sorry for this man, whom prosecutors referred to as a "killing machine"? Who, that is, besides the anti-death penalty ideologues?
When he was 8, a neighborhood boy pushed him into a shed and set it on fire. Andrews was burned on his face and hands. Children teased him, calling him "crispy critter." Later, he was called "scarface."
When Andrews was 13, his father was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate in a Texas prison. The teenager ignored the urgings of his mother and brother to scatter his father's ashes, according to testimony. Instead, Andrews kept the box of ashes in his bedroom or carried them around in his black-and-maroon backpack, which was shown to the jury.
One such ideologue blames society. I know that's a tired joke, so don't take my word for it; read this instead:
[H]ow did Mr. Andrews become a hardened criminal with his father as the textbook example of deterrence?There's no doubt that Andrews had a miserable childhood, but here's what bothers me:
The answer lies that if you have an at-risk child from a poor, abusive family with little by way of social services, once they reach adulthood, the mean streets will take their toll.
Like weeds in unattended lots, too many children are left to fend for themselves; and as adults, we then incarcerate or execute them because they grew wild as blazes.
Until we learn to protect our offspring from the scourge of poverty, illiteracy, missing fathers and broken families, the cycle of violence continues -- unabated.
1. Many people grow up with miserable childhoods and yet do not commit murder. If this writer's determinism is correct, how do we explain that?
2. The issue here is capital sentencing, but why wouldn't the criminal's miserable childhood justify acquittal? That seems to be the implication of the argument that "the scourge of poverty, illiteracy, missing fathers and broken families" leads to a "cycle of violence." If we as a society have no right to punish a murderer with death simply because he had a miserable childhood, why are we allowed to punish him at all?
3. Drawing from 1 and 2, doesn't the argument that society is responsible for the murders, rather than Andrews, treat him as sub-human? Death-penalty opponents speak as if we must treat murderers humanely, but all too often they themselves treat them as less than human.
June 11, 2007
Death and deterrence
It's a little bit of an oversimplification, but most proponents and opponents of capital punishment fall into one of two categories: the moralists or the practicalists. In fact, I'd venture that the people who care most about the issue -- on both sides -- fall predominantly within the moralist category.
For death-penalty opponents, this means they are opposed because it's always wrong to kill (which is a moralist argument whether offered by the religious or the non-religious); or because the power to kill should not be given to the government (this is a libertarian view that I used to hold); or because there is a risk of error, and any risk of error is too much in capital punishment; or because the system might be racially biased. All of these are moralist arguments, including the risk of error argument, which sounds like a practical argument but necessarily makes the moral judgment that, whatever the justification for death may be in the run of cases, we cannot risk the possibility that an innocent person will be executed.
For death-penalty proponents, the moralist arguments focus on the penological goal of retribution. They include arguments that murder is evil and must be eradicated; and that society has an obligation to affirm the value of innocent life by imposing a unique punishment, depriving those who deny the value of innocent life of their own lives. There are others, though they tend to sound like the two I've mentioned.
The practicalists on both sides, in contrast, wonder about general and specific deterrence. They wonder whether an alternative of life without parole is an adequate substitute for death. They wonder what happens if a murderer is confined to prison and murders again, either in prison or after early release.
So the practicalists may be very interested to learn that "a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument -- whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes."
More specifically:
Among the conclusions:The article I've quoted notes that the studies are not without their critics, but I suspect that this is always true, regardless whether the studies support the pro or the con.
-- Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).
Among the conclusions:
-- The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.
-- Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.
The question is what effect these conclusions, assuming they are shown to be correct, have on the moralists. I suspect that opponents would see little to change their views. If it's always wrong to kill, the utilitarian argument that killing a murderer prevents other deaths doesn't persuade. On the other hand, if the argument is that there is too much risk of error, one might end up conceding the possibility that these studies could be relevant.
The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a well-known liberal law professor, University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein. A critic of the death penalty, in 2005 he co-authored a paper titled "Is capital punishment morally required?"And what of the moralist proponents of capital punishment (of whom I'm an example)? The answer is that we would welcome the refutation of practical arguments against the death penalty, but we would still think deterrence (at least general deterrence, which is, after all, the focus of these studies) is largely irrelevant. I've never really thought of the general deterrence argument as much a justification for capital punishement, so proof of a deterrent effect wouldn't bolster my views, just as the proof of no deterrent effect wouldn't make me doubt the benefit of capital punishment.
"If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple," he told The Associated Press. "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."
