How does your state rate?

[Lusted4]

Mine has no Death Penalty. Move your mouse over your state.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14302379/

[Monkeyman]

1. IL. tell it all

[sweetheart]

2. My state is not on that map

It contains the other 95% of the democratic population of this earth,
and it obviously has no rating because testing truth across borders might
expose a prison, might expose insurrection and malthusian war for bigger
hummers and private jets.

State of poverty or wealth, hidden, shushhhh to survive, hiding
from the evil patriarch, while the prison guard hunts his prey.
How does your cell block rate, prison state, ain't that great.

[Critters2]

3. I moved from a state without the death penalty (Iowa)

to Illinois, which has it. Illinois has several neighbors without it--IA, WI, MN--but persists in this brutal practice.

And calls itself a blue state.

[City Lights]

10. Um, you might want to brush up on IL's history with the DP.

Governor calls for review of 'flawed' system

January 31, 2000
Web posted at: 10:33 p.m. EST (0333 GMT)

CHICAGO (CNN) -- Illinois Gov. George Ryan on Monday imposed a moratorium on the state's death penalty. All lethal injections will be postponed indefinitely pending an investigation into why more executions have been overturned than carried out since 1977, when Illinois reinstated capital punishment.

"We have now freed more people than we have put to death under our system -- 13 people have been exonerated and 12 have been put to death," Ryan told CNN. "There is a flaw in the system, without question, and it needs to be studied."

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/01/31/illinois.executions.02/

I can't stand Ryan for other things (licenses for bribes scandal for one) but this is one thing I will always admire him for.

Here's some more info on where IL stands on the death penalty:

Illinois has executed a total of 12 people since 1976. In January 2003, Governor Ryan commuted every death sentence in the state, clearing death row as he left office. Later that year, the legislature passed some significant reforms, but many of the committee's recommendations have not yet been implemented. Under the current governor, the moratorium has remained in place. Meanwhile, an abolition bill passed out of committee with a vote of 8-4 in 2003!

What is my governor's position on the death penalty?

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) has announced that he will continue the state's moratorium on executions, stating: "I don't feel any artificial pressure to lift the moratorium. I'd like to one day be in the position to do that, if I thought the position was foolproof. But I don't believe a series of reforms that the Legislature will pass, most of which I support, will do enough to have me feel that the system won't make those kinds of mistakes."

How many people are on Death Row in my state?

There are currently 10 prisoners on Death Row in Illinois. Of the 10 Death Row prisoners, 3 are black, 5 are white and 2 are Latino. However, Illinois is currently in a state of moratorium.

http://deadlinethemovie.com/state/IL/index.php

[Critters2]

35. Oh, I lived in Illinois when the moratorium was first discussed

and just across the river when it went into effect. But the fact is that it can be lifted at any time--when just a heinous enough criminal gets the public's attention, for example. The simmple fact remains, I moved from a state with no death penalty to a state with "only" 10 prisoners on death row. As opposed to Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, which don't have death rows for prisoners to be on.

Really, a moratorium isn't much to be proud of. Getting rid of the death penalty would be.

[City Lights]

39. I wish IL abolished the death penalty also, but I think a

moratorium is better than nothing.

What steps have you taken to get the state legislature to abolish the death penalty in IL?

[Bjornsdotter]

14. Yes

...but IL does have a moratorium on the death penalty since 2000. It's a step in the right direction, however the current legislature in Springfield wouldn't go for abolishing death penalty at this time....that's why Ryan did what he did in 2000, he knew it was the only way.

Cheers

[Selatius]

4. I don't get it; why are Texans so much more supportive of it?

Is it because there are more Black people on death row than White people?

[Buck Laser]

5. I don't even want to LOOK at Texas...

I joined the Texas Society to Abolish Capital Punishment in 1961. Fat lot of good it's done.

[Lusted4]

6. Leadin da pac. n/t

[seabeyond]

7. i am in texas. 'nough said. oooh please dont kill me, bush mocks

[Avalux]

8. Good lord! Texas - 372.

:scared:

[jayctravis]

12. The map is almost comical...

It's like...whoa...oh...yes...very nice.... sixteen...thirty two...twelve... THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO???

