Polling agencies seldom take into account specific murder cases. When they do, support for executions is shown to be significantly higher than in generic polls.
A recent Washington Post poll found that 60% of Maryland citizens support capital punishment with 32% opposed. But there was a caveat – when respondents were forced to give a choice between life without parole or execution for murderers, Marylanders supported life without parole over execution 49% to 40%. Opponents of the death penalty have long enjoyed pointing out that support for executions drop when life without parole sentences become an option to putting murderers to death. However, overall numbers of death penalty support or the more nuanced ones reflecting the life without parole option (from whatever polling agencies), are misleading at best in attempting to gain the public's true and accurate views of capital punishment.
Why is this? How so? Polling agencies, no matter how reputable, fail to gauge true levels of support for society's ultimate penalty because they seldom take into account specific murder cases. When they do, support for executions is shown to be significantly higher. Generic, sterile questions devoid of real life examples to determine levels of death penalty support/opposition will always yield lower levels of support than what actually exists. There is a significant reality gap between what the polls show, and what is.
For example, in October of 2009 Gallup conducted its yearly death penalty survey and found that nationally, 65% of U.S. citizens favored capital punishment for murder. Yet, incredibly, when New York City residents were asked a month later if they supported the death penalty for alleged 911 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed if found guilty, 77% sad "yes" while only 18% said "no" (USA Today/Gallup, Nov. 20-22, 2009). Politically, socially and culturally, NYC is a very liberal place. It is bluer than blue. Yet it decisively trumped the rest of the nation in support for the death penalty when a very real incident involving real evil was in play. And, I might add, one can't be a true foe of capital punishment if an exception is made for a particular individual (granted, a particularly bad one).
Let us look at another example. In July of 2007, three members of a Cheshire, Connecticut family were brutally slain. Two men broke into the home of Dr. William Petit and wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit. For seven hours the family was subjected to a nightmarish horror while at the mercy of the two. Doctor Petit was viciously beaten but survived. Jennifer Hawke-Petit was not as fortunate. The thugs strangled her. The assailants set the home ablaze and the couple's two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, suffocated in the smoke. Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky have been charged for the murders and currently await trial. The prosecution is pursuing the death penalty.
In 2000, a Quinnipiac University poll found 63% of Connecticut voters supported capital punishment with 27% against. In 2009, Quinnipiac found that 61% of the same state's voters favored the death penalty with 34% opposed, indicating a slight drop in support and a larger rise in opposition over nine years. Yet in 2007 Quinnipiac found that 73% of Connecticut voters favored the death penalty for the Cheshire suspects if found guilty (CNN, Feb. 1, 2010). How can 73% of the people of Connecticut support lethally injecting the two killers when only 61-63% of people in the same jurisdiction favor capital punishment? And again, it bears pointing out that this large majority who favor execution for the perpetrators, live in an overwhelmingly liberal state.
The truth is that many people who oppose capital punishment, do so in the abstract. When confronted with real cases involving real victims and murderers, and very specific instances of true evil, a certain segment of the opposing population (highly liberal areas included) discard their niceties regarding academic and perhaps purely philosophical questions on crime and punishment. Moral revulsion takes over. This is why if ever a poll is taken, it will show that well over 60% of Maryland citizens will favor the execution of convicted sex offender Thomas James Leggs, if found guilty of last December's abduction and murder of 11-year-old Sarah Foxwell.
Re: ” Generic, sterile questions devoid of real life examples to determine levels of death penalty support/opposition will always yield lower levels of support than what actually exists.”
In a documentary about the death penalty, a prosecutor said that as the hour of execution approached for a murderer he had prosecuted, he would always have last-minute doubts about whether the penalty was just; however, he went on to say that all he had to do to relieve those doubts was to re-examine the crime scene photographs.
Do Conservatives encounter this same phenomena when faced with real life examples of abortion? Possible genetic deformities, a young Daughter, Incest, prosecutable Rape? Save the child but kill the father still doesn’t site well with me. I’m not interested in Sharia law either.
