|
  
- 积分
- 3956
- 威望
- 1077
- 金钱
- 3
- 阅读权限
- 80
- 性别
- 女
- 在线时间
- 209 小时
|
2#
发表于 2007-9-16 01:39
| 只看该作者
Campaigners against the death penalty have been making their case state by state, with little fanfare but some success. The number of executions has fallen by 46% from its modern peak in 1999, to 53 last year (see chart 1). Two-thirds of states executed no one last year, and only six carried out multiple executions. The number of death sentences has fallen even more sharply, by 60% from a peak of about 300 a year in the mid-1990s.
反对死刑的活动家一个州接一个州地默默实干，获得了一些成功。行刑数从1999年的近代以来峰值降低了46%，降到去年的53例（见图1）。三分之二的州去年没有处死一人。只有6个州处死了多人。死刑判决数下降得更快，比90年代中期的每年300例的峰值降低了60%。
The arguments for and against capital punishment have evolved. Thirty years ago, says Mr Radelet, Americans supported the death penalty for three main reasons: deterrence, religious conviction (an eye for an eye) and taxes (the idea of spending public money to feed and clothe murderers for the rest of their lives seemed outrageous). This last argument no longer applies. It is now far more expensive to execute someone than to jail him for life; in North Carolina, for instance, each capital case costs $2m more. Ordinary inmates need only to be fed and guarded. Those on death row must have lawyers arguing expensively about their fate, sometimes for a decade or more (see chart 2). The system of appeals has grown more protracted because of fears that innocent people may be executed. Few would argue that such safeguards are not needed, but their steep cost gives abolitionists a new line of attack.
支持和反对死刑的理由也在变化。Radelet先生说，30年前美国人因为三大理由支持死刑：威慑犯罪，宗教信念（以眼还眼）和税收（花费公众钱财来负担杀人犯余生的吃穿看起来骇人听闻）。最后一个理由不再站得住脚了。相比终生监禁，现在处死一个犯人昂贵得多：比如在北卡罗来纳州，每个死刑案要多花200 万美元。普通犯人只需要食物和看守。那些等待行刑犯的要价不菲的律师们为死刑犯争取未来，有时候要拖十年或者更长时间（见图2）。因为害怕无辜的人被执行死刑，上诉体系变得更拖拖拉拉。没人说这些安全措施没必要，但过高的花费使废除死刑者找到了新的口实。
Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland, says that, but for the death penalty, his state would have been $22.4m richer since 1978. That money would have paid for 500 extra policemen for a year, or provided drug treatment for 10,000 addicts. “Unlike the death penalty, these are investments that save lives and prevent violent crime,” he told the state legislature in February, in a speech urging it to repeal capital punishment in Maryland. He failed by the narrowest of margins: a state Senate committee was deadlocked by five votes to five, preventing the bill from advancing.
马里兰州长Martin O'Malley说，如果没有死刑，马里兰州自1978年来能多收入2240万美元。这些钱够该州一年多雇佣500个警察了，或者为1万名吸毒者进行药物治疗。“这是能挽救生命并防止暴力犯罪的投资，而死刑不是。”他在二月份敦促州议会废除死刑的一次演讲中说道。最微弱的票数差使州长的计划失败，一个州参议院委员会陷入了5比5的僵局，使这项法案无法继续推动。
A similar attempt got further in Colorado, where Paul Weissman, a state representative, proposed that the money saved by abolishing the death penalty should be spent on a “cold cases” unit to investigate unsolved murders. His bill made it through a committee, but was gutted.
科罗拉多州类似的尝试更进了一步。该州议员Paul Weissman提议把废除死刑节省的资金用于设立一个调查谋杀悬案的“死案”部门。提案被一个委员会通过，但随即被腰斩。
Abolitionists have had more luck, at least temporarily, by arguing that lethal injection, the form of execution most widely adopted, is excruciatingly painful. The cocktail used generally contains sodium thiopental (to anaesthetise the condemned man), pancuronium bromide (to paralyse his muscles) and potassium chloride (to stop his heart). Some studies suggest that prisoners are sometimes inadequately sedated, and perhaps die in silent agony from asphyxiation.
至少在目前，在另一方面废除死刑者运气更好。他们争辩说毒剂注射这种最广泛使用的行刑方式是极度痛苦的。一般注射用的混合针剂含有硫喷妥钠（麻醉犯人），泮库溴铵（麻痹犯人肌肉）和氯化钾（停止犯人心跳）。一些研究说，犯人有时可能未被充分麻醉，或许因为窒息而愤怒无声地死去。
Since last year, ten states have halted executions because of fears that lethal injection may be cruel, and therefore unconstitutional. In Florida, for example, Governor Jeb Bush (the president's brother) suspended executions after a fiasco last December in which the executioner missed a vein and pumped the drugs into muscle. The condemned man took 34 minutes to die, during which he grimaced and writhed, suggesting acute agony.