So let a thousand academic studies bloom. Proving a deterrent effect may help the politics from my perspective by undermining the opponents withthe general public, and I don't want to minimize that, but otherwise it doesn't really mean a lot to me, and I suspect (Cass Sunstein notwithstanding) that it doesn't mean a lot to the moralists among the opponents, either.
March 20, 2007
Death penalty hanging by a thread
Depending on the metric you choose, Baltimore can be seen as a very successful city. For example, if your metric is high violent crime and murder rates, Baltimore is extremely successful, not that any sane person would use such a metric.
The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for 2005, the most current year-end statistics, show Maryland with the fourth highest violent crime rate of any state, largely thanks to Baltimore. In 2005, Maryland's violent crime rate per 100,000 population was 703.0, and its murder rate was 9.9. But Baltimore's violent crime rate per 100,000 population was 1,754.5, and its murder rate was 42.0. (For comparison, the rate for the United States overall was 469.2 violent crimes per 100,000 population and 5.6 murders. That puts Maryland 49.8 percent above the national violent crime rate and 76.8 percent above the national murder rate.)
Baltimore accounts for much of that difference. Baltimore has 11.4 percent of the population of Maryland but 28.6 percent of the violent crimes and 48.7 percent of the murders.[1]
If you lived in Baltimore in 2005, your chances of being murdered were greater than 1 in 2,500. Just in that year alone. So murder has been a serious problem by any standard.
To put these figures in context, let's pretend for a moment that Baltimore was not part of Maryland at all. The state, minus Baltimore, would have a violent crime rate of 567.0 per 100,000, down from the actual 703.0, and a murder rate of 5.7, down from the actual 9.9.[2] And yes, Virginia, we are indeed including Prince Georges County. The murder rate in Maryland, minus Baltimore, is roughly the national average.
I give you these statistics as background, because the mayor of Baltimore was recently elected governor of Maryland.
As far as I can tell, Governor O'Malley's only public pronouncement on crime policy since his election -- at the very least, his most public pronoucement, his most vigorously advocated pronouncement -- has been to call for abolition of the death penalty, which I might add has already been eliminated, de facto, in Baltimore. The governor has expressed his views on the morality of capital punishment in an op-ed in the Washington Post and has testified in the state legislature in favor of abolition.
The bill seeking abolition of the death penalty failed last week in committee -- which is why I'm bothering to talk about all of this. But it will be back, and it will succeed, eventually. Of that I have no doubt.
I'm very much in favor of the death penalty, in appropriate cases, but I can respect people who oppose it. With one qualification. That qualification is that they must pay serious attention to the problems that abolition raises.
If you're an executive and you can't use a particular solution to deal with a problem, you have to figure out a workable alternative. For example, if you run an American business overseas, where it's customary to bribe government officials, federal law prohibits you from engaging in those practices, so you have to figure out how to deal with the bureaucracy in some other way.
Similarly, if you're a governor who wants to abolish the death penalty for murder, you have to figure out a good, workable alternative. And you have to be serious about it.
How should we sentence murderers? To 10 years? 15? 25? Life?
If life, is it with or without parole? If with parole, how do you deal with the high-publicity parole hearings that inevitably will occur when the murderer is eligible for parole?
The bill actually proposed in the state senate offered life without parole as the alternative. But that raises its own issues: What do you do with murderers already serving sentences of life without parole who murder a prison guard? What else can you do to them, after all, besides take away their right to watch TV? By eliminating the death penalty, even for murderers serving sentences of life without parole, you've given these people a "murder a prison guard free" card. (Incidentally, Senator Alex Mooney, who had the key vote on the abolition bill, offered a substitute that would have allowed the death penalty for people who commit murder while in prison, but the abolition proponents rejected that compromise. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum.)
Sentencing murderers to life without parole also raises some moral issues. Death-penalty abolitionists invariably speak of the intolerable risk of error. But people who are sentenced to life without parole are no less likely, in our fallible criminal justice system, to be mistakenly convicted than people who are sentenced to death. Without a death penalty, however, you'll never find platoons of lawyers working pro bono to try to prove their innocence. They'll be almost totally ignored. Death is different. So in reality, a sentence of life without parole may well have the perverse effect of throwing away the key on the innocent.
I've seen nothing to indicate that the governor has taken any of these issues seriously. He's certainly engaged in a lot of moral preening, but little more.
"Can the death penalty ever be justified as public policy when it inherently necessitates the occasional taking of a wrongly convicted, innocent life?" O'Malley said during the first of two appearances yesterday before legislative committees. "Is any of us willing to sacrifice a member of our own family . . . in order to secure the execution of five rightly convicted murderers?"Sure, and if we allow a speed limit of 65 MPH on I-95 north of Baltimore, people will die. Would you sacrifice a member of your own family so traffic can move more quickly?
