what about

[philosophygirl]

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty
THE SYSTEM BY WHICH PEOPLE ARE EXECUTED IS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS

Are people happy enough seeing SOME of the murders sentenced to death even though not all of them are? Or are people just happy enough with the way the system works because it's not the white race being exterminated?

The system is sick and injust. How can you live with that?

[RickZ]

philosophygirl said:

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty

I would be interested in a link from which you got your statistics.

You have also neglected to mention that the majority of serial killers are white males. Some exceptions are Lee Malvo, John Mohammed, Wayne Williams, and Eileen Wuarnos (who has been executed). I don't want serial killers, of any color, to play the legal system and get away with multiple murders.

Also, how do you account for the high percentage of black on black crime, including gang violence? Are those murder victims to be ignored because the perpetrators are black?

[Thomas]

So you would have us throw out the baby with the bath water? Justice demands that we work to ensure that every person who commits heinous murders face the same punishment, no matter what his or her race. It is Americans who are being exterminated at the rate of 15,000 murders a year, not the murderers. We must strive to make all justice colorblind. This cannot be accomplished by abandoning justice; as you seem to advocate.

From the tone and content of your statement, it is obvious that you are young and uninformed. May I suggest that you spend the next five or ten years of your life in law enforcement or corrections. I would be willing to bet near anything that your attitude toward the death penalty would change.

[philosophygirl]

Guest-Thomas said:

So you would have us throw out the baby with the bath water? Justice demands that we work to ensure that every person who commits heinous murders face the same punishment, no matter what his or her race. It is Americans who are being exterminated at the rate of 15,000 murders a year, not the murderers. We must strive to make all justice colorblind. This cannot be accomplished by abandoning justice; as you seem to advocate.

From the tone and content of your statement, it is obvious that you are young and uninformed. May I suggest that you spend the next five or ten years of your life in law enforcement or corrections. I would be willing to bet near anything that your attitude toward the death penalty would change.

Thanks for the advice, Tom--hope you don't mind if I call you Tom.
"Justice demands that we work to ensure that every person who commits heinous murders face the same punishment, no matter what his or her race." Your right, but if we did that then according to your stats. 30,000 U.S. citizens would die every year. I know that doesn't bother you, but at that rate this section of North American continent would be wiped clean in a matter of decades. But we don't execute everyone charged with manslaughter, do we? Not even all of those who are found guilty of the most heinous of murders are executed.
As is, the system is arbitrary and capricious and all executions need to be stopped.

[RickZ]

philosophygirl said:

As is, the [death penalty] system is arbitrary and capricious and all executions need to be stopped.

Um, is this the basis for your statistics?

[Deleted]

RickZ said:

Um, is this the basis for your statistics?

I am also curious about the basis of her statistics!

[Thomas]

What makes you think that locking a murderer up for life will stop his killing? Let me tell you a story. Several years ago, a young man in Nevada became known as the "show and tell" murderer because he lured a gay white man into the desert, killed him and then for weeks brought as many people as he could to show them the body. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Problem solved right?

A few years later he brutally killed a fellow inmate, a black man. He received another sentence of life without parole. This time the problem was really solved, right?

He was transferred to Utah under interstate compact. In our prison, he killed another black inmate, this time stabbing him sixty five times in the face, head, neck and torso. The victim inmate was in full restraints and had no chance of defending himself. This inmate now sits on death row in Utah for that murder. He has planned and attempted to carry out the killing of a staff member at the prison and has vowed to kill again before he is executed. He will be on death row for some years to come, so he just may get his chance.

The moral of the story is that for psychopath murderers, the killing does not stop with life in prison. It merely changes the victim pool. If this inmate had of been timely executed for his first murder, two other fellow human beings would still be alive today.

In addition, there is no such thing as an escape proof prison. Every prison in the world occasionally experiences an escape, even the most secure ones. Just a few years ago seven inmates, most of them convicted murderers, escaped from a maximum security prison in Texas and within days had killed a police officer. The killing doesn’t stop with a prison sentence.

