Capital punishment, execution publicity and murder in Houston, Texas.

• Author: Stolzenberg, Lisa

Punishment is not inflicted by a rational man for the sake of the crime that has been committed--after all one cannot undo what is past--but for the sake of the future, to prevent either the same man or, by the spectacle of his punishment, someone else, from doing wrong again.

--Plato, Protagoras

1. INTRODUCTION

   Healthy debate persists as to the deterrent effect of capital punishment. Although an expansive and diverse body of research has accumulated that examines the effect of executions or execution publicity on murder rates, this research affords few definitive conclusions. On one hand, there is evidence that executions reduce murder levels. Empirical work by Ehrlich, Phillips, and Stack supports this view. (1) On the other hand, several studies fail to discern convincing evidence of a relationship. (2) Still others find a positive association. (3) These inconsistencies in the literature raise methodological issues, some of which are grounded in theoretical arguments. Perhaps the most serious concern is specifying the true nature of the causal relationship between capital punishment and murder rates. Most previous studies estimated only unidirectional relationships. The question of salience, however, is whether recursive models portray the relations among the variables of interest accurately. Another issue relates to the geographical unit of analysis best suited for evincing deterrence effects. Whereas most prior studies relied on state or national level data to assess the deterrent effect of capital punishment, a high level of aggregation may not fully capture the ecological dynamics that are hypothesized to underlie deterrence theory.

   We address these methodological concerns to help clarify the conflicting findings often reported in the literature. Using monthly data and a fully recursive vector ARMA statistical procedure, we examine the causal relations among execution risk, execution newspaper publicity, and incidents of murder in Houston, Texas from January 1990 to December 1994. We address three general questions. First, does the number of monthly executions decrease murder incidents? If people are rational actors who weigh the likely costs and benefits of their behavior before engaging in criminal activity as deterrence advocates suggest, an inverse relationship between execution risk and murder incidents is anticipated. Conversely, if the brutalization thesis has any merit, we expect to observe a positive relationship between execution risk and murder incidents. Second, does variation in murder incidents impact execution risk? It is plausible that high levels of murder drain the finite resources of the criminal justice system, thereby making the apprehension, prosecution, and execution of offenders less certain. It is also possible that high murder rates amplify public fear of crime, which in turn evokes a more punitive response on the part of prosecutors and judges in their handling of criminal cases. Third, if causality flows in both directions, what is the relative magnitude of the effects of execution risk on murder incidents and murder incidents on execution risk?

   In addition to analyzing the relationship between execution risk and murder incidents, an effort is made to determine whether the newspaper publicity surrounding an execution affects the frequency of murder incidents. Because deterrence is a communicative theory, it seems logical to anticipate that such publicity influences murder rates. The identification of the nature and direction of the causal relations among execution risk, execution newspaper publicity, and murder incidents should help to enrich our understanding of deterrence theory.

   1. BACKGROUND

      The deterrent effect of capital punishment remains a topic of contentious debate. Advocates of the deterrence thesis maintain that the death penalty acts as an effective deterrent because individuals are free-will actors who rationally weigh the probable benefits and potential liabilities before engaging in criminal activities. This calculation on the part of the individual hinges on personal experience with criminal punishment, knowledge of what sanctions are imposed by law, and awareness of how punishment has been applied to apprehended offenders in the past. (4) The state's administering of capital punishment must also be swift and certain if a reduction in crime is to be actualized. Another important facet of the deterrence theory is that the threat of punishment must be communicated to the populace. The state's sanctioning of criminal offenders serves as an example to those who have not yet committed a crime, instilling in them sufficient fear to deter them from partaking in illegal activities.

      Advocates of deterrence remain steadfast in their belief that the crime of murder is a product of a reasoned decision-making process on the part of an individual. A number of empirical studies give credence to this belief. Felson and Messner find that a sizable percentage of murders in our society result from an offender's desire to avoid retaliation from others or to eliminate potential witnesses. (5) Parker also reports that even alcohol-related murders are not irrationally motivated.(6) Even serial killers, usually considered among the most irrational of all offenders, appear to select their victims from either the defenseless or from those unable to depend fully on law enforcement for protection, such as prostitutes and the homeless. (7)

      However, despite the plausibility of the deterrence thesis, many social scientists are still unconvinced that capital punishment deters people from committing murder. The threat of the death penalty, especially when the likelihood of execution is extremely small, is not seen as having the same motivating power as the offender's desires at the moment of the crime. Most murderers, for example, are thought to lack single-minded intent.(8) The death or survival of a victim in a homicidal attack is believed to be largely a matter of chance, and that chance depends to a degree on the lethality of the weapon used to inflict the injury. Studies also show that most murderers have little or no prior criminal records (9) and that murderers released from prison recidivate at lower rates than other felony offenders, (10)

      Some also argue that executions escalate violence levels in society by devaluing human life and by legitimizing lethal violence. Two main variants of this argument have been adduced in the literature. One focuses on the desensitizing aspects associated with repeated exposure to violence, while the other centers on the modeling of violent behavior. First, according to Bandura, (11)repeated exposure to either direct or indirect violence has a desensitizing effect on individuals. Bandura's claim is consistent with experimental studies showing that frequent exposure to violence not only results in a gradual blunting of emotional responses to subsequent displays of aggression (12) but also reduces the speed and willingness of an individual to intervene in the violent disputes of others. (13)

      A second perspective maintains that individuals learn aggressive behavior by observing the aggressive behavior of others. For example, research has found that homicides increase markedly shortly after championship prize fights given widespread media coverage of the events. (14) Additionally, the publicity surrounding suicides has been found to be associated with subsequent rises in suicide rates. (15) The clear implication of these studies is that heavy exposure to publicity surrounding executions may desensitize people or may provide them with violent models to imitate, and in turn, raise the probability of violent behavior, including murder.

   2. PRIOR RESEARCH

      Despite considerable support for the deterrence theory at both the macro and micro levels of analysis, (16) empirical evidence for the expectation that capital punishment reduces murder rates in society has not been compelling. It is beyond the scope of this paper to comment on all previous research in detail. However, prior studies have enough commonality that a general discussion of several examples is sufficient. (17)

      Ehrlich examined national execution and homicide data for various periods between 1933 and 1969 and found a significant negative relationship between execution rates and homicide rates after controlling for a variety of factors. (18) His analysis led him to conclude that an additional execution per year over the period in question resulted, on average, in seven or eight fewer murders. Phillips examined the deterrent effect of twenty-two highly publicized executions in London, England from 1858 to 1921. (19) He found a thirty-five percent decline in the average number of homicides during the two weeks immediately following each execution. However, this deterrent effect was short-lived because the number of homicides returned to baseline levels during the third, fourth, and fifth weeks following the executions. Stack used data for the United States from 1950 to 1980 to examine the deterrent effect of newspaper coverage devoted to executions. (20) He classified executions recorded in Facts on File and The New York Times as receiving high levels of newspaper publicity. Executions appearing in The New York Times but not in Facts on File were coded as receiving moderate media attention. Executions not covered in either source were classified as low-publicity cases. Stack observed a reduction in homicide rates for months with highly publicized executions. In contrast, there was little association between executions receiving moderate or low publicity and homicide rates. Over the entire period of observation, Stack estimated that an average of thirty people were saved for every execution carried out by the state.

      Bailey investigated the relationship between monthly murder rates and national evening news coverage devoted to executions from 1976 to 1987. (21) He employed the amount of...