Why the Death Penalty Works
Tucker, William
S ome day' when the smoke has cleared in tire presidential election and either George Bush, Jr. orN Gore, ]r. is sitting in the Oval Office, somebody will go back and do an analysis of...
...But here is the interpretation I would put upon them...
...Second, all four candidates on the national tickets have declared in favor of it--in one form or another...
...Now the differential between armed robber and murder is only jail time and maybe a little more jail time after that...
...Just go to two Websites: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/h0micide/homtmd.hh-n and htip://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glancelexe.lxt...
...When this portion of the The American Spectator _9 O c t o b r r ~ o o o 35 population bulges, crime will go up...
...What was the impact on murder...
...Even National Rerieu" fc!t compelled to respond with its own \\5I,LIAM '['UCKER iS Thc American Spcctator} New })irk correspotMent and CEO of Thel'~lerator.com...
...Noflring in particular-only tile press's efforts to fill tile early election vacuun-t with its own concerns...
...Note: The category "stranger murder" did not even exist in 196o...
...Even if he is never elected President, he has already done well in servinghis country...
...In addition to the inevitable protestations of innocence--the jail-house girlfriend who swears the murderer is a changed man, the outright falsehoods put out by death penalty opponents and reported as whole truths by the press--there is the moral burden of taking responsibility for ending someone's life...
...The murder rate tied the 1933 record in 1973, broke it in 1974, broke it again in 198o, and peaked a third time in 199o-9z...
...Executions could do nothing to deter these "crimes of passion," since "people don't think of the consequences" (or so the defense attorneys said...
...ii lure 1:, Newsueek ran a covcr story, "'Rethinking the Death Penalb...
...Murder is the only rational alternative...
...In the early 196o% the Court began its wholesale review of state capital cases, imposing various exclusionary rules for confessions and search-and-seizure and creating the lengthy-almost endless-appeals process...
...What does all this prove...
...Over the next two centuries, reformers succeeded almost completely in eliminating this dangerous ambiguity...
...This ban was not lifted until 1978...
...This became one of the cornerstone arguments of death penalty opponents...
...Bv June-judging From the press accounts--\ou would have thought the death penalty would be the major issue of the 2ooo elections...
...But by abolishing the death penalty, however, we only re-created the dilemma...
...Carrying out public executions is not a pleasant task...
...It's like charting the weather...
...The results are plain to see...
...What possible avenue does the burglar have for avoiding your identification and testimony...
...Some other explanation is required, perhaps the rearing of a whole generation of potential criminals who never even heard of the death penalty...
...That testimony is the most likely evidence that will put you in iail...
...Cox ernor George R,,an of Illinois did suspend his state's death penal b but that was back in January...
...is sitting in the Oval Office, somebody will go back and do an analysis of the great Dcath Penalty Scare ofzooo...
...You may know the burglar by sight or even be casually acquainted with him...
...In regions such as New England, where there are no executions, murder rates, although traditionally low, have fallen hardly at all...
...Once capital punishment was effectively abolished, these murders returned with a vengeance...
...or the high number of executions pushed down the murder rate...
...One common scenario is the "surprised burglar...
...There you will find graphs showing the rate of murder per capita over the last 50 years and the annual number of executions over the past 50 years...
...Fortunately, none of this worked...
...and discover him...
...Of course, this shallow argument missed the most important point--the number of murders that were being deterred by the death penalty...
...There is...
...Despite hand-wringing about some imaginary "rush to judgment," five percent of death row inmates are there for crimes committed in the 197o's...
...By 199o , the average armed robber was serving three years in iail...
...Many times it is impulsive...
...Part of this is dcmographic (qi:xas is the second largest state) and part is that Texas and the rest of the Southxvest are traditionally high-crime areas...
...Pick up any newspaper article announcing a crime trend, up or down, and you will find a criminologist saying it is the result of demographic shifts in the population...
...But is there anything more specific we can say about how this deterrent effect works...
...The Neu, York Times ran its usual six-part series plus a Sunday magazine cover about h l l l o c e n t n l e l l on Death Ro\v...
...In July, fortuitously, there appeared the first scheduled execution in 37 years of a federal prisoner--a drug dealer convicted of murdering three people...
...The death penalty works...
...Executions also peaked in 1935...
...In the future, there may be mass executions with each ethnic group equally represented...
...A dispute erupts and eventually escalates into a homicide...
...o capital punishment does deter murder...
