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and those innocen ts that would have died if not for the deterrent effect (most recently estimated as 72 innocent lives saved per execution).
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Source/link?
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sorry, it was 74 per year
theres also a WSJ article but it is nearly identical and requires a subscription
"Roy Adler and Michael Summers, both professors at Pepperdine University, have analyzed the relationship between the number of U.S. executions by year and the number of murders in the year thereafter for 1979-2004. They relied on raw data supplied by the Death Penalty Information Center and the FBI"
"They have documented a relationship between capital punishment and the future rate of homicide. When executions leveled off, the professors found, murders increased. And when executions increased, the number of people murdered dropped off. In a year-by-year analysis, Adler and Summers found that each execution was associated with 74 fewer murders the following year. "