Death Penalty is Crime Deterrent

ABC News: Does Death Penalty Achieve Desired Effect?

The steady drumbeat of DNA exonerations pointing out flaws in the justice system has weighed against capital punishment. The moral opposition is loud, too, echoed in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world, where all but a few countries banned executions years ago. What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.