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My name is Ricky J. Slicc, from Denver Colorad, I Would head this organization with pride, as I believe capital crime deserves capital punishment. I can't say I would ever want the Boston bomber or Las Vegas shooter to live, would you?

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Board meeting to be conducted at community rec center in SF. Featuring guest speaker.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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She is a survivor of the Boston marathon bombing. She is a public speaker, and an advocate of the death penalty as a means of valid punishment.

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Two Instagram posts by a victim and his family after the Boston marathon bombings killed him.

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Song by the Ramones that expresses an opinion of justice based on the offense.

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Punishment Fits The Crime Lyrics: I hear the bells of freedom chiming / But inside my heart I feel I'm dying / Wise guys never compromise / Then they lose their rights and they act surprised / Jail really cuts you

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A poorly drawn cartoon yes, but nevertheless it does point out how the death penalty is a mean of efficient deterrent to crime.

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A YouTube video By the prager University, detailing why it is the the death penalty is a moral security, and a tool of justice.

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Published 10/01/15 by CONTRIBUTOR

This article details a visit one reporter took to the inside of an Illinois states prison, where inmates on death row are house in the same area as normal inmates.

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In one word, "Justice."

In three words: "They deserve it."

Some people kill so heinously that death and only death constitutes society's dignified response. A few years ago, under court order, I documented life inside every maximum security prison in Illinois. What I found appalled me. As my crime and punishment memoir, The Death of Punishment, recounts, convicted murderers serving life sentences inside Illinois maximum security prisons watch soap operas and sports, after shopping for goodies and snacks to munch on. These callous killers play sports for hours at a time. Their prison library even contains a "true crime" section. With the best jobs and hustles inside prisons, often those who deserve it most suffer least, while those who deserve it least suffer most.

Why is that? The prisoners and those who guard them spoke with one voice: "What a guy did outside is none of our business. How he behaves inside is our only concern."

Illinois' Department of Corrections self-declared mission further confirms it: "Protect the public . . through incarceration and supervision which securely segregates offenders from society, assures offenders of their constitutional rights and maintains programs to enhance the success of offenders' reentry into society." No mention of punishment. No mention of justice. Ironically and perversely, inside prison as presently administered, it's nobody's job to punish.

We retributivists feel certain that those who rape and murder children, serial killers, terrorists, mass murderers etc - the worst of the worst- all other things equal, should be punished and their punishment should fit their crimes. Justice demands it.

If Illinois does reinstitute the death penalty, it should morally refine it to reserve it only for the worst of the worst, and only based upon evidence that leaves a nearly unanimous jury with no residual or lingering doubt as to guilt, and convinces them to a moral certainty that the convicted murderer deserves to die.

But whether or not Illinois reinstates the death penalty, and especially if it does not, it should administer prison life to really help rehabilitate those it might release, while it truly punishes - yes, punishes with life - those who deserve to die.

Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor at New York Law School, is the author of The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst.
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Counterpoint: Why Illinois should reinstate death penalty

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In one word, "Justice." In three words: "They deserve it." Some people kill so heinously that death and only death constitutes society's dignified response. A few years ago, under court order, I documented life inside every maximum security prison in Illinois. What I found appalled me.

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Published July 26, 2015 by Phillip Halloway, CNN legal analyst

CNN seems to believe that the death penalty is not cruel enough of a punishment, that life in prison is a lifetime of suffering and that is the proper means of punishment.

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As a former law enforcement officer, former prosecutor, criminal lawyer, and continuing real-world "student" of criminology, I've seen up close the evidence suggesting that the United States should not be having this conversation anymore, because it may be time to put an end to capital punishment completely.

This is not because I have any moral objection to executing the worst of the worst -- those who murder innocent victims, sometimes in the most horrific ways imaginable. It is hard to see capital punishment as particularly "cruel" or "unusual" when the victims will often have died much worse deaths than the killer will be subjected to. But the fact is that there are several practical reasons why the death penalty just doesn't make sense any longer, if it ever really did in the first place.

1. Executions are actually less punitive than life without parole. I've never been to prison, but having dealt regularly with prisoners, it's clear that prison life is hard -- very hard. And you don't have to take my word for it. Recently executed murderer David Zink had this to say about it just before his death by lethal injection in Missouri:

"For those who remain on death row, understand that everyone is going to die. ... Statistically speaking, we have a much easier death than most, so I encourage you to embrace it and celebrate our true liberation before society figures it out and condemns us to life without parole and we too will die a lingering death."

