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Depravity Scale: Weighing evil that men do

By Paul H.B. Shin

NY Daily News, May 14, 2006

FOR JUDGES AND juries, determining how depraved a crime is can be notoriously tricky and often clouded by gut-wrenching emotions. But the task could soon become much more scientific, thanks to a local expert who is creating a first-of-its-kind scale to standardize what courts mean when they label crimes as depraved, heinous or evil. "When is a murder like many other murders and when is a murder truly the worst of the worst?" said Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist at the NYU School of Medicine, who is developing a "depravity scale." For example, which of the following two crimes warrants a stiffer sentence: . A father tortures and beats his underweight 7-year-old daughter to death for taking yogurt without permission, following years of abuse, or: . A man binds the face of a talented 24-year-old woman with packing tape, rapes and strangles her, then dumps her defiled, naked body on a desolate street. Juries in New York may soon have to struggle with these gruesome crimes against Nixzmary Brown and Imette St. Guillen. Though Welner's scale may not be in place in time to give these particular juries guidance, it's something that's sorely needed to establish consistent and fair punishments for the worst of crimes, legal experts and law enforcement officials around the country said. In 39 states, including New York, judges and juries can mete out harsher sentences for crimes described with words such as "depraved," "vile" and "atrocious". "But there's been a longstanding confusion and lack of consensus in the field about what some of these terms mean," said Jay Corzine, co-editor of the journal Homicide Studies and a sociologist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. "There just is not any consistency," he said. Using a Web-based poll (www.depravityscale.org), Welner asks 25 nuanced questions that gauge why a person thinks one crime is more depraved than another. "This is the first research in which the general public is instrumental in having an impact on future sentencing," he said. One question asks which is worse: a perpetrator who causes grotesque suffering in a victim or a perpetrator who defiles a victim after the crime. "We all have a sense of what we personally consider depraved, but this [scale] would take away the subjectivity of our personal beliefs and hopefully would objectify the process and make it more fair," said Kevin Takata, a prosecutor in Honolulu who specializes in homicides. Takata recalled two recent homicides - both gruesome - one of which was deemed depraved while the other was not. One involved a prostitute strangled to death and then dismembered. The other involved a man who bludgeoned a woman severely and then slashed her throat while she was still alive. "Both could be considered depraved murders, but in the case where the prostitute was dismembered, because she was dead before the dismemberment, we didn't charge the defendant with depraved conduct," Takata noted. Welner's scale will allow prosecutors, judges or juries to classify a crime as having low, medium or high depravity. "The judge or the jury will still have the burden of saying, 'Here's how I want to call it.' But at least they will be informed," Welner said. 
 
pshin@nydailynews.com