Letter to the Editor About Exaggerating the Cost of the Death Penalty
I am still appalled at yesterday’s L.A. Times article on the death penalty — so much so that I have written a rare letter to the editor:
Re “Death Row Often Means a Long Life,” March 6: Your article overstated the cost of the death penalty by millions of dollars. First, it erroneously included in the cost of capital punishment every dollar spent litigating appeals filed by capital murder defendants. But these defendants would still appeal their murder convictions — at state expense — if they were sentenced to life instead of death. Your article implicitly assumes that it would cost the state nothing to litigate such appeals. In fact, it would cost millions.
In addition, some murderers plead to life to avoid the possibility of a death sentence. This saves the state the cost of a trial and an appeal. These plea bargains are made possible by the death penalty. But the article does not tell us how often this happens, and how many millions of dollars are saved each year as a result. Indeed, these savings are not even mentioned.
I suggest that you do the article again and report a more accurate estimate this time around.
I’ll let you know if it’s printed.
[…] les of any vehicle trying to travel the road of truth. I tried correcting the errors in a letter to the editor. The newspaper […]
Patterico's Pontifications » Filling in the Potholes of Falsehood (0c6a63) — 3/15/2005 @ 4:54 amIf someone murders me with special circumstances, please don’t ask for the death penalty. The 20 years of hassle to survivors is just obscene. When the state becomes competent at executing the death sentence within 3 weeks from sentencing, I’ll change my mind.
The reasons for the state being incompetent are well known, and not fixable. This state is filled with crazy people, crazy voters, crazy judges, and crazy newspaper reporters. But the weather is nice, so I like California anyway.
Ladainian (91b3b2) — 3/7/2005 @ 8:34 amPatterico –
Boman (fa5c02) — 3/7/2005 @ 2:40 pmYou did good until you told the editors they needed to rewrite the editorial, because they didn’t do a very good job the first time.
I do believe you have probably hurt their feelings.
The LAT editors are on record saying they won’t be corrected. And here you are, slapping them in the face with a wet fish.
So, I say – Aw, just go ahead and slap them again.
This Is The Way The World Ends?
Local Liberty (a8d754) — 3/7/2005 @ 3:17 pmCalifornia Mafia thinks the world might be ending—see Ken’s writing on redistricting (and the LAT’s support of it) here. The LAT editorial position is somewhat suprising, but snow isn’t melting you-know-where yet. The Times makes up for their s…