I do not think it deters, and even a casual study of the history of crime will demonstrate that it was precisely at those moments when the largest number of crimes was punishable by death that crime increased, and it will also be found that the lowest incidence of crime, including murder, exists in those countries where Capital Punishment has been abolished. In particular, almost all of human society maintains the death penalty as a punishment for treason, and in some cases for acts against the state that fall short of treason. Treason is a class matter as well as a national matter, and the poor man's patriotism has always been the rich man's treason. But just as no act of treason can undermine a government that has its people's respect and support, so is the accepted punishment of treason a hysterical response to a specific situation. And I cannot see how any government which call itself progressive can long justify the maintenance of Capital Punishment.
Death is too permanent.
All the men of good will on earth, rallying to the call that justice be done to the memory of the Rosenbergs, cannot bring them back to life or remove the scars of sorrow from those who loved them. Yes, and we will someday do honor to the seven young men of Martinsville who were put to death with such indecent haste, as a warning to all the Negro people, but we cannot breathe life back into their clay. That is, for all the nations of mankind to take a long step toward the future and to do away once and for all with legal murder. There can be no exception. With my friends, I was put in prison, but the prison was over-crowded, and so I was separated from them and put into another cell block.