Does the death penalty deter?

SALT LAKE CITY — Does shooting Ronnie Lee Gardner to death next week, or executing anyone for that matter, make people think twice about killing someone?

It's a question with no clear-cut answer.

Capital punishment certainly is a specific deterrent in that an executed killer will never kill again. But whether it generally deters murder and other violent crimes could be debated ad infinitum.

Studies over the years are not definitive either way, with many concluding that the rarity of executions renders them an ineffective deterrent. Some show a temporary reduction in crime immediately following an execution, while others say those statistics are not mathematically valid.

"I often ask people, 'Can you name the last two men executed in Utah or the last two women executed in the United States?' and they can't, and I ask how much of a deterrent can it be if we don't know their names or what they've done?" said Weber State University criminologist Kay Gillespie, an expert on capital punishment.

"We don't have any evidence that it deters much either way. We don't know that it does and don't know that it doesn't."

Though proponents and opponents disagree on the justness of the death penalty, they tend to agree with that assessment.

"The argument is all over the place," said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.

Salt Lake attorney Ralph Dellapiana agrees, saying there's substantial dispute in the academic world.

Says Creighton Horton, who prosecuted a dozen capital cases during his 30-year career in Utah: "The only thing you know for sure is the killers who were not deterred because they went ahead and killed in jurisdictions with the death penalty."

Utahns are split in their opinions of the death penalty's effectiveness.

Dan Jones & Associates asked Utahns this week whether executing people who commit murder deters others from killing. Half of those polled for the Deseret News and KSL said they believe the death penalty does deter others, while 44 percent said it does not have much effect. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 6.5 percent.

Utahns' opinions matched those in the rest of the country. A national Harris poll asking the same question in 2008 showed almost identical results.