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The crazy thing is that although salient, of all the ways the US government kills innocent people, the death penalty probably has one of the lowest total body c

The crazy thing is that although salient, of all the ways the US government kills innocent people, the death penalty probably has one of the lowest total body counts. At least in comparison with wars of aggression, foreign coups, the war on drugs, subsidizing cars, subsidizing fossil fuels, subsidizing tobacco, weak pharma regulation, promoting antibiotics in food, cop shootings, fast food subsidies (via corn), not implementing cap & trade to combat climate change, privatized health insurance, trade embargoes, promoting harmful nutrition guidelines, lack of food safety standards/inspection, lack of any required safety testing for new chemicals, etc.

striking 11y ago
They also burn an absolutely astronomical amount of money in the process of trying to kill these people.
philwelch 11y ago
It seems almost pointless to even have a formal death penalty when law enforcement officers are given effective blanket immunity against homicide charges.
- tsotha 11y ago
  That's not true. They officer who shot Walter Scott has been charged with murder.
  - philwelch 11y ago
    One officer charged out of hundreds of Americans killed by police every year. Statistically, that's still effective blanket immunity.
    - tsotha 11y ago
      You can't know that without knowing how many would have been charged had they not been police officers.
      - mikekchar 11y ago
        Your comment intrigued me and I thought it might be fairly easy to estimate this number, but it seems that justifiable homicide numbers are under reported in the US: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-the-data-on-justifiable-homicide-just-wont-do-1725/ http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-the-data-on-justifiable-hom... It is interesting to look at the graph at the top of the article, though. Why do justifiable homicides for police and private citizens track each other almost identically? I can't think of any explanation. According to: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-killings-this-year-black-americans http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-kil... the number of police homicides have also been under reported, historically. It appears (if the Guardian's reporting is correct) that some states don't even report at all some years. But let's assume that there are 15,000 homicides per year by non-police and that 1000 of them are deemed justifiable homicides (double the reported ones to account for under reporting). That's about 7% of homicides that are justifiable. In the second link, it says that 19 out of 547 were killed by police after they were taken into custody. 31 were killed by tasers. 119 were killed while unarmed. What percentage of these killings were justifiable? http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged-for-on-duty-shootings-1416874955 http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged... claims 41 police officers were charged for shootings in a 7 year period. That is about 5.86 per year. The original link claimed about 87% of killings were shootings, so let's assume that police are charged with killing linearly and we get about 7 officers charged per year. I think it is telling that I can't find the success rate of prosecution anywhere :-P So if we assume all 7 officers were found guilty, that means we get 540 out of 547 killings to be justified, or 98.7%. So the average citizen has an upper bound of somewhere around 7% of having a homicide found to be justified, while the police have a lower bound of around 98% of having a homicide to be found justified. This despite the fact that 3.5% of police homicides happen after the suspect is in custody, 5.7% happen as a result of the suspect being hit with a taser, and 21.8% of the suspects are unarmed. While I wouldn't say this is a case for "blanket immunity", I have to say that the numbers do not seem reasonable to me. Especially if 20 people are killed by police while in custody and there is not an expectation that a charge will be laid in any of the 20 cases, that does not seem reasonable at all given that at least 93% of civilian homicides are deemed not-justifiable. But even more worrying is the sorry state of affairs for the reporting of this data (if the newspapers I browsed while doing my back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct). If they don't have better reporting, I don't know how anyone is supposed to scrutinize it. Anyway, I hope someone found this interesting. Apologies if I made any math mistakes along the way.

striking 11y ago

They also burn an absolutely astronomical amount of money in the process of trying to kill these people.

philwelch 11y ago

It seems almost pointless to even have a formal death penalty when law enforcement officers are given effective blanket immunity against homicide charges.

tsotha 11y ago
That's not true. They officer who shot Walter Scott has been charged with murder.
- philwelch 11y ago
  One officer charged out of hundreds of Americans killed by police every year. Statistically, that's still effective blanket immunity.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    You can't know that without knowing how many would have been charged had they not been police officers.
    - mikekchar 11y ago
      Your comment intrigued me and I thought it might be fairly easy to estimate this number, but it seems that justifiable homicide numbers are under reported in the US: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-the-data-on-justifiable-homicide-just-wont-do-1725/ http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/why-the-data-on-justifiable-hom... It is interesting to look at the graph at the top of the article, though. Why do justifiable homicides for police and private citizens track each other almost identically? I can't think of any explanation. According to: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-killings-this-year-black-americans http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/01/us-police-kil... the number of police homicides have also been under reported, historically. It appears (if the Guardian's reporting is correct) that some states don't even report at all some years. But let's assume that there are 15,000 homicides per year by non-police and that 1000 of them are deemed justifiable homicides (double the reported ones to account for under reporting). That's about 7% of homicides that are justifiable. In the second link, it says that 19 out of 547 were killed by police after they were taken into custody. 31 were killed by tasers. 119 were killed while unarmed. What percentage of these killings were justifiable? http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged-for-on-duty-shootings-1416874955 http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged... claims 41 police officers were charged for shootings in a 7 year period. That is about 5.86 per year. The original link claimed about 87% of killings were shootings, so let's assume that police are charged with killing linearly and we get about 7 officers charged per year. I think it is telling that I can't find the success rate of prosecution anywhere :-P So if we assume all 7 officers were found guilty, that means we get 540 out of 547 killings to be justified, or 98.7%. So the average citizen has an upper bound of somewhere around 7% of having a homicide found to be justified, while the police have a lower bound of around 98% of having a homicide to be found justified. This despite the fact that 3.5% of police homicides happen after the suspect is in custody, 5.7% happen as a result of the suspect being hit with a taser, and 21.8% of the suspects are unarmed. While I wouldn't say this is a case for "blanket immunity", I have to say that the numbers do not seem reasonable to me. Especially if 20 people are killed by police while in custody and there is not an expectation that a charge will be laid in any of the 20 cases, that does not seem reasonable at all given that at least 93% of civilian homicides are deemed not-justifiable. But even more worrying is the sorry state of affairs for the reporting of this data (if the newspapers I browsed while doing my back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct). If they don't have better reporting, I don't know how anyone is supposed to scrutinize it. Anyway, I hope someone found this interesting. Apologies if I made any math mistakes along the way.