The timely application of the death penalty for vicious murders will save innocent lives. It is an absolute truth that an executed murderer will never kill again. How is that immoral, as you suggest?

[philosophygirl]

"A disproportionate number of capital murder defendants are black and a disproportionate number of capital murder defendants are people who are accused of killing a white victim. and close to 100 percent of capital murder defendants are indigent. At some level, everyone in America already knows this. If you were accused of capital murder would you rather be black or white? If you were accused of capital Murder , would you rather be rich or poor? The answers are obvious, of course. Rich people generally have advantages that poor people do not, and that is especially true in the criminal justice system. Likewise, black Americans face forms of racism that whites do not, including poorer medical care, higher disapprovale rates on mortgage applications, and so on; and one instance of racism is reflected in the criminal justice system. The population of death row in America is clsoe to 100 percent poor." (Dow, David R., 20--Machinary of Death by Dow and Dow.)

[Deleted]

Amazing. Your quoted passage didn't reference your 80% claim. Interesting. Could that be because they do not exist? Seems like it.

I don't fault you believing that racism is a big problem in DP cases. I used to believe that because it is repeated so many times, but then I actually researched the issue. Boy was I surprised when I looked at the statistics and saw that most murders kill their own race. That means that most African Americans on DR are there because they killed another African American.

That belief has also led to white defendants being executed faster and to having fewer of their appeals granted because there is rarely a claim of racial prejudice. That is not fair either. It should be equal for everyone, black, white, male, or female.


According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1997 more than 18,000 people were murdered. Of those murders 48% of victims were white and 49% of the victims were black. Of the offenders 45% were white and 53% black. Murder is also usually committed intra-racially. In cases of one victim and one murderer 94% of the black murder victims were murdered by blacks while 85% of white murder victims were killed by white murderers

curios said:

It is true that the number of blacks executed in Texas (and nationwide) is greater than their proportion in the population. But it is also true that the proportion of black murderers far exceeds the proportion of blacks in the population at large. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 1996 report (released May, 1999), blacks commit 54% of the homicides in America even though they constitute only 12% of the population. An individual black male is eight times more likely to commit murder than an individual white male. Thus, in the most equitable system imaginable, a black male would be more likely than a white male to be executed for murder. In fact, however, convicted white murderers are more likely to be executed for their crimes than convicted black murderers. In 1996-1997, whites accounted for 62% of the convicted murderers executed in Texas. According to statistics provided by the Justice Department, the proportion of whites presently on death row compared to the total white population is almost four times that of the comparable proportion of blacks on death row in terms of the total black population. Whatever these statistics prove, they do not prove that the justice in America is systemically biased against blacks.

Actually, the Amnesty report does not explicitly claim that there is a racial bias against African-American defendants in murder cases (although its implications are just that). The reason is that most studies of racial sentencing, including the Baldus study—which is one most invoked by anti-death penalty activists—have found "neither strong nor consistent" evidence of discrimination directed against black defendants because of race (see Randall Kennedy’s Race, Crime and the Law). But the desperation to prove white turpitude is so great that instead of celebrating this as a triumph of civil rights reform in the law, the race baiters merely shift their focus to the victims of capital crimes.

Thus the statistic with which Amnesty opens its case is this: "Of the 500 prisoners executed between 1977 and 1998," according to Amnesty, "81.8% were convicted of murdering a white person, even though blacks and whites are the victims of homicide in almost equal numbers nationwide." No attempt is made, of course, to explain how the criminal-justice system might systematically discriminate in favor of white victims but not against black defendants (except by this indirect method!). What the Report’s raw statistic fails to take into account is that the death penalty is only imposed in aggravated circumstances, which can include the violence of the crime, whether it is committed in the course of another crime, or whether the perpetrator has a prior criminal record of violent crimes. All these factors are ignored in the Amnesty report. It so happens that black felons commit 43% of aggravated assaults, 66% of (armed) robberies, 27% of rapes and 85% of inter-racial crimes of violence, mainly against whites (this last figure from a Justice Department report for 1993). Since juries generally don’t demand the death penalty for crimes of passion, where the victim is known to the killer, and since blacks are far more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than whites commit against blacks, the disparity that offends the Amnesty Report has a basis in facts that may not imply a racial bias on the part of prosecutors and juries. The Report does not even acknowledge this as a problem.

