" The political parties in Europe often "condemn the United States as human rights violators," due to the fact that we still enforce capital punishment. These abolitionists point to Article Five of the Declaration of Independence, which states that "No one shall be subjected to cruel or degrading punishment," and the Eighth amendment of the United States Constitution, which prevents humans from being subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment." Since the beginning of mankind, capital punishment has been a practiced form of sentencing in many countries, thus it can not be considered unusual nor cruel if the United States Supreme Court has not declared it illegal. (Page 73 The Death Penalty, Opposing Viewpoints) Daniel Lazare in his essay "Your Constitution Is Killing You," describes the positive and negative aspects of this question raised by abolitionists, and confirms the fact that it is not unconstitutional nor cruel or unusual. Thus there would be no need to dismiss capital punishment. (Fields of Reading).
Dismissing capital punishment on the basis that it does not deter crime, "requires us to eliminate all prisons as well because they do not seem to be anymore effective." In 1985, a study by Stephen K. Layson, an economist at the University of North Carolina showed that for "every execution of a murderer", 18 lives were saved. Layson's study also proved that if the United States raised "the number of death sentences by one percent it would prevent one hundred five murders. However, only thirty eight percent of all murder cases tried in the United States result in death sentences, and of those, only one tenth percent are actually executed." (Page 273 Congregation of the Condemned).
In 1975, a "correlation between execution and deterrence" was discovered. Isaac Ehrlich, an economist from the University of Chicago published a paper in the American Economic Review titled "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death.