从去年开始，10个州开始停止了死刑执行，因为它们害怕毒剂注射有可能太残酷而违反宪法。比如在佛罗里达，州长杰布·布什（总统的弟弟）在去年12月的一次丑闻之后——行刑者漏过了静脉，把毒剂打进了肌肉里——暂停了死刑行刑。那名犯人34分钟后才死去，其间表情怪诞身体扭曲，饱受痛苦煎熬。
The problem can, however, be fixed. In Florida a committee has recommended 37 ways to make lethal injection more “humane”. This has satisfied Mr Bush's successor, Charlie Crist, who has now started signing death warrants. The governor of Tennessee, having stopped all executions in February, also let them resume in May.
不过，问题可以得到解决。在佛罗里达，一个委员会推荐37种方法使得毒剂注射更“人性化”。这使布什州长的继任者Charlie Crist十分满意，他现在开始签署死刑执行令了。在二月停止了所有死刑行刑的田纳西州州长，三月份也恢复了行刑。
For many, the death penalty holds a deep emotional appeal. It is “an expression of society's ultimate outrage”, says Bob Grant, a former prosecutor and now a professor at the University of Denver, Colorado. Some acts, he argues, are so heinous that no other punishment is appropriate. One example he cites is the case of Gary Davis, the only man executed in Colorado since the 1960s. Mr Davis kidnapped, tortured, sexually assaulted and murdered a young mother in
1986. His guilt was not in doubt. Mr Grant prosecuted him and watched him put to death.
对很多人来说，死刑包含着很深的情感诉求。死刑是“社会终极愤怒的一种表达”，曾任检察官，现在是科罗拉多州丹佛大学教授的Bob Grant说。他争辩说，有些行为十恶不赦，除了死刑其他刑罚都不合适。他举的一个例子是Gary Davis的案子，该犯是科罗拉多60年代以来唯一处死的犯人。1986年Davis绑架，折磨并性攻击一位年轻母亲，最后谋杀了她。他的罪孽是毫无疑问的。Grant先生对他提起公诉并最终看到他被处死。
Mr Grant says his views on the death penalty have nothing to do with religion, but many who agree with him do so for religious reasons. A prosecutor in Texas cites Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” This, he says, is “pretty compelling”.
Grant先生说他对死刑的观点与宗教无关。但很多赞同他的人因为宗教原因而支持死刑。一位德州检察官引用《圣经·创世纪》9章6节：“凡流人血的，他的血也必被人所流。”对此，Grant说，这种说法“颇令人信服”。
Opponents of capital punishment tend to respond by saying that juries, being human, err. If you find you have jailed the wrong man, you can free and compensate him. If you have executed him, however, it is too late. Jurors increasingly balk at imposing the death penalty, even when they are convinced of a defendant's guilt. Governors, who must review every capital conviction, are also becoming hesitant. In 2000, for example, after journalism students dug up evidence that a man about to be executed was innocent, Illinois's governor, George Ryan, commuted all death sentences in the state and imposed a moratorium that still stands, despite challenges.
反对死刑的人常回应说，陪审团是人，就一定会犯错误。如果你发现你关错了人，你可以释放他并给予补偿。然而如果你错杀了他，什么都迟了。陪审员们越来越不愿意判定死刑，即使他们确认被告犯有死罪。州长们必须复核每一个死刑定罪，他们也变得越来越犹豫。比如2000年，在伊利诺伊州实习记者调查发现一个即将行刑犯人的无罪证据后，伊利诺伊州长George Ryan给全州所有的死刑犯减了刑，并强行暂停了处刑。尽管争议重重，这项暂停一直延续到今天。
Since 1973, 124 Americans have been released from death row because of doubts about their guilt; and of the 7,662 sentenced to death between 1973 and 2005, 2,190 had their sentence or conviction overturned. But in no case has it been legally proven—for example, with DNA evidence—that an innocent person has been executed. Mr Grant says it simply does not happen. “The fact that some people are released from death row is proof that the safeguards work,” he says. Abolitionists suspect he is wrong. The Death Penalty Information Centre, a lobby group, lists eight executed men for whom there is “strong evidence of innocence”.
1973年以来，因为案件仍存有疑点，124名美国人脱离了等待行刑的队伍。1973到2005年间被判死刑的7662人中，2190人的判决或定案被撤销了。但在法律上还没有发现——比方说，通过DNA证据——某个无辜的人被处死。Grant说那根本就不会发生。“一些人脱离这一队伍的事实本身就说明安全措施是有效的，”，他说。废除死刑主义者怀疑他是错的。死刑信息中心——某游说团体——列出了七名据说存在“强有力的无罪证据”而被处决的男性。
Ruben Cantu, for example, was put to death in 1993 for murder during a robbery. He was convicted because Juan Moreno, a second victim he allegedly shot nine times but failed to kill, identified him at the trial. But Mr Moreno now says his identification was made under pressure from the police, and was wrong. The prosecutor accepts that the man he sent to his death “may well have been innocent” (though an investigation in Texas in June rejected this).
