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PRO DEATH PENALTY

I.

Singapore Government Response to Amnesty International Report1

Whether a country should retain or abolish capital punishment is a question for each country to
decide, taking into account its own circumstances. Every country has the sovereign right to
decide on its own judicial system. We do not live in a homogenous world. Within certain
universally agreed broad parameters, international norms call for the respect of differences of
views and beliefs.
Singapore weighs the right to life of the convicted against the rights of victims and the right of
the community to live in peace and security. Taking into account our national circumstances, we
have made a considered decision to retain the death penalty. It has worked for us, making
Singapore one of the safest places in the world to live and work in.
Singapore recognises that the death penalty is a severe penalty and cannot be remedied in the
event of any mistake in its application. That is why we use it only for very serious crimes.
Amnesty Internationals claim that the death penalty is a violation of international human
rights standards
There is no international consensus on abolition of the death penalty. Key international
instruments that apply to countries with wide divergences in cultures and values do not proscribe
the use of the death penalty in their texts. For example, even the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights provides that the death sentence "may be imposed only for the most serious
crimes".
On the two occasions, in 1999 and 1994, that the European Union attempted to get the United
Nations General Assembly to adopt a resolution that called for a moratorium on the death penalty
with the view towards its abolition, these attempts failed. This was because a large majority of
UN member states disapproved of the EUs attempt to impose their views and systems on the rest
of the world. AI refers to the resolutions adopted in the UN Commission on Human Rights that
encourage states to stop executions. However, AI failed to say that on at least seven occasions, a
significant number of countries disassociated themselves from those resolutions. In 2003, 63
countries, or one-third of the UNs membership, disassociated themselves.

Singapore response to amnesty international report the death penalty: a hidden toll of execution

As of July 2015, of the 195 independent states that are UN members or have UN observer status:
102 have abolished it for all crimes; 6 have abolished it, but retain it for exceptional or special
circumstances (such as crimes committed in wartime); 51 retain it, but have not used it for at
least 10 years or are under a moratorium; 36 retain it in both law and practice, according to.

II.

The Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty

How capital punishment affects murder rates can be explained through general deterrence theory,
which supposes that increasing the risk of apprehension and punishment for crime deters
individuals from committing crime.2
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The modern economic study of crime began with Gary Beckers famous paper on the
economics of crime. The analysis of this paper indicated that criminals should be expected to
respond to incentives, including the threat of punishment.
Isaac Ehrlich was the first economist to test this theory for the particular case of capital
punishment and homicide in two papers in 1975 and 1977. Ehrlich was the first to study capital
punishments deterrent effect.
2 Paul H. Rubin, February 1, 2006, Statistical Evidence on Capital Punishment and the Deterrence of Homicide,
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/TestimonyPaulRubin.pdf

Ehrlichs 1975 paper examined U.S time-series data for the period 1933-1969. He tested the
effect on national murder rates of deterrent variables (the probabilities of arrest, conviction,
and execution), demographic variables (population, fraction of nonwhites, fraction of people age
14-24), economic variables (labor force participation, unemployment rate, real per capita
permanent income, per capita government expenditures, and per capita expenditures on police),
and a time variable. He found a statistically significant negative relationship between the
murder rate and execution rate, indicating a deterrent effect. Specifically, he estimated that each
execution resulted in approximately seven or eight fewer murders.
Ehrlichs 1977 paper studied cross-sectional data from the fifty states in 1940 and 1950. That is,
instead of his first papers approach testing how the total U.S. murder rate changed across time
as the execution rate changed, Ehrlich explored the relationship during a single year between
each of the states execution rates and their murder rates. The results indicated a substantial
deterrent effect of capital punishment on murder.
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Modern Studies of Capital Punishments Deterrent Effect.
1. Hashem Dezhbakhsh, et. al. examine whether deterrence exists using county-level panel data
from 3,054 U.S. counties over the period 1977 to 1996. A substantial deterrent effect was found;
both death row sentences and executions result in decreases in the murder rate. A conservative
estimate is that each execution results in, on average, 18 fewer murders.
2. In another paper, Joanna Shepherd examined two important questions in the capital
punishment literature. First, she investigates the types of murders deterred by capital
punishment. Some people in the debate on capital punishments deterrent effect believe that
certain types of murder are not deterrable. They claim that murders committed during
interpersonal disputes, murders by intimates, or unplanned crimes of passion are not intentionally
committed and are therefore nondeterrable.3
She finds that the combination of death row sentences and executions deters all types of
murders: murders between intimates, acquaintances, and strangers, crime-of-passion murders
and murders committed during other felonies, and murders of both African-American and white
people.
She estimates that each death row sentence deters approximately 4.5 murders and that each
execution deters approximately 3 murders. In this paper she also finds that that shorter waits
on death row increase deterrence. Specifically, one extra murder is deterred for every 2.75-years
reduction in the death-row wait before each execution.

