"IF YOU EXECUTE, THEY WILL STOP MURDERING!!"

Joanna Shepherd, a professor of law at Emory Law School, writes a lengthy analysis in the Christian Science Monitor which concludes that Capital Punishment only deters if you in fact execute those found guilty! DUH!

Her comment on the "brutalization effect' - her term for an effect caused by "setting an example of killing to avenge grievances." - amuses me. Does she really believe our no longer brutal executions - Tookie left us after a lethal injection, hardly brutal in the common meaning of the word - really are perceived by some as authorization to do the same?

Since we execute so few, perhaps if we started using Saddam's favorite, a shredder, to execute the guilty, we would do some serious deterrence! (I am only joking for effect - save your nasty comments!).

Read the entire article and see why it takes her so many words to confirm the obvious.