比如Ruben Cantu，1993年因抢劫中发生的谋杀被处决。另一名据称被案犯射击9枪但并未毙命的受害者Juan Moreno在法庭上指认了他，他因而被定罪。但Moreno先生现在说当时的指认是在警方压力下做出的，是错的。检察官也承认在他手上送命的这名犯人 “很有可能是清白的”。（虽然德州六月的一次调查否定了这一点。）
Deterrence works—or does it?
震慑有效——真的有效吗？
Although DNA testing has yet to show that an innocent American has been executed, it has proved beyond question that miscarriages of justice occur. Widely reported exonerations have alerted the public to the uncomfortable fact that juries are sometimes biased, that the police sometimes lie and that snitches often do.
虽然DNA检测证明并未有无辜的美国人被处死。但还不仅仅是误审发生的问题。定罪后又被判无罪的事情广为报道。陪审团有时存有偏见而警察有时撒谎这一令人不安的事实使公众警觉起来。
But what if executions save lives by deterring potential murderers? That would “greatly unsettle moral objections to the death penalty”, argue Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, two law professors. Abolitionists say there is no proof that capital punishment deters. Death-penalty enthusiasts say several studies suggest it does.
但如果行刑能通过震慑潜在谋杀者来挽救生命呢？那将“极大地扰乱对死刑的道德上的反对”，两位法律教授Cass Sunstein和Adrian Vermeule说。废除死刑者声称没有证据表明行刑有震慑作用。热衷于死刑的人则说几个研究表明死刑确实能够震慑罪犯。
A crude way of trying to settle which camp is correct is to compare murder rates in jurisdictions with and without capital punishment. This offers no support for the notion of deterrence. In 2005 there were 46% more murders per head in states with the death penalty than in those without it, and that gap has widened since 1990. The murder rate in the United States as a whole, moreover, is far higher than in western Europe, where capital punishment is a thing of the past.
解决两个阵营争议的一个粗略方法是比较有死刑和没有死刑辖区的谋杀案发率。结果并不支持死刑有震慑作用的想法。2005年，有死刑的州比没有死刑的州人均多46%的谋杀案。1990这一差距更大。此外，美国整体的谋杀率远比西欧高得多，而在西欧死刑早已是过去的事了。
Yet many other factors influence murder rates—unemployment, the probability of getting caught, the availability of guns, the proportion of young men in the population and so on. More sophisticated studies attempt to control for such factors.
但很多其他因素影响着谋杀案发案率——失业率，被抓住的可能性，能否搞到枪支，人口中的青年人比例以及其他因素。更复杂的研究试图考虑这些因素。
Joanna Shepherd, of Emory School of Law in Atlanta, for example, looked at monthly data for executions and murders between 1977 and 1999 and controlled for age, sex, race and labour-market conditions. She found that each execution deterred on average three murders, and that swift executions deterred even more. Other researchers at Emory found that each execution deterred a startling 18 murders. In another study Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Kaj Gittings of Cornell University found that each execution deterred five murders, and that each time a death sentence was commuted, five more murders were committed.
比如亚特兰大埃默里大学法学院的Joanna Shepherd的研究，她考虑了年龄，性别，种族和劳动力市场情况等因素，在此基础上观察1977年至1999年之间每月的谋杀和行刑数。她发现每例死刑行刑平均能阻止三起谋杀，快速行刑震慑力更强。埃默里大学的其他研究人员研究发现，每例死刑执行震慑了令人惊异的18起谋杀。科罗拉多大学Naci Mocan和康奈尔大学的Kaj Gittings的另一项研究发现，每次死刑执行震慑了5起谋杀，每给一例死刑减刑就增加5起谋杀案。
The trouble with all these studies is that they draw firm conclusions from sparse data. America has executed on average fewer than 40 people a year since 1976. Even if each execution had a strong deterrent effect, it would be hard to detect against the background of a murder toll that has fluctuated from 24,703 in 1991 to 15,522 in 1999, before rising again to 16,692 in 2005. Researchers' calculations are further distorted by the fact that one state dominates the data. “Any regression study will be primarily a comparison of Texas with everywhere else,” writes Ted Goertzel in Skeptical Enquirer magazine.
