Recently in Death Penalty Category

In the Poisson models for the full sample, several criminal-career variables were significantly associated with subsequent death sentences. These variables included an early onset of antisocial behavior as measured by juvenile arrests and prior rape, robbery, and molestation offending. In both models, which focused on separate instant offenses and the violent and property offenses, prior prison sentences predicted subsequent death sentences. These findings suggest that violent, recidivistic offenders who are routinely incarcerated throughout their life course might be sentenced to death for a capital offense. This pattern is consistent with the behavioral continuity that is a cardinal feature of criminal careers research. The number of murdered victims significantly predicted death sentences, which supports prior research that found multiple homicide victims was the strongest predictor of receiving a death sentence. An offender's race had no predictive effect on death sentences in the current sample; however, the coupling of criminal career information and race-dyad effects is an important issue for future research.

A few days ago, I put up an entry about a previously convicted killer serving LWOP who knifed to death a prison guard.  The next day, the story was picked up by Sentencing Law and Policy, a popular legal blog.  SL&P, although center-left in its orientation, noted that a case of that sort makes it very problematic categorically to oppose the death penalty.

The story generated (so far) 68 comments, which is a very large number by the standards of that blog.  A dozen abolitionists chimed in.  I repeatedly asked them the following question:

"What punishment, short of the death penalty, do you suggest for this case that is (1) consistent with the Eighth Amendment, (2) likely to deter LWOP inmates from murder, and (3) proportionate to the offense?"

I first posed the question five days ago.  Most readers of C&C will not be surprised to learn that, through all 68 comments, not a single abolitionist has answered it. 

The reason is not that hard to figure out.  They don't have an answer. 

So in what condition does that leave abolitionism today?  

Six weeks ago, North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue vetoed a bill that in substance would have repealed the state's Killers' Bonanza Law, a/k/a Racial Justice Act.  The Act, rammed through by a partisan vote when the Democrats held the state legislature, allows murderers sentenced to death to challenge their sentences based on statistical evidence that blacks had been more frequently subject to capital punishment than whites in roughly similar circumstances.  The Act notably did not require the defendant to show that a single actor in his own case  --  prosecutor, judge or jury  --  bore any racial animus whatever.  In other words, the Act enabled a killer retroactively to nullify his death sentence in the name of "racial justice," without ever having to produce one iota of actual evidence that he had been prejudiced by any racial injustice.

One of the numerous absudities of the Act was that it was available to whites, notwithstanding that no one has been able to find any evidence that whites suffered from racial discrimination in North Carolina.  But the absurdity was needed lest the bill be patently unconstitutional.  So now we have the spectacle of North Carolina white killers  --  along with the rest of them  --  parading to court to claim some unrecognizable mutant of "racial discrimination."

Fast forward to today's report in Politico that Gov. Perdue, with approval ratings in the low 30's and lagging far behind her likely Republican opponent, has decided to bail out and not seek re-election.  Good riddance.

One of the rallying cries of abolitionism is that life without parole will keep us just as safe as the death penalty.

There are so many things wrong with this assurance it's difficult to know where to start.  For one thing, today's life without parole can become tomorrow's parole board hearing; if the death penalty can be changed, so can its promised successor.  In addition, the whole rationale of abolitionism tells you that the stout promise of LWOP isn't really sincere.  A polestar of abolitionism is that even the worst people can change, and that the death penalty forecloses all hope of redemption and a return to civil society.  But of course so does LWOP. 

But even that is not the main driving force.  At the core of abolitionist thinking is a moral irresolution that will never abide life without parole.  No sooner will the the ink be dry on the statute ending the death penalty than the push will be on to banish LWOP as simply the death penalty in slow motion, and thus even more cruel and backward. 

Of course the main thing wrong with the promise that LWOP will keep us as safe as the death penalty is simply that it's false.

The number of death sentences imposed in the U.S. has been dropping for the last 11 years.  Those interested in spinning can claim a single cause consistent with their viewpoint, e.g., (1) the American people are turning away from the death penalty; or (2) sentences are down because murder is down because the death penalty is working.  Reality is a bit messier, as it usually is.

Noting the length of time many inmates spend on death row, often more than 20 years, [Gov. Kitzhaber] said Oregon had an "unworkable system that fails to meet basic standards of justice." He said there was a wide sense the death penalty process was flawed but that the state had "done nothing; we have avoided the question."

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"If the review system is broken such that nobody but volunteers are being executed, the answer is to fix the review system," said Kent S. Scheidegger, the legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty.

Mr. Scheidegger said the authority some governors had to commute or delay death penalty sentences "is given for the purpose of correcting injustices in individual cases. It's not given for the purpose of negating an entire law."