The defense of criminals as a civil-rights cause is only an extreme manifestation of what has apparently become the very essence of the civil-rights movement. Do black children fail to achieve in school? White oppression explains their failure. (Nothing else could without blaming the victims.) Poor black academic performance cannot be seen as a failure of black families to educate their children, or of the black community to support educational values, which are often referred to derisively as "thinking white." Black failure can only be the result of some lingering residue of the white perfidy involved in slavery and segregation. Call it "institutional racism."

Of course, those who invoke the phantom of "institutional racism" are too sophisticated to claim that there are actual racists lodged in our liberal education establishment who refuse to admit black children to legally integrated schools, or refuse to teach them when they get there. Instead, the concept of "institutional racism" is made to encompass an entire system of oppression that invisibly conspires to keep black children down. It may do so through culturally rigged tests; or through the failure to provide black role models in positions of authority; or by providing only under-funded schools to black neighborhoods; or as a result of the pervasive negative pressure exerted by an environment of poverty that cannot be countered with a mere six hours of school. (And, indeed, compulsory pre-school is already being proposed by Gore and the left as a new "right" and social cure-all.)

I

[jbpro]

I agree 100%. But would still like to see her source for those stats. You know why she hasnt posted them? Yea I thought you did ;D

[philosophygirl]

I'm sorry I could not find the exact source for 80/20 stat. However, I didn't pull it out of thin air--I spent 3 months in Chicago studying Racism and the Death Penalty and the stat. reflects what I was taught. The fact is, and the point of what I was trying to get at with my first message is that the race of the victim plays a bigger role in deciding who gets the death penalty than most of evidence that is presented in court. People in this society are outraged at the murder of a white person. But they don't give a damn about the deaths of people of color. A black man kills a black man--chances are good that he will get a prison system (maybe life w/out parole, but probably not.) If a black person kills a white person, then the chances are very good that he will recieve the dp. People are racist...people run the judicial system that determines life or death...
"As I go around the rural South today, I see that many institutions have changed, maybe not as much as they should have, but there are changes in the schools, changes in the hospital, changes in the housing authorities. And yet when I go into the courtrooms of the South, I see that nothing has changed. Often the only minority person in the courtroom is the person on trial." (Bright, Stephen B., (Bright, Stephen B., Race, Poverty and Disadvantage in the Infliction of the Death Penalty in the Death Belt from Machinery of Death pg. 122, 1995.)

[RickZ]

philosophygirl said:

I'm sorry I could not find the exact source for 80/20 stat. However, I didn't pull it out of thin air--I spent 3 months in Chicago studying Racism and the Death Penalty and the stat. reflects what I was taught.

A point on being 'taught': Would you queston being taught that the sky is green and the seas are orange? This is not merely rhetorical in nature.

When it comes to statistics, I always remember the adage: There are lies, d*mned lies, and statistics. My point is that if you did not study and review the empirical data from which the statistics you posited on this board were derived, how can you vouch for their validity? Just because you were taught them?

The fact is, and the point of what I was trying to get at with my first message is that the race of the victim plays a bigger role in deciding who gets the death penalty than most of evidence that is presented in court. People in this society are outraged at the murder of a white person. But they don't give a *darn* about the deaths of people of color. A black man kills a black man--chances are good that he will get a prison system (maybe life w/out parole, but probably not.) If a black person kills a white person, then the chances are very good that he will recieve the dp. People are racist...people run the judicial system that determines life or death...

You bring up a point on white victims and black perpetrators. What are the 'statistics' of a black victim and a white perpetrator? Surely that must be in the emipirical data as well. Or was the study of this aspect of our criminal justice system conveniently ignored as not fitting the agenda? Just curious on this, now that you've brought up one side of the issue.

