[CUADPUpdate] On deterrence, and this & that....

[Abraham J. Bonowitz]

Sent ONLY to the Recipients of CUADPUpdate
Feel Free to Forward


Greetings All!

So many of you wrote to me asking about the 
Associated Press article about "new" studies 
suggesting a deterrent effect to the death 
penalty that I felt it best to pass along some 
resources.  The story has been picked up widely, 
so some response would probably be good.  But I 
encourage people to use it as an opportunity to 
point out the problems in the death penalty, 
rather than give too much play to the studies 
themselves.  Some points for consideration are 
below.  But first, A little This & That!

Up front, this time....
Rawanda Abolishes the Death Penalty!
Larry Peterson Story on NPR!
Gary Beeman Op-Ed
Abolitionists meet the President
On Deterrence - several items....


UP FRONT THIS TIME

Yesterday I posted this at the end of my message 
to no response.  Today I put it up 
front.  Organizations are co-sponsoring, but the 
amounts being sent are smaller this year almost 
across the board.  If you can help, please do....

DROPPING BY... THE FAST & VIGIL

My former colleague, ED DiFiglia, now lives in 
the DC area.  Last week he wrote:

>Hey Abe,
>
>I want to participate in the fast and vigil, but 
>I'm not sure what my schedule is going to look 
>like for those days just yet. What's the policy for people just dropping by?
>
>Ed D./

My response:  Come any time, stay as long as you 
can, leave when you must and come back when you 
can, if you can!  The first rule of the F&V is 
that there are no rules....  Each person makes 
the most of it given what they have to offer and 
what they seek from the experience.  The main 
goals of F&V are to have a presence at the US 
Supreme Court, but also to have quality time with 
fellow abolitionists in an environment that is neither rushed nor pressured.

Learn more at http://www.abolition.org/starvin14/

CAN'T MAKE IT TO DC?

Join dozens of organizations and a handful (at 
this point) of individuals who have become 
co-sponsors of the Fast & Vigil by sending a 
donation to help cover the costs of this 
event.  It usually costs about $5,000 to pull 
this off.  Because I got started organizing late 
this year, we are well behind in meeting the need 
- only $1,275 is in the door and we are less than 
three weeks away!  $5 helps.  $500 helps 
more!  Do what YOU can to join with Amy Jo Smith, 
Ron Keine, Martha Mortenson, Susan Gries and Dale 
Baich as individual co-sponsors of the 14th 
Annual Fast & Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty 
at the US Supreme Court.  Even if you cannot be 
there person, you CAN be there in spirit AND with tangible support....

Visit 
https://www.compar.com/donation/donateform.html to make your donation today!

Many Thanks!

--abe

www.CUADP.org
800-973-6548

******************


RAWANDA ABOLISHES THE DEATH PENALTY!

I was in my car on Sunday, driving to meet Beth 
and Isaac at the playground.  They wondered why I 
sat in the car for so long before I got out.  I 
was listening to the report about this fantastic news....

Read more at 
http://deathpenaltyusa.blogspot.com/2007/06/rwanda-moves-toward-abolition.html

and as to deterrence, here's a quote:

>Survivors of the slaughter welcomed the 
>decision, noting that the death penalty had 
>existed in Rwandan law before the genocide.
>
>"It didn't deter people from picking up machetes 
>to slaughter their fellows - that's why we are 
>not bothered by its removal," said Theodore 
>Simburudali, president of the Ibuka genocide survivors' group.

**************

Lots of other good news is here:  http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

**************



LARRY PETERSON STORY ON NPR!

