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To: Dayuhan who wrote (3730)	3/20/2002 4:15:10 PM
From: Bill	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 21057

I have seen no data suggesting that imposing capital punishment on a jurisdiction that previously did not have it results in decreased crime rates. Try New York. Since capital punishment was implemented a few years ago, murder is down significantly.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (3730)	3/20/2002 6:13:08 PM
From: J. C. Dithers	Respond to of 21057

Those kind of statistics don't count for much, Steven. Simple correlations don't prove cause and effect. That a crime rate rose or fell after abolition of a death penalty (or implementation of one) doesn't prove a relationship. There are way too many extraneous variables that were at work at the same time, beginning with the general direction of the crime rate. There is no way to prove or disprove the deterrent effect of the death penalty with statistics. Besides, the long delays in executions due to appeals would reduce the deterrent effect. Also, there may be many lags in time before the effect of a DP change takes hold, one way or the other. I think you need to go with common sense here. If you might remember the movie, The Onion Field (true story of a cop-killing), the killer pauses before shooting the officer and says, "Have you ever heard of the Little Lindbergh law?" That is what the creep actually did say in real life. In that instance, the perp meant that he was going to face the death penalty anyway, since he was already guilty of kidnapping. I cite this only as an indication that low-lifes are very savvy about jailhouse law, and some definitely do take into account the consequences of their dirty deeds. Just as anti-DP'ers wail and moan about one innocent person being executed, how about we think about one innocent civilian (or cop) being saved because the criminal stops to think about going on death row?