"As I go around the rural South today, I see that many institutions have changed, maybe not as much as they should have, but there are changes in the schools, changes in the hospital, changes in the housing authorities. And yet when I go into the courtrooms of the South, I see that nothing has changed. Often the only minority person in the courtroom is the person on trial." (Bright, Stephen B., (Bright, Stephen B., Race, Poverty and Disadvantage in the Infliction of the Death Penalty in the Death Belt from Machinery of Death pg. 122, 1995.)

Methinks Mr. Bright is full of hyperbole. Appellate issues abound in his statement, and he d*mn well knows this, him being a defense lawyer and all.

[PK]

philosophygirl, read this link carefully please. You may also want to read in other areas of this site.



www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

[Deleted]

Take a look at the real numbers. There are very few cases of murder committed by one race upon another. Most African Americans on DR are there because they murdered another African American. Just as most whites are there from killing whites. Whoever gave you that 80/20 number must have been dropped on his/her head because those numbers are a fallacy.

[Death star]

I would think a philosophy girl would be able to read. Manslaughter is not heinous murder. Manslaughter is not even murder at all. That is why it has a different name.

Also, although not as important as reading for a philosophygirl, simple arithmetic is valuable as well.

If every year 30,000 people who committed homicide were executed, the population of the US would continue to grow. That would happen for two reasons. First there would be many fewer innocent homicide victims and second, there are more than 30,000 people born in the US every year. Perhaps you should change your name to "thegirlwhoisphilosophydeficient" or "scarecrowfromtheWizardofOz".

Actually everybody in North America would be much better off if we had about 30 times more executions for murder.

philosophygirl said:

"Justice demands that we work to ensure that every person who commits heinous murders face the same punishment, no matter what his or her race." Your right, but if we did that then according to your stats. 30,000 U.S. citizens would die every year. I know that doesn't bother you, but at that rate this section of North American continent would be wiped clean in a matter of decades. But we don't execute everyone charged with manslaughter, do we? Not even all of those who are found guilty of the most heinous of murders are executed.
As is, the system is arbitrary and capricious and all executions need to be stopped.

[Deathstar]

This result is the problem of the system not being arbitrary and caprisious. People receive the death penalty ONLY if the murder one or more people with aggravating circumstances that outweigh the mitigating circumstances. That system exists because anti-DP creeps are opposed to justice. As a result few murderers are executed. In addition, since there are more white people and more black murderers, the natural statistical variation would lead to more black murderers of whites being executed than white murderers of blacks. Another reason for this statistical artifact is that many more whites are killed by blacks than there are blacks killed by whites.

However the biggest reason is the general prevention of justice by anti-DP dimwits (look in the nearest mirror philosophygirl to see what an anti-DP dimwit looks like).

The vast majority of black murderers of whites are not excuted. However the complex capital murder scheme that you anti-DP lamebrains demanded requires that specific circumstances be present before a capital murder can even be charged. The thousands of black murderers who prey on whites have a tendency to create those special circumstances when they murder whites.

But remember that, overall, a white male murderer has a greater chance of being executed than a black murderer.

The simple solution to the "problem" that you think exists would be to execute more white murderers of black victims. That could be easily arranged with a simple affirmative action program instituted during the panalty phase of a murder trial. A new aggravating factor could be added, "Murder of a member of a disadvantaged racial group by a member of an advantaged racial group".

philosophygirl said:

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty
THE SYSTEM BY WHICH PEOPLE ARE EXECUTED IS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS

Are people happy enough seeing SOME of the murders sentenced to death even though not all of them are? Or are people just happy enough with the way the system works because it's not the white race being exterminated?

The system is sick and injust. How can you live with that?

[Deleted]

Actually everybody in North America would be much better off if we had about 30 times more executions for murder.

...AMEN!