Until two weeks ago, Larry Peterson was New 
Jersey's most recent exoneree, and the only one 
to have faced the death penalty at trial.  He 
received a life sentence.  Nevertheless, Larry 
has been outspoken about his case.  National 
Public Radio's All Things Considered program 
followed Larry for more than a year to produce a 
two part story that will air Tuesday and 
Wednesday of this week.  Some of this *may* have 
been recorded at last year's Fast & Vigil, where 
Larry spoke at one of our evening 
teach-in's.  Other parts may have been recorded 
during several NJADP events where NPR showed up 
to capture Larry's activities.  We'll just need 
to listen to see what made the cut!  Here is an 
article about it.  If you don't live near an NPR 
broadcast station, you can listen and download after the fact at www.NPR.org

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/112-06112007-1361124.html



Wrongly convicted, man fought for vindication

By: MIKE MATHIS (Mon, Jun/11/2007)

Larry Peterson's lengthy fight for vindication in 
the rape and murder of a Pemberton Township woman 
nearly 20 years ago played out in the courtrooms 
in New Jersey and in the local and regional media.

Now a national radio audience will learn the 
details of Peterson's battle to win his freedom and clear his name.

National Public Radio will air “The Exoneration 
of Larry Peterson,” a two-part documentary that 
explores the Pemberton Township resident's 
successful efforts to overturn his conviction and 
life sentence for the killing of Jacqueline Harrison.

The documentary is scheduled to air tomorrow and 
Wednesday as part of the daily NPR News program 
“All Things Considered.” Locally, the program 
begins at 4 p.m. on WHYY-FM (90.9).

The body of Harrison, a 25-year-old mother of 
two, was discovered in a soybean field near her 
home in the Lake Valley section of Pemberton Township on Aug. 24, 1987.

Peterson, 56, was convicted in 1989 of raping and 
killing Harrison. He served 16 years of a life 
sentence before a judge overturned the conviction 
in July 2005 because a DNA test did not link 
Peterson to the crime. DNA testing was not 
available when Peterson was convicted.

The documentary includes interviews with Peterson 
and Jacqueline Harrison's sister, who, despite 
the DNA results and the recantation of a key 
witness, still believes Peterson is guilty.

Christopher Turpin, executive director of “All 
Things Considered,” said the decision was made to 
do the documentary on Peterson after the program 
aired a segment about DNA exonerations.

“We wanted to find out what happens to prisoners 
who are exonerated, what happens to them after 
they re-enter society,” Turpin said.

Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi 
said he did not participate in the documentary 
because Peterson has filed a lawsuit seeking 
unspecified damages as compensation for the time he spent in prison.

Bernardi dropped the case against Peterson in 
June 2006 after deciding a lack of DNA evidence 
connecting Peterson to the crime would have made 
it difficult to win a second conviction.

“When there is a civil lawsuit pending against 
this office and members of it, I don't think it 
would be beneficial to (participate),” Bernardi said.

*************



GARY BEEMAN OP-ED

Kurt writes:

>Congratulations are in order for Witness to 
>Innocence's Gary Beeman, whose incredibly 
>powerful op-ed appeared in Sunday's edition of the
>Buffalo News. Gary's account of his ordeal of 
>having been sentenced to Ohio's death row for a 
>crime he did not commit reached more than a
>quarter million readers in the second largest 
>city in New York state.  Read all about it at:
>
>www.buffalonews.com/opinion/editorials/story/95570.html
>
>Peace,
>
>Kurt Rosenberg
>Director, Witness to Innocence


PS - To read even more about Gary go to
http://www.journeyofhope.org/pages/gary_beeman.htm

****************


ABOLITIONISTS MEET THE PRESIDENT

From: <mailto:m.marazziti at fastwebnet.it>Mario Marazziti
To: <mailto:bpelke at gci.net>'Bill Pelke'
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2007 1:05 PM
Subject: Dear Bill, from Mario


Bush, during Italy visit, to shine spotlight on Sant 'Egidio group

2007-06-08 13:17:54 -

ROME (AP) - When U.S. President George W. Bush 
visits Rome, he will cast an unusually bright 
spotlight on the Sant'Egidio Community, a lay 
Roman Catholic organization that for 40 years has 
been quietly helping the poor, mediating civil 
wars _ and fighting the death penalty.