It's like...BUSH WROTE HOW MANY SIGNING STATEMENTS IN COMPARISON TO...

Or...BUSH TOOK HOW MANY WEEKS OF VACATION???

[whistle]

9. It seems that Florida has a shot to kill policy with every citizen who

...is licensed to carry a firearm can shoot first, ask questions later if challenged by anyone who engages them in a life threatening situation.

<snip>

ORLANDO SENTINEL SPECIAL REPORT
Gun law triggers at least 13 shootings
Cases involving the new deadly force law are handled in a broad range of ways. Enacted Oct. 1, 2005, the law says that a person who is not engaged in unlawful activity and who is attacked has no duty to retreat and has the right to 'stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.'

Michael Brady didn't think about his rights when he shot and killed a stranger in his front yard. He says he was just scared.

Brady is one of at least 13 people in Central Florida who pulled the trigger this year under a new law that loosens restrictions on the use of deadly force in self-defense.

They killed six men and wounded four more. All but one of the people shot were unarmed. So far, three of the shooters have been charged. Five have been cleared; the other cases are under review.

It is too early to tell whether the law makes Floridians safer or puts them at greater risk. There are no statistics on the number of self-defense claims statewide before or after the law took effect Oct. 1. <more>

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-deadlyforce1106jun11,0,2402838.story

[benEzra]

24. That law didn't change the circumstances under which a shooting

would be ruled justifiable; "reasonable fear of death, serious bodily harm, or forcible felony" is the law in pretty much every state in the nation. But prior to this year, Florida had a quirky "duty to run away" statute that said that allowed you to be prosecuted if you were viciously attacked and were in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm, but didn't try to run away first before defending yourself. Florida's new law eliminated that statute (bringing its laws into line with California's, BTW), and also changed the law so that the victims of a carjacking are on the same legal ground as victims of a home invasion, and blocked frivolous lawsuits by violent attackers who are injured by their would-be victims. The latter two areas are the only ones in which the revised law broke any new ground.

If those 13 shootings are ruled justifiable under the new law, they almost certainly would have been justified under the previous statutes.

[Ediacara]

11. I was going to say that my state just executed someone yesterday,

the first execution here in several years, but then I opened the article and the article is about that very execution.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Check out the corresponding murder rates by state.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=12&did=169#MRalpha

So much for the idea that the death penalty is a deterrent.

[ncrainbowgrrl]

15. NC- not so good-

It seems like we've had a 3 year run on all of the death sentences actually being carried out.

I can remember one month when it seemed like every week there was another one. :shudder:

It's quite an experience being at a silent vigil outside the prison the night before the state-approved-killing. :cry:

[Nutmegger]

16. I'm ashamed of my state.

The state killed Michael Ross after 45 years of not instituting the death penalty.

The guy wanted this to happen. A psychiatrist who argued that he was incompetent received a letter from Ross stating "Check, and mate. You never had a chance!"

[Breeze54]

17. No death penalty

Zero!

[tinfoil tiaras]

18. Do I want to know about Mississippi...

What the hell, I'll take a look...

Wow. Not that bad, actually. 7 compared to 300 something in Texas. Whoa. :o

[sandnsea]

19. OR-2, CA-13, TX-372

:wow:

Equally stunning is that I bet the majority of Texans find absolutely nothing wrong with that figure.

[peacebaby3]

22. CA is about to hit a brick wall though.

CA has around 600 people on DR now and are about to hit a point where there are going to be more and more executions if something doesn't change.

I'm not sure anyone will ever touch TX. One of the huge problems in TX is that they don;t have the option of LWOP (Life without Parole). So the jury must give the convicted person either the DP or Life with the Possibility of Parole. Of course, you know the big supporters of the DP are against legislation to add the option of LWOP.

There is also some new legislation that is being introduced in Congress over and over again by Kyl (Arizona?) that if it passes, you are going to see the # of executions sky rocket. They are also passing laws making extreme limitations on federal review and in my state, most defendants get no relief in state court. The system is very bias here. Some very bad legislation has already gone through because it was attached to the renewal of the Patriot Act.

