In the OLD movies, everybody is terrified to commit murder. “We’re gonna be hanged” is said in just about every movie (with a murder) from the black-and-white era. While this is a terribly unscientific use of “evidence” on my part, I think it does reflect something about the society at the time . . . you didn’t murder because, if you got caught, you were gonna be hanged, period.

Imagine if we only vaccinated 2 people a year. It would still cost the same amount (hundreds of millions, I believe) to develop the vaccines. It wouldn’t cost as much to produce them, because you’d only have to buy enough raw material for two vaccine doses. But the net effect on public health of only vaccinating two people would be . . . well, nothing. Statistically, the population would be no healthier than if you inoculated nobody at all. So there’d be no cost-effectiveness to vaccinations. We could throw them out and be just as well off.

But if we vaccinate more and more people, the per-vaccination cost goes down, while the net public benefit goes up. Once you’ve inoculated a certain number of people, it’s vastly cost-beneficial to vaccinate rather than not vaccinate.

I believe the same is true with execution. We don’t execute enough people now to be of any statistical benefit to the rest of us. It’s not a deterrent the way it’s done now, and it’s not saving enough lives (deterrent-wise or future-offenses-wise) to be matter. But that doesn’t mean the only option is to drop it. The other option is to doggedly pursue it. If every first-degree murder conviction carried an automatic penalty of death, the state wouldn’t be spending that much more on capital trials, and you’d get a much better deterrent effect (like the moderate one in Texas). It’s not a pretty choice, but it would be disingenuous to say the evidence only points in one direction.

I’m not even convinced the death penalty is much of a deterrent; I think it’s more a case of justice. My state — Connecticut — has the death penalty but uses it only rarely; in the 14 years I’ve been here I recall only one execution, of a serial killer who kidnapped and murdered several teenage girls. Right now we have another case of two monsters for whom prosecutors seek the death penalty; Google “Cheshire Connecticut Killers” and you’ll find the horrifying details (though after reading about things like the rape of an 11-year-old you’ll wish you didn’t).

There’s a nascent movement afoot to abolish the death penalty here, but even people like me have the general attitude “Hmm, yes, let’s wait until AFTER the Cheshire vermin are eradicated before we do that, no?” The Cheshire doctor will never get his wife and two daughters back, but executing their torturers, rapists and killers might provide him with a certain form of closure which he will NOT get