Death Penalty Deters
I have a distinct recollection of one of my first lectures at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Stephen Schulhofer, a brilliant academic (he's now at NYU) who looked as if he'd responded to Central Casting's call for a liberal, was leading a discussion of the death penalty - and he was having difficulty finding anyone to speak in support.
I still had hair back then, admittedly not much, and perhaps my close-cropped coif was just the invitation Schulhofer needed to include me as a participant as he looked for a contrarian. I took the bait and weighed in.
"But do you think it's a deterrent, Mr. Smerconish?" he pressed. When I responded affirmatively, my classmates literally hissed their disapproval.
For me, the only thing that has changed relative to the death penalty in the intervening 20 years is that I've grown accustomed to the public ridicule that often accompanies my view. I still think it's a deterrent, and my opinion is emboldened by a recent analysis of execution and homicide data published in the Wall Street Journal.
Roy Adler and Michael Summers, both professors at Pepperdine University, have recently analyzed the relationship between the number of U.S. executions by year and the number of murders in the year thereafter for 1979-2004. They relied on raw data supplied by the Death Penalty Information Center and the FBI.
They have documented a relationship between capital punishment and the future rate of homicide. When executions leveled off, the professors found, murders increased. And when executions increased, the number of people murdered dropped off. In a year-by-year analysis, Adler and Summers found that each execution was associated with 74 fewer murders the following year.
That's a stunning statistic, but as I have already learned, not one that will necessarily sway death-penalty opponents. When I shared the data last week with actor, M.A.S.H. TV star, and death-penalty opponent Mike Farrell, he dismissed it as "peddled" and part of an agenda: "It's a claim, it's a typical claim that comes up periodically, and it's been refuted generally. As is always the case, this hard data is analyzed by people that have a bias one way or the other."
But one of the Pepperdine professors assured me they brought no agenda to the table.
"The morality of the issue is something for someone else to argue," Adler, himself a Fulbright professor, told me this month. "We're just simply presenting the data and lifting the veil that says, 'There's no deterrent effect, therefore . . . ' Well, there is, and it's about 74 to 1. And other people can argue moral grounds on either side."
Based on their analysis, Adler and Summers properly recast the issue that confronts society when deciding whether to implement the death penalty. The question is not whether to spare the life of the convicted, but rather, whether to spare the lives of 74 innocents in the year that follows.
"Our intent was to open this up to a dialogue. The ratio is not 'save a life or not;' it's 'save this life or save dozens of others next year.' And that's a much more difficult moral dilemma that deserves wide discussion, I think," Adler told me.
My interview with Adler and review of his work with Summers reminded me of a similar body of work conducted in the 1980s by a then-Auburn University criminology professor named Steven Stack. Now a professor at Wayne State University, Stack sought to answer a more specific question: Do well-publicized executions deter future homicides? Because if the public is unaware of an execution, Stack argued, its deterrent effect cannot be calculated.
Stack targeted 16 execution cases between 1950 and 1980 that met his criterion for "nationally publicized." His analysis led him to conclude that approximately 30 fewer homicides are committed in the month that follows a publicized execution story.
When I caught up with Stack last week, he told me his work has withstood the test of time and that he was looking forward to publishing an update that is currently being circulated for peer review. When I told him his findings were not as significant as those of Adler and Summers, he appropriately quipped, "I suppose it's especially significant if you're one of those 30 people who would've been killed otherwise."
Of course, what put the issue of crime and capital punishment on my mind was the violence against Philadelphia police officers, specifically the murder of Officer Chuck Cassidy. How ironic that one day after the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office decided not to pursue death for Solomon Montgomery (who pleaded guilty to the brutal killing of Officer Gary Skerski), the execution of Officer Cassidy rocked the city anew.
