On Monday, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke at Vanderbilt as a part of Project Dialogue, which is focusing on the death penalty this year. Ashcroft, who as AG often over-ruled local prosecutors and ordered them to seek the federal death penalty.

In particular, Ashcroft spoke about the utility of capital punishment as a deterrent. Believe it or not, this former high-ranking government official said that the death penalty was a deterrent “if not statistically, than at least anecdotally” (emphasis added). Anecdotal evidence? Every legitimate study of the death penalty ever done has found absolutely no deterrent effect.

The deterrence of the death penalty has, to most reasonable minds, ceased to be a credible argument. The states without the death penalty have a generally lower murder rate than those which do execute people. We have not seen a spike in murders after a state abolishes the death penalty, nor have we ever seen a decrease in the murder rate after a state reinstated the death penalty or after it’s first execution. The only thing we have seen is an increase in violent crime after a highly publicized execution, often referred to as the brutalization effect.

Ashcroft also referred to the death penalty being “necessary” to protect other prisoners and guards from these individuals supposedly unable to stop killing. This is the newer argument about specific deterrence. In other words, if we kill person A, that person will not kill again. Of course, this argument falls apart a little, when you consider 1) that we have sentences like life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) which ensures that a convicted murderer will never be a danger to the public again and 2) that we have supermax prisons which practically ensure that a prisoner cannot hurt anyone. And all of this at a lower cost and without the risk of killing innocent people.

So really, who does Ashcroft think he’s kidding? Everyone who has studied the issue knows that the deterrent argument in regards to capital punishment doesn’t hold any water, so we’re forced to referring to “anecdotal” evidence. What, did someone come up to him and say, “Gee, I was going to kill this guy, but then I realized that I could get the death penalty if I did that, so I made him a cake and now we’re friends” ?

We should have a serious debate about the use of capital punishment as a public policy tool in America. We should acknowledge that people feel strongly about it. But let’s call a spade a spade, and let’s be honest about the facts. To do anything less, particularly on a college campus and as a former high-ranking government official, is to do a disservice to us all.

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