Here's a good example of how our state courts work:

We had a guy on DR that if you saw the totality of the evidence it would blow your mind that he was convicted in the first place...i.e. the main evidence was an eyewitness who had actually identified another person the first time. BUT, after direct appeal, you can no longer argue the facts of the case for innocence, you can only argue on other issues such as juror misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, etc. This guy had a "Batson" claim. He was an African American juror who had an all white jury and if that is the case (that there are no AA jurors regardless of race of defendant), the DA must have given race neutral reasons for striking any African American jurors. After his last petition was filed, his pro-bono attorneys (person on DR not guaranteed representation in our state)got a statement from a former ADA that had worked on the case stating that the DA had purposely struck AA jurors in this case. The state supreme court refused to overturn case because they said the new information was procedurally barred because it was presented after the filing deadline. He was executed.

[sandnsea]

25. I don't foresee an execution mill in CA

In fact, I think dp protestors should use the 13 number to prove how stupid reinstating the dp has been. Crime rates have gone up and down regardless of people being executed. I would think a case for heavier policing and poverty programs would be fairly easy to make since the 90's. I was actually surprised at the very low number in most states, I don't think most people know what a complete aberration Texas is.

[peacebaby3]

29. We had a discussion about the possibility of this in CA at a conference I

attended last month.

With the re-authorization of the Patriot Act, Congress approved a shift in the way a state may be certified for what is called "opt-in" under AEDPA (Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act), giving the US Attorney General the authority to decide rather than the courts. The change was really pushed by the states that wanted to speed up (or any many ways just get rid of) the appeals process for death sentenced prisoners. This is going to be a problem for states like CA because the courts there are much more liberal and have been one of the reasons you see so few executions in a state that has the largest death row, but that is likely to change now with the new legislation.

Many of the people I met from CA are very worried.

[sandnsea]

30. I don't think the people will tolerate it

That's what I was referring to. I grew up in CA and I honestly just don't think the vast majority have the stomach for one or two or five executions every single week. I think the people will put a stop to it in pretty short order.

[peacebaby3]

32. I certainly hope you are right, but it's the law now so it will have to be

changed.

They slipped this in with the renewal of the Patriot Act. CA is really hurt by this "opt-in" measure because they are a progressive state with one of the better indigent defense systems.

They tried to basically end all federal habeas corpus review, but we (as in the anti-dp community) managed to stop that part at least for the moment. It will be brought up again though and until there is a shift in power, it has a strong possibility of happening and if it does, you will see a huge increase in executions in this country. It's called the "Streamlined Procedures Act" introduced by John Kyl of Arizona in the Senate and the companion bill in the House by Dan Lungren of CA. I believe if the repukes take the Senate again that Kyl may be the Judiciary chairman and if that happens, well...need I say more.

[peacebaby3]

20. This is actually a subject I know a lot about in my state because I

work on capital cases, both at the trial level and in post-conviction. My state fluctuates between 190-200 on DR for the past decade. It went down a little last year because of the SCOTUS Roper v. Simmons decision, but is still well over 190. If you were to look at that # per capita, we would be competing with TX. Although, TX definitely holds the record for the most executions over the past 10 years.

Just to clear up the matter...there are actually more caucasian people on death row. The problem is that when you figure up African Americans by their % of the population, you get a huge discrepancy. The #'s are also off based on who gets executed. More minorities and poor people actually get executed. Many other factors play into it as well.

Let me give you an example of the way this works...

2 actual scenarios:

An African American man is the driver of a vehicle where two men get out of the vehicle he is driving and rob a store and in the process, shoot and kill the clerk. He is considered "complicit" in the robbery and murder of the clerk and is executed. In my state "murder while in the process of robbery" is a capital crime.

Two caucasian women are arguing while driving down the road. One woman flips the other woman off so when she exits, the other woman follows her. They are stopped in traffic getting off the exit. The woman in front gets out of the car to come back and say something to the woman who is following her. The woman in the back car pulls out a gun and shoots her dead on the road. According to our laws, she could be charged with capital murder because "murder while shooting out of a vehicle" is also a capital crime (added to the code because of drive-by shootings). She claimed she was afraid for her life, but she followed this woman off of the interstate and she had rolled her window all the way down on her side. She was never even charged with CM. She instead got off with Man II and a two year sentence.

