<p>The death penalty DOES NOT save lives. This is the current research questioning the empirical methodologies of the papers that claim that the death penalty saves lives. The statistical methods used in those papers are not robust due to model misspeccification. The model tend to oversate the coefficients.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w11982[/url]”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w11982</a></p>
<p>The issue raised by the study is the deterrence effect of the death penalty, not whether there should or should not be a death penalty, and under what conditions.<br>
I’m with UCLari on this. I would like to see more convincing data and analysis</p>
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Deterrence is one of the reasons given to support having a death penalty. Don’t know where you are going with your argument.</p>
<p>Okay, I’ll be technical for a second.</p>
<p>Let’s say we do a simple OLS (okay, we’ll use fixed-effects to control for unobservable variation) model. We’ll do something like…</p>
<p>Ycrime deaths = </p>
<p>Where am I going with this argument? The study does not prove what it set out to prove conclusively. It’s flawed.</p>
<p>RS, the evidence has been judged as good and sufficient by any number of judges and juries. And turned out to be wrong. I don’t see a way of implementing a “higher standard” other than a subjective “any fool can see…”</p>
<p>I’ll take my chances in non-death penalty country, thanks.</p>
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<p>I’d be really interested in how many cases of this have occurred where this hypothetical person doesn’t commit suicide. This situation is not really rooted in reality IMO and I resent your attempt to use the recent Tech events to capitalize on people’s emotions in your death penalty argument when there’s little relevance. We shouldn’t have to execute anyone because we shouldn’t have 32 people dead right now. Maybe in Va we should fix our completely inadequate mental health system* instead of spending another bazillion dollars on trying to beat Texas in execution rates. </p>
<p>*not my opinion, the finding of the governor’s panel who has been studying the issue. </p>
<p>It’s pretty easy to be opposed to the death penalty as it stands under our current justice system, as unfairly as it’s applied. I think the study is fairly questionable BTW. It conflicts with other studies that show the death penalty is not a deterrant. Also cost is not a factor because life in prison is cheaper than executing someone, and raising the level of evidence would only make execution more expensive. </p>
<p>I don’t know how much I would be concerned with it if we had a system that wasn’t so questionable, but then again we’re humans and not robots so maybe that would never come, I don’t know.</p>
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Not rooted in realty? Unfortunately it was very much reality. I wasn’t using the tech incident to capitalize on emotions, I was using it is a real example of when the death penalty would be appropriate. Murder is always emotional. So go pound sand. I can’t control how sensitive you are but there are many examples that could substitute for the vt shooter. All justify capital punishment. How about Bin Laden? Jeffrey Dahlmer? Timothy McVeigh? etc.</p>
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You just gave a good standard to use? DNA evidence. How about confessions of the murderer, DNA evidence, video evidence AND at least two eye witnesses? Require that they all be present before imposing the death penalty. How about that as a level of certainty to resolve your concerns about the level of evidence? Wouldn’t that be sufficient?</p>
<p>I do not need an econometric model to know that some people convicted of murder are paroled, serve their time and are released, or escape and then commit more murders. Some even commit more murders while incarcerated. I can prove to a near certainty that no dead person will ever commit murder. There fore executing murderers would have to save some lives.</p>
<p>higherlead,</p>
<p>A model that relies on outliers for explanatory power is generally not very good.</p>
<p>We should be asking if the death penalty prevents murders from happening in the first place (as in, first offense) rather than talking about rare cases. Otherwise, we’re not really predicting much.</p>
<p>“I’d be really interested in how many cases of this have occurred where this hypothetical person doesn’t commit suicide.”</p>
<p>Neither of the Washington Beltway snipers committed suicide though John Lee Malvo did literally poop his pants in an escape attempt. They randomly shot people in my neighborhood. Also the likely killed a number of people in other attacks around the country. I believe they are suspected in or convicted of 17 murders and 7 attempted murders.</p>
<p>The older of the two snipers John Muhammad was convicted of capital murder in Virgina and our worthless, publicity seeking DA then extradited him to Maryland which for all practical purposes does not have the death penalty, and spent a small fortune trying him again.</p>
<p>12 foot of good hemp and a stout oak and we could have sent this demon straight to hell and never have to worry about him again. As for the boy I don’t know you are doing him any favors locking him up for the next 60-70 years. BTW he was an illegal alien.</p>
