Blame Canada

A Canadian citizen on death row in Montana is appealing to his country's government to help him avoid execution. Ronald Allen Smith was convicted of two murders in 1983 and has been on Montana's death row (population: 2) ever since. He recently filed a suit with Canada's Federal Court which argues that the Canadian government's decision not to fight harder for a commutation of his sentence is wrong, even illegal. Canada has outlawed the death penalty and has called Montanan officials and requested a commutation of Smith's sentence before, to no avail. This case raises interesting moral and international implications. Once again, the United States' view on capital punishment is being contrasted with the world's wider consensus through a high-stakes international and, in this case, judicial showdown.

A Swing State in Flux

There are signs that the debate over the death penalty in Ohio is intensifying, from the American Bar Association report I mentioned in my October 15th post to an article questioning Ohio's application of the death penalty in the Akron Beacon Journal, printed yesterday. Now, Ohio clergy are gathering signatures for a letter to Democratic Ohio Governor Ted Strickland which condemns capital punishment in Ohio. The current situation is particularly politically interesting as it represents a convergence of opinion between the prominent religious factor in middle-American, swing state Ohio, which was given a large amount of credit in determining the 2004 Presidential Election, and the more liberal, democratic portions of the state. Both of these groups are opposed to the death penalty, and a "coalition" (I use the term loosely, informally, and only with respect to their views on capital punishment) like this in such a crucial electoral state could have very interesting ramifications on the upcoming 2008 Presidential Election.

The Big Report: A Critical Look at What Everyone's Talking About

If you've been following world of capital punishment at all in the past few days, you already know what this post is about. The recent blizzard of articles in the US news media regarding some kind of revolutionary report (actually several studies) which examines the death penalty through the wonderfully empirical lens of economics has appeared with a force that's been shocking; I no longer have to search for articles on capital punishment lately. This whirlwind we've seen in the past three days was touched off by a November 17th front page article in the New York Times which asks Does the Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate. The article, and its many, many contemporaries (most of them re-reporting exactly what the Times did, without a shred of additional analysis) are being said (by themselves) to have precipitated the first serious reexamination of the death penalty's deterrent effect "for the first time in a generation" (New York Times).

If one reads the articles and their sometimes hysterical, sometimes jubilant quotes about this report which is, essentially, on the economics of murder, it seems as though the death penalty is of the most effective policemen in the country, "preventing 3 to 18 murders" for every inmate executed.

However, further examination and perhaps just a shred of critical thinking reveal fundamental flaws in the conclusions drawn by the studies and espoused by their media entourage (an entourage eager to sell papers to a public which is equally eager to supplement its 70% support for the death penalty with some favorable articles). Step one is to actually read one of the reports yourself - it's really not that long (the actual text is just over 20 double-spaced pages, followed by about 15 pages of pretty charts). Next, take a course in elementary statistics, and pay particular attention to the lectures on sampling error and significance of standard deviations from the mean. Essentially, the data to construct a coherent, unimpeachable correlation and therefore argument are not present. As the Times article notes:

The death penalty “is applied so rarely that the number of homicides it can plausibly have caused or deterred cannot reliably be disentangled from the large year-to-year changes in the homicide rate caused by other factors,” John J. Donohue III, a law professor at Yale with a doctorate in economics, and Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in the Stanford Law Review in 2005.

Next, and perhaps most obviously, is the fact that the other facets of the death penalty are utterly unaffected by these studies: the issues of morality, of cost, of the message sent, are still just as pressing as they were last week. As a letter written to the New York Times the day after the piece ran says:

If the death penalty deterred killers, we would be able to find at least one, in a state without the death penalty, who expected to be caught and imprisoned for life but committed murder anyway. No rational person would make that exchange.

Economists will keep debating the numbers, but they should support public policy that sends clear, rational messages. Here’s one: Killing people is wrong — whether they’re walking in a dark alley or strapped to a gurney.

Clearly, the moral and emotional issues are undiminished. These latest studies are interesting, and will serve to intensify the debate over capital punishment in the coming weeks and months. As we move forward with these new opinions, it's important to exercise discretion and critical analysis of how these numbers actually affect the debate.

Quick Update on U.N. Death Penalty Moratorium Proposal

The United Nations anti-death penalty proposal took a step forward as the UN's commission on human rights passed the proposal. General Assembly-wide support for the proposal has also increased to "99 countries, compared to 52 against and 33 abstentions."

Death Penalty Faces Probable Rollbacks Everywhere from New Jersey to the U.N.

The New Jersey Legislature has known it's been coming since January, when a special state commission on the death penalty found that the death penalty was "a more expensive sentence than life in prison and didn't deter murder" (AP Report). The abolition of the death penalty in New Jersey is finally gaining serious traction, with most political analysts predicting that the New Jersey Legislature will take advantage of the current "lame duck" period, in which legislators have maximum protection from their constituents' votes (most legislators won't have to face voters again for 2-4 years), to enact the potentially unpopular abolition of the death penalty. There is little doubt that the bill will be signed into law by Governor John Corzine, who is anti-death penalty as well as anti-seatbelt. New Jersey would be the first state to abolish the death penalty in the modern, i.e. post-Furman v. Georgia, era.

Moving to a broader stage, the United Nations is set to consider a resolution suspending the death penalty worldwide. The resolution, which will likely be voted on next week, has the pre-vote support from little over 40% of the general assembly (81 of 192 nations). It is likely to pick up more states during the actual vote, as 130 countries have banned the death penalty in their own nations. While U.N. resolutions have no binding legal weight, the passage of this resolution would further illuminate the contrast between the 25 or so nations that still regularly execute their citizens and the rest of the world's consensus, possibly increasing the mounting international and domestic pressure to eliminate capital punishment worldwide.

Massachusetts Lawmakers Nix Death Penalty

By a 110-46 margin, the Massachusetts State House voted down a bill to conservatively reinstate the death penalty in the Bay State. The bill would have called for the death penalty only "in the most heinous cases where there is no doubt of guilt." Previous efforts by Massachusetts' conservative Governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney to reinstate capital punishment in the state have met similar fates in the State House. This firm rejection of the death penalty represents both the general liberality of Massachusetts and the current prevailing sentiment in the state.

Inadequate Advice from Counsel Gets Man off Death Row

Earlier today the Supreme Court announced that it would take on the case of Idaho v. Hoffman. The case has to do with the constitutional guarantee of competent legal counsel for the accused. Max Hoffman was on trial for the murder of a federal informant 18 years ago when his lawyer advised him to decline a plea bargain offer of life in prison and continue with the trial. Hoffman ended up sentenced to the death penalty, and the lawyer with an egg on his face. I know which I'd prefer; eggs exfoliate. A federal appeals court ruled in July 2006 that the advice of Hoffman's lawyer was so poor that it was constitutionally unacceptable, and essentially informed Idaho that it could either give Hoffman his original plea bargain or let him go. The Supremes will hear the case and primarily decide on (a) the standards for effective and ineffective counsel, defined in the sixth amendment, and (b) the fate of Hoffman.