1. Is capital punishment an effective deterrent to murder or not? Please fully support your response.

It is really hard to determine whether or not capital punishment does have an deterrent effect on murder. There have been debates on deterrence and capital punishment. According to Fagan, Zimring, & Geller, 2006), the first debate was in the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which restored capital punishment after its constitutional ban following Furman v.

Georgia in 1972. Research have shown that during the 1950s and 1960s, each execution deter eight murders. Since 1996, more than a dozen studies have stated that each execution can prevent anywhere from three to thirty homicides (Fagan et al., 2006). Some researchers have claimed that pardons, commutations, and exonerations have caused murder rates to increase. These studies have suggest that the deterrent effects of capital punishmetn are limitless, which lead legal officials to offer execution was a cure for all types of murder.
The measures of homicide used in the new deterrence studies are hard to understand because by studying whether punishments affect all homicides, these studies failed to identify a more honest target of deterrence to those homicides that are punishable by death.

These studies have overestimated not only the number of lives saved by deterrence, but whether murder rates are decreased by the threat of executions. As a result, these research studies haven’t provided any evidence of deterrence when the effects of execution are estimated for the homicides that are most affected by execution (Fagan et al., 2006). There have been questions about whether the threat of actuality of execution adds to the deterrent effect on homicide produced by imprisonment alone has been the subject of statistical debate. The vast majority of statistical studies that try to address this issue have used a variety of punishment as independent variable which determine whether the death penalty is authorized, or used, or its frequency and the total rate of intentional homicides as the dependent variable.

The use of total intentional homicide had always been an aggregation error in the deterrence debate in the United States.
There have been argument on the deterrence that focused not only o general homicide trends and rates, but on homicides that have been defined as eligible for the death penalty by statue. These types of homicides provide a more sensitive indicator than the overall homicide rate index for detecting a deterrent effect from execution (Fagan et al., 2006).

Research data based on police descriptions of homicides from 1976-2003 have constructed rates of potentially death-eligible killings. While death-eligible cases are much larger function of total homicides than cases that produce death sentences, types of killing that are eligible for the capital sanction are less than 25% of total criminal homicides. Across the nation a total of 24.5% of all reported killings were death-eligible type cases, with a share of those being 11.8% of forcible killings and killings with multiple victims which were 7.8%.
2. Is sentencing “color blind”? You may address this generally or in regards to capital punishment. As part of your response, include real life examples, empirical data, etc., which supports your view.
Sentencing is not “color blind.” Most felony trials in the United States, jurors do not participate in determining the sentence that are given to a convicted individual. The major exception is in capital trials, where the jury either determines or recommends to the judge a sentence of life or death. According to Platania and Moran (1999), a capital trial occurs when a defendant is charged with first-degree murder, consist of a guilt/innocence phase where culpability is judged and, should the defendant be convicted, a second phase where sentence is determined. Juries in capital cases are selected by a procedure known was “death qualification.” Death qualification identifies jurors whose attitudes toward the death penalty either in favor or opposed, would prevent or substantially impair their ability to serve on a capital jury in a fair and impartial manner (Platania & Moran, 1999).
3. From our week 4 readings, do you think it should be an ethics violation when a police officer accepts a free meal?
I think that it should be an ethics violation when a police officer accept a free meal. Police officers who accept a free meal shall be considered an ethics violation because they shall pay for anything they want because nothing in this world is free. Police officers are not above the law and shall be professional at all times. Police gratuities remain a problem that really need to be address.
It is ethically wrong for a person to intentionally offer the police gratuities in order to get either enhanced service in the form of their presence or a pass on minor violations that might otherwise be enforced such as not writing a ticket for someone who commit a traffic violation but instead offers the gratuity. Bribes and payoffs serve the same function as gratuities because they are rewards to the officer for his or her willingness to perform their duties according to the wishes of the payer (Brandon, 2005). To accept gratuities offered with this rationale would violate a democratic ethos because police resources are a social good paid for from the common purse of a democratic government. No one should be able to garner additional service because they have the resources to pay a surcharge in the form of gratuities. It is even more serious an ethical transgression to overlook minor violations of the law because someone feels indebted to the giver of a gratuity. The gratuity is a token that gains admission to a realm of friendship, conversation, and closeness (Brandon, 2005).
Reference
Brandon, D. P. (2005). One dogma of police ethics: Gratuities and the “democratic ethos” of policing. Criminal Justice Ethics, 24(2), 25-46. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/209777503?accountid=8289.
Fagan, J., Zimring, F. E., & Geller, A. (2006). Capital punishment and capital murder: Market share and the deterrent effects of the death penalty. Texas Law Review, 84(7), 1803-1867. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203689504?accountid=8289.
Platania, J., & Moran, G. (1999). Due process and the death penalty: The role of prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument in capital trials. Law and Human Behavior, 23(4), 471-486. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1022364132399.

Carl Johnson

1. Is capital punishment an effective deterrent to murder or not? Please fully support your response.
For every study produced to suggest the death penalty is an effective deterrent to additional murders, there is one that claims that it is not. Since 1996, more than a dozen studies have been published claiming that each execution can prevent anywhere from three to thirty-two homicides.

These studies are reportedly flawed because they lump total homicide cases together including those that were not eligible for the death penalty reportedly which skew the results and showed a deterrent affect when reportedly paring it down to only eligible cases did not find a deterrent affect (Fagan, Zimring & Geller, 2006).
Applying the death penalty is much like telling a child they will be spanked if they do not stop acting out.

When the child continues to act out in the same manner, with only a hollow promise of a spanking, the rare instance in which the parent actually spanks the child rarely serves as a deterrent. Some believe if the death penalty was carried out more swiftly rather than twenty years after the fact it may in fact serve as a deterrent (Shepherd, 2004).
The argument of whether or not the death penalty is an effective deterrent to murder is irrelevant in my opinion because a death sentence is called capital punishment,

not capital deterrence. The death penalty is levied upon the individual as punishment for wrongfully taking the life of another person. If it serves as a deterrent, so be it, bottom line is nobody that has been executed ever committed another murder.
2. Is sentencing “color blind”? You may address this generally or in regards to capital punishment. As part of your response, include real life examples, empirical data, etc., which supports your view.

I believe race was certainly a factor in sentencing in the past and may be a factor in some cases now, but overall I don’t know that I would agree that it is a factor. Studies attempting to identify these vary widely on actual data used, methodology and of course outcome it is hard to determine who is right. How do you quantify a decision, more so, how to measure how as decision was made?
In most of the studies I read for this assignment there was always a reference to the disproportionate number of blacks imprisoned and or sentenced to death.

When I looked at the 2012 FBI Uniform Crime Report there were 14,581 murders and of the offenders for whom race was known, 53.4 percent were black, 44.3 percent were white, and 2.3 percent were of other races. The race was unknown for 4,228 offenders. (FBI Uniform Crime Report, 2012, Expanded Homicide Data Table 3.) This is certainly a disproportionate number of murders per capita and certainly does not address the underlying causes.
There seems to be much focus on the race of the victim playing a key role in capital cases as well.

According to Kent Scheidegger, “The death penalty is sought and imposed less often in jurisdictions with high black populations and those are the jurisdictions where most of the black-victim homicides take place. If just looking at the statistics, this can be immediately viewed as the death penalty is less likely for the killer when the victim is black, but there would be no consideration for the demographic makeup of the area and the fact that the death penalty is not as widely supported in black communities as it is in white communities

(Scheidegger, 2012).
This is further supported by a study regarding death penalty cases in California, it was determined that Los Angeles County, which has the highest number of homicides in the state, has one of the lowest death sentence rates. The highest rate of death sentencing occurs in counties with low population densities and a high proportion of non-Latino whites (Pierce & Radelet, 2005).
A solution to this would be that capital cases are capital and if convicted a predetermined sentence of death would be immediately handed down by the judge.

There could be some exceptions in cases in which a plea bargain was reached or in cases in which the defendant is not eligible the death penalty because of age or limited mental capacity, but having the sentencing predetermined for these types of cases could help with the actual and or perceived bias.
?3. From our week 4 readings, do you think it should be an ethics violation when a police officer accepts a free meal?
I do not think it should be an ethic violation for a police officer to accept a free meal occasionally, just as I do not believe it is an ethics violation to for a fire fighter or member of the military to accept a free meal or discount that is made available.

The notion that by having the police present a restaurant the owner enjoys an enhanced service from the police not available to others may be true in theory (Brandon, 2005), just as they enjoy the added protection against a fire should one break out while a firefighter is eating at their establishment. To claim the police are deterring crime by their presence would automatically suggest there will be an increase in crime when they were not there, which is conjecture.

As an OSI agent I was allowed to accept discounts or other gratuities if they were publicly known and available to all law enforcement and definitely could not accept anything from anyone subject to an investigation.
That being said, there are exceptions to everything and I remember and example from when my father was a deputy sheriff in Oklahoma and I was a teenager on a ride along. During the ride along I was hungry and we stopped at Pizza Hut, which as a long history of providing free meals to police officers on duty.

My father got a cup of coffee and I had some pizza and when we approached the register to pay the manager informed my father that the meal was on the house. My father thanked him but insisted on paying for my meal and when the mange refused my father became very stern in his explanation that he was grateful for the gesture; however, he was certainly paying for my meal and he did.
When we got to the car I was shocked and asked my father why he would pay for something that was free. He pointed inside to a family of four sitting in a booth by the window and explained that the man was a police officer from the local police department who ate a free lunch at Pizza Hut almost every day.

That officer he would bring his wife and two kids there for dinner twice a week and flash his badge when the check was presented in order to get a free meal. My father took the time to explain how this was wrong and how the officer was taking advantage of his superior’s lack of leadership and taking advantage of the gesture made by Pizza Hut. As it turned out, his behavior was not limited to free meals, he expanded his quest for free and discounted items to other businesses in the area and was eventually fired because of it. The free meal isn’t the problem; it is the individuals lack of ethics and his personal greed.

References
Fagan, J., Zimring, F. E., & Geller, A. (2006). Capital punishment and capital murder:

Market share and the deterrent effects of the death penalty. Texas Law Review, 84(7), 1803-1867. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203689504?accountid=8289
Shepherd ., , Clemson University, Murders of Passion, Execution Delays and the Deterrence of Capital Punishment, 33 Journal of Legal Studies 283 (2004). Retrieved from: http://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/POLI195_Sp13/StamSummaryofDeathPenaltyStudies.pdf
Scheidegger, K., Rebutting the Myths About Race and the Death Penalty, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 147 (2012). Retrieved from: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/osjcl/issues-and-articles/issues-and-articles-archive/volume-101/

FBI, Uniform Crime Report (2012). Crime in the united states 2012, Retrieved from: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expandhomicidemain
Pierce, G., Radelet, M.( 2005). Impact of legally inappropriate factors on death sentencing for California homicides, 1990-1999? . Santa Clara Law Review. Retrieved from: http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/lawreview/vol46/iss1/1/
Brandon, D. P. (2005). One dogma of police ethics: Gratuities and the “democratic ethos” of policing. Criminal Justice Ethics, 24(2), 25-46. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/209777503?accountid=8289