[fla-left] [news] Study: States Without Death Penalty Have Lower Homicide Rates (fwd)

[Jordan Hayes]

> States Without Death Penalty Have Lower Homicide Rates
> 
> by Raymond Bonner, Ford Fessenden, New York Times
> 
> The dozen states that have chosen not to enact the death penalty since
> the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that it was constitutionally permissible
> have not had higher homicide rates than states with the death penalty,
> statistics and analysis show.

This is why I hate reading statistics in the paper.  Am I the only
one who thinks that this was written to "prove" that the death
penalty doesn't have a deterrent effect?  As if you could set up
a hypothesis that goes "Say it had a deterrent effect; then, in
the places where they have it, you should see lower rates of
homicide.  If you don't see that, there's no deterrent!"

What lousy logic!  It sounds like the Chewbacca Defense!

I'm no fan of capital punishment, but this is just bad pseudo-science.
I can't believe somone got funding for that study.

"States With Low Homicide Rates Decide Not To Have Death Penalty"

/jordan