How does using the Death Penalty stop murder?
“Put yourself in the shoes of a criminal, would you be more or less likely to murder if the punishment was execution as opposed to a jail sentence?” Honestly…how many people do you think consider a *life sentence* acceptable costs on a transaction? Folks who commit murder generally do it under one of three conditions: (1) They don’t expect to get caught. Increasing sanctions for criminals who are caught would have zero impact on this subsection, as they don’t expect the sanction to be applied to them. (2) They aren’t thinking of the consequences. (i.e. crimes of passion). Obviously, if they aren’t considering the consequences, graver consequences will have no impact. (3) They have lost their sense of self-preservation. These are the ‘suicide by cop’ cases, for whom the death penalty merely *encourages* the crime. Threatened with life in prison, they might just go and throw themselves off bridges instead. There are very few exceptions to this. Extremely few murderers go through with a