There is comical irony in cojacked’s comparison. He supports destroying a fetus in the most gruesome way possible due to its possible inconvenience to an irresponsible woman who is “too young” to have a baby, but wails for the loss of the life of someone convicted of the most heinous crimes known to humanity. Thanks for bringing the difference between conservatives and liberals into such sharp clarity.
I’m not ‘supporting’ anything, merely asking a question. And you obviously missed the point. The author is saying that people tend to change their minds on capital punishment when a personal connection is made. A connection like having ‘your’ daughter become pregnant at the age of 15. Or a friend or relative being raped and impregnated.
BTW, I never wail. Thanks for the show of arrogance and ignorance, it is indeed comical.
Cheers
cojacked:
I met a woman whose brother-in-law was on death row, and she said that, “they should execute every last one of them.”
As an honest person, you would probably not subscribe to “finders keepers, losers weepers,” would you? But if you found a bag of money dropped by an armored car, and no one knew it, you would be tempted to keep it. There is nothing new about this phenomenon; it’s called temptation.
The point was quite clear – you believe it is hypocritical for conservatives to fail to support abortion while supporting the death penalty, and wished to illustrate the point by waxing dramatic about Sharia law and rape babies believing these examples to be analogous to the author’s use of specific murder cases that create greater-than-average support for the death penalty. A staggering feat of logic to be sure, but I think even us simpleton conservatives could pick up the clever nuance. If my assessment is “ignorant” or you were attempting to make a different point, you should have chosen different words and put them into different order so that they conveyed a different meaning. If you cannot properly convey your thoughts in writing, the fault is with you, not the reader.
Well now that you know the point, “The author is saying that people tend to change their minds on capital punishment when a personal connection is made… Does the same hold true for abortion,” what do you think?
And for the last time, there is NO analogy between specific murder cases and abortions. Its about the fact that a personal connection to something does in fact change a persons opinion, or at least makes them take an even deeper look as to what they really believe. Capital punishment and abortion are easy targets because they are so emotional; as evidence by your extraordinarily emotional and intolerant tone.
As I said, your point was not lost on anyone in the first place. I didn’t realize I would be required to repeat your assertions back to you in order to justify the inferences that any thinking person could reasonably draw from them, but if it that provides you with some needed validation, then I’m glad I could help.
I think you lost the credibility to characterize anyone else’s comments as emotional and intolerant when you exploded into a tirade about conservatives’ narrow views on abortion as it regards rape babies and implied a moral equivalence between capital punishment in America with Islamic Sharia law in response to an article about how personalizing particular murder cases has a tendency to increase support for capital punishment. Drawing a moral or legal equivalence between abortion and the death penalty is a pretty silly conjecture and your intentions are beyond obvious. Troll, troll, troll your boat gently down the stream. When you start to hear banjos, you’re in the right place.
You call that an ‘explosion’? All you’ve done here is confirm your arrogance. This isn’t about me or you’re inability to get over yourself.
I’ll stop asking you to address the issue, you are completely incapable of doing it. You’ve gone down a path you can not turn back on and you have no interest in talking about the article.
When faced with these issues personally you and ‘any thinking person’ would have to have a long look in the mirror; and you may not like what you see.
I’m not sure how characterizing your initial comment as a tirade is an indication of arrogance, but I will gladly stand by that statement, regardless of the consequences of going down that path.
As far as addressing the article, I’d be happy to have a conversation about the article with you. Unfortunately, your tirade had absolutely nothing to do with the article, and what you actually want to discuss is your tirade. That was kind of the point. The moral and legal equivalence, or lack thereof, of abortion to capital punishment, or of capital punishment to Islamic Sharia law, has exactly nothing to do with the way that personalizing specific murder cases affects public perception of capital punishment.
Trolling takes a bit of finesse. Where you went wrong was by trying to do too much too fast. You need to pace yourself. Your first post should introduce the idea of a moral equivalence between abortion and the death penalty and pigeonhole the conservative view on both issues. Leave some time for a couple of people to comment, then move into the conservatism to Sharia law comparison. Once two or three people have picked up this tangential discussion, move into a George W. Bush to Hitler comparison and try to work in a passage about conservatives being racist or homophobic. By this point your cover will be pretty well blown, but your objective will have been met and you can go back under your rock having executed a solid, multi-post troll raid. A couple new articles should be posted by the weekend, so keep these tips in mind and give it another shot. Remember, practice makes perfect. Once you’ve gotten a solid repertoire down, try registering a new username. For bonus points, use your second username as a conservative strawman to argue against with your primary username. Keep at it kid, you’re gonna go far.