<p>How about live imprisonment for ALL murderers, regardless of the severity? No chance of parole, ever. It would be more expensive initially, but in the long run might be an effective deterrent without the added burden of those wrongfully accused being executed, and the only way out of prison would be exoneration so there’d be an out for new DNA evidence.</p>
<p>“We should be asking if the death penalty prevents murders from happening in the first place (as in, first offense) rather than talking about rare cases. Otherwise, we’re not really predicting much.”</p>
<p>We are predicting the cost of clemency. I kind of think folks generally are interested in reducing murders in general not just first murders.</p>
<p>In any event deterence is dependent on at least two things, first the liklihood of being caught and punished and second the severity of the punishment. If murder is a parking ticket then nobody will be detered no matter how certain the punishment. Similarly if the punishment is certain to be severe then even a relatively small chance of being caught will serve as a deterent.</p>
<p>Our problem is that the liklihood of being caught and convicted is as low as the severity of the punishment. I believe that of all the murders in New Orleans this year there has been one arrest. Small wonder there is a drug war going on.</p>
<p>How about we tatoo a target on their forehead, declare them and outlaw, and turn 'em loose. Open season and no limit. All of a sudden Canada and Mexico would have a problem with illegal aliens from America.</p>
<p>RS, no, I don’t trust confessions or two witnesses. Too many confessions coerced and extracted, too many witnesses wrong. Otherwise the several hundred “mistakes” where murderers have been cleared wouldn’t have happened.</p>
<p>For those that you cite, I’m willing to lock 'em up and throw away the key.</p>
<p>I just got back from two weeks in Eastern & Central Europe. I felt much safer there, with no death penalty, tightly restricted or illegal private ownership of guns, and nobody crapping in their pants about what language one spoke or didn’t speak, than I do here in the good ol’ USA.</p>
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<p>They were serial murderers, as was Dahmer. They were not on a suicidal rampage. You talked about shooting 32 students at a university. That specifically refers to ONE known incident where the murderer clearly planned on committing suicide the entire time. So where’s the connection to the death penalty? Why would you look at that situation and focus so much on what should hypothetically happen afterward when it has no relevance (because the murderer committed suicide) rather than the fact that he should have had mandated treatment if it weren’t for flaws in Va’s system? That makes absolutely no sense. Sorry but we execute enough people. I don’t believe the death penalty has any established link to stopping mentally ill people from murdering others, but Va’s system is subpar and there is a connection there. </p>
<p>Lee Boyd Malvo was a minor when the murders occurred. John Allen Muhammud (not sure how he spells it sorry) is going to be executed, no question about that, it’s not like he isn’t. I am well aware of this, it happened in my neighborhood too, however it is not the same situation as the Tech massacre. You can’t really accuse Va of not using the death penalty enough anyway. OR having too many gun laws. And where did it get us? yes, a little irony in regards to the arguments about more guns and more executions making things safer, I’ll be sure to tell the families I know that.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. All the model predicts, in a strict sense, is how much of negative effect the death penalty has on murder. The model has absolutely NO ability to control for clemency at present.</p>
<p>Clemency is overwhelmingly rare, and we cannot make any predictions with such a small population as to what the death penalty would do. You cannot operate policy based on small samples and hope to actually enact a truly effective policy.</p>
<p>higherlead, I know you like to play lawyer. In jurisprudential discussions about criminal sanctions, people generally distinguish between specific deterrence (keeping THIS person from committing more crimes, sometimes by locking him up permanently or killing him) and general deterrence (making an example of a criminal so that others are afraid to commit crimes). No one doubts the efficacy of the death penalty as specific deterrence, although it is not significantly better than life sentences. Most arguments for the death penalty are based in specific deterrence and social retribution against a specific criminal.</p>
<p>The issue addressed by the OP article is general deterrence, however. If the claim is true – that imposition of the death penalty deters others from committing murders – that is a pretty powerful argument that’s completely distinct from yours. Unfortunately, it seems like BS at the level of proof.</p>
<p>“I just got back from two weeks in Eastern & Central Europe. I felt much safer there, with no death penalty, tightly restricted or illegal private ownership of guns, and nobody crapping in their pants about what language one spoke or didn’t speak, than I do here in the good ol’ USA.”</p>
<p>All those countries (Russia excepted) with little diversity. It would be interesting to do an econometric study of diversity in a society and crimes against persons. You are more likely to get mugged in London or Paris now than in New York. What has changed in London and Paris in the last 30 years? I’ll give you two guesses if the first one isn’t an staggering increase in the much ballyhooed but little studied ethnic diversity of those cities.</p>