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"Study says Texas death penalty a homicide deterrent"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this new AP article.  Here is how it starts: 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, according to a study of death penalty deterrence by researchers from Sam Houston State University and Duke University. A review of executions and homicides in Texas by criminologist Raymond Teske at Sam Houston in Huntsville and Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng concludes a monthly decline of between 0.5 to 2.5 homicides in Texas follows each execution. ?Evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in the numbers of homicides in Texas in the month of or after executions,? the study published in a recent issue of Criminology, a journal of the American Society of Criminology, said...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 07, 2010 (boomark / email).