Hmm, haven’t seen cojacked around here before. Typical leftist bomb-thrower, I see.
Patrick, I’d like to add that he needs to also appear as the “reasonable” one by never actually committing to a specific position himself. He should restrict his comments to sarcastic, hostile attacks.
Then, after dismissing his adversaries as stupid, narrow-minded, and bigoted, he can huff off feeling superior for proving yet again that conservatives are stupid.
Cojacked asks the question; “The author is saying that people tend to change their minds on capital punishment when a personal connection is made… Does the same hold true for abortion,” what do you think?”
The short answer is “No.”
The author has demonstrated that percentages of persons favoring the death penalty for a capital crime go up when the question is applied to specific cases. So the question cojacked asked is; “Would a conservatives rethink their support of a ‘Right-to-Life’ for a fetus known to have a mental or physical defect, or that had been conceived through the actions of incest or rape. IN other words, if I may paraphrase his question directly; “Do conservatives have the courage of their convictions?
While I cannot speak for other conservatives here, I can speak for myself. My personal opposition to both abortion and the death penalty stem from my Catholic belief that all life is to be respected from conception to natural death.
Having said that; The straw man argument cojacked attempts to set up is If you are willing to execute a lawbreaker, why not execute the living tissue resulting from a crime. These are obviously two different cases despite his sophomoric attempt to equalize them.
Increased support for the execution of a murderer was shown in the author’s essay by demonstrating that, as opposed to a ‘generic’ offense, when an actual case, with actual brutality, is cited more people begin to agree that some punishment must be extracted from the evildoer.
This does NOT equate to the taking of an innocent life as ‘punishment’ for a crime carried out by another perpetrator.
One may reasonably turn the question back to the originator. If we execute murderers, and we execute those fetuses that display genetic or physical deformities or are created during the breaking of a law (rape or incest); should we not reasonably execute anyone who fails, at any time, to be of advantage to the state?
The IRS could be the enforcement arm. Each year all citizens would be required to file a federal income tax form. All those whose tax forms calculate out to a negative balance or refund would be declared of no further advantage to the state and be singled out for execution. This would ensure that only healthy, ‘contributing’ citizens would be consuming any state resources.
Why would we reasonably rid society of such ‘unsavory’ entities and not carry this to its logical conclusion. How much better would our society be if we were able to rid ourselves of the poverty-stricken, the unemployable, the mentally deficient, and the incurably lazy, all at once?
Please sir, have the courage of YOUR convictions.
Mulligan,
There is no moral equivalence between abortion and the death penalty. None was stated, none was implied.
There was no comparison made between conservatism and Sharia law. Sharia law preaches eye for an eye, i.e. Capital punishment. Qualification was needed and not given. All apologies.
A sentence does not constitute a tirade. But a can certainly imply intolerance.
You are far to gleeful in your arrogance and your attack is baseless and awkward. No one here is trolling unless its you merely looking for someone to argue with. I can’t argue with you, because all you’ve done is make up a fictitious argument which I won’t defend. I’m not the donkey to pin your tale on; pun intended.
Mt. Man,
No one was dismissed as stupid or bigoted. Narrow-minded yes. I love the use of ‘adversaries’ though; a bit much but nice none the less.
The thesis of the article is that personal connection (specific cases) changes perception.
Yes, one example of this in regards to abortion is in fact “If you are willing to execute a lawbreaker, why not execute the living tissue resulting from a crime.” Interesting term, ‘living tissue’. However, that is not the only example. Abortions do not just stem from crime. They also stem from irresponsibility as pointed out. They also stem from responsible decisions to become pregnant in which things did not turn out the way the responsible parties had planned. On and on and on.
There are too many scenarios to play out and this is obviously not the place.
Personal connection does change perception, and sometimes conviction. If our convictions are just handed down to us, unlearned, inexperienced, they should at the very least be questioned. If the answer is Yes, I believe this to be the truth, the way, then so be it.
