n said: Not once did the death penalty act asa deterrent in all the jobs I carried out... and I have executed more peoplethan anyone this century! (Amnesty 313-315).Statistical data seems to agree here. Lets look at four states withdeath penalties and two without the death penalty and compare crimerates. The state of Texas (which interestingly carries out one of fourexecutions each year in the United States since 1976), has a murder rateof one murder per 6, 385 residents. In Florida, we have one murder per9,952 residents, while Georgia has one per 8,997 residents, and Virginiahas one per 11,249. On the other hand, non-capital punishments states,like Wisconsin and Minnesota, their crime rates are one per 20,383 andone for an amazing 43,750 respectively (U.S. Criminal Justice Statistics211).On the flip side, retentionsists argue that none of these statisticsprove that the death penalty never deters crime. They believe such ratesdepend on urban population, economic prosperity, and social and racialmakeup of the people. Likewise, states like Florida and Texas would evenhave higher murder rates if the death penalty were not in place to keepthinks partially in check (Kronenwetter 51).An experiment conducted by Isaac Elrich, looked into howdeterrence may affect the murder rate in the United States. In this studyhe explained: ...per additional execution...may result in, on average,seven or eight murders per year. However, Elrichs conclusions werefound to be controversial and unstable in some scientific aspects in theway he directed them (Wekesser 114-116).Supplementary support of Elrichs view can be traced back to anearly 1970s Los Angeles Police Department report. According to thisreport, interviews with ninety-nine criminals who didnt carry lethalweapons in their crimes. When asked for a reason, over half of themcited the fear of the death penalty as one of their reasons for not carryinga weapon (Siegel 13). Moreover, another go...