This point of view is not surprising when you look at the Supermax prison in Colorado, which some have described as a fate worse than death. There, inmates typically spend 23 hours a day locked inside a cell, with little communication with other inmates or the outside world. There are also state versions of these facilities, which the New York City Bar Association has labeled as cruel and unusual punishment, likening imprisonment in one as torture under international law.

2. Death penalty litigation makes no financial sense. Numerous studies have found that death penalty criminal litigation costs taxpayers far more than prosecutions seeking life without parole. For example, in Colorado, where the Holmes jury now has to spend the next several weeks hearing evidence, the state will shell out approximately $3.5 million, as opposed to an average of $150,000 if the state had not sought the death penalty, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Why? Because the average length of the initial prosecution for a death penalty case -- not including lengthy appeals -- means more than a thousand extra days of courtroom resources are being used. Judges, prosecutors, public defenders, court reporters, jurors, bailiffs and other courtroom staff are all needed just to conduct a trial, and that means spending a lot of money from state coffers that could have been used elsewhere. In Colorado's case specifically, the state has executed exactly one person since 1976, when the Supreme Court of the United States lifted the moratorium on capital punishment in the landmark ruling of Gregg v. Georgia. So is this punishment phase of the Holmes trial really necessary? Only time will tell, but the fact remains that Colorado has historically been hesitant, to say the least, to execute murderers.

3. Death penalty litigation is harder on families of murder victims. Death penalty cases on average take 25 years or so to reach ultimate resolution, whether it be the imposition of the death sentence, a reversal or otherwise. As such, family members and loved ones of murder victims often find themselves entangled in the justice system for a very long time. In fact, in Colorado, the trial portion of the process alone is six times longer than if the state were seeking life without parole.

4. The death penalty is not evenly applied. For starters, only 31 of the 50 U.S. states employ capital punishment. And even in states where it is an option, prosecutors can decide against pursuing a death sentence. This is the case in the "hot car death" in Cobb County, Georgia, involving Justin Ross Harris, who is accused of murdering his young son by leaving him strapped in a car seat to bake to death. With the death penalty off the table, any conviction and appeals process would be much shorter than in a capital case.

Wise use of prosecutorial discretion should therefore be welcomed, not least because prosecutors know their cases better than anyone. Also, prosecutorial discretion can mean that a case costs much less, eliminates many appellate issues, shortens the trial and ultimately brings the matter to a conclusion much sooner than if it were a death penalty trial.

5. Despite safeguards, innocent people do wind up on death row. The fact is that innocent people are convicted and sometimes end up on death row. I have plenty of heartbreaking stories of clients who, in my opinion, were convicted of crimes they did not commit. And I am far from alone -- there have been 154 verified cases of death row exonerations since 1973.

Meanwhile, a study last year found that, at a conservative estimate, "more than 4 percent of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent." Indeed, there have been 330 exonerations based on DNA alone, with 20 of those defendants having served time on death row since the advent of DNA technology. A case from North Carolina underscores this point. There, Henry McCollum was released last year after spending some 30 years on death row for the murder of an 11-year-old girl that DNA evidence suggested he did not commit. With cases such as this, it defies all reason to believe that no innocent person has been executed in the United States.

The bottom line is this: While the death penalty is neither "cruel," when taking into account the cruelty so often inflicted on the victim, nor "unusual," in that it has been around for millennia, there are simply too many practical reasons for states to curtail or abandon their use of the death penalty. Our criminal justice system -- and those caught up in it, including the families of victims -- would be the biggest beneficiaries should we choose to end capital punishment in the United States.

Of course, the debate over capital punishment is a longstanding one, and there is no end to it in sight. But it is hard not to question the rationality -- indeed the sanity -- of continuing to follow a system that does not deter violent crime for determined individuals.

One example of such a determined individual is admitted cop killer, Jamie Hood, who was recently convicted of the murder of Athens, Georgia Police officer Buddy Christian. Bizarrely, Hood represented himself and beat almost half of the 70 count indictment and also "won" the sentencing phase of the trial when a jury, after deliberating only about an hour and a half, returned a verdict of life without parole -- a sentence which Hood offered to accept on a guilty plea. This further illustrates that capital punishment does not deter individuals who are intent on murder.

Just ask Chattanooga or Charleston.

