12/12/2023
To: Rob Schofield, Editor, NC Newsline
All Leadership & National reporters States Newsroom
BOLTS
BCC: see below
Subject: Death Penalty - Journalists Refusing Fact Checking, Vetting & Critical Thinking
RE: Advocates push for extraordinary action on the death penalty, Rob Schofield, NC Newsline, Dec 12, 2023
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
Preface
Schofield's is a standard media anti-death penalty article:
1) No fact checking nor vetting nor critical thinking, regarding anti-death penalty claims:
2) No research, whatsoever, of pro-death penalty facts and defenses
Can that be done, accidentally? Of course not. Very common, throughout media, as detailed.
Schofield confirms that with this:
1) Schofield : "Abolition proponents have the best of the argument when it comes to a dispassionate review of the data."
Sharp: The reverse is true. Will States Newsroom care? The standard is that they will care, very much, and, because of that, do nothing. It is the preferred method. It is "journalism today". Yes? No? Let's look.
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I rebut all of Schofield's points in his article, in order, with sources.
2) No Deterrence
Sharp:
a) The Death Penalty: Saving More Innocent Lives
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-death-penalty-do-innocents-matter.html
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-death-penalty-do-innocents-matter.html
b) Deterrence, Death Penalties & Executions
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2019/04/deterrence-death-penalties-executions.html
https://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2019/04/deterrence-death-penalties-executions.html
c) 30 Examples: How Death Penalty Abolitionists Value Murderers More Than Their Innocent Victims:
AKA - Full Rebuttal of Sir Richard Branson & His Death Penalty Comments
3) racist and blatantly unfair
Sharp: See Race, Gender & Class in three separate articles, here
The Death Penalty: Fair and Just
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-death-peanalty-fairjust.html
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-death-peanalty-fairjust.html
4) Regularly convicts innocent people
Sharp: The Death Row "Exonerated"/"Innocent" Frauds
71-83% % Error Rate in Death Row "Innocent" Claims,
Well Known Since 1998
5) brutal and horrific executions
Sharp: Rebuttal: Botched Executions
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2017/01/rebuttal-botched-executions.html
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2017/01/rebuttal-botched-executions.html
6) autocratic regimes
Sharp: The USA, South Korea, Japan
7) Schofield: "it’s still easy to feel the presence of injustice and unfairness in the notion that someone might brutally end another’s life and yet still live to a ripe old age — especially in the case of a murderer who has acted multiple times."
Sharp: Thank you, but . . . If you cared you would have fact checked, vetted and used critical thinking. Did you avoid that, by accident? Of course not.
8) Schofield "this debate can readily become a quagmire of misinformation and prejudice in the world of modern sound bite politics, where anonymous forces – particularly on the political right – are happy to expend millions on ads designed to mislead and manipulate emotions."
Sharp: Schofield, look in the mirror.
9) Polling and reduced death penalty support
a) August 16, 2021
86% Death Penalty Support, Depending Upon Crime Committed
New Evidence of Broad Support for Death Penalty | RealClearPolicy
Joseph M. Bessette & J. Andrew Sinclair, RealClearPolicy August 16, 2021
These polls, above and below, reflect well known polls, for the last 15 years, showing much higher death penalty support than by the oft quoted, much less accurate Gallup, as even, Gallup shows (see Gallup's Mcveigh poll (below) vs their standard poll)
b) Death Penalty Polling
updated 3/2023
c) 86% Death Penalty Support: Highest Ever - April 2013
World Support Remains High
95% of Murder Victim's Family Members Support Death Penalty
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/11/86-death-penalty-support-highest-ever.html
95% of Murder Victim's Family Members Support Death Penalty
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2013/11/86-death-penalty-support-highest-ever.html
10) Schofield: "As NC Newsline reporter Kelan Lyons detailed in a recent special report (“In NC, one man — Gov. Roy Cooper — has the power to empty death row. But will he do it?”)
Sharp: Lyon's article may, even, have been worse than Schofield's. A huge article. not, once mentioning the innocent murder victims and comparing the death penalty, today, to the past's lynching . . . without noting . . .
White murderers are twice a likely to be executed as are black murderers and are executed at a rate 41% higher than black death row inmates (3 above).
11) This is, particularly, foul:
Lyons: " (Anti-death penalty) advocates are now hoping Cooper will offer clemency for the 136 people on death row en masse, regardless of the circumstances of the crimes of which they are convicted, because of the injustices of the death penalty and North Carolina’s criminal legal system at large."
Sharp: No matter how cruel, not matter how foul, not matter how racist, no matter the hatred of women, no matter how much of a continuing danger, no matter how perfect the trial, no matter no remorse, no matter how much the families of the children raped/tortured and murdered, finding that the death penalty the most just sanction, these anti-death penalty folks think that all death row inmates should be spared execution.
Not one bit surprising, as detailed:
30 Examples: How Death Penalty Abolitionists Value Murderers More Than Their Innocent Victims:
AKA - Full Rebuttal of Sir Richard Branson & His Death Penalty Comments
12) Lyons: "(murderer) Basden stopped using alcohol and drugs and found God (while on death row)."
Sharp: it never occurred to Lyons or Basden's family members that all of that happened because he was on death row?
a) The Death Penalty: Mercy, Expiation, Redemption & Salvation
b) Jesus and the Death Penalty
13) If you would like to see a complete deconstruction of Lyon's article, let me know.
In Closing
Journalism is extinct and that is what "journalists" have chosen., as detailed:
Enter Media Disaster in the search box, here, and click
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bcc: I will be sending an edited version of this, later
To: Gov. Roy Cooper and Staff
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Staff
Senate/House Committees and staff - Justice, Judicial, Public Safety, Corrections, PrisonsAttorney General Josh Stein and Staff
North Carolina Sheriff's Assoc.
NC Office for Victims of Crime
Parents of Murdered Children
Megan Smith, ArtSpace Charter School, staff and teachers
North Carolina Policy Watch
Media throughout North Carolina
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600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
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Victim Services
Victims' Voices
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Research, w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of anyone within a public policy debate and which rebut all anti-death penalty claims.
The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro-death penalty experts are included)
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Partial CV
