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I was surprised at your editorial claiming that the death penalty saves lives because it contradicts the majority of the research I have read both in the past and recently.

The studies asserting deterrence have been refuted. For example, researchers studying the Emory report you cited concluded that "the view that the death penalty deters is still the product of belief, not evidence ... On balance, the evidence suggests that the death penalty may increase the murder rate." By slightly redefining just one of the factors in the Emory research, they found that each execution actually caused 18 murders.

The Death Penalty Information Center data shows that the murder rates in states without a death penalty are about 35% to 42% lower than in states with a death penalty. When Massachusetts and Rhode Island abolished capital punishment, their homicide rates fell. In contrast, some studies report that homicides generally increase in the months following an execution because of the "brutalization effect" of the death penalty.

Eighty-eight percent of the country’s top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide, according to a study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. A similar number believe that abolition of the death penalty would not have any significant effect on murder rates.

While the assertion that the death penalty saves lives has not been proven, there's no doubt that the death penalty costs the lives of people convicted in error. Since 1973, 138 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. Because of so many wrong convictions, Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican and a supporter of the death penalty, declared a moratorium on all executions in January 2000. No one knows for sure how many innocent people have been executed.

Ted Laux
Lansing, NY

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