3 Joanna M. Shepherd, 2004. Murders of Passion, Execution Delays, and the Deterrence of
Capital Punishment, 33 Journal of Legal Studies 283

3. Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Joanna Shepherd examined capital punishments deterrent effect
from 1960- 2000. This is the only study to use data from before, during, and after the 1972-1976
Supreme Court moratorium on executions.4
First, they perform before-and-after moratorium comparisons by comparing the murder rate for
each state immediately before and after it suspended or reinstated the death penalty.
The before-and-after comparisons reveal that as many as 91 percent of states experienced an
increase in murder rates after they suspended the death penalty. In about 70 percent of the
cases, the murder rate dropped after the state reinstated the death penalty. They
supplement the before-and-after comparisons with time-series and panel-data regression analyses
that use both pre- and postmoratorium data. These estimates suggest that both adopting a capital
statute and exercising it have strong deterrent effects.
4. Two papers by FCC economist Paul Zimmerman. In both papers (1978 to 1997 and 19782000 data), Zimmerman finds a significant deterrent effect of capital punishment. He estimates
that each execution deters an average of 14 murders and that executions by electrocution have
the strongest impact.5
To an economist, this is not surprising: we expect criminals and potential criminals to respond to
sanctions, and execution is the most severe sanction available.6
III.

OPINIONS

George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States, in a June 23, 2000 CNN.com article "Bush
Death Penalty Stance Could Be Campaign Issue," wrote the following:
"Im going to uphold the law of the land and let the political consequences be what they may. If
it costs me politically, it costs me politically... No case is an easy case... I also keep in mind the
victims, and the reason I support the death penalty is because it saves lives. Thats why I support
it, and the people of my state support it too."
Carl F. H. Henry, ThD, PhD, Founder and Editor of Christian Today, in his 1988 book titled
4 Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Joanna M. Shepherd, 2006. The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: Evidence from a
Judicial Experiment, (Emory University Working Paper, 2003; forthcoming, Economic Inquiry, 2006)

5 Paul R. Zimmerman, Estimates of the Deterrent Effect of Alternative Execution Methods in the United States:

1978-2000, American Journal of Economics and Sociology (forthcoming); Paul R. Zimmerman, State Executions,
Deterrence, and the Incidence of Murder, Journal of Applied Economics (forthcoming)

6 Paul H. Rubin, February 1, 2006, Statistical Evidence on Capital Punishment and the Deterrence of Homicide,
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/TestimonyPaulRubin.pdf

Twilight of a Great Civilization, wrote: "Nowhere does the Bible repudiate capital punishment
for premeditated murder; not only is the death penalty for deliberate killing of a fellow human
being permitted, but it is approved and encouraged, and for any government that attaches at least
as much value to the life of an innocent victim as to a deliberate murderer, it is ethically
imperative."
Christ.org, a Christian ministry, stated: "The Death Penalty is moral and just. Judicial death for
the purpose of maintaining justice or righteousness is well established in human history.
However, the rise of death penalty executions in the United States against a backdrop of
liberalism has triggered protests from various anti-capital punishment factions. Often shouting
the loudest are liberal religionists and clergy who erroneously claim to speak for God. These
folks are grossly confused and seriously wrong."
Bruce Fein, JD, General Counsel for the Center for Law and Accountability, offered the
following: "Abolitionists may contend that the death penalty is inherently immoral because
governments should never take human life, no matter what the provocation. But that is an article
of faith, not of fact, just like the opposite position held by abolitionist detractors, including
myself... The death penalty honors human dignity by treating the defendant as a free moral actor
able to control his own destiny for good or for ill; it does not treat him as an animal with no
moral sense, and thus subject even to butchery to satiate human gluttony. Moreover, capital
punishment celebrates the dignity of the humans whose lives were ended by the defendant's
predation."
Adrian Vermeule, JD, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School: "Defenders of capital
punishment can be separated into two different camps. Some are retributivists. Following
Immanuel Kant, they claim that for the most heinous forms of wrongdoing, the penalty of death
is morally justified or perhaps even required.
Other defenders of capital punishment are consequentialists and often also welfarists. They
contend that the deterrent effect... is significant and that it justifies the infliction of the ultimate
penalty. Consequentialist... tend to assume that capital punishment is (merely) morally
permissible, as opposed to being morally obligatory...
We suggest... that on certain empirical assumptions, capital punishment may be morally required,
not for retributive reasons, but rather to prevent the taking of innocent lives. In so saying, we are
suggesting the possibility that states are obliged to maintain the death penalty option..."

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