Outrage at Arnold

***So if executations really protected the citizens of Texas that state should have a murder rate less then the national average. But the fact is that Texas has the highest murder rate in the country.***

Nonsense, Texas certainly does NOT have the highest murder rate; it's pretty close to the average, with many states worse.

More to the point, you're neglecting the many other obvious factors that of course play a role in the murder rate. You really think the only difference between North Dakota (w/ lowest rate) and Texas is that ND doesn't have capital punishment? Obvious nonsense.

Even accepting that the only reason to have capital punishment would be to to statistically lower the murder rate (though I think there are other reasons), the question isn't how Texas compares to North Dakota; the question of course is, how does Texas compare to a hypothetical alternate Texas WITHOUT capital punishment. That's a far more complex issue than you present.

Meanwhile, think of the states with the lowest murder rates: ND, New Hampshire, Maine, Iowa, Utah. How are they different from states with the worst murder rates? Unless you let yourself be rendered stupid by political correctness, there are a few pretty obvious things come to mind that have nothing to do with cap punisment law.

In the UK a majority have long believed in the death penalty. But it has always been left to a free vote (i.e. individual conscience) in parliament and has long been rejected by a large majority.

The reason is that it is one thing to be in favour 'in principle' but quite another thing when you are faced with putting the death penalty in place and have to consider the practical consequences.

Would it make juries less likely to convict if even the tiniest possibility that they got it wrong could lead to an innocent man or woman being executed? This could lead (under the double jeopardy rule) in killers walking free and presenting a danger to others.

If a criminal has murdered someone and believe they would, if caught, be executed, they have no incentive not to kill again in order to avoid being captured. This could increase the murder rate.

What if an innocent person were executed as they surely would be, sooner or later? There can be no compensation.

Practically, the death penalty is expensive. Because of the danger of an innocent being executed (which can never be entirely eliminated), the time and legal hoops before someone is executed costs much more than a life sentence.

Regardless of the moral issue, these practical issues make the death penalty a bad idea.

JohnDewey -- while people in Texas may believe that the death penalty protects them the facts do not support that belief.

Texsas has an executation rate some three to four times the national averge. So if executations really protected the citizens of Texas that state should have a murder rate less then the national average. But the fact is that Texas has the highest murder rate in the country. So it is obvious that the high executation rate in texas does not protect the citizens of that state.

So why do the people of Texas continue to believe something that is so blatently untrue?

I can't see how I missed commenting on your post as I posted it to my blog.

I come from a developmental model of ethics. Kids don't have "ethics"; they are raised in them. Capital punishment explicitly role models to them that violence CAN be a solution. No wonder it gets used so often in society as a panacea for problems.

T Mills:

"I have moral reasons as well. It is wrong to kill another, whether the state or an individual is doing the killing, except in self defense. In the same way as torture is wrong whatever the situation."

Those are opinions not shared by everyone. Religious leaders of several faiths have provided moral arguments for both war and capital punishment.

I am a European who is opposed to the death penalty.

I do not think the state should be given such a power.


It is too final for a start. In the UK we have had too many miscarriages of justice (admittedly one is too many) which have later been overturned. If these people had been sentenced to death then they'd be dead with no chance of trying to pick up their lives again.


We have in the recent past had convictions of those killed by the state overturned and apologies issued, but that gives little comfort to their relatives.

I have moral reasons as well. It is wrong to kill another, whether the state or an individual is doing the killing, except in self defense. In the same way as torture is wrong whatever the situation.

As for the majority, I'm afraid that we should guard against the tyrrany of the majority as much as of a minority. Just because most people believe something it does not make it just. Libertarians and Classical Liberals should know this more than most.

I always like to point out what should be obvious. OF COURSE the death penalty deters: at a very minimum, it deters the executed murderer from ever killing again. That's not facetious; that's an important point.

I think it makes perfectly good sense for the public to decide that a dangerous, pathological destroyer of innocent lives should be snuffed out so as never to destroy again.

Nothing else, including an LWOP sentence in a max security prison, can be assured of doing the same. After all, Charles Manson himself comes up for parole every few years; all it will take is a few California crackpots in the right job to set that man free.

I think we should take the Christian approach. Throw 'em to the lions.

The belief that criminals are irrational is extraordinarily pernicious, not to mention long since disproved.

Randy brings up an interesting issue: penal colonies vs. prisons. What do y'all think?

Ironically, yesterday in Maryland the threat of the death penalty helped prosecuters get a plea deal.:

http://wbal.com/news/story.asp?articleid=38205

The deterrent argument I always thought was weak, admittedly I have not sat down and looked at any study either way. ( have no personal opinion on this whatsoever) But really, all heinous crimes that warrant the death penalty the person who is committing the crime is in an irrational frame of mind, so I highly doubt that they would stop and say "Oh, I might get the death penalty if I do this"

With respect to the justness of the death penalty: I'm not aware of anyone executed in the U.S. in my lifetime (54 years) who was not convicted of murder. The conviction decision was not made by the government but by a jury of peers. Of course, very few persons convicted of murder were executed. I think that in most states either the crime must be especially heinous or else the victim must be a law enforcement officer.

I think the most important rationale for a death penalty is that it is a deterrent. I'm aware that studies exist which allegedly disprove the deterrent impact of the death penalty. I doubt that any such study will convince the citizens of my state, Texas, that the death penalty does not reduce murder.