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death penalty: why america needs a rethink - cnn

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Death penalty: Why America needs a rethink - CNN

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As a former law enforcement officer, former prosecutor, criminal lawyer, and continuing real-world "student" of criminology, I've seen up close the evidence suggesting that the United States should not be having this conversation anymore, because it may be time to put an end to capital punishment completely.

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Published June 11, 2007 by associated press.

A fox new article from 2007 that describes a case study conducted on the death penalty. It shows that for every execution, less people get murdered in the US. It shows that the death penalty is a efficient crime deterrent.

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Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey.

The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations - pointing out flaws in the justice system - has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago.

What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument - whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

The reports have horrified death penalty opponents and several scientists, who vigorously question the data and its implications.

So far, the studies have had little impact on public policy. New Jersey's commission on the death penalty this year dismissed the body of knowledge on deterrence as "inconclusive."

But the ferocious argument in academic circles could eventually spread to a wider audience, as it has in the past.

"Science does really draw a conclusion. It did. There is no question about it," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. "The conclusion is there is a deterrent effect."

A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) - what am I going to do, hide them?"

Statistical studies like his are among a dozen papers since 2001 that capital punishment has deterrent effects. They all explore the same basic theory - if the cost of something (be it the purchase of an apple or the act of killing someone) becomes too high, people will change their behavior (forego apples or shy from murder).

To explore the question, they look at executions and homicides, by year and by state or county, trying to tease out the impact of the death penalty on homicides by accounting for other factors, such as unemployment data and per capita income, the probabilities of arrest and conviction, and more.

Among the conclusions:

* Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14).

* The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston.

* Speeding up executions would strengthen the deterrent effect. For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor.

In 2005, there were 16,692 cases of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter nationally. There were 60 executions.

The studies' conclusions drew a philosophical response from a well-known liberal law professor, University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein. A critic of the death penalty, in 2005 he co-authored a paper titled "Is capital punishment morally required?"

"If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple," he told The Associated Press. "Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty."

Sunstein said that moral questions aside, the data needs more study.

Critics of the findings have been vociferous.

Some claim that the pro-deterrent studies made profound mistakes in their methodology, so their results are untrustworthy. Another critic argues that the studies wrongly count all homicides, rather than just those homicides where a conviction could bring the death penalty. And several argue that there are simply too few executions each year in the United States to make a judgment.

"We just don't have enough data to say anything," said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the Wharton School of Business who last year co-authored a sweeping critique of several studies, and said they were "flimsy" and appeared in "second-tier journals."

"This isn't left vs. right. This is a nerdy statistician saying it's too hard to tell," Wolfers said. "Within the advocacy community and legal scholars who are not as statistically adept, they will tell you it's still an open question. Among the small number of economists at leading universities whose bread and butter is statistical analysis, the argument is finished."

Several authors of the pro-deterrent reports said they welcome criticism in the interests of science, but said their work is being attacked by opponents of capital punishment for their findings, not their flaws.

"Instead of people sitting down and saying 'let's see what the data shows,' it's people sitting down and saying 'let's show this is wrong,'" said Paul Rubin, an economist and co-author of an Emory University study. "Some scientists are out seeking the truth, and some of them have a position they would like to defend."

The latest arguments replay a 1970s debate that had an impact far beyond academic circles.

Then, economist Isaac Ehrlich had also concluded that executions deterred future crimes. His 1975 report was the subject of mainstream news articles and public debate, and was cited in papers before the U.S. Supreme Court arguing for a reversal of the court's 1972 suspension of executions. (The court, in 1976, reinstated the death penalty.)

Ultimately, a panel was set up by the National Academy of Sciences which decided that Ehrlich's conclusions were flawed. But the new pro-deterrent studies haven't gotten that kind of scrutiny.

At least not yet. The academic debate, and the larger national argument about the death penalty itself - with questions about racial and economic disparities in its implementation - shows no signs of fading away.

Steven Shavell, a professor of law and economics at Harvard Law School and co-editor-in-chief of the American Law and Economics Review, said in an e-mail exchange that his journal intends to publish several articles on the statistical studies on deterrence in an upcoming issue.

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Studies: Death Penalty Discourages Crime

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Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey. The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations - pointing out flaws in the justice system - has weighed against capital punishment.

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By examining this chart, you'll notice that in the 1940's when the death penalty has an astounding presence, the murder rate was much lower. And when it wasn't murder began to gain a terrifying clime on the charts.