Talk:Capital punishment in Wisconsin

Question: What does the "lowest possible murder rates in the Union" have to do with capital punishment? It appears to me to be a backhanded way of supporting abolishment of the death penalty, tainting the article. Since it adds nothing of value to the discussion,I think it should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.19.137.133 (talk) 20:55, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The statements "Wisconsin was one of the earliest United States states to abolish the death penalty" and "becoming just the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes" seem odd together. If it was the first, then "one of the" seems like an unnecessary qualifier. Is there any good reason why it's phrased this way?

Ztrem (talk) 06:57, 31 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Based on the information presented in the Capital punishment in Michigan and Capital punishment in the United States articles, Wisconsin was perhaps the third state overall to abolish the death penalty (behind Michigan and Rhode Island) and the second state to abolish it for all crimes (behind just Michigan). The qualifier "for all crimes" was perhaps an attempt to distinguish Wisconsin's abolition against that of Rhode Island, but it appears that Michigan may still have Wisconsin beat in this regard. Therefore, at least based on the other Wikipedia articles, I believe that the second sentence that you quoted is actually incorrect. After reviewing the cited source for that second sentence, it gives the relevant dates for the Act which abolished the death penalty, but it gives no context about these dates in regards to abolition efforts in other states. I'll update this article to remove the "becoming just the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes" as it is not supported by the cited sources, and it appears to be an incorrect assertion. Ovenel (talk) 19:54, 22 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Actually, upon re-reading the article on Michigan, it indicates that Michigan did retain it as a punishment for treason up until 1963. So it might be the case that Wisconsin had abolished the death penalty for cases of treason as well, making it possibly true that Wisconsin was the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes. I am, however, still going to remove this phrase because it is not supported by the cited sources. The source given indicates that the relevant Act was signed into state law in 1853, but it does not go into detail about what exactly that law entailed. The source does not support the phrase "abolished the death penalty for all crimes". If it did, however, it still would not support the assertion that Wisconsin was the first state to do so without some original research on behalf of the Wikipedia editor. Even if we found a source that showed that Wisconsin had abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 1853 and cited a source that showed that Michigan had earlier abolished it for all crimes except for treason, it would still be against Wikipedia's policy against original research to assert that Wisconsin was the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes WP:SYNTHESIS. So I'm still removing the phrase, but it might actually have more merit than I was originally suggesting in my prior comment. Ovenel (talk) 20:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)