Death Penalty

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Class #7

Statistics and the Death Penalty

The articles discussed in class relate to the study A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995, which was released last summer. You can listen to an NPR interview with the study's author, Joseph Liebman. (This requires the free RealPlayer 8 Basic plug-in.)

Here are links to articles on America's death penalty from The Economist.

" America's Death-Penalty Lottery," 8 June 2000. This article includes the infamous one-in-seven statistic criticized by Barnett.
" Dead Man Walking Out," 8 June 2000.
" Murder One," 15 June 2000. This article contains the curious double y-axis plot discussed in class

Homework

Write a brief paragraph responding to the last discussion question from the Death Penalty handout.
(This is actually problem 24.9 in your text. You may find it helpful to read the discussion of Simpson's Paradox on pp. 465-469.)