Post by SoulTrainOz on Jun 18, 2006 3:01:53 GMT -5
Punishment.
Book Review
Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas During the Modern Era Jon Sorensen and Rocky Leann Pilgrim----UT Press, $23.95
Few issues are more divisive than capital punishment, and no other state rivals Texas' implementation of the method. Just last month, Primera native Jesus Ledesma Aguilar was executed for the 1995 murders of Leonardo and Annette Chavez. 2 legal experts weigh in on the matter with the recently published Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas during the Modern Era.
Jon Sorensen, a professor of Justice Studies at Prairie View A&M
University, and Rocky Pilgrim, a practicing attorney and part-time
professor at the University of Houston, both recognize the gray areas involved in the issue and work hard to sort through statistics looking for answers to the fundamental questions.
Deterrence is often cited as one of the most compelling reasons for capital punishment. The severity and finality of execution is believed to discourage other criminals from committing murder. Evidence would seem to support this.
During the 1960s and until 1977, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling provoked a de facto moratorium on executions, and the homicide rate went into a dramatic increase. When executions were reinstated, this rate did not decline immediately, but during the 1990s, when Texas reached a height in the number of executions per year, the murder rate sharply declined.
Sorensen and Pilgrim, though, find cause for skepticism. They point to large number of urban areas in Texas (Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio) with populations of more than one million and compare these with the homicide rates in other states that did not execute convicts at an equal rate and find no difference. They then believe the drop in murder rates during the mid- to late 1990s was a national trend, not directly caused by the high number of executions in Texas.
The authors then look at other issues involved with capital punishment and present a surprisingly balanced perspective. They find that jurors on capital murder trials tend to sentence defendants to death out of retribution rather than in hopes of preventing another murder. They also look at the proportionality of juveniles on trial for murder, a growing problem in America, as well as the issue of racial equity throughout the justice system.
The authors showed that blacks and Hispanics accounted for nearly 60 % of all condemned inmates on death row. Since most homicides are intraracial, the number of murders in these minority populations remains alarming.
Sorensen and Pilgrim offer an empirical study of capital punishment and their intent is to offer the statistics that can ensure lawmakers have the correct evidence to decide on the issue. Popular polls show Texans favor the use of capital punishment; the authors do not see this opinion changing in the near future.
(spirce--Martin Winchester is a book critic for The Monitor. He is an
English teacher at the IDEA Academy in Donna----The Monitor)
Book Review
Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas During the Modern Era Jon Sorensen and Rocky Leann Pilgrim----UT Press, $23.95
Few issues are more divisive than capital punishment, and no other state rivals Texas' implementation of the method. Just last month, Primera native Jesus Ledesma Aguilar was executed for the 1995 murders of Leonardo and Annette Chavez. 2 legal experts weigh in on the matter with the recently published Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas during the Modern Era.
Jon Sorensen, a professor of Justice Studies at Prairie View A&M
University, and Rocky Pilgrim, a practicing attorney and part-time
professor at the University of Houston, both recognize the gray areas involved in the issue and work hard to sort through statistics looking for answers to the fundamental questions.
Deterrence is often cited as one of the most compelling reasons for capital punishment. The severity and finality of execution is believed to discourage other criminals from committing murder. Evidence would seem to support this.
During the 1960s and until 1977, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling provoked a de facto moratorium on executions, and the homicide rate went into a dramatic increase. When executions were reinstated, this rate did not decline immediately, but during the 1990s, when Texas reached a height in the number of executions per year, the murder rate sharply declined.
Sorensen and Pilgrim, though, find cause for skepticism. They point to large number of urban areas in Texas (Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio) with populations of more than one million and compare these with the homicide rates in other states that did not execute convicts at an equal rate and find no difference. They then believe the drop in murder rates during the mid- to late 1990s was a national trend, not directly caused by the high number of executions in Texas.
The authors then look at other issues involved with capital punishment and present a surprisingly balanced perspective. They find that jurors on capital murder trials tend to sentence defendants to death out of retribution rather than in hopes of preventing another murder. They also look at the proportionality of juveniles on trial for murder, a growing problem in America, as well as the issue of racial equity throughout the justice system.
The authors showed that blacks and Hispanics accounted for nearly 60 % of all condemned inmates on death row. Since most homicides are intraracial, the number of murders in these minority populations remains alarming.
Sorensen and Pilgrim offer an empirical study of capital punishment and their intent is to offer the statistics that can ensure lawmakers have the correct evidence to decide on the issue. Popular polls show Texans favor the use of capital punishment; the authors do not see this opinion changing in the near future.
(spirce--Martin Winchester is a book critic for The Monitor. He is an
English teacher at the IDEA Academy in Donna----The Monitor)