I liked this one, too:
Human dignity is the concept that leads brave individuals to sacrifice their lives for the lives of strangers. Human dignity is the universal truth that is the basis of ethics. Human dignity is the fundamental belief on which the laws of this state and this republic are founded. And absent a deterrent value, the damage done to the concept of human dignity by our conscious communal use of the death penalty is greater than the benefit of even a justly drawn retribution.Human dignity is also what the murderer stole from his victim, but never mind that.
In the same article, the governor threw around bogus statistics, as well: "In 2005, the murder rate was 46 percent higher in states that had the death penalty than in states without it -- although they had been about the same in 1990." Which is a little like saying that neighborhoods where police make arrests have more crime than those where they don't, so police should stop making arrests in the high-crime neighborhoods.
There are a lot of ways you could characterize people who engage in moral preening without regard to the consequences of what they're advocating. "Irresponsible" is one of the nicer ones.
___________________
[1] Population 641,097 out of 5,600,388. Violent crime 11,248 out of 39,369. Murders 269 out of 552. All figures from 2005 UCR.
[2] Population 4,959,291, violent crimes 28,121, and murders 283.
January 26, 2007
Maryland to offer huge wet kiss for murderers
Maryland has got many things going for it, but a low violent crime rate is not one of them. In the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for 2005, the most current year-end statistics, Maryland is fourth in violent crime rate, with 703.0 violent crimes per 100,000 population, trailing only South Carolina, Tennessee, and (narrowly) Florida. Washington, D.C., which wants to be a state but is not, has a rate of 1,459.0.
For murders, it's even worse. From that same chart, the UCR shows Maryland with a murder rate of 9.9 per 100,000 population, which is tied for first in the nation, with Louisiana. And not to be too crude about it, but we may have lost a few murder statistics with the post-Katrina flooding. (Again, D.C. takes the lead with 35.4 per 100,000, but it's not a state.)
Our new Governor, Mr. O'Malley, used to be Mayor of Baltimore, which had a violent crime rate of 1,754.5 in 2005, quite a bit higher than our nation's capital. Baltimore's 2005 murder rate was 42.0, again beating out Washington, D.C. (I computed the rates myself from the table: crimes x 100,000 / population.)
I've given this to you as background. Today's Baltimore Sun reports:
Gov. Martin O'Malley said yesterday that he would sign a repeal of the death penalty if a bill reaches his desk, weighing in on the contentious issue hours after a coalition of legislators and activists renewed their push to strike Maryland's execution law from the books.A bill is being introduced by two Democratic legislators. The Sun says that O'Malley announced he would lobby for the bill but didn't include it in his own legislative agenda.
"Now that it's salient, and we have to deal with it, I'm certainly not going to try to duck or hide. I would like to see us repeal the death penalty," O'Malley said during an interview in his State House office. "I think the dollars could go to better use and could be invested in things that actually save lives. I don't believe the death penalty saves lives."
The Washington Post notes: "The bill is likely to meet resistance, with some Democrats joining minority Republicans in opposition." One Democrat said he was opposed because (in the Post's words) "he had a gun held to his head three years ago." I guess there's nothing like being mugged by reality.
Capital punishment in Maryland is in legal limbo right now. The Court of Appeals (our highest court) issued a decision in December holding that the Maryland Division of Corrections protocol for executions is equivalent to a regulation, which must be formally promulgated under Maryland's Administrative Procedure Act. (Disclaimer: I'm not admitted to practice in Maryland. But I know how to read a news article if I feel like it.) The linked article explains:
Maryland uses three drugs during executions. Sodium pentothal makes the inmate unconscious, pancurium bromide paralyzes the inmate's breathing and potassium chloride stops the heart.The Court of Appeals rejected other arguments offered by the murder, however, including a racial bias claim and a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel in the earlier sentencing proceeding.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeals concluded that the current protocol is consistent with state law. However, the court also concluded that a legislative committee charged with reviewing the protocol "may have a different view." The ruling also pointed out that even if the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review agrees that the protocol is consistent, "it may wish to object to it and direct DOC to consider some other one."
So let's review the bidding. Maryland has the fourth highest violent crime rate in the U.S., and is tied for the highest murder rate. And high on the agenda of the state legislature, supported by Gov. O'Malley, is abolition of the death penalty.
We may be less safe, but at least we'll feel good about ourselves.
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