drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:This should be the topic of a Slate piece (if it hasn't been already - and if the non profits focus more on death row cases, which I'm assuming, but don't know for sure), but I am going to hypothesize that the death penalty is counter intuitively a huge benefit to people who are innocent and on trial for first degree murder.

Non profits and other advocacy groups seem to work an awful lot harder to exonerate death row inmates than the average Joe Schmo in for life. For all of the concern over innocent people being executed, there is a serious lack of posthumously not guilty people being discovered given all of the people who have been let off death row so being sentenced to die doesn't seem like all that terrible of a thing in and of itself for an innocent person relatively, since you tend not to get executed. Meanwhile god knows how many people are rotting away innocently after being found guilty of murder but were not lucky enough to be sentenced to death.

If someone hasn't already written this paper, I want to be a coauthor.

Edit: Two further caveats - not the existence of the death penalty itself is insignificant to funding for innocence project type endeavors, and they would continue to help life in prison people even if the death penalty didn't exist (seems like a stretch)

And really not the case if someone who knows they're innocent but pleads guilty to life in prison to avoid the death penalty. Or pleads to a lesser offense to avoid the death penalty but would have refused to plead to a lesser offense if the maximum sentence was life without parole. That seems like it should be something that is pretty rare though.

And people suggest I'm the exemplar of circumlocution

jerseyhoya wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:
...Non profits and other advocacy groups seem to work an awful lot harder to exonerate death row inmates than the average Joe Schmo in for life. For all of the concern over innocent people being executed, there is a serious lack of posthumously not guilty people being discovered given all of the people who have been let off death row so being sentenced to die doesn't seem like all that terrible of a thing in and of itself for an innocent person relatively, since you tend not to get executed. Meanwhile god knows how many people are rotting away innocently after being found guilty of murder but were not lucky enough to be sentenced to death....

I was spitballing.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:Berlusconi called Merkel an #$&! lard-ass a few weeks ago and nary a mention here. I'm kinda disappointed.

jerseyhoya wrote:fivethirtyeight Nate Silver
New Suffolk poll has Romney way ahead in NH, and Perry in 4th place. Romney 41%, Paul 14%, Huntsman 10%, Perry 8%.

Huntsman ahead of Perry?!

jerseyhoya wrote:This should be the topic of a Slate piece (if it hasn't been already - and if the non profits focus more on death row cases, which I'm assuming, but don't know for sure), but I am going to hypothesize that the death penalty is counter intuitively a huge benefit to people who are innocent and on trial for first degree murder.

Non profits and other advocacy groups seem to work an awful lot harder to exonerate death row inmates than the average Joe Schmo in for life. For all of the concern over innocent people being executed, there is a serious lack of posthumously not guilty people being discovered given all of the people who have been let off death row so being sentenced to die doesn't seem like all that terrible of a thing in and of itself for an innocent person relatively, since you tend not to get executed. Meanwhile god knows how many people are rotting away innocently after being found guilty of murder but were not lucky enough to be sentenced to death.

If someone hasn't already written this paper, I want to be a coauthor.

Edit: Two further caveats - this doesn't work if the existence of the death penalty itself is insignificant to funding for innocence project type endeavors, and they would continue to help life in prison people even if the death penalty didn't exist (seems like a stretch)

And really not the case if someone who knows they're innocent but pleads guilty to life in prison to avoid the death penalty. Or pleads to a lesser offense to avoid the death penalty but would have refused to plead to a lesser offense if the maximum sentence was life without parole. That seems like it should be something that is pretty rare though.

A federal appeals panel has reversed itself and decided that former Olympic track and field star Carl Lewis will not be on the ballot for state Senate after all. The problem, according to the the three judge panel: Lewis voted in California as recently as May, 2009. Therefore, they said, he does not meet the state’s four-year residency requirement for state Senate candidates.

“Under these circumstances, he cannot show that the New Jersey constitutional provision has been applied unevenly as to him,” reads the decision, which was released this morning. The decision adds Lewis failed to “articulate what discrimination the residency requirement imposes.” The judges also noted that Lewis can run for state Senate later – that “a period of waiting simply delays votes for him should he choose to run at a later time meeting New Jersey’s requirement of residency.”

...

Just last week, the same three judge panel voted 2-1 to overrule the state and a lower federal court to put Lewis back on the ballot. Then they granted Republicans' request for a rehearing, which led to today's decision. Nothing in today’s decision addresses why they came to a different conclusion last week. Although they put out an order for that decision, a written opinion was never published.