The law of love does not negate justice, nor does it indulge in sentimental softness toward the wrongdoer. But it does nullify the motives of vengeance and retribution by forcing us to think in terms of redemption, rehabilitation, and reclamation. The application of the death sentence puts an offending person outside the pale of human help or hope. Capital punishment is of doubtful value as a deterrent. The 1965 paper reported that practically all available documentation failed to substantiate the argument that capital punishment curbed homicidal tendencies or curtailed capital crimes.
More recent studies bear that out.
When comparisons are made between states with the death penalty and states without, the majority of death penalty states show murder rates higher than non death penalty states. The average murder rate per 100,000 population in 1997 among death penalty states was 6.6, while the average murder rate among non death penalty states was only 3.5. A look at neighboring death penalty and non death penalty states show similar trends. Death penalty states usually have a higher murder rate than their neighboring non death penalty states. The capital punishment as a deterrence argument assumes that the potential criminal will engage in a kind of rational, cost-benefit analysis before he or she commits the crime of murder.