Forensic Psych Effects of Capital Punishment Paper

Abstract

This paper will study journal entries related to capital punishment and its role in crime deterrence to arrive at a logical public policy change.

Keywords: capital punishment, crime, deterrence

1. Introduction

Many people, upon entering a conversation regarding the capital punishment, may assume that the death penalty is an effective way to combat major crime in our nation.  As this increasingly becomes the view of the proponents of the death penalty and those that plead ignorance, the opposite is just as quickly becoming a favored argument of those against taking the life of a criminal.  In a journal entry written by Rosalind Simson, she writes of a study that “found that 93 percent of supporters agreed that ‘the death penalty is a more effective deterrent than life imprisonment,’ while 92 percent of opponents disagreed.”  It is no surprise that both sides disagree because there are cases that support both claims.

1. Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide?

Rosalind Simson, in her article talks about a researcher from the mid-70s named Isaac Ehrlich.   After reading a study on capital punishment’s relation to separate states from the 50s and 60s by Thorsten Sellin, Ehrlich came to the conclusion that Sellin had not accounted for as many differences in state law and procedure to have come to a generalized conclusion. He then attempted to distinguish exact variables and then create a study looking at the effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring murders.

After taking variables such as average income, unemployment rates, and youthfulness percentages, variables that had been previously missed, he concluded that “each execution during that period (between 1933 and 1967) deterred eight murders. (Simson, 2001, p. 295)” While he was confident in his finding, the conclusion has been widely attacked by social scientists whose own studies found no evidence to support such a conclusion.  That is until I the mid-80s Stephen Layson responded to Ehrlich’s critics by creating a study that accounted for additional variables, used updated data and measured rates more reliably (Simson, 2001, p. 296). While his conclusion was also attacked afterwards because researchers felt that he had not adequately resolved previous problems of Ehrlich, he found that “every execution deters as many as eighteen homicides. (Simson, 2001, 296)”

• From the Bench Death is Not Worth It

As a lawyer and then an appellate judge, Judge Rudolph J. Gerber writes of his experience with capital punishment through both arguing cases and sentencing murderers. He believes that one of the most common arguments in support of the death penalty is that the threat of it prevents murders.

That being said, Judge Gerber writes of a study performed by the Florida State Penitentiary which “found that 75 percent of all murderers had been drinking alcohol just prior to their crimes (Gerber, 1998, p. 3).”This study just says ‘had been drinking alcohol’ and fails to give a BAC level or a separate quantitative level of intoxication, therefore we cannot assume that 75 percent of murderers were drunk at the time of their crime or that the murderers were not considering the death penalty at all. What we can take out of the finding is that a large majority of murderers in Florida State Penitentiary may not have been in the state of mind to have the threat of the death penalty prevent their crime.

Judge Gerber also acknowledges a second argument in his journal.  The second argument is that in the weeks following a public execution, the murder rate will decrease because of clear recognition of the reality of the punishment. While it seems to make sense, Judge Gerber cites two studies that say otherwise.  Robert Dann, in Philadelphia, examined a 60 day period following 5 different executions and found that the murder rate actually increased, rather than decreased, in the month and a half period following (p. 4).  William Graves conducted a similar study along the coast of California.  Similarly, his data revealed that in the days leading up to the execution, murder rates increased while soon after the rates returned to normal (p. 4).

Neither argument made for the death penalty seems to be holding up when put into a real world study.

1. Learning from the Limitations of Deterrence

Michael Tonry, while he believes that there may be evidence in the future, states that “there is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters better than life sentences… (Tonry, 2008, p. 279)” He recognizes that policy changes and laws can and will dictate a change in public behavior by giving parking and speeding tickets as examples of decreased deviant behavior, but that there is no evidence of such a change as a result of capital punishment.

There are, of course, studies by economists, psychologists, sociologists and lawyers that have found evidence, but they are either unable to be generalized or are easily contradicted by an opposing study. Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, and Shepherd (2003), a group of American economists, again “concluded that each execution saves…18 lives.” However this study has been discredited by other economists and non-economists alike.  Levitt and Miles (2007) found that “the only credible conclusions that can be drawn are either that capital punishment has no deterrent effects on homicide or that there is not credible evidence that it does. (Tonry, 2008, p.283)”

1. … and the Deterrence of Capital Punishment

Joanna Shepherd, in 2004, asked two questions, “What kinds of murders are deterred [by the death penalty] and what effect does the length of the death row wait have on deterrence? (Shepherd, 2004, p. 283)” Shepherd, differing from Judge Gerber, disagrees with the thought that because many murders are not in the 1^st degree but are instead crimes of passion, the death penalty is not as much a deterrence as people think.

Contrary to Glaser (1977), Peterson and Bailey (1991) and Bailey (1998), Shepherd concluded that even in supposed crimes of passion, offenders follow the “economic theory” by weighing their actions’ costs and benefits, therefore taking capital punishment into account prior to committing the murder (Shepherd, 2004, p. 283).  Furthermore, she “found that capital punishment deters both crimes of passion and murders by inmates and that stranger murders neither decreases nor increase after executions (p.284).”

In regards to her second question, Shepherd found that “one extra murder is deterred for every 2.75-year reduction in the death row wait before each execution. (Shepherd, 2004, p.284)” Michael Tonry, author of Limitations of Deterrence Research, agrees and cites Beccaria and Bentham as believing that the certainty and promptness of punishment are more important than the severity (p. 280). On the other hand, holding a certain amount of weight as awareness is spreading of wrongly executed citizens, Parkin (1999) argues that any reduction in time weakens an appellate argument thereby possibly increasing the speed of an innocent execution.

1. Public Policy Change

Judge Gerber, in his journal, writes that “corrections administrators regularly describe murderers as the most adaptable group of prisoners with the fewest discipline problems.” I take this to mean that the majority of murderers are not cold-blooded killers, while some are genuinely evil people, two and a half decades or a quarter of your life, is enough for anyone to change.

I believe that the death penalty should be indefinitely eliminated based on the evidence currently being cited on both sides.  Death is a very permanent outcome and in my opinion it is too harsh of an outcome for the majority of murderers.  Until there is evidence granting nearly unarguable proof of deterrence or decline in rate, capital punishment should be suspended.

References

Gerber, R. J. (1998). From the Bench Death is Not Worth It. Litigation, 24(3), 3-5. Retrieved March 12, 2016.

Shepherd, J. M. (2004). Murders of Passion, Execution Delays, and the Deterrence of Capital Punishment. The Journal of Legal Studies, 33(2), 283-321. Retrieved March 12, 2016.

Simson, R. S. (2001). Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide?: A Case Study of Epidemiological Objectivity. Metaphilosophy, 32(3), 293-307. Retrieved March 12, 2016.

Tonry, M. (2008). Learning from the Limitations of Deterrence Research. Crime and Justice, 37(1), 279-311. Retrieved March 12, 2016.