After meeting with Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday, 
Bush is expected to participate in a round table 
discussion with members of Sant'Egidio at the U.S. Embassy.

On the surface, a Bush meeting with Sant'Egidio 
seems implausible. The organization is at the 
forefront of the international anti-death penalty 
movement, working city by city to generate 
support for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment.

Spokesman Mario Marazziti acknowledged there was 
an obvious clash of cultures regarding capital 
punishment. Bush allowed 152 executions while he 
was governor of Texas, the U.S. state that 
executes more inmates than any other.

But Marazziti said Saturday's encounter _ which 
the White House requested _ should still be 
constructive. Sant'Egidio's other social justice 
initiatives _ such as running schools for the 
poor, soup kitchens for the hungry and home 
visitations for the elderly _ are the type of 
faith-based programs that Bush often embraces.

«We will try not to be naive, to be respectful 
... but at the same time sincere, to find all the 
ways in which poverty can be fought and human 
dignity can be supported,» Marazziti said.

One area where the two find common ground is 
fighting AIDS in Africa, and that is expected to 
be a focus of Saturday's discussion, Marazziti said.

Bush recently urged the U.S. Congress to 
authorize an additional US$30 billion (¤22 
billion) to fight AIDS in Africa over five years, 
doubling the current U.S. commitment for the 
President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief.

Five years ago, Sant'Egidio launched an AIDS 
project to provide free antiretroviral treatment 
for HIV-positive people in Africa _ a staggering 
mission considering that sub-Saharan Africa is 
home to an estimated 24.7 million people with HIV.

The program, which has an annual budget of US$25 
million and is operational in 10 African 
countries, combines access to free antiretroviral 
drugs with follow up and home care. It has also 
created a network of molecular biology 
laboratories across Africa that are working to 
ensure that the virus does not become resistant to generic drugs.

Sant'Egidio boasts that of the 1,500 children 
born to HIV-positive mothers in its program, 98 
percent were born without the virus, and that 95 
percent of the people on its program adhere to the strict drug regimen.

Sant'Egidio created the DREAM program (Drug 
Resource Enhancement against AIDS and 
Malnutrition) because it rejected the notion that 
prevention programs were the only way to cope 
with Africa's HIV crisis. Many have argued that 
treatment programs were too expensive and complicated for Africa's HIV problem.

«We could not accept a genocide,» Marazziti said. 
«We tried to demonstrate that therapy was possible.

The DREAM program first began in Mozambique, 
where Sant'Egidio had a long history of 
involvement _ including mediating an end to the 
country's civil war. Sant'Egidio hosted the 
warring parties at its Rome headquarters over the 
course of 27 months until a peace agreement was signed in 1992.

The organization's success in Mozambique 
propelled it into other mediating roles, 
including in Algeria, Guatemala and the Balkans _ 
work that has earned it multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

Part Catholic charity, part non-governmental 
organization, part mini-United Nations, 
Sant'Egidio has some 50,000 volunteer members in 
70 countries. Created in 1968, it relies on 
funding from Italian banks, the World Bank and private and corporate sponsors.

On the Web
Sant'Egidio is at <http://www.santegidio.org/>www.santegidio.org

********************



ON DETERRENCE - SEVERAL ITEMS

Randy Tatel sent this:

Death penalty findings: Not so fast

Steve Levitt, the economist behind 
"Freakonomics," doesn't buy the 
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_on_re_us/death_penalty_deterrence>new 
reports concluding that the death penalty has a deterrent effect:

Analyses of data stretching farther back in time, 
when there were many more executions and thus 
more opportunities to test the hypothesis, are 
far less charitable to death penalty advocates. 
On top of that, as we wrote in Freakonomics, if 
you do back-of-the-envelope calculations, it 
becomes clear that no rational criminal should be 
deterred by the death penalty, since the 
punishment is too distant and too unlikely to 
merit much attention. As such, economists who 
argue that the death penalty works are put in the 
uncomfortable position of having to argue that 
criminals are irrationally overreacting when they are deterred by it.

