The Human Toll of Antonin Scalia’s Time on the Court

PostmodernProphet said:
interesting.....that would then mean that blacks get the death penalty LESS frequently than whites in cases where persons are found guilty of murder..........
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Those are FBI numbers. I doubt christiefan cares about proportions in that situation. I don't doubt that she will find some way to say something about pointing out what I did as somehow being racist.
 
CFM said:
Those are FBI numbers. I doubt christiefan cares about proportions in that situation. I don't doubt that she will find some way to say something about pointing out what I did as somehow being racist.
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yet they commit 47% of the murders but are only 36% of the death penalties......that does rather take her opening premise and treat it as would a gang of thugs attacking a young woman at the mall.......
 
NOVA said:
And if you look at the number of murders, rapes and kidnappings, committed by blacks compared to population, its clear why they get executed in the numbers they do.....

you're a brainwashed lemming.....1200 murders a year in one city alone.....

Blacks responsible for 1/2 the murders in the country and are about 13% of the population....

That ain't racist, that the facts.
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5700 murders in 2013 of people of all races. 2700 (47.4%) committed by a group that makes up 13% of the population. That's 3 1/2 times their proportion in society. 2750 (48.2%) of those murders were by whites, a group that makes up roughly 68% of the population. That's .7% of their proportion of the population.

You are correct, those is be the facts that people like christiefan, ZappasGuitar, The Dude, etc. ignore.
 
Superfreak said:
No... Because whites account for approx 62% of the population, blacks about 13%... So statistically she is correct.
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Murder is the only crime for which the death penalty is given. Blacks make up 13% of the population yet of the 5700 murders in 2013, blacks committed 2700 or 47% of them. That's 3 1/2 times their proportion of the population. As for white, the number of murder committed was 2750 or 48% from a group that makes up 68% of society making it a ratio of .7% of their ratio in the population.
 
christiefan915 said:
Here are some excerpts from another Scalia article. Michelle Alexander (Why Hillary Clinton Doesn't Deserve the Black Vote) should read this; she wouldn't be so quick to heap blame on Clinton for his policies. Maybe it'll also help some righties understand why liberals don't want another Scalia on the bench.

"In the days since Antonin Scalia’s death, he has been duly recognized as one of the most impactful justices in the Supreme Court’s history. A critical part of his troubling legacy has long been staring us in the face, although it finally started receiving the public scrutiny it deserves in recent years. As draconian punishments became the norm over the last three decades, the Supreme Court largely rubber-stamped these practices. Justice Scalia played a key role in this process, as his hardline stances on criminal punishment significantly contributed to mass incarceration, numerous executions, and systemic racial discrimination. Scalia was an outspoken supporter of harsh punishments and wanted the court to take an even more hands-off attitude toward so-called “tough on crime” laws.

Not long after he made it onto the court in 1986, Scalia’s influence on these issues began to be felt. In McCleskey v. Kemp, one of the first cases he heard, anti-death penalty advocates brought compelling evidence of pervasive racial discrimination in Georgia’s administration of capital punishment. A sophisticated statistical study demonstrated that sentencing was tied to the race of the victim and offender. All other factors being equal, blacks who killed whites were the likeliest to receive a death sentence. Justice Scalia was unfazed. During oral arguments, he derisively asked: “What if you do a statistical study that shows beyond question that people who are naturally shifty-eyed are to a disproportionate extent convicted in criminal cases, does that make the criminal process unlawful?”

Had Scalia had his way, far more people would have been executed during his tenure and the court would have adopted an even more accommodating approach to mass incarceration. In his view, merciless punishments were just deserts for “evildoers.” He scoffed when fellow justices advanced a more nuanced view of criminal behavior or occasionally suggested that draconian punishments were dehumanizing. He was certain that the court already cared too much about people who faced the death penalty or endless prison sentences. Justices who disagreed with him were judicial activists who refused to defer to elected branches of government.

John Charles Boger, who represented the black death-row prisoner in McCleskey, responded by pointing to the obvious: “This is not some sort of statistical fluke or aberration. We have a century-old pattern in the state of Georgia of animosity [toward black-Americans].” Scalia and four other justices nonetheless chose to analyze discrimination out of its social context, including in cases from Southern states with a lengthy history of slavery, segregation, and lynchings.

