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Banned
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pan, you're advocating for the death penalty, in Texas, of all places. I have to stand against it because it is not administered equally and justly, and it cannot be taken back, if new relevant knowledge about the case surfaces after the execution.
We have to show that we are better than the killers, and better than these guys:
Texas is already an effing mess, when it comes to equal justice:
Quote:
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/texas/texas.html
Texas Tough?: An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State
Introduction
The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2 million people behind bars as of year-end 1999.2 With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. holds a quarter of the world's prisoners.3 In the 1990s alone, more persons were added to prisons and jails than in any other decade on record.4 While all states have increased their prison populations over the last two decades, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) has conducted a series of studies analyzing the incarceration records of individual states to put the national numbers into context. Our reports have highlighted state-specific prison growth, the disproportionate impact incarceration policies have had on African American and Latino communities and youth, and have analyzed the role prison growth may have played on the changing crime rate. Some of JPI's recent findings include:
* In the state of California, nearly four in ten African American men in their twenties are under some form of criminal justice control. While African Americans make up 7% of California's population, and constitute 20% of felony arrests, 31% of the prison population and 43% of third "strike" defendants sent to state prison.5
* From 1992 to 1994, the Florida Department of Corrections received a $450 million increase in funding. That is more than the state's university system received in the previous ten years.6
* Florida prosecutors are sending as many children into the adult prison and jail system as judges do in the entire rest of the United States.7
* In New York State more than 90% of people doing time for a drug offense are African American or Latino. There are more blacks and Hispanics locked up in prisons than there are attending the state university system.8
* The District of Columbia literally has more prison and jail inmates than D.C. residents enrolled in its one public university. D.C.'s correction system experienced a 312% increase in funding from 1977 to 1993, compared to an 82% increase in university funding during that 16 year period.9
* While African Americans represent one out of every four (25%) Maryland residents, they represent over three out of four (77%) of the state's prisoners. Since 1990, 9 out of every 10 new inmates imprisoned in Maryland have been black.10 ......
...Tough on Whom?: Disparate Impact Upon Communities of Color
While Texas' punitive criminal justice policies have affected all communities within the state, the African American community has disproportionately born the brunt of the state's high incarceration policies:
* While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day.22
* One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice supervision.23
* Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks of 2366 per 100,000.
* If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated 824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the U.S. The new figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans incarcerated in the U.S. by 63%. ...
...Within the criminal justice population in Texas, blacks are underrepresented within the ranks of those receiving less punitive sentences.
* Although blacks represent 12% of the Texas population, they comprise 44% of the total prison and jail population. While whites comprise 58% of Texas' population, they represent only 30% of the prison and jail population.
* Probation is often given in lieu of incarceration as a less severe form of punishment. The percentage of blacks on probation falls to 20.6% of the total probation caseload, as compared to a 44.9% representation by whites.24
* Blacks form only 26.7% of the Substance Abuse and Felony Prevention Program (SAFP), a drug treatment program that can be court mandated by judges for convicted felons instead of prison. Whites represent 43.1% of the SAFP population.25 ...
.......Tough, but not smart, on Crime?: The Impact on Crime Rates
Despite the simplistic connection drawn by some that harsher crime policies lead to safer communities, there is little evidence that Texas' severe correctional system is responsible for the drop in crime. In 1980, when Texas had a prison population of 30,000, the state's crime rate was 10% above the national average. Eighteen-years, and 130,000 prisoners later, the Lone Star State's crime rate was 11% above the national average. So, after 18 years, and a monumental growth in imprisonment, Texas' crime rate is not just higher, but increasingly higher, than the national average. While crime has dropped in Texas in recent years, as it has done all over the country, a state-by-state comparison shows the Lone Star State to be lagging behind other jurisdictions which have not increased their prison systems as dramatically. Between 1995 and 1998 -- the last year for which data is available -- the percentage drop in the overall number of index crimes in Texas was half the percentage drop in the number of index crimes nationally, and the lowest of the five largest states (See Graph 4). The Texas crime rate also experienced a slightly lower percentage decline than the national average and was again lowest among the five states (California - 25.5%; New York - 21.3%; National - 11.7%; Illinois - 10.7%; Florida - 10.6%; Texas - 10.1%).
....The comparison between Texas and New York is particularly noteworthy, as their state populations are relatively matched. While Texas had the fastest growing prison system in the country during the 1990s, New York had the third slowest growing prison population in the U.S.(26) During the 1990s, Texas added more prisoners to its prison system (+98,081) than New York's entire prison population (73,233) by some 24,848 prisoners. This means that the number of prisoners that Texas added during the 1990s was 34% higher than New York's entire prison population. Throughout the 1990s, Texas added five times as many prisoners as New York did (18,001). Nevertheless, the Lone Star State's crime drops were much less impressive than what occurred in the Empire State. Since 1995, the percentage decline in overall crime in New York was four times greater than the drop experienced in Texas, and New York's crime rate dropped twice as much as Texas. Even if you go back further, from 1990 to 1998--the decline in the crime rate in New York was 26% greater than the drop in crime in Texas....
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Texas has been forced to temporarily stop executing people:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/us...hp&oref=slogin
Texas Ruling Signals Halt to Executions Indefinitely
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: October 3, 2007
.....On Thursday, the Supreme Court stepped in to halt a planned execution in Texas at the last minute, and though many legal experts interpreted that as a signal for all states to wait for a final ruling on lethal injection before any further executions, Texas officials said they planned to move ahead with more.
As a result, Tuesday’s ruling by the Texas court was seen as a sign that judges in the nation’s leading death penalty state were taking guidance from the Supreme Court and putting off imminent executions.
The Texas court order gave state authorities up to 30 days to explain in legal papers why the execution of the inmate, Heliberto Chi, should proceed. With responses then certain from defense lawyers, the effect of the order was to put off the execution for months, lawyers said.
Mr. Chi was convicted of killing the manager of a men’s store in Arlington in 2001.
Other executions, including four more scheduled in the next five months, were also likely to be stayed, said David R. Dow of the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit law clinic that worked on Mr. Chi’s appeal.
“Until the Court of Criminal Appeals addresses the questions raised in this case there will be no more executions in Texas,” predicted Mr. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston.
Acting less than a week after it rejected another inmate’s appeal 5 to 4, the appeals court justices provided no breakdown of the vote and did not give any reasoning for their decision. But they directed the state’s director of criminal justice, Nathaniel Quarterman, not to execute Mr. Chi and gave Mr. Quarterman and Tim Curry, the district attorney of Tarrant County, where the crime had been committed, up to 30 days to respond to claims by Mr. Chi’s lawyers that the formulation and administration of chemicals used for lethal injections did not quickly and painlessly kill but paralyzed the condemned inmates while they painfully suffocated.
Earlier Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 4 to 3 against recommending a stay for Mr. Chi. A request for a 30-day reprieve was also pending with Gov. Rick Perry.
Had the appeals court not halted the execution, Mr. Chi’s lawyers would have taken the case to the United States Supreme Court, which last Thursday stayed the execution for another Texas inmate, Carlton Turner Jr.
Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., and a law professor at New York University, said the Supreme Court’s ruling was a sign that while it was reviewing the legality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case, “it was at least unseemly for states to be carrying out executions.”....
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Last edited by host; 11-27-2007 at 08:00 AM..
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