The Death Penalty

To the Editor:

Re "New Debate Over Restoring Death Penalty" (news article, Dec. 16):

The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, opposes capital punishment because "states with the death penalty have homicide rates that are 44 percent higher than those without it" and "rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them."

But it can be reasonably argued that these states choose to impose the death penalty precisely because they possess the factors and subpopulations that disproportionately contribute to a high homicide rate. Moreover, to claim that the death penalty fuels violence is to argue that it not only doesn't decrease the murder rate, but also increases it more than it would otherwise be increased. This claim is dubious in the extreme.

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