Scalia was in the majority as the court held that statistical proof of systemic discrimination in the death penalty is irrelevant. A defendant must instead prove intentional discrimination in his own case, an almost impossible standard without considering systemic patterns. Many experts consider McCleskey among the worst Supreme Court decisions of all-time. It largely closed the door to statistical evidence as a means of challenging systemic discrimination in criminal punishment.

Scalia would also play a significant role as the Supreme Court licensed ruthless sentences leading America to world record incarceration levels. He wrote the operative part of the influential Harmelin decision, a 1991 plurality opinion holding that theEighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” does not require that a prison sentence be “proportional” to the crime. The court thus upheld a life-sentence for cocaine possession.

Scalia again was in the majority in Lockyer v. Andrade, a 2003 case upholding a 50-year-to-life sentence under California’s three-strikes-law for a man who shoplifted videotapes worth $153 because he had prior convictions for petty theft, burglary, and transporting marijuana. Erwin Chemerinsky, who zealously represented the prisoner, was in tears as the media asked him about his reaction to the court’s inhumane decision.

McCleskey, Harmelin, and Lockyer were all 5–4 decisions that could have been decided otherwise if Scalia had thought differently. Naturally, he was not a swing vote but a sure one for harsh justice. While the justices might not have been able to stop mass incarceration singlehandedly, they definitely could have limited it. Indeed, the court’s belated decision in Brown v. Plata, has contributed to reducing California’s incarceration rate. In this 2011 case, the court ordered California to reduce its dramatically overcrowded prison population because “depriv[ing] prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity.” In a vehement dissent, Scalia charged that this was “a judicial travesty” and that the majority was “wildly” overstepping its authority.

Similarly, he fiercely dissented in other rare cases where the court decided to check ruthless punishments. If it had been up to Scalia, it would still be constitutional to execute mentally retarded people or teenagers, not to mention sentence teenagers to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for homicide or any other crime.

(Continued)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...de_america_s_incarceration_problem_worse.html
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NOVA said:
And if you look at the number of murders, rapes and kidnappings, committed by blacks compared to population, its clear why they get executed in the numbers they do.....

you're a brainwashed lemming.....1200 murders a year in one city alone.....

Blacks responsible for 1/2 the murders in the country and are about 13% of the population....

That ain't racist, that the facts.
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:palm: You always show just who you are in your posts. There are fewer whites than blacks in prison for the same crimes, and whites get lesser sentences. That's just the facts. Even the right-leaning WSJ admits it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324432004578304463789858002
 
PostmodernProphet said:
didn't we just discover that whites were more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime than blacks?.......
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Do you want to respond to my actual post, which was about sentences?

"Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years, an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found. That racial gap has widened since the Supreme Court restored judicial discretion in sentencing in 2005, according to the Sentencing Commission's findings, which were submitted to Congress last month and released publicly this week. In its report, the commission recommended that federal judges give sentencing guidelines more weight, and that appeals courts more closely scrutinize sentences that fall beyond them...

The Supreme Court, in the 2005 case U.S. v. Booker, struck down a 1984 law that required federal district judges to impose a sentence within the range of the federal sentencing guidelines, which are set by the commission.

The law was meant to alleviate the disparity in federal sentences, but critics say placing restrictions on judges can exacerbate the problem by rendering them powerless to deviate from guidelines and laws that are inherently biased. An often-cited example is a federal law that created steeper penalties for crack-cocaine offenses, which are committed by blacks more frequently than whites, than for powder-cocaine offenses. Congress reduced the disparity in 2010.

In the two years after the Booker ruling, sentences of blacks were on average 15.2% longer than the sentences of similarly situated whites, according to the Sentencing Commission report. Between December 2007 and September 2011, the most recent period covered in the report, sentences of black males were 19.5% longer than those for whites. The analysis also found that black males were 25% less likely than whites in the same period to receive a sentence below the guidelines' range..."
 
christiefan915 said:
:palm: You always show just who you are in your posts. There are fewer whites than blacks in prison for the same crimes, and whites get lesser sentences. That's just the facts. Even the right-leaning WSJ admits it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324432004578304463789858002
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So now you want to switch from prison population to the length of sentencing ?

