I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet (I haven't seen it) but one interesting statistic regarding the abolition of the death penalty is that conviction rates for ex-capital offences tend to rise significantly. I think Canada's conviction rate for first-degree murder doubled in the decade following abolition.
Don't worry, I can handle an insult or two if I've been spinning a losing argument. However, in this case, it's not. In that same poll, when the question is a simple yes-no, yes wins by 70%. The question giving a choice of a hypothetical punishment is more argumentative. I could frame a question to dishonestly get 90% yes, probably. Something like "If a mass murderer could possibly escape and go on another killing spree, would you give the murderer the chance to do that or is it preferable to eliminate the possibility with capital punishment?" If people want to eliminate the death penalty, I can accept that. It's really only going to make prison guards a little more unsafe and maybe endanger a little more people who live near a penitentiary. And it will tell criminals that we have ratcheted a little farther towards leniency. Bad, but not a disaster. I can't accept clever lawyers attempting to get their way by making phony due process arguments, which is what Galt is doing. Countenancing that is a disaster and has gotten us a growing mountain of it.
How is it a "phony argument" when courts (including the Supreme Court) actually do over-turn sentences at times based on such an argument? You have yet to answer that question. Instead you continue to trot out words like sophistry as if you just finished a Philosophy 101 class last semester. I have no problem with you being for the death penalty but please stop trying to argue the due process angle of the debate because it's obvious you have little understanding of it. Have you ever even read the Furman or Gregg decisions?
Is a 17-year wait on Texas death row to long for you? http://www.truthinjustice.org/ernest-willis.htm
Er, wouldn't that tend to imply that the amount of people committing murders doubled or at least went up significantly in the same period?
--- two possibilities at least: 1) the number of murders rose ( doubled? ) 2) juries were twice as willing to convict if the death penalty was off the table absent anecdotal evidence, we cannot deduce with any real certainty what the cause of the rise in convictions was. we can speculate ( reason from evidence? ) but drawing a conclusion simply from the two facts is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
I agree, nothing can be known for certain without more information, but it's a bit much to assume the murder rate has doubled. I'll guess the answer is a variation of your #2. In the US, jurors often have the option of convicting of a lesser charge. I don't know the Canadian system, but, if they also had that option, and if convictions for 1st-degree murder were higher in the decade after the death penalty was abolished, then conviction rates for lesser-degree murder were probably higher before it was abolished. I don't expect they were just letting guilty murderers walk to avoid the death penalty before it was abolished.
Not necessarily, because the conviction rate is a percentage, a ratio of prosecution to convictions. I had a look to see if I could find something to back up my recollection: http://www.amnesty.ca/deathpenalty/canada.php
Re: If you support the death penalty … Yet polls would find that Canadians still favour the death penalty.
Sorry... I was thinking 'the rate at which people were convicted', i.e. an absolute quantity, rather than 'the proportion of those charged to those convicted'. The site you mention is extremely interesting. The relevant part on the website for the point presently under discussion is in the paragraph before the one you quote... 'Contrary to predictions by death penalty supporters, the homicide rate in Canada did not increase after abolition in 1976. In fact, the Canadian murder rate declined slightly the following year (from 2.8 per 100,000 to 2.7). Over the next 20 years the homicide rate fluctuated (between 2.2 and 2.8 per 100,000), but the general trend was clearly downwards. It reached a 30-year low in 1995 (1.98) -- the fourth consecutive year-to-year decrease and a full one-third lower than in the year before abolition. In 1998, the homicide rate dipped below 1.9 per 100,000, the lowest rate since the 1960s.' However, in line with the British miscarriages of justice I mentioned, it also says... 'Since abolition, at least 6 Canadian prisoners convicted of first-degree murder have been released on grounds of innocence. Two were incarcerated for more than 10 years before their innocence was established, after wrongful conviction for crimes that would likely have resulted in their execution if Canada had retained the death penalty.' As someone has already said, this begs the question of how many innocent people the Americans have murdered. I suppose we'll never really know because people stop looking after they're already dead.
Ah, polls. From that same site: You can do anything with polls. I reckon in this country general majority opposition to the death penalty as a legal recourse is pretty much established now. And yet I'd happily bet that someone, say The Daily Mail, could get a poll to show that there is considerable support for its re-institution. Something like "Would you oppose the re-instatement of the death penalty for acts of terrorism or murders with child victims?". Next day's headline: 75% of Britons want death penalty back!" There's more, on polls: Check the run of events. To start, broad and unquestioning support at consistent level --> February 1987 motion --> three months of media spotlight on what it actually means to have the state kill people --> support at "an all-time low". Which is the crux of this. In countries with a high level of either ignorance of, or apathy about, the real implications of state-sponsored murder, the inate support for such measures is high. In states where a public discourse has taken place on the matter, support for the death penalty is low and the recourse itself is highly likely not to be on the statute books anymore.
Re: If you support the death penalty … You don't prove anything with a survey that's several years old.
Re: If you support the death penalty … I wasn't trying to prove anything. I was pointing out that polls are inherantly weak because they are a snapshot of a select group's view on an issue, taken without context and in spite of any wider, relevant considerations.
