Two words:
wrongful executions.
Uh, no. States with the death penalty have more violent crime.
Correlation doesn't equal causality.
But I'm not sure how you could still believe that the death penalty is a deterrent if they still have higher violent crime rates. Remember, I'm not arguing that the presence of an electric chair somewhere in the state causes people to be more violent (that's ridiculous, actually), but that it is not lowering the murder rates.
In Norway up here our governemnt is trying to "re-habilite" and make sure others see what punishment the other criminals get, then the other criminals won`t do it, and we have low crime-rate. Well it is riising but the method is working, also, our police isn`t having guns other than some in their cars, and that also helps because then criminals won`t have guns either. This is working in Norway, in the US the oposite is being done and the crime-rate = riising there. We are sending our psychos to the "psycho hospital" or "mad-house" depending on how ill they are. the wrid thing is that this works better than the system the US is using, not my opinion, it is fact.
I could be really pragmatic and advocate this system, but I'm personally more interested in the psychological explanation for this. Does this work in theory too? It may be important to remember that not everything in theory turns out that way in reality.
I do not support the death penalty for two reasons:
1) I don't think death is an appropriate punishment for anyone. Taking someone's life is murder, no matter if it is done by the state or by a lynch mob. And state sponsored retribution is also wrong.
2) Wrongful executions. I see this as the greater of the two evils, because not only is it retribution in the first place, but now you have caught an innocent civilian in the crossfire. And don't expect the state to admit fault in these cases either.