...There is the same dip in the 195o's , followed by the maturation of the baby boom in the late 196o's and 197o's...
...By 196o , 9 ~ percent of all murders involved people who knew each other...
...to this difference it is owing that though they rob in that country they never murder...
...But they did not eliminate it entirely...
...Homicide has been traditionally high in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas...
...Just like the rookie beer man in the Coors commercial, President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno panicked at the first sound of the crowd...
...Beginning at almost the exact point when executions ended, murder soared to unprecedented heights...
...Murder by a husband, ex-husband, or boyfriend is still the most common cause of homicidal death among women...
...Yet the costs of such delays are apparent...
...Traditionally, societies made the mistake of over utilizing the death penalty by applying it to non-capital crimes...
...Executions ceased altogether- not because murders had ceased but because of an entirely extraneous factor-the U.S...
...Create widespread revulsion against the death penalty and therefore his candidacy, or 2b...
...The story appeared constantly on the front pages of major newspapers...
...But that is part of the burden of public office--putting the greater good of society above one's personal qualms and preferences...
...Criminologists and death penalty opponents willfully refuse to talk about it...
...In the 193o's , murderers were often executed within months of committing a crime...
...In The S#irit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu wrote: It is a great abuse among us to condemn to the same pu~aishment a person what only robs on the highway and another who robs and murders...
...Throughout this press campaign, reporters managed to overlook one startling fact...
...When you are engaged in a felonious crime--armed robbery, burglar},, rape --your victim also is the principal witness to that crime...
...The campaign to make the death penalty the centerpiece of the 2ooo campaign was weakened by two factors: First, the public itself still favors the death penalty by about 60 percent...
...The dead, they say, tell no tales...
...Execution rates will remain high for some time, even as murder rates decline...
...Of course the Democrats favor the death penalty the same way they favored welfare reform--mouthing support until it actually comes time to do something...
...You come home unexpectedly Criminologists are a PECULIAR BREED, worthy of a sociological study THEMSELVES.They are the only people in the world who believe that punishment does not DETER CRIME...
...Over the next 30 years, both the murder rate and the number of executions declined...
...Therefore it was "barbaric" to continue executing people when it couldn't produce any results...
...The first is called a "crime of passion...
...While felony murders constituted only lo percent of a low crime rate in 196o, by 199o they constituted half the murder rate, which was itself twice as high...
...Criminologists are a peculiar breed, worthy of a sociological study themselves...
...As we shall see, their efforts have bccn rcx~ardcd...
...But the adolescent population dropped offsharply in the 198o's while crime remained high...
...Was there any real risk in murdering your victim...
...In t999, the median murderer was executed for a crime committed in 1988...
...This created a situation that actually 36 October 2000 _9 The American Spectator Once CA "ITAL PUN_ SN...
...This evolves from arguments between friends, lovers, married couples, blood relatives, or people who are at least casually acquainted (opponents in a card game, for example...
...It is hard to rape or rob someone without letting them see some identifying feature of yourself...
...Robbery is the presumed motive, although the category can also include cases where people are murdered entirely at random...
...He or she can testify against you to the police or in court...
...I have seen crime trends from the past six months explained in this fashion...
...But the biggest factor of all seems to be that the people of Tcxas have gotten sick and tired of high rates of murder and have decided to do something about it...
...The execution of the victim does not have to be planned (although often it is...
...The same wcck the Economist gazed across the Atlantic and found "Amcrica's Death Penalty [,otter\" to be the most important subject ofthc acck...
...Superimpose these two graphs upon each other (I know of no crime expert who has ever bothered to do this) and you get the graph below...
...They are the only people in the world who believe that punishment does not deter crime...
...The average person doesn't like to think about it...
...Running for cover, they immediately postponed the event until such time as it could be proved that Hispanic drug dealers (the ethnicity of this particular murderer) were not being executed at a higher rate than drug-dealer/murderers of other national origins...
...Reformers of the Enlightenment were quick to point this out...
...Thc press agcnda was to: 1. Pin the death pcnal~' on Covcrnor Bush and thcn cither 34 October 200o ' The American Spectator 2a...
...Force Bush to cave in on some execution, in which case he would appear weak and indecisive...
...This is i because the rise and eventual fail in murder rates over the past 35 years was not an undifferentiated phenomenon...
...The political angle, of course, was that George W. Bush is governor os \vhere one-third of tlle nation's executions take place...
...Qat was the "news peg" on this nationwide campaign...