Re: If you support the death penalty … Polls are far more balanced and one person represents the views of many.
Yes, but the point that Matt makes is that the various polls, (Canadian and otherwise), indicate that people's opinions on these things vary as the mood takes them. If the British people had been asked what to do with the Birmingham Six just after they had been tried and convicted they'd probably have voted FOR the death penalty. However, when they were released, 16 years later, everyone would have been AGAINST the death penalty because it meant we would have killed innocent men. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1987928.stm 'It is 11 years since the Birmingham Six emerged into the strong sunlight of a spring afternoon, spewing the tortured emotions of relief and anger to friends, the media and anyone who would listen. For 16 years they had found few prepared to listen to their pleas they were innocent of killing 21 people in the Birmingham pub bombings.' What would you suggest doing if it turns out that people are innocent after they've been mudered by the state? DIg them up again and give them a nice condo in Dayton, Ohio? I mean... this is leaving aside the whole 'It's wrong to kill' business. They might be killers... but I'M not.
People don't get that THIS is the bottom line; at least it is for me. Throw in the fact that it's not even an in-the-moment effort at self-defense, but reasoned, thought-out murder, and to me it becomes even worse. But there apparently are a whole bunch of people willing to become killers of possibly innocent people, even when they don't have to, but not really, as they can hide their murderous nature behind the machinations of "the state." Throw on top of all THAT the fact that the same states have healthy contingents that find no inconsistency between the above, their stance on abortion, and their claimed relationship with Christ, and you are left with a large portion of the nation that operates no differently than many psychotics. Sorry, but it seems clear to me. Death penalty supporters, in a democracy (r even in a representative republic) are proxy murderers. Period.
Re: If you support the death penalty … No one has been wrongfully executed here in Canada. There were way too many safeguards to prevent that. All the examples of wrongfrul conviction they have used here are moot given that they wouldn't have qualified for the death penalty in the first place. Meanwhile, the sick freaks who deserve to be knocked off a still living off the taxpayer and even getting back into society. That makes it even more hard to swallow.
Preposterous. I mean, seriously - even if you are naive enough to believe in mankind's ability to concoct the infallible judicial system, you think it would happen in Canada!?!?!?
Re: If you support the death penalty … Obvious you didn't read the whole post. Try Again. Where's the proof that we executed an innocent man?
I'm sorry - is that supposed to be funny? After someone's been killed by the state nobody is going to try and find out if you were innocent all along... and they can hardly ask you to help with their enquiries... well, not without a ouija board anyway. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engACT500022001 'Since 1973 more than 90 US prisoners have been released from death row after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.' http://www.criminaljustice.org/public.nsf/ChampionArticles/2000mar01?OpenDocument 'At the time of this writing (February 2000) there have been seventy post-conviction DNA exonerations in North America, 64 in the United States and 6 in Canada' and.. http://www.criminallawyers.ca/publicmaterials/press&submissions/johnson.htm '"The case of Guy Paul Morin is not an aberration. By that, I do not mean that I can quantify the number of similar cases in Ontario or elsewhere or that I can pass on the frequency with which innocent people are convicted in this province. We do not know. What I mean is that the causes of Mr. Morin’s conviction are rooted in systemic problems as well as the failings of individuals. It is no coincidence that the same systemic problems are those identified in wrongful convictions worldwide." In Mr. Johnson’s case those systemic factors include: 1. the single minded pursuit of a predetermined goal by the investigating officers 2. the use of "junk science" to support the theories of the police 3. the role of scientific evidence and in particular the subjective opinions of witnesses that are clothed in the authority of expertise 4. an over reaching prosecution that utilized suspicion and speculation in the place of evidence' WHAT? Murdering 21 people in a terrorist incident doesn't make you likely to get the death penalty in countries, like America, that have it. Timothy McVeigh was just given those injections to try and clear up his acne, then, was he?
There is no conclusive proof that anyone has been wrongfully executed in Canada. That's a long, long way from saying that it's never happened. Many Canadians have been convicted and executed on circumstantial evidence. In several of these cases (such as Coffin) there remains to this day a large degree of doubt as to their guilt. In addition, there have been numerous near-misses where people convicted and on death row were exonerated in time to save them (including Morin, Marshall and Milgaard). Hardly proof that it's an infallible system, and certainly not a strong basis to claim that it is certain that no innocent person has been executed in Canada.
Yeah, I read it. But if you will set your stall out in that fashion, I'm going to bite at the top, y'know? Bottom line - if you seriously do believe in the utter fantasy of an infallible system (and that would appear to be the only basis upon which you can make your preposterous claim) then you are not a credible contributor to this discussion. Or a goodly number of other ones, for that matter. If, on the other hand, you are able to make the (achingly simple) distinction between "no dead person has been proven innocent after we killed them" and "no dead person was innocent", then I reckon your best course of action is just to rescind the previous post and have another shot at making a useful contribution around here.
Would you be willing to offer your life in exchange for the post-mortem discovery that a Canadian has been wrongly murdered by the state?