It is frustrating to me how easy it is for some people to be so completely convinced of the evil, the horror of something without ever having been near it.
Can’t wait to hear what I was ‘really talking about.
Cheers
cojacked,
I see that reading comprehension is a deficiency of yours. I did not say that you called anyone those names. I was offering a potential course of action for you, based on the typical leftist debating template.
So far, you have exactly fit the mold. You have failed to explain any position you hold, why you hold it, or why those you debate are wrong.
You have made snotty comments, called people names, and condescended. This all means that Mr. Mulligan is correct. You are a troll.
Prove me wrong by stating a position contrary to the article, defending your position, and allowing others to examine your logic to see if it holds water.
Or, just keep throwing bombs.
This is ridiculous. I called no one a name and I’ve only defended myself against a very rude and aggressive personal attack. Pointing out someones arrogance is not name calling. Calling someone a troll or a leftist bomb-thrower however is name calling. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to justify that.
Also, since you brought up reading comprehension, I never, not once, said anyone was wrong. Only one person in this thread has even stated an opinion; its not you.
This whole thread has been about attacking me for my lack of ‘posting prowess’? Its a joke.
All I’ve done here is try and defend myself and attempt to get a clear response to a question; again, only one person has responded and its not you.
You came here specifically to bash on someone, nothing more. You’re demanding me to take a stance on something when the only two posts you’ve thrown up here are completely defamatory? Are you serious?! You make me sick.
My ‘position’ was based on the thesis of the article!! Making people question things before blindly marching to the drummer. I’m against Abortion for anything other than medical reasons. I’m 100% against Capital Punishment. My issues with abortions stem from mothers who will die during childbirth from obvious and rectifiable causes. That in itself is a slippery slope and could be talked about for decades, but if your mother was having another child and it was either have a new baby brother or keep your mother you might think twice. Then again, you might not. I don’t know, and at this point I really don’t care.
cojacked:
Re: “I’m 100% against Capital Punishment.”
Let’s turn your question back to you. Would you be against it if you had a personal connection, i.e., if someone you loved was murdered?
Hmm. You called no one a name?
“Thanks for the show of arrogance and ignorance, it is indeed comical.”
“…as evidence by your extraordinarily emotional and intolerant tone.”
“All you’ve done here is confirm your arrogance. This isn’t about me or you’re (sic) inability to get over yourself.”
“You are far to (sic) gleeful in your arrogance and your attack is baseless and awkward.”
You see, cojacked, all you’ve done is insult people in a hostile, condescending way. I have responded in kind. If you don’t like my tone, change yours.
The people that you have been so snotty to are people who have posted here for years, and they, like me, value an honest vigorous debate where ideas are exchanged. I don’t know what you’re used to, but here we expect a certain decorum that you have yet to exhibit.
Now. If you have something valuable and thoughtful to contribute, do so. Or, go away.
There is no moral equivalence between abortion and the death penalty. None was stated, none was implied.
Give me a break. The only possible way in which your original question can be related to the original article is by way of a moral or legal equivalence of abortion to capital punishment. You can’t make a “what if the shoe was on the other foot?” argument and then try to claim you aren’t drawing an equivalence between the two “feet”. If you were not intending to frame abortion and capital punishment as morally equivalent, then your question is off-topic and irrelevant, as I originally contended. You cannot defend your original foray into this discussion honestly – either you posted a question that was off-topic in order to provoke and distract from the original piece (when done intentionally this is known in internet message board parlance as “trolling”; even assuming you did it unintentionally the result is the same), or you were attempting to equate abortion and capital punishment at some philosophical level, be it moral or legal. I’ll take you at your word that you were not intending to draw a moral equivalence and assume, as I have since you first posted, that your off-topic question was merely intended to distract and provoke. If you’re not going to behave honestly, there’s no reason to address you seriously, which is why nobody but Bill has indulged you by answering your initial question. For my part, I do not ever intend to do so. The popular term for this approach is: “Don’t feed the trolls”
I’ve noticed that cojacked has deigned to respond to all with the exception of my July 29th posting. 24 hours and counting
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