Well, this is a surprise, the death penalty saves lives. If so, the question than becomes only a moral one.
Rethinking the Death Penalty in The New York Times
According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.
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“I personally am opposed to the death penalty,” said H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University and an author of a study finding that each execution saves five lives. “But my research shows that there is a deterrent effect.”
Deterrance is a red herring. It always has been, ever since someone said that "following an execution there is demonstrable evidence that at least one individual has been deterred from further killing."
As in discussions about torture (also currently fashionable...and not unrelated to the blunting of what passes for public morality) the underlying question is not what capital punishment does to the perpetrator, but what it does to us who render the punishment. Mine is a minority view, but it is the only one I can hold and consider myself anything close to moral.
In the whole scheme of things, I find the taking of a potential and unlived life especially if done for reasons of convenience or because it's the wrong sex far worse than the taking of a criminal's life who, with his gift of life, chose to murder another innocent in a particularly gruesome way because the death penalty is involved, and has been tried, found guilty and with numerous opportunities for appeal.
Posted by: Jill at November 19, 2007 3:40 PM