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Monday, June 11, 2007
"If it's the case that executing murderers prevents the execution of innocents by murderers, then the moral evaluation is not simple. Abolitionists or others, like me, who are skeptical about the death penalty haven't given adequate consideration to the possibility that innocent life is saved by the death penalty." This is Cass Sunstein, a legal scholar at the University of Chicago, responding to a bunch of new studies that show the death penalty to have significant deterrent effect. Although Sunstein remains critical of the penalty, he also remains an exponent of the supreme university ethos of analytical disinterestedness: If the data show a particular outcome -- even one profoundly at odds with his political views on a subject -- he will respect that outcome and allow it to trouble his position. The studies, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer." One economist describes a study he and others did showing that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. "The results are robust, they don't really go away," he said. "I oppose the death penalty. But my results show that the death penalty (deters) — what am I going to do, hide them?" Another study concludes that The Illinois moratorium on executions in 2000 led to 150 additional homicides over four years following, according to a 2006 study by professors at the University of Houston. |