Thank God We Don't Have This Problem in Texas

U.S. Supreme Court restores, for the third time, death sentence for California murderer

This is the third time the SCOTUS has overturned the lunatic 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hellbent on preventing the execution of monsters like Fernando Belmontes, who beat a woman 15 to 20 times with a barbell so he could steal her stereo and buy drugs and beer with the cash.

I have no patience for this bullshit. As I told my husband, "Somebody needs to go into this guy's cell and shoot the M.F. and get it overwith." Except I didn't say "M.F."

The jurors knew what this guy was about and determined that his crime deserved the death penalty. But liberal lawyers and their willing accomplices on the 9th Circuit are determined to circumvent justice.

The case illustrates the continuing dispute over the death penalty between state prosecutors and federal judges in California. The state has 685 inmates on death row, by far the most in the nation. Yet, executions are rare. Since capital punishment was restored in 1977, the state has carried out 13 executions. Many of the cases have remained tied up in federal litigation for decades.

By comparison, Texas has executed 444 monsters since the death penalty was reinstated, and 21 this year alone. We save our sympathy for the victims and their families.

I'm Proud to be a Texan

When I read that my fair state executed convicted rapist and murderer Jose Medelin, I nearly let out a great big ol' "Yee haw!" Instead, I grabbed my boots and hat and took my rifle out to the back 40 for some target practice. Then I rode my horse, roped some cattle, and checked on how my oil wells were doing.

Well, ok, maybe I didn't do any of that. But I did find it satisfactory that yet another rapist and murderer won't have the opportunity to rape and murder anyone else. Who says capital punishment doesn't deter crime?

Over the last five days, Mr. Medellín’s lawyers tried to stop the execution by arguing to the Supreme Court that it should be put off until Congress had a chance to pass pending legislation that would require a review of similar cases. They argued that Mr. Medellín would be deprived of life without due process if he died before Congress acted.

Funny, I don't think "Mr. Medelin" worried about the life of the 16-year-old girl he raped and murdered. It's just hard to work up much sympathy, IMO.

Naturally, the usual suspects are upset that Texas actually upheld its laws.

“The impact of ignoring this endangers Americans traveling abroad,” Victoria Palacios, a professor at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law, told Reuters. “If the world sees us ignoring the rights of foreign nationals arrested here, there is very little reason for them to recognize the rights of U.S. citizens.”

Strangely, I'm not worried about the rights of American citizens who go to Mexico and rape and murder 16-year-old girls.

UPDATE: Aphrael argues in the comments that Texas needs to abide by the treaties the U.S. ratifies, and violating such treaties sends the wrong message to other countries. But according to this article, the courts addressed these concerns on multiple occasions and found Texas not to be in violation of anything.

In their appeal, Medellin's lawyers warned his execution could endanger Americans abroad if they get into legal trouble and said Congress or the Texas Legislature should be given a chance to pass a law setting up procedures for new hearings before he was executed.

A bill to implement the international court's ruling wasn't introduced in Congress until last month. The Texas Legislature doesn't meet until January.

"State and federal courts -- on three separate occasions -- have already satisfied the World Court's suggestion that American courts examine whether Medellin suffered actual legal harm when authorities did not inform him about certain rights under the Vienna Convention," said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office. "On all three occasions, state and federal courts concluded that Medellin suffered no legal harm."

Texas Leads in Executions

This New York Times piece tries to smear Texas for having the audacity to follow its own laws and court decisions.

For the first time in the modern history of the death penalty, more than 60 percent of all American executions took place in Texas.

Over the past three decades, the proportion of executions nationwide performed in Texas has held relatively steady, averaging 37 percent. Only once before, in 1986, has the state accounted for even a slight majority of the executions, and that was in a year with 18 executions nationwide.

But enthusiasm for executions outside of Texas has dropped sharply. Of the 42 executions in the last year, 26 were in Texas.

I have no problem with other states deciding they don't want to use the death penalty. That's the glory of our system. But you have to wonder about the purpose of a NYT story which boils down to "Texas is still enforcing its laws."

Oddly enough, the reason there are so many executions in Texas is because--gosh!--we carry out the decisions made by juries all over the state.

The rate at which Texas sentences people to death is not especially high given its murder rate. But once a death sentence is imposed there, said Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, prosecutors, state and federal courts, the pardon board and the governor are united in moving the process along. “There’s almost an aggressiveness about carrying out executions,” said Mr. Dieter, whose organization opposes capital punishment.

Shame on those juries for thinking their decisions will be carried out! We need more liberals telling us that we don't really mean what we say. We need more nullification of juries, like what happened in New Jersey.

Similarly, New Jersey’s abolition of the death penalty last week and Gov. Jon Corzine’s decision to empty death row of its eight prisoners is almost entirely symbolic. New Jersey has not executed anyone since 1963.

Liberals would be screaming about abuse of power if President Bush were to decide to ignore a law. Funny how we don't hear that about executions.

If other states want to ignore their death penalty options, that's fine by me. Maybe being the death penalty enforcer will discourage rapists and murderers from messing with Texas.

Death Penalty Is a Deterrence

Unsurprisingly, a series of academic studies have found that the death penalty does deter murders.

This isn't shocking to me. I've always argued that, of course, the death penalty is a deterrent because that criminal won't get out and murder anybody. And it isn't like there aren't cases of people getting out of jail, then committing more murders.

But don't expect common sense from people adamantly opposed to the death penalty. And, frankly, I don't expect any amount of statistical evidence to change their minds.

"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.

I proudly live in a state that executes more people than any other. Here's the list, if you are interested.

But the studies in question had more interesting findings.

• 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.

Even liberal law professor Cass Susstein has to ponder the results.

"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."

One point not discussed is that many death penalty opponents dislike the death penalty purely on the moral grounds that the government shouldn't be in the business of executing people. It's a hard point to argue with, even if it isn't grounded in statistics or other facts. If you are 100% pro-life, there's a certain consistency involved with being against both abortion and the death penalty. The Catholic Church opposes both.

I think it is a more principled position than those trying to attack these studies because they don't like the results. To take the moral position that the death penalty is wrong because taking human life is wrong is more philosophical, but at least it doesn't run into the quagmire of studies contradicting it.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.