Read more of his thoughts 
<http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/06/11/does-the-death-penalty-really-reduce-crime/>here.

*************

NCADP's Fact Sheet is here:  http://www.ncadp.org/fact_sheet5.html

DPIC's Fact Sheet is 
here:  http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=12&did=167

And here are some additional excellent points to consider....

 From DPIC's Resource Guide

Þ     Generally, states without the death penalty 
have consistently lower murder rates than states 
with the death penalty.  A New York Times review 
in 2000 of murder rates over the past 20 years 
found that the murder rate in states with the 
death penalty has been 48% to 101% higher than in non-death penalty states.

Þ     When contiguous states are compared, the 
one without the death penalty usually has a lower 
murder rate than the neighboring state with the 
death penalty.  E.g., West Virginia (no death 
penalty) has a lower murder rate than Virginia, 
and Massachusetts (no death penalty) has a lower murder rate than Connecticut.

Þ     The South accounts for over 80% of the 
executions in this country and has consistently 
had the highest murder rate of the four 
regions.  The Northeast, which has had only 4 
executions since the death penalty was 
reinstated, has the lowest murder rate of the regions.

Þ     The U.S. with the death penalty has a much 
higher murder rate than countries in Europe which 
do not have the death penalty.

Þ    More sophisticated studies of deterrence and 
the death penalty have failed to show a 
conclusive effect.  Expert criminologists from 
around the country were polled on their views of 
such studies and 84% of them concluded that the 
death penalty did not act as a deterrent to murder.

Þ    Some recent studies have shown a reverse 
deterrent effect, or brutalization, associated 
with the death penalty.  Murders in some 
jurisdictions increased in the periods following 
well-publicized executions, just the opposite 
from what a deterrent effect would produce.

 From scholarly articles and from DPIC's "News & 
Developments" on Deterrence (in some cases, 
there's more information on DPIC's Web site):

Researchers Find Flaws in Studies Claiming Deterrent Effect

In an article entitled The Death Penalty: No 
Evidence for Deterrence, John Donohue and Justin 
Wolfers examined recent statistical studies that 
claimed to show a deterrent effect from the death 
penalty. The authors conclude that the estimates 
claiming that the death penalty saves numerous 
lives "are simply not credible." In fact, the 
authors state that using the same data and proper 
methodology could lead to the exact opposite 
conclusion: that is, that the death penalty 
actually increases the number of murders. The 
authors state: "We show that with the most minor 
tweaking of the [research] instruments, one can 
get estimates ranging from 429 lives saved per 
execution to 86 lives lost. These numbers are 
outside the bounds of credibility."

The authors conclude that the evidence of 
deterrence is far too weak to rely on as a justification for the death penalty:

The view that the death penalty deters is still 
the product of belief, not evidence. The reason 
for this is simple: over the past half century 
the U.S. has not experimented enough with capital 
punishment policy to permit strong conclusions. 
Even complex econometrics cannot sidestep this 
basic fact. The data are simply too noisy, and 
the conclusions from any study are too fragile. 
On balance, the evidence suggests that the death 
penalty may increase the murder rate although it 
remains possible that the death penalty may 
decrease it. If capital punishment does decrease 
the murder rate, any decrease is likely small.

John Donohue is a professor at Yale Law School 
and a Research Associate at the National Bureau 
of Economic Research. Justin Wolfers is a 
professor at the Wharton School of Business and a 
Research Affiliate at the National Bureau of 
Economic Research. (The Economists' Voice, April 2006).