You can't blame the D.A.'s Office or the Skerski family for not pressing for Montgomery's execution. No doubt they were reflecting that in one month, the Faulkner family will mark the 26-year anniversary of the night Mumia Abu-Jamal murdered Officer Danny Faulkner - a death-penalty case with no end in sight. Soon, the Cassidy family may have to make its wishes known relative to John Lewis, given his confession Tuesday to the murder of Chuck Cassidy.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has instituted a de facto death-penalty moratorium. For all practical purposes, capital punishment is on life support.
Too bad.
Because while the academics tabulate their evidence suggesting that the death penalty deters crime, what I told my law professor at Penn two decades ago remains incontrovertible. When he asked me if I thought the death penalty was a deterrent, I borrowed a line I'd heard Frank Rizzo once deliver.
"Professor," I said, "I know it deters at least one person at a time."
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I bet the way China uses the death penalty is a great deterrent to crime, but does that mean they're a great government?
Think hard about all the death row inmates who have been released based on DNA evidence, and then tell me again that killing them is worth it because it deters crime.
The morality and law enforcement issues may be complicated. But the death penalty sure is expensive.
Kenneth Allen McDuff- Killed three people, sentenced to Death in Texas. Before he could be killed, state supreme court commutes all death sentences. McDuff is commuted to life, but jails were overcrowded and he received early parole. Women started disappearing within three days, brutally raped and murdered. Caught again, death penalty reinstated and this monster put down for good.
Death- the only true guarantee a killer won't do so again...
There's no death penalty in Canada. There is in the United States. If it's a deterrent, why isn't the murder rate in Canada higher than in the United States?
states that have the death penalty have a higher murder rate than those that don't.chec
do the facts matter?
not to right wing "law and order" nutballs. there are justifications for the death penalty; deterrence is definitely not one of them.
The punishment meted out to murderers reveals the value we place on the victim's life.
Anything less than the death penalty is an injustice.
I don't know if it's a conservative or liberal thing. I'm a liberal who believes in the death penalty, but only after all appeals and dna evidence have been exhausted. After that, I believe the murderer should be executed in exactly the same manner in which he or she murdered their victim....
I highly doubt that a man killing his girlfriend for cheating on him thinks of the death penalty. The drug dealer killing a rival doesn't think of the death penalty. The serial killer does not think of the consequence of his behavior. Please, all the death penalty does is allow for vengenace. Any statistician can manipulate numbers to prove a pre-determined point. This "study" doesn't take into account public outrage at the crime (not the punishment), better policing after the initial crime, etc. Its sad that this country cannot move past such medieval concepts.
The state shouldn't kill people. Punishment for murder is state-sanctioned murder? Come on.
If we have the means to permanently remove the worst offenders from society without killing them, then what's the problem?
The death penalty isn't a deterrent and it isn't justice - it's vengeance, pure and simple.
If the death penalty is such a deterrent how do you explain this, Mr. Smerconish:
Average of murder rates among death penalty states in 2006: 5.1
Average of murder rates among non-death penalty states in 2006: 3.1
http://www
Horrible criminal act, blood, semen and DNA match, jury conviction and judge in agreement.
Death, the only true guaranty that a monster will never kill again.
Don't care about deterence
Don't care about revenge
Don't care about the bible/koran etc.. (the true leading cause of death in the world)
Even when the crime is so heinous that the only satisfactory punishment is to incinerate the offender, the death penalty is no deterrent. It entertains the rabble, it makes the survivors feel a little better, but given that it's taken right off the table when the defendant pleads guilty like BTK did, it's not a deterrent.
Our justice system is a steaming heap. We have guilty people on the street and innocent people in prison. The poor,the retarded and the mentally ill are pawns in the prosecutors political game. Prisons have been privatized so now there is profit motive to lock people up. When all these problems have been solved we can talk about the death penalty.
I believe what Michael meant to say was: "I've grown resigned to the public ridicule that always accompanies my views”!!!
With every statistic in favour of your argument and every sentence you write as to its ability to deter future crimes, they are, each and every one, countered by the numbers of innocent people put to death.
There is no argument. Whatever morality or ethics you may apply to either argument is halted by that simple fact.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
