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What makes Newark murders so heinous?

 
By Michael Welner, M.D.
 
NY Daily News, August 15, 2007

Four people shot, ages 18 to 20, three dead in Newark. You may think you've heard this kind of story before, because you have. But the recent robbery-slayings in a local schoolyard grabbed national headlines as activists tweaked the city's ambitious mayor, Cory Booker.

Of course, we should all be outraged by the Newark killings - but do we know what makes them more heinous than others, other than the page on which the story appears in the newspaper?

We don't - but we should.

Laws in many states, including New York and New Jersey, allow for special sentencing for crimes that are "cruel" or "depraved." But standards for heinous crimes are vague and lack consistency or a foundation in that crime's evidence. As a result, a crime may be deemed as the worst of the worst because the victim was a "good person," which all too often may mean that he or she has a certain skin color or a photogenic face. Or a heinous crime may be declared when the perpetrator had a criminal record, was an undocumented immigrant or was otherwise easy to demonize.

Whatever happened to the punishment reflecting the actual crime?

That's where the Depravity Scale (www.depravitystandard.org) comes in. Its surveys, developed by an organization I chair, are the first initiative to give the public a direct voice in shaping laws that define the features of evil crimes. We ask all Americans to answer questions like: Are homicides more depraved when victims are unarmed? Or are homicides more depraved when the actions are far more indulgent than needed to, say, simply carry out a robbery?

The Depravity Scale research focuses on the potential intents, actions and victims of a given crime, and attitudes of the perpetrator. Our ultimate goal is to develop evidence guidelines that can be used to get jurors to think about the specific facts of a case, not the politics or theater that sometimes obscure those facts.

Examining the Newark shootings through the lens of the Depravity Scale, investigators might one day probe whether the crime occurred as it did because its plotters wanted to terrorize the community; whether they wanted to carry out murder for the experience - or whether the shootings were a crime to gain street cred. Did the perpetrators target the helpless, or pick their prey based on ethnicity? What was the attitude of each of the perpetrators after the fact - satisfaction? indifference?

Unlike the emotion-driven judgments we make today, evidence-based determinations of the evil of a crime can be fair and precise. When we as citizens define, through our opinions, the worst features of crime, we will have more confidence in courts in which we may one day sit as jurors, families of victims or even as defendants.

Press conferences and headlines are not a reliable guidepost for calibrating what crimes are unacceptable to the people of Newark. Rather, when each person's input to the Depravity Scale research shapes a consensus of what makes evil crimes evil, we can begin drawing fair, clear red lines that promote fairness in punishment and help shape a society that knows evil - and can turn away from it.

Dr. Welner, a forensic psychiatrist, is an associate professor at NYU School of Medicine and chairman of the Forensic Panel.

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