...A young hoodlum pulls a carjacking or "push-in" robbery and suddenly realizes that the victim has had a good look at him...
...George W. Bush has been among the leaders in stemming what had become the nation's most alarming public health epidemic...
...For this reason, societies have always felt compelled to draw a bright line between felonies--robbery, burglary, and rape-and felony murder--the execution of the victim of the crime...
...There are actually two types of murder...
...the average murderer was serving eleven...
...In China, those who add murder to robbery are cut in pieces: but not so the others...
...In fact, the size of the crime-prone population tracks murders only marginally...
...Supreme Court...
...Now statistics may prove nothing--or, alternatively, anything you like...
...Youthful and amateur criminals are particularly susceptible...
...Will the trend continue...
...Then suddenly it plummeted, so that by 1999 we were once again back to the levels of 1966 when murder first began its upward sweep...
...Historically, the vast majori b, of murders have been crimes of passion...
...So both homicides and executions are now headed in the right direction...
...Meanwhile, less than half the felony and stranger murders in the country were being solved...
...Once the candidates began shaping their own agenda at the Republican and Democratic conventions, the death penaI~ dropped out of sight...
...Had executions remained at the same reasonable level they were in the early 196o's , 45o,ooo Americans probably would have avoided being nmrdered over the next 35 years...
...The answer is transparently simp l e - although very difficult to discuss in public debate...
...But don't think for a minute that professional criminologists will accept this...
...You can prove this yourself...
...When we stop executing people, murders soar...
...The Supreme Court had halfa case...
...A neighborhood youth breaks into your home...
...N The American Spectator _9 0 c t o b e r 2 o o o 37...
...The immediate result was that executions virtually ended after 1964 . In 1971 the justices declared all existing death penalties to be unconstitutional...
...Both explanations would work for the pre-1963 portion of the graph...
...encouraged felony murder...
...The reason is this: All things being equal, it pays to kill your victim...
...But after 1963, something entirely new happened...
...ENg was effectively abolished, these felony or STRANGER murders returned with a VENGEANCE...
...During the 193o's, murders hit an all-time high--probably as a result of Prohibition...
...It is used today to describe a situation where a dead body is found in a public place for no apparent reason...
...In Russia, where the punishment of robbery and murder is the same, they always murder...
...These are murders committed in the course of another crime...
...WILLIAM TUCKER cover disclaimer, "The Problem With the Chair...
...Rather, it was an explosion of a very particular kind of homicide-"felony" or "stranger" nmrder...
...As the gangland killings of the 193o's and 4o's subsided, acquaintance murder became by far the most common form of Almost the entire run-up of homicide from 1965 to 1995 was in one specific category--felony or stranger murders...
...Almost the entire increase in homicide has been among felony and stranger murders...
...However, these four states now account for half the nation's executions, and murder rates have dropped more precipitously there than anywhere else in the country...
...In those distant days, people were executed fairly routinely and the number of executions generally tracked the number of murders...
...Instead, they have one simple, uniform explanation for all kinds of crime: It is the result of population t~ends, specifically the number of"crime-prone" young men (ages 16-25) in the population, Most crimes are committed, so the argument goes, by this particular cohort of young men...
...homicide...
...Only criminals know it in their bones...
...This could be interpreted two ways: murders declined because of some external reason (the end of Prohibition) and the number of executions fell accordingly...
...Only after a painful legislative reformulation did more than half the states impose the death penalty on murderers by the 199o's...
...Why should felony and stranger murders be particularly affected by the death penalty...
...Surely, for the public security, some difference should be made in the punishment...
...George W. Bush has borne this burden well...
...The news WILL KILL opponents of capital punishment, but MURDER RATES go down when execution numbers GO UP...
...Trends in law enforcement, efficient policing, the number of people in jail-- nothing has any effect...
...When it shrinks, crime will go down...
...Well, on the surface, the answer seems obvious...
...The rate of acquaintance murder has barely changed over the last 4 ~ years...
...When we resume executing people, murders decline...
...Or rather, societies have felt compelled when they were thinking straight...
...Until the recent revival of capital punishment, was there any rational deterrent...
...As late as the ]96o's, North Carolina and Georgia were still executing people for rape and "chronic burglary...
...Undoubtedly, some criminologist somewhere will argue that these figures illustrate the death penalty actually encourages murder...
...Executions deter murder...
Vol. 33 • October 2000 • No. 8