Here in Texas, most of us believe the death penalty protects the citizenry in general. We believe it especially protects the cops and prison guards we've placed in dangerous environments.

Slave labor... instead of giving them the death penalty why not give them a lifetime of slave labor. Like the slave labor in les miserae. Now that is a deterent!

It’s certainly true that the majority in hte UK support the death penalty. It might even be as high as the support for it in the US.

I.’m against it on purely moral grounds....there are only two morally permissible reasons to kill someone else. Immediate self defense and in the course of a Just War. But that’s just my opinion.

It is also true that the "elite" is wildly out of touch with general European opinion. A country cannot be a member of the Council of Europe or of the EU if they retain capital punishment. So what the populace wants doesn’t matter very much. The ban isn’t going to disappear from those two organisations.

Personally, I prefer the Escape from New York approach. Just throw them into a society of like minded individuals and let them make the best of it.

But it does seem to me that if society does not accept its responsibility for retribution, the vendetta will return.

What is so just about death penatly? If it is an eye for an eye, then it should be, well, an eye for an eye:

- People who injur others should be themselves injured by the state and in the like fashion (you hit me in the bar and broke my jaw, well, let a state executioner break yours)


- Rapists should be raped by a state-appointed person

So far, so good, fair and square. The trouble is, what do with mass murderers to serve them perfect retributive justice? Since you can't kill them more then once and you do not want to kill people other than the murderer himself, should you at least torture the murderer before he dies? Or should you "almost kill" the mass murderer, putting him in the state of clinical death, then let the doctors bring him back to life and execute again and again?

I am from Europe and the opinion here is more elaborate and differentiated than AP reports (again). I personally know many people who would acknowledge that death penalty should be an option in extreme cases (murder, child molestation etc.). I myself am opposed to the idea of killing people. Isn't it enough to take the freedom from them and basically own their lives for what they have done wrong. I think that revenge (and Death sentence is nothing more or less than revenge) is stupid and unnecessary (especially, when you proclaim you value life and the self-ownership of life). And the idea that capital punishment somehow is "preventive" has been rejected statistically.

I oppose the death penalty on a public choice basis.

As economists, we generally distrust government and are skeptical of its ability to do anything properly or efficiently.

When this incompetence results in waste and loss of wealth, it is unfortunate for society. But when it means killing people, it is unacceptable.

We generally strive to make the state smaller, which generally implies the state taking a smaller share of our wealth. I have trouble with somebody who screams to high heaven about how evil it is for the government to confiscate 25 or 35% of his earnings, but is perfectly happy to allow the government to take some peoples' lives, especially with the knowledge that some of those lives were taken in error.

A murder committed by the state is little different to a murder by a criminal - it merely has a different level of "justification". By sending the message that premeditated killing can be justified, the act of killing is reduced to a rationalizable decision. The problem is that everybody has different levels of justification and rationalization. So when does premeditated killing cross the line between "justified" and not? Or in other words, where is the line between these states, and who decides when it has been crossed?

When governments kill people, they move that line to far away from the extreme location (e.g., self-defense in situations of imminent death) it should be at to some mushy "middle ground" that can be too readily redefined.

I'll restate: there is massive hypocrisy in complaining about government taxing you but cheering when government takes people's lives.

I'm disappointed that a poster to this blog would invoke the "good versus evil" paradigm, that sort of thinking is below the usual level of discussion here. But then, I suppose Europe-bashing is always fun for the American intelligentsia, since there's nobody else left that they can deride without the PC police coming down on them.

I'm a retributive justice advocate, so I favor capital punishment for murder. Nevertheless, I admit that reasonable people can object to the system that assigns the death penalty.

I think the current system is adequate. I’m in favor of the lengthy appellate review of death penalty cases. If we are to give the state this supreme power, it must have supreme safeguards. I’m in favor of capital punishment, but I’m not a “hang ‘em high at noon” zealot.

It is well to touch upon some of the disagreements with the death penalty. Some claim that it is given out unfairly to various racial groups, but this is false. Of those convicted of capital crimes, the death penalty is actually the FAIREST punishment considered by racial group.

Some (the Catholic Church included) claim that the death penalty is an outmoded relic of the medieval world. New technology is supposed to allow us to put away capital offenders without endangering the rest of the citizenry. This misses the point. The death penalty is JUST. In fact, since the victim can never be restituted, the penalty is actually insufficient by retributive justice standards. Even the ancient world had technology to put away people for life. This argument is completely bogus. We do not punish to protect “society” but to exact just retribution fro the victim.

Others (the Catholic Church included) claim that the death penalty offends human dignity. Yes. Yes it does. It specifically offends the dignity of the capital offender to exact just retribution for crimes. So what?

The death penalty debate is really a clash of social and political philosophies.

I think "the Europeans" are right on this one. The statistics on questionable death row convictions are pretty scary (something in excess of 30%--usually racist or corruption-motivated). The death penalty is a power we do not need to give the state.

Outrage, my a**. Opinion polls regularly show that Europeans are in favor of the death penalty, especially the British. It is the European press & narcissistic "elites" that get their shorts in a twist. I wonder how many of the European outraged can name this guy's victims.