Was race a factor? Yes, in this case it was, but there are plenty of caucasian men on DR as well.
Was gender a factor? Yes, even more so.
Was socio-economics a factor? Absolutely. The African American male was poor, the woman who was shot and killed was a white woman who "lived in a trailer park" (this was actually brought up in the case) and would be considered poor, and the white woman who shot her lived in an upper middle class neighborhood and would be what we would call a "soccer mom."

The other huge issue about race even more so than what race is serving on DR, is the race of the victim? In my state, the victims of the people on DR are 80% Caucasian even though the murder rate by race in my state would be much higher for African Americans. Apparently, Caucasian murders deserve the DP more than any other murders.

I could go on, but I am probably starting to go off on a tangent here so I'll stop.

I've often wished we had an forum here just for discussion about the DP. It seems weird to me that we don't, but I've just never had the time to start up the group.

[elocs]

21. I ive in Wisconsin which abolished the death penalty in 1853.

Wisconsin law has been without the death penalty since July 10, 1853,and from what I have read it has maintained this tradition longer than any other state in the nation. But even now the Republican controlled legislature is getting a measure on the ballot to reinstate the death penalty. Wisconsin also has no concealed weapon carry law and they almost passed that recently. At the last minute a Democrat who had supported it changed his vote and you should have heard the howling. I think the guy might have gotten death threats because of it.

[Nicole]

23. Oklahoma is #3

I was surprised at that, I thought we were #2 but Virginia is #2.

Oklahoma executed 81, Virginia executed 97.

[BreweryYardRat]

26. Florida. 60.

I can't believe Texas has 372.

[JohMunich99]

27. New York has a death penalty but no executions since 1976?

I'm a little confused. COuld someone explain the legal system there? Why not just get rid of the death penalty all together?

[peacebaby3]

33. NY re-instated the DP in 1995 which is late compared to many other states

that worked really hard after the DP was reinstated in 1976 by Gregg v. GA to get it back in the code with new guidelines.

As far as I know, there is only 1 person on DR in NY so it will probably be a good while before you see an execution.

I remember when there was a big push to get the DP back on the books in NY. If I remember correctly it was during the "law and order" years under Giuliani.

I am not in NY, but one of my mentors is a professor at NYU School of Law and they have probably one of the best systems in the country for indigent defense.

[bluespeck]

28. Texas Can be the Pits

We didn't have Life without Parole until June of this year here in Texas. Unbelievable. We execute poor whites, poor blacks, and poor Mexicans. I doubt I would ever be called to serve on a capital murder trial, because I would let it be known before-hand that I do not believe in capital punishment. But if we liberals didn't stay in the San Antonio-Austin area and band together--somewhat--with the libertarians and anti-growth people, it could be a lot worse. Thanks to improved DNA technology, some of our death row inmates have been set free, plus others who are serving crimes for rape, etc. Now if we could only get a law for Insane at the Time of the Crime But Guilty, we would close another loophole that forces juries to either choose Innocent due to Insanity (and thus being released to the public when a psychiatrist deems a person has returned to sanity) or Guilty ala Andrea Yates.

[peacebaby3]

34. So you got LWOP added? That's great! I knew there had been a push,

but I also knew there were some people fighting the measure as well. I hadn't heard it had passed a couple of months ago. Thank Goodness!!! Hopefully, it will help decrease some of the people sent to DR.

[newyawker99]

40. Hi bluespeck!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[peacebaby3]

41. Oops! I should have welcomed you also!

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[aikoaiko]

31. GA at 39, not proud, not unhappy about the number per se

I am unhappy about the biased that lead the DP to be administered to some but not others.

I'm a democrat for the DP when it involves a outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman murder.

[Blue_In_AK]

36. No death penalty here, thank God. n/t

[Moloch]

37. Ugh... I'm in Va.

Second worst.

[never_get_over_it]

38. Ok the best I can tell

from scanning the map is VA is second highest with 97 - which sickens me since I lived there for so many years - but first highest is TX which doesn't surprise me but that it is almost FOUR TIMES HIGHER THAN ANY OTHER STATE - now that is ridiculous 372 GOOD GOD.