Category talk:Americans convicted of murder

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Should this category be "American convicted murderers" or similar? At the moment it seems slightly ill-defined, leaving open the possibility of POV additions. TSP 00:51, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. We don't want to open the "generally believed to be guilty of" can of worms. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 23:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree. An even better name might be "Americans convicted of murder," in fact, since "convicted murderers" refers to a a specific sort of murderer rather than a specific sort of convict. --Ian Maxwell 06:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Agree as per above. – Morganfitzp 12:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I also agree. Americans Convicted of Murder is more precise and neutral, with perhaps a different category for Americans Accused of Murder. Just my humble suggestion, for whatever it is worth. Zahir13 16:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree that "Americans Convicted of Murder" would probably be a better name for a category... "American murderers" sounds somewhat pejorative. ekedolphin 10:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, so I did a page move, and that moved the talk page, but not the main page. Can someone enlighten me as to how to move the main page? There is no "move" link like there is on this page. csloat 23:19, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Very large?

I don't think this category is very large. If subcategories are added, I don't think this category should be depopulated. If there are no negative comments, I will remove the very large tag in a few days. -- Samuel Wantman 20:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What makes a person worthy of inclusion as a murderer?

A particularly spectacular crime? Lots of publicity? Ann Rule writes a book about him?

I've been wondering if Dr. John Baxter Hamilton, who is serving life without parole for the Valentine's Day 2001 murder of his wife, is deserving of an entry. I think the fact that it was a doctor, a spouse murder on Valentine's day, makes it a particularly interesting crime. ChristinaDunigan 04:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Manslaughter?

What about those convicted of manslaughter, like John Thomas Sweeney? Can they be included? youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 00:29, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

An excellent question. IANAL but no, obviously. Consider Tom Neal, convicted of involuntary manslaughter. See my question here: nobody has been interested for two whole years.
I remove the "Murderers" category (2005)
Ted Wilkes adds the "American murderers" category (2006).
Seedbot changes this to "Americans convicted of murder" (3 July 2007).
I remove this category (3 July 2007). -- Hoary 14:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What a disgrace

What a disgrace... that much murders in one country~!! Talk about Safety......

[edit] Name

Some who were included in "Category:American murderers" were known to have committed murder without ever having been convicted - most commonly because they died before ever being discovered or prosecuted. --Dystopos 19:39, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. And others were convicted of something less than murder, but "Americans convicted of involuntary homicide" (etc) doesn't have a dramatic ring to it, and readability may trump factual accuracy (in the minds of some editors, not mine). See my comment two sections ago. -- Hoary 23:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Someone could have suggested "Americans convicted of killing" when it was up for renaming. The problem with broader categories (outside of "convicted of") is that a conviction is verifiable; it is not verifiable whether or not someone is a "murderer." Ultimately I think there is a deeper problem here, which is that a category such as this is simply not all that useful or encyclopedic. csloat 05:24, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I didn't notice that it was being renamed. All I saw was that the new category had been misapplied to Tom Neal: hapless, unpleasant and homicidal, but not convicted of murder. -- Hoary 06:32, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
(re: sloat's comment) The determination of whether or not someone is a murderer can certainly take into account sources other than a legal conviction. You can have confessions, biographical analyses, objective reports, etc. Where there is no controversy (i. e. Seung-Hui Cho) it is clearly enough to cite reliable sources. Where there may be controversy (i. e. Aaron Burr) it is best not to be categorical. --Dystopos 12:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
That's not unreasonable. However, when there's been a homicide and a suspect has, in a generally respected legal system, either been found innocent or been found guilty of lesser charges, and hasn't confessed (etc), then I don't think it's right for WP to announced that the suspect is a murderer. ¶ What do you think of this character? The article tells us that he's been charged with murder (and that prosecutors are seeking the death penalty). But the categorization says that he has already been convicted of murder. I think that this is wrong; indeed that it's the kind of thing that's a stain on WP. Come to think of it, I'll remove the cat right now. -- Hoary 16:17, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I believe I already said that where guilt is uncertain or controversial, it would be better not to categorize. --Dystopos 19:40, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
This is the reason the category name was changed. Whether someone was convicted of murder or not is an objective question easily determined by observation, and about which there can be no "controversy." Whether someone is a murderer or not, however, is a subjective question about which there can be a lot of controversy, even after a successful conviction (see, for example, Leonard Peltier, which is the page that got me interested in this category in the first place). It's perfectly reasonable to consider him an American convicted of murder, but there is a lot of controversy about whether he actually is one. He clearly fits the current category name. And it is true that there are a lot of probable murderers who have not been convicted -- rather than try to deal with all those sticky questions in a category, we should keep the category simple and verifiable (and keep people who have not been "convicted of murder" out of the category). csloat 18:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
And that is the reason the name change introduced inaccuracies. There are numerous cases of uncontroversial identifications of people as murderers. The court system is not the only verifiable source for that identification, but it is the only source for a conviction. Where shall we put those murderers who were not convicted? This is a separate question from the issue of controversial claims. --Dystopos 19:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I fully understand the difficulty of verifying membership in Category:American murderers. However, as pointed out by Dystopos and others, there are some people who are clearly murderers and not convicted of murder. Seung-Hui Cho is a recent example but so too are those who are found not guilty by reason of insanity. This is my personal understanding but I think there is a distinction between having committed a murder and having been convicted of a murder. For this reason, I think we could have two categories Category:American murderers and Category:Americans convicted of murder. Category:Americans convicted of murder can then be made a subcategory of Category:American murderers.

