This piece by Dr. John Lott appeared in the Billings Gazette, Helena Independent Record, Missoulian, Montana Standard, and the Ravioli Republic, all in Montana.
President Joe Biden has recently commuted death sentences to life sentences for 37 of the 40 men who are on the federal government’s death row. Those spared included child killers and mass murderers, and many showed no remorse and horribly tortured their victims.
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Ironically, 36 of those 40 sentences were under a 1994 law written by then-Sen. Biden that designated new capital offenses.
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While Democrats oppose the death penalty, Americans overall support the death penalty by at least a 3-to-2 margin.
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Some support the death penalty to achieve “justice.” Others point to evidence that lives may be saved by deterring future murders.
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Twenty-seven states have the death penalty, but only 11 states and the federal government have held executions since 2020. Montana has the death penalty, but state courts have prevented it from being used since 2006. The Trump administration executed thirteen people, but the federal government has not executed anyone under Biden.
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Like quickly selling border wall parts for pennies on the dollar, commuting these murderers’ sentences is another way for Biden to hinder President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. The commutations make it difficult for Trump to resume executions.
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Among those whose sentences were commuted are an ex-Marine who tortured and murdered three people (two young girls and, later, a female naval officer), a man who kidnapped and brutally murdered a 12-year-old girl, and two men who kidnapped for ransom five people that they then murdered.
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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and wounded more than 250 others, was among the three who didn’t receive a commutation. If the death penalty is wrong, why exempt some but not others?
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The strongest support for the death penalty comes from those with the lowest incomes — the very people who are most likely to be victims of crime.
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Many opponents point to the costs of the death penalty, including costly trials and appeals processes. But threating the death penalty can save taxpayer money by getting murderers to agree to plea bargains.
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Dylann Roof, who murdered nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, agreed to plead guilty in order to avoid the death penalty. Without the threat of the death penalty, there would have been no reason to make a plea. Nicolas Cruz, the Parkland, Florida, school shooter who murdered seventeen people, also pleaded guilty and fought against the death penalty in his hearing.
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Cases like these show some murderers fear the death penalty more than life in prison. But there is other evidence of the death penalty’s deterrence effect. Most peer-reviewed academic research contends that each additional execution causes there to be eight to 18 fewer murders.
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Others argue that the death penalty is racist. But, in fact, whites are executed more frequently for murder than blacks are. From 1977 to 2011, the last year for which the FBI has compiled data, 64.7% of people executed were white. That is despite the fact that whites committed only 47% of the murders. In 2020, 64% of executed people were still white.
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The concern that innocent people will be executed isn’t valid. Between 1989 and 2014, about 260,000 Americans were convicted of murder, with DNA evidence available in about 12,000 cases. The Innocence Project claims 34 people convicted of murder in those years were later exonerated by DNA evidence. Of those 34 people, only 18 had been sentenced to death, and, more importantly, none had been executed.
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DNA evidence rarely shows an innocent person is convicted for any type of crime.
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The death penalty saves lives and can also be used to save tax dollars.
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John R. Lott, Jr., “The death penalty saves lives and tax dollars,” The Missoulian, December 30, 2024.
Dead criminals don’t commit new crimes.