Proponents of the death penalty will never cease the futile effort to prove the death penalty serves as a deterrent. Countless reputable national and international studies have consistently demonstrated that it does not. Nonetheless, occasional localized studies will rear their ugly heads with headlines like the one that appeared in the Houston Chronicle on January 7, 2010: “Texas study: Death penalty deters killers.”

            This latest study was conducted by researchers at Sam Houston State University (which, coincidentally happens to be located in Huntsville where all Texas executions are carried out) and Duke University. Sam Houston criminologist Raymond Teske and Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concluded that there is a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas following each execution carried out by the state. These findings were based on executions carried out in the state between 1994 and 2005.

            Writing in the most recent issue of Criminology, a journal of the American Society of Criminology, the researchers offered this conclusion restated in the Chronicle account: “Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions.”

            I wouldn’t dare dispute the statistical findings of these fine gentlemen. I’m sure they spent long hours poring over homicide figures to reach their finging. What I will vigorously dispute is the conclusion, drawn either by Associated Press writer Michael Graczyk based on his review of the study or drawn by the study itself, that “as many as 60 people may be alive today in Texas because two dozen convicted killers were executed last year in the nation’s most active capital punishment state …” as reported in the Chronicle account.

            That conclusion assumes that 60 potential killers, who had murder on their minds, either read or heard about one or more of the two dozens executions carried out in Texas in 2009 and decided not to kill. Of the 24 executions carried out in Texas in 2009, five of the executed killers were convicted in Harris County. None of the 24 executions, and in particular those involving the five killers from Harris County, had a deterrent effect on the 17-year-old Lee High School student named Danish Moazzin Minhas who gave 18-year-old Nur Mohamed $1,000 to killed Minhas’ mother because she was “too strict.”

            Both of these kids had probably never read a single account or heard any word-of-mouth story about any of the two dozen executions carried out in Texas last year. And if you review the personal backgrounds of the 24 executed killers, and the factual background of the crimes which brought about their executions, it would be reasonable to conclude that not one of them remotely considered the death penalty before they committed their crimes.

            To say that there is a decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides each month in Texas following an execution carried out by the state is one thing but to extrapolate from that bare statistical finding to the conclusion that as many of 60 people may be alive because of the finding is borderline ludicrous. The statistical finding may very well be a fact, depending upon the methodology employed by the researchers to reach that finding, but any conclusion drawn from it is an assumption—and we all know what you are when you assume.

            Astronomers can prove the existence of “black holes” in space but they can only conclude (or assume) what is in the belly of those black holes. Of course, death penalty proponents are shouting “glory, glory” to the mountain top that this study justifies the existence of the death penalty. For example, the Chronicle article quoted Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, as saying that the “study would be sufficient by itself to justify the death penalty.”

            Following the Scheidegger logic, astronomers could just as easily conclude that there is a Walmart in the center of every black hole in space.

            To be fair to the researchers involved in this latest study, I must point out that David McDowall, a statistical analysis expert at State University of New York, was quoted in the Chronicle article as saying the researchers utilized standardized research methods: “What the study does is try to control a constant variety of factors that vary over time by chance and then try to assess whether any decreases in homicides are large enough that chance can’t account for them.”

            And researcher Teske was quoted in the Chronicle as saying: “I have hard time getting people to understand that this [study] reports a scientific analysis of an issue and is not a political statement.”

            Of course, the legitimacy of Teske’s defense of the study could only be fairly measured by examining the original motives of the researchers for undertaking the study in the first place. If they subscribe to the death penalty, or simply wanted to show it had a deterrent impact, it would be easy enough to tweak the statistical data to reach a desired finding, professor McDowall’s statement notwithstanding.

            But, as I have pointed out, it is not the statistical finding I have a problem with but rather the conclusions drawn from it.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6802314.html