Lethal Injection Cruel & Unusual? Options

[impala454]

I don't have a link but it shouldn't be difficult to find. Apparently here in Texas we're halting executions because some dipshit judge decided to rule lethal injection as "cruel & unusual punishment". WTF is cruel & unusual about it!!??

[blaarg]

and yes, 2 or 3 murders per 100,000 is substantial.
for instance in Canada that means 1000 less murders a year...

[impala454]

and yes, 2 or 3 murders per 100,000 is substantial.
for instance in Canada that means 1000 less murders a year...

I understand where you're coming from, I just don't think you're looking at the end result of the data and what it really means.

with 4.55 murders per 100,000 means that you have a 0.0046% chance of being murdered
lets say we dropped it to 2.55, that means you now have a 0.0026% chance of being murdered.

yeah, with the first value it's nearly twice the chances !! but it's akin to saying you have twice the chances of winning the lottery by buying two tickets.

[blaarg]

I understand where you're coming from, I just don't think you're looking at the end result of the data and what it really means.

with 4.55 murders per 100,000 means that you have a 0.0046% chance of being murdered
lets say we dropped it to 2.55, that means you now have a 0.0026% chance of being murdered.

yeah, with the first value it's nearly twice the chances !! but it's akin to saying you have twice the chances of winning the lottery by buying two tickets.

This isn't about me being personally murdered, its about the number of people murdered in a country. I agree, I feel just as safe in both Canada and the USA.

All I am saying is that if Canada had the same homicide rate as USA, a 1000 more people would be murdered a year. Or think of it in reverse, if the US had homicide rates of Canada, that is 9000 people that aren't murdered each year. This I find substantial.

This is an observation not a biased opinion.

[impala454]

This isn't about me being personally murdered, its about the number of people murdered in a country.

but that's the exact numbers you posted! all i did was perform the division to make it a percentage (more meaningful number). whether you say that 4.55 in 100,000 are murdered, or say you have a 0.00455% chance of being murdered, it's exactly the same statistic. it just looks worse when you say it one way rather than the other . that's where statistics can bite ya in the ass.

[blaarg]

but that's the exact numbers you posted! all i did was perform the division to make it a percentage (more meaningful number). whether you say that 4.55 in 100,000 are murdered, or say you have a 0.00455% chance of being murdered, it's exactly the same statistic. it just looks worse when you say it one way rather than the other . that's where statistics can bite ya in the ass.

I don't see how you can authoritatively say that a percentage is "a more meaningful number." I think that is subjective at best.
Also, they are not exactly equivalent. Assuming that the act of murder was a random event, then I would have a .00455% chance of getting murdered. If I stole millions of dollars from a Mob Boss and was not smart enough to leave the city, then I would have a 99% chance of being murdered.

I concede that they are two different ways of looking at the statistics. Where one way you are concerned as an individual, you aren't going to see much of a difference, however, if you look at it spanning an entire population, there is, at least in my opinion (you might not think that way) that there is somewhat of a difference.

One final thing (at least on this front), if you took your approach on saying that there are (to paraphrase, not to quote) "such a slight chance of these things happening to me it doesn't lend itself to much concern" then what can you say about other things: terrorism, medicine to cure non-prominent diseases (just to name the first two that come to my head). When one follows that train of thought, its a slippery slope to unintentionally implying a lot of other things.