The National Review’s John O’Sullivan provides his views on the capital punishment debate. I agree with much of his analysis, but I’m skeptical of a statistical study O’Sullivan cites showing that each execution deters between eight and twenty-eight murders. Most studies do not find a significant deterrent effect under the current regime. But that is almost surely because, under the current regime, the death penalty is not carried out often enough to deter. O’Sullivan is on more solid ground when he argues that the death penalty is sometimes the only punishment that seems equal to the horror of a particular crime, and when he points out that there are no known cases of a wrongful executiion in the U.S. since the death penalty was restored in 1976.
-
-
Most Read on Power Line
Donate to PL
-
Our Favorites
- American Greatness
- American Mind
- American Story
- American Thinker
- Aspen beat
- Babylon Bee
- Belmont Club
- Churchill Project
- Claremont Institute
- Daily Torch
- Federalist
- Gatestone Institute
- Hollywood in Toto
- Hoover Institution
- Hot Air
- Hugh Hewitt
- InstaPundit
- Jewish World Review
- Law & Liberty
- Legal Insurrection
- Liberty Daily
- Lileks
- Lucianne
- Michael Ramirez Cartoons
- Michelle Malkin
- Pipeline
- RealClearPolitics
- Ricochet
- Steyn Online
- Tim Blair
Media
Subscribe to Power Line by Email
Temporarily disabled
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.