From the WSJ link

The commission, which is part of the judicial branch, was careful to avoid the implication of racism among federal judges, acknowledging that they "make sentencing decisions based on many legitimate considerations that are not or cannot be measured."
The law was meant to alleviate the disparity in federal sentences, but critics say placing restrictions on judges can exacerbate the problem by rendering them powerless to deviate from guidelines and laws that are inherently biased. An often-cited example is a federal law that created steeper penalties for crack-cocaine offenses, which are committed by blacks more frequently than whites, than for powder-cocaine offenses.

"to avoid the implication of racism among federal judges, acknowledging that they "make sentencing decisions based on many legitimate considerations that are not or cannot be measured."

So what does that mean....
Suppose the quantities of drugs in drug cases were different........would not that be a factor in sentencing....
Suppose one criminal was a habitual offender...........would not that be a factor in sentencing....
Suppose the crimes differed.....using vs. selling........would not that be a factor in sentencing....
How about the demeanor of the offender in court.....would not that be a factor in sentencing....
Suppose the victims are more distressed.................would not that be a factor in sentencing....

There could be dozens of reasons for the length of sentencing creating a disparity....so why immediately assume its all racism, impling most judges are racist.....
I'll tell you why....because it already fits your pre-conceived conclusions.....you want to believe its always racism because its who you are....a lemming.

Do you want judges to decide the sentence or do you want the gov. to set the sentence for every crime with no consideration of other factors ?

Your belief must be that most judges are racist.....and then most appeals court judges are also racist....is that your point ?
 
christiefan915 said:
Every sentence was not for a death-penalty crime.
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we understand.....you don't want to talk about your death penalty posts because you lost that argument......now you've jumped to something new until someone proves you have your head up your ass there as well......Desh does the same thing......that's why we think you're just like Desh.......
 
PostmodernProphet said:
we understand.....you don't want to talk about your death penalty posts because you lost that argument......now you've jumped to something new until someone proves you have your head up your ass there as well......Desh does the same thing......that's why we think you're just like Desh.......
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Hello PMP,,,,,I'm someone.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
we understand.....you don't want to talk about your death penalty posts because you lost that argument......now you've jumped to something new until someone proves you have your head up your ass there as well......Desh does the same thing......that's why we think you're just like Desh.......
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Two different articles are being discussed, moron. Two different authors with different points, if you can't keep up just stop typing now.
 
NOVA said:
So now you want to switch from prison population to the length of sentencing ?

From the WSJ link

The commission, which is part of the judicial branch, was careful to avoid the implication of racism among federal judges, acknowledging that they "make sentencing decisions based on many legitimate considerations that are not or cannot be measured."
The law was meant to alleviate the disparity in federal sentences, but critics say placing restrictions on judges can exacerbate the problem by rendering them powerless to deviate from guidelines and laws that are inherently biased. An often-cited example is a federal law that created steeper penalties for crack-cocaine offenses, which are committed by blacks more frequently than whites, than for powder-cocaine offenses.

"to avoid the implication of racism among federal judges, acknowledging that they "make sentencing decisions based on many legitimate considerations that are not or cannot be measured."

So what does that mean....
Suppose the quantities of drugs in drug cases were different........would not that be a factor in sentencing....
Suppose one criminal was a habitual offender...........would not that be a factor in sentencing....
Suppose the crimes differed.....using vs. selling........would not that be a factor in sentencing....
How about the demeanor of the offender in court.....would not that be a factor in sentencing....
Suppose the victims are more distressed.................would not that be a factor in sentencing....

There could be dozens of reasons for the length of sentencing creating a disparity....so why immediately assume its all racism, impling most judges are racist.....
I'll tell you why....because it already fits your pre-conceived conclusions.....you want to believe its always racism because its who you are....a lemming.

Do you want judges to decide the sentence or do you want the gov. to set the sentence for every crime with no consideration of other factors ?

Your belief must be that most judges are racist.....and then most appeals court judges are also racist....is that your point ?
Click to expand...

Two different articles with different points being addressed. Do you have a problem with that?

It has been statistically proven that whites get a break in sentences when all other factors are equal. "Many experts consider McCleskey among the worst Supreme Court decisions of all-time. It largely closed the door to statistical evidence as a means of challenging systemic discrimination in criminal punishment."

You can introduce a diversion but that's not what this is about.
 
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