To address the concerns of those who wish to argue that Leonard Peltier should be in Category:Americans convicted of murder but not in Category:American murderers. For them, we could perhaps have a category Category:Americans who claim that they have been wrongly convicted of murder.

--Richard 19:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

  • My proposal is to return the category to Category:American murderers and to avoid adding articles for which the categorization is disputed. --Dystopos 21:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
    • The problem with that is that there are often disputed convictions that are worth looking at--Mumia Abu-Jamal, for instance. He is largely famous for his murder conviction and the dispute over it, so there should probably be some category for it. The previous solution was, basically, to say that "American murders" meant "Americans convicted of murder" (avoiding any dispute), except in cases where someone was obviously a murder and had died before trial. I don't think, all in all, that that's really a workable solution... the naming of the category was plainly POV to apply in a disputed case, no matter what the criteria here said. So the situation is this: We cannot restict ourselves to a category just for definite murderers, since people convicted of murder are often important enough to categorize; we can't restrict ourselves to only people who were convicted (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wouldn't be included--well, actually, they fall under American Spree Killers, but you get the idea); and we can't lump the two together, because any category name broad enough to encompass Harris and Klebold would probably be POV to apply to Mumia. One solution is to apply Americans convicted of murder to everyone who was convicted (and not overturned; we should probably have a seperate category for that), and recreate American murders for essentially uncontroversal cases where the subject wasn't convicted for one reason or another (usually, for it to be uncontroversal, this would have to be because they died before trial.) There might be some confusion where people apply 'American murderers' to someone who was convicted, but it will be easy enough to fix those when a dispute arises (and when no dispute arises--when someone is both uncontroversally considered a murderer and has been convicted of murder--it doesn't really matter, does it?) --Aquillion 02:03, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
  • In my opinion the distinction between your proposed categories is unclear and the tendency to multiply categories is unpromising. In the interest of simplicity, I again propose that the category be maintained as "American murderers" and cases where it would be POV to apply the category should be left uncategorized. --Dystopos 20:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit warring by Rambone

Rambone, please stop edit warring. The name of the category is "Americans convicted of murder." This should not include people who have not been convicted of murder any more than it should include non-Americans.csloat 17:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Though I do not support edit wars, I remind you that until recently the category had a broader scope, so who knows how many articles remain categorized here regardless of the whether a legal conviction on charges of murder was returned against their subject. Despite what "should" be categorized here, until someone takes the time to fix the errors introduced in renaming, the category does include unconvicted murderers. --Dystopos 17:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Fine, I'll start. I'll check the articles, and if it doesn't say they were convicted of murder, I'll remove the article from the category. --Kbdank71 18:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Finished with the A's. Removed three articles. --Kbdank71 18:31, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Finished with the B's. Removed 13 articles. --Kbdank71 19:09, 20 July 2007 (UTC)