That's the title of an editorial in Sunday's Dallas Morning News. It's subtitled, "Death penalty does not reduce homicide rate."
In theory, the death penalty saves lives by staying the hand of would-be killers. The idea is simple cost-benefit analysis: If a man tempted by homicide knew that he would face death if caught, he would reconsider.
But that's not the real world. The South executes far more convicted murderers than any other region yet has a homicide rate far above the national average. Texas' murder rate is slightly above average, despite the state's peerless deployment of the death penalty. If capital punishment were an effective deterrent to homicide, shouldn't we expect the opposite result? What's going on here?
Human nature, mostly. Murder is often a crime of passion, which by definition excludes the faculties of reason. The jealous husband who walks in on his wife and another man is in no position to deliberate rationally on the consequences of killing his rival. The convenience store robber who chooses in a split-second to shoot the clerk has not pondered the potential outcomes of pulling the trigger.
People overtaken by rage, panic or drunkenness should be brought to justice, of course, but they are hardly paragons of pure reason, and it's unreasonable to assert that they consider the possibility of a death sentence when committing their crimes.
The editorial also contains this chart: Most per capita executions, Murder rate Texas, 5.9 Delaware, 4.9 Virginia, 5.2 Missouri, 6.3
• The 10 states with the lowest murder rates have collectively executed 11 people since 1976. That's only 1 percent of all executions carried out by states since the death penalty resumed.
• Nine of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in the country have the death penalty.
SOURCES: Death Penalty Information Center; FBI
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