所有这些研究的问题在于，他们确定的结论来自于寥寥无几的数据。美国自1976年以来每年平均处决不到40人。即使每起死刑执行有强烈的震慑作用，在谋杀数大幅波动的背景下（1991年24703人被谋杀，1999年15522人，2005年升至16692人。）也很难观察到这些效应。某个州的数据占上风的事实使研究人员的计算更加失真。“任何回归研究都将基本成为德州和其他州的对照结果。”《怀疑探究者》杂志的Ted Goertzel写到。
The chance of being executed in America is so remote that it cannot plausibly be a significant deterrent, argues Steven Levitt, of the University of Chicago. Even if you are on death row—a fate over 99% of murderers escape—the chance of being put to death in any given year is only about 2%. Members of a crack gang studied by one of Mr Levitt's colleagues had a 7%-a-year chance of being murdered. For them, death row would be safer than the street.
芝加哥大学的Steven Levitt认为，在美国被处决的机会微乎其微，使得死刑执行无法成为一个明显可信的震慑。即使你是等待被处决的死刑犯——超过99%的谋杀犯都不会被判死刑——每年被处死的概率大约只有2%。Levitt的一位同事对毒品团伙所做的研究表明，毒品团伙成员被谋杀的可能性是年均7%。对他们来说，等待行刑比待在街上安全多了。
There are other arguments against the death penalty. Some opponents complain of a racial bias in its application. This is disputed. Mr Radelet thinks the race of the perpetrator makes little difference, but juries respond more vengefully when the victim is white. In a study of murders in California, he found that those who killed non-Hispanic whites were twice as likely to be sentenced to death as those with darker victims.
还有其他的理由反对死刑。一些反对者诉说在执行中存在种族偏见。在这点上存在争论。Radelet认为罪犯的种族影响不大，但受害人是白人时陪审团复仇情绪更强。在一项对加利福尼亚谋杀犯的研究中，他发现那些杀害非拉美裔白人被判死刑的机会是杀害深色人种两倍。
Capital punishment is not about to end in America. But, as voters lose their appetite for it, states will use it less or even give it up completely. How closely America follows the global trend towards abolition will depend less on academic arguments than on emotional ones.
死刑并不会从美国马上消失。但随着选民对死刑没了胃口，各州会减少死刑甚至彻底放弃死刑。美国如何紧密跟随全球废除死刑的潮流，与其说取决于学术原因，不如说是由情绪原因决定。
After Joseph Nichols's execution, the victim's family said they were glad that justice had been done, but angry that it had taken nearly 30 years. Colleen Shaffer, the victim's daughter-in-law and a social worker by training, said that at the time of the murder she had thought the death penalty “maybe wasn't such a good idea”. Now she is a strong supporter.
Nichols被执行死刑后，被害者家属说他们很高兴正义得到了伸张，但是他们对近30年才行刑表示愤怒。被害人的儿媳，一名从事培训的社会工作者Colleen Shaffer说，在谋杀发生时她认为死刑“或许不是什么好办法”，而现在她是死刑的坚定支持者。
In Boulder, Colorado, Howard Morton tells a different story. His son Guy disappeared while hitch-hiking in the Arizona desert in 1975, when he was 18. For more than a decade Mr Morton continued to search for his son. Then, in 1987, a retired deputy sheriff read about Guy in a newspaper, and recalled finding a skeleton in the desert in the year he had disappeared. The medical examiner had mislabelled it as belonging to a Hispanic woman, but dental records proved it was Guy. He had been found with a broken knife blade in his chest. The murderer was never caught.
在科罗拉多州的波尔得市，Howard Morton讲述了一个不同的故事。1975年他18岁的儿子Guy在亚利桑那沙漠中徒步旅行时失踪了。十多年来Morton先生一直在寻找他的儿子。 1987年，一位退休的副警长在报纸上读到了Guy的故事后，想起曾在Guy失踪那年在沙漠中找到一具骷髅。验尸官把骷髅错标成一个拉美裔女人，但牙科记录证明那就是Guy。他被发现时胸口插着一把缺刃的刀刃。杀人者到现在仍未找到。
Mr Morton discovered that over 30% of murders in America are unsolved, like his son's. He found out, too, that the states spend millions of dollars putting a handful of murderers to death while detection is under-financed and thousands of murderers walk free. He became an ardent abolitionist. Anyone close to a murder victim “wants the son of a bitch who did it to die,” he says. “But you've got to catch the son of a bitch. That's more important.”
Morton先生发现美国30%以上的谋杀案仍未结案，就如同他儿子的案子。他也发现，各州花费数以百万计的美元对屈指可数的罪犯执行死刑的同时，案件侦破经费严重不足，成千的谋杀犯逍遥法外。于是他热情地支持废除死刑。任何一个受害者的近亲好友都“希望杀人的那个狗娘养的死掉”，他说，“但是你必须抓住那些狗娘养的，这更重要。” |
|
