Despite volumes of commentary on the topic, capital punishment remains a thorny issue. Data analyses and other observations are marshalled to enlighten regarding the interplay of Murder, Suicide, and Execution, variously defined. It is concluded that supporters of capital punish ment have some explaining to do. Murder and Suicide track Execution in the same pattern. Therefore, to argue that executions depress murders would seem to require insistence that executions reduce suicides, too. The dynamics of this latter relationship boggle the mind.
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since 1976 75% of executions occurred in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia, though these states hold only 16% of U. S. population ("Death in the U. S. A", February 15, 1988: 32).
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e. g., since 1967 only about a dozen states have executed anyone (author's calculations). National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) (May 1986: 9).
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In 1981 25 states sentenced at least 1 person to death (" 1981 Death Row Population Reaches Record High", August 1982: 1).
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Lawes, L.E. (1969). Man's judgment of death. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith says: Crime comes in waves, like the rising and falling of the tide, waves that are coincident with periods of unrest, ... Homicides vary ... for the same reasons."; see Klein, Forst, & Filatov (1978: 345). In the "wisdom" of fiction we encounter the words of an old detective sergeannt to a new appointee: "Love, lust, loathing, lucre, the four L's of murder, laddie. And the greatest of these is lucre." (James, 1986: 129) Peterson and Bailey (1984: 446-7) assert, citing Sellin in 1955 and 1980, murder and capital punishment are independent. Bowers ( 1984: 215) says processing of potentially capital offenders responds to changing social, economic, or political concerns apart from the crime committed. This complication, surely, is lost to our analysis, though it impacts on the streets!
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