Researchers Retest the Deterrence Studies

A new edition of the Stanford Law Review contains 
an article entitled Uses and Abuses of Empirical 
Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate. The article 
examines and performs comparison tests on recent 
studies that have claimed a deterrent effect to 
the death penalty. Authors John J. Donohue of 
Yale Law School and Justin Wolfers of the 
University of Pennsylvania state their goal and conclusions:

(O)ur aim in this Article is to provide a 
thorough assessment of the statistical evidence 
on this important public policy issue and to 
understand better the conflicting evidence.

...

Our estimates suggest not just “reasonable doubt” 
about whether there is any deterrent effect of 
the death penalty, but profound uncertainty.

...

We are led to conclude that there exists profound 
uncertainty about the deterrent (or 
antideterrent) effect of the death penalty; the 
data tell us that capital punishment is not a 
major influence on homicide rates, but beyond 
this, they do not speak clearly. Further, we 
suspect that our conclusion that econometric 
studies are highly uncertain about the effects of 
the death penalty will persist for the foreseeable future.

...

Aggregating over all of our estimates, it is 
entirely unclear even whether the preponderance 
of evidence suggests that the death penalty causes more or less murder.
58 Stanford Law Review 791 (2005).


A Review of Deterrence Studies and other Social Science Research

Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford 
University's School of Law, examines recent 
studies on deterrence and the death penalty, as 
well as other social science research regarding 
capital punishment in the U.S. In The Death 
Penalty Meets Social Science: Deterrence and Jury 
Behavior Under New Scrutiny, Weisberg notes that 
many of the new studies claiming to find that the 
death penalty deters murder have been 
legitimately criticized for omitting key 
variables and for not addressing the potential 
distorting effect of one high-executing state, 
Texas. Later in the article, Weisberg examines 
studies on race-of-victim discrimination and on 
capital jurors. This article will appear in the 
forthcoming edition of the Annual Review of Law 
and Social Science. (1 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 151 (2005)).

Expert Testimony Faults Death Penalty Deterrence Findings

In testimony before the Massachusetts Joint 
Committee on the Judiciary regarding proposed 
legislation to initiate a "foolproof" death 
penalty, Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey 
Fagan analyzed recent studies that claimed that 
capital punishment deters murders. He stated that 
the studies "fall apart under close scrutiny." 
Fagan noted that the studies are fraught with 
technical and conceptual errors, including 
inappropriate methods of statistical analysis, 
failures to consider all relevant factors that 
drive murder rates, missing data on key variables 
in key states, weak to non-existent tests of 
concurrent effects of incarceration, and other deficiencies.

"A close reading of the new deterrence studies 
shows quite clearly that they fail to touch this 
scientific bar, let alone cross it," Fagan said 
as he told members of the committee that the 
recent deterrence studies fell well short of the 
demanding standards of social science research. 
(J. Fagan, Public Policy Choices on Deterrence 
and the Death Penalty: A Critical Review of New 
Evidence, testimony before the Joint Committee on 
the Judiciary of the Massachusetts Legislature on 
House Bill 3934, July 14, 2005).

WALTER C. RECKLESS MEMORIAL LECTURE

Death and Deterrence Redux: Science, Law and
Causal Reasoning on Capital Punishment by Jeffrey Fagan

"The new deterrence literature fails to provide a 
stable foundation of scientific evidence on which 
to base law or policy. Nor can this evidence be 
used to calibrate the normative implications of 
new “facts” about lives saved or lost. As in the 
debate over Ehrlich’s findings, simple but 
necessary changes in the functional form of 
regression equations, combined with measurement 
strategies that provide more complete and 
accurate data, produce different results that 
differ from the current crop of studies, results 
that are far more equivocal. Even more 
significant modifications to these studies, such 
as using research designs that more closely 
approximate quasi-experiments that account for 
murder trends in states with no executions, also 
produce different and equivocal results.276 
Conceptual errors and omissions in specifying the 
multiple influences on murder rates seriously 
bias the estimates of deterrence."

4 OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW 255, 314 (2006)

*************

Carry On!

--abe
abe at cuadp.org
www.CUADP.org
800-973-6548