[sweethonesty]

philosophygirl said:

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty
THE SYSTEM BY WHICH PEOPLE ARE EXECUTED IS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS

Are people happy enough seeing SOME of the murders sentenced to death even though not all of them are? Or are people just happy enough with the way the system works because it's not the white race being exterminated?

The system is sick and injust. How can you live with that?

is that you Theresa??? LMAO!

[ltdc]

philosophygirl said:

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty
THE SYSTEM BY WHICH PEOPLE ARE EXECUTED IS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS

Are people happy enough seeing SOME of the murders sentenced to death even though not all of them are? Or are people just happy enough with the way the system works because it's not the white race being exterminated?

The system is sick and injust. How can you live with that?

all of these issues are purely court system issues not death penalty issues. there may be problems with the court system, juries ect. deal with them at their level

there are really only two death penalty issues
#1 were they guilty? ( the mythical innocent person executed has been hashed and re-hashed here forever, and we're still waiting for the difinitive proof)

#2 did they kill AFTER the execution? (still waiting for that one too)

virtully every thing else is some other system/court/process problem

[sweethonesty]

philosophygirl said:

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty
THE SYSTEM BY WHICH PEOPLE ARE EXECUTED IS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS

Are people happy enough seeing SOME of the murders sentenced to death even though not all of them are? Or are people just happy enough with the way the system works because it's not the white race being exterminated?

The system is sick and unjust. How can you live with that?

murder is murder regardless of the color of your skin.

There are many that aren't happy with the way the system is set up..... I'm not happy with the system when it comes to the endless appeals of ANY DR inmate when it delays their execution ... Swift is Justice.

I don't see murder in any shade of color.

[cynthiak]

philosophygirl said:

what about the fact that if you're black and you kill a white person there is approx. an 80% chance that you will recieve the death penalty
BUT if you are white and you kill a black person there is an 80% chance that you will NOT recieve the death penalty
THE SYSTEM BY WHICH PEOPLE ARE EXECUTED IS ARBITRARY AND CAPRICIOUS

Are people happy enough seeing SOME of the murders sentenced to death even though not all of them are? Or are people just happy enough with the way the system works because it's not the white race being exterminated?

The system is sick and injust. How can you live with that?

Its hard, I must admit. However, by the time I get through saying voodoo chants over them and sacraficing small animals...I usually come to terms with it. Of course, sometimes when I'm drinking the blood of a virgin goat, I see the wrong in it...once I burp, I'm ok after that.

[cynthiak]

philosophygirl said:

"A disproportionate number of capital murder defendants are black and a disproportionate number of capital murder defendants are people who are accused of killing a white victim. and close to 100 percent of capital murder defendants are indigent. At some level, everyone in America already knows this. If you were accused of capital murder would you rather be black or white? If you were accused of capital Murder , would you rather be rich or poor? The answers are obvious, of course. Rich people generally have advantages that poor people do not, and that is especially true in the criminal justice system. Likewise, black Americans face forms of racism that whites do not, including poorer medical care, higher disapprovale rates on mortgage applications, and so on

And there are many forms of racism whites face that blacks dont.

[bryan]

cynthiak said:

philosophygirl said:

"A disproportionate number of capital murder defendants are black and a disproportionate number of capital murder defendants are people who are accused of killing a white victim. and close to 100 percent of capital murder defendants are indigent. At some level, everyone in America already knows this. If you were accused of capital murder would you rather be black or white? If you were accused of capital Murder , would you rather be rich or poor? The answers are obvious, of course. Rich people generally have advantages that poor people do not, and that is especially true in the criminal justice system. Likewise, black Americans face forms of racism that whites do not, including poorer medical care, higher disapprovale rates on mortgage applications, and so on

And there are many forms of racism whites face that blacks dont.

i bet there is cyn, but can you give me an example so i understand

[cynthiak]

bryan said:

cynthiak said:

And there are many forms of racism whites face that blacks dont.

i bet there is cyn, but can you give me an example so i understand

When we found out Chris was diabetic, I called the state to ask for assistance with medical bills. I asked for whatever kind of assistance I could get since the child was only 8 and its not his fault his mom and dad can't pay his bills. I spoke with about 3 different people and by the time I got to the third, I was crying. I asked the lady (who was black) WTF I need to do to get my child some help since at that moment I had to choose between his medication or formula for the baby. She kinda laughed and told me AND I QUOTE "be black".

[cynthiak]

bryan said:

cynthiak said:

And there are many forms of racism whites face that blacks dont.

i bet there is cyn, but can you give me an example so i understand

News broadcast on the other night. Basically it was along the lines of the African Americans in Washington D.C are living together but not getting married so they can still get benefits. There was one couple that was together like 20 years and had 9 kids. They never got married so she could keep getting benefits for the kids. They reported of a new bill that would give African American couples incentive to get married...a check for a down payment on a house, education or whatever. Now, it may not JUST be for blacks, because I know how the news is but there was not one mention of whites getting the check to help them get off welfare.

[cynthiak]

Just because I was friends with a black guy back in the town I grew up on, at first his friends automatically thought things like I was "a spy" for the white folks, looking to buy drugs, or trying to do WHATEVER I even asked one, A white girl can't be friends with a black guy? His reply? NO! It's not natural.
How is it not natural? Just because I'm white, I can't have friends who are black?

[cynthiak]

Want more?

[cynthiak]

Another one! New subdivision went up in the area. Its ALL black families. One of the guys I work with, when the subdivision first went up, tried to buy a house there. Now, these are 200,000 dollar houses and up. His wife makes about double + what he makes. They were denied. They must have great credit because they basically pay cash for everything. He financed his new truck to add to his credit.
Well, one of the people that live in that area came to where I work one night. I was standing there when she said where she lived. He was there too and made the statement that he tried to get a house there when the subdivision first went up. She said "you ain't the right color". Of course, we both asked what she meant. She said it was common knowledge among the black people that wanted to live there and still live there to move into those houses because the builders and the bank worked together and wanted all black families in the subdivision. She said she had just filed bankruptcy a couple years before and worked housekeeping at one of the casinos. (they dont make *crap*) Other than her job she had child support payments for two kids. Yet, she was living in a $200,000 house.

[cynthiak]

cynthiak said:

bryan said:

i bet there is cyn, but can you give me an example so i understand

When we found out Chris was diabetic, I called the state to ask for assistance with medical bills. I asked for whatever kind of assistance I could get since the child was only 8 and its not his fault his mom and dad can't pay his bills. I spoke with about 3 different people and by the time I got to the third, I was crying. I asked the lady (who was black) WTF I need to do to get my child some help since at that moment I had to choose between his medication or formula for the baby. She kinda laughed and told me AND I QUOTE "be black".

To help prove this one. The "crackhead" neighbor I always refer to..her 14 year old son gets a 700 check a month. He got into a fight one day at school and she had some shrink say he was like that because his father is in prison. His mother is white and his father is black. So he gets 700 bux a month? Mine is 8, been stricken with juvenile diabetes, had an instant 15 years shaved off his life and I cant get just 200 bux every three months for his meds and doctors appointments?

[bryan]

i understand that and i am truly sorry but to be honest after reading this, i see why they are doing this...its all politics with these people and to make up for racial tension that was been going on for years and years, they are trying to provide better benefits for blacks, almost forgetting whites...i dont think thats right, i would like to see all people to be treated alike (income, benefits and just normal attitude towards someone) but i guess it wont happen...but cyn, straight up with you, i dont see that as a form of racisim....i see it as politicians and people with authority choose sides, and trying to have blacks and black voters go to there side...i doubt the system was ever ment to shortchange whites but i think its more of a over paying blacks for the states mistakes many years ago...and cyn, those examples are not for every black person...i still got shortchanged by many of those examples, having me fall into more of the white person catorigy...i just think, after years and years of racism and now my fellow blacks expect to have stuff handed to them and it might upset white people not getting the same treatment in return