January 20, 2003
SBC official calls capital punishment 'strong deterrent'
___NASHVILLE, Tenn.--Capital punishment should be supported as a strong deterrent to crime, according to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
___Land's statement on the matter, broadcast on his call-in radio program Jan. 11, contrasts sharply with a report approved by the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission one day earlier.
___The Texas CLC report calls for a moratorium on executions and says, among other points, that capital punishment does not have a deterrent effect on crime.
___Land was responding to news that outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentence of every death-row prisoner inIllinois. Ryan's action coincidentally occurred on the same day the Texas CLC deliberated the findings of a two-year-long study of capital punishment.
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Texas CLC calls for death penalty moratorium
___Ryan also pardoned four men who had received death sentences, saying they had given false confessions after being tortured in police custody. Most of the 167 inmates whose sentences were commuted by Ryan will now serve life sentences without parole.
___"There is compelling academic evidence that capital punishment has a deterrent effect in saving people's lives who otherwise would be murdered," Land on his "Richard Land Live!" program.
___He cited a January 2001 study by Emory University researchers Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Paul Rubin and Joanna Mehlhop Shepherd. The study--titled "Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect?"--examined records from 3,054 U.S. counties from 1977 to 1996.
___The Emory study says homicide rates in these counties fell significantly when would-be murderers knew they faced the threat of execution.
___"Most people know intuitively that perpetrators, unless they are criminally insane, don't want to be executed," Land said. "If they are living in a state that has the death penalty, they are going to be thinking about that possibility."
___The Emory researchers predict that for every person executed, the lives of 18 potential future murder victims are spared through this deterrent effect.
___The Emory study, while buttressed by research from the University of Houston and the University of Colorado at Denver, contradicts a number of other studies conducted in recent years.
___The Texas CLC report, for example, cites a 1999 study of Texas cases, a 1998 study of Oklahoma cases and a 1999 study of California cases as proving the opposite of the Emory study quoted by Land.
___"Common sense might suggest that the death penalty must have a deterrent effect on some potential murderers who presumably calculate the penalty before committing the crime," the Texas CLC report explains. "Yet many controlled studies over decades have not demonstrated that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder or other crimes. One reason for the failure of deterrence is that there seems to be precious little calculation in the commission of most murders. Many murders are crimes of passion, facilitated by alcohol and/or other drugs."
___As further evidence that capital punishment does not deter other crimes, the Texas CLC cites a 2001 FBI report that notes the South remains the region of the country with the highest murder rate, while the South also carries out 80 percent of the nation's executions.
___Also, an extensive study by the New York Times published in 2000 found that 10 of the 12 states without the death penalty have homicide rates lower than states with the death penalty.
___Land also told his radio audience that swifter justice would make capital punishment more effective.
___"Swift and sure justice would offer even greater deterrent to capital crimes," Land said, noting that death row prisoners often avoid execution through years of appeals and, sometimes, frivolous legal wrangling.
___"One of the reasons God instituted civil government was to mete out justice against people who injure or take the life of another human being in a wanton and premeditated way," he said. The Bible's teaching on capital punishment is clear, he added.
___"I believe in capital punishment because I believe the Bible teaches that capital punishment is biblical," Land said, citing Romans 13, which he said provides an important outline of the role of the civil magistrate in these matters.
___Men and women, boys and girls are made in the image of God, he said. "When you take another human being's life, you have imposed upon and invaded a prerogative that only God has."
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