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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!floyd!clyde!ihnp4!ihuxm!cwa
From: cwa@ihuxm.UUCP (Carl W. Amport)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Capital punishment
Message-ID: <626@ihuxm.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Oct-83 11:58:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxm.626
Posted: Fri Oct  7 11:58:12 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Oct-83 10:04:34 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il
Lines: 31

From your article, these were most obvious assumptions that you made:

   1 - People in society 'A' value life less than people in society 'B'.

   2 - Society 'A' where capital punishment is introduced will become MORE
       violent than society 'B' where it was not introduced.

   3 - Each member of society 'A' is more likely to commit murder than
       members of society 'B'.

I guess you could call your assumptions, your theories, but I feel we can
get them down to a factual level.  Lets call society 'A', Illinois, and
society 'B', Wisconsin.  You said that is unlikely, although possible, 
to have a violent society that does not have capital punishment.  It is not
only likely, but a fact.  Wisconsin is without capital punishment, but yet
it too, has violent crime.  Questions:

  1 - Do people in Madison, Wisconsin value life less than people in
      Springfield, Illinois?

  2 - Are people in Springfield more violent than people in Madison?

  3 - Am I now more likely to commit murder since I have moved to Illinois
      from Wisconsin since there is capital punishment here and not there.

Don't want to clutter an emotional argument up with factual examples but
capital punishment was not reinstated in all 50 states so I guess we have
examples of the situations you described, though it doesn't seem to work
the way you assumed.

ihuxm!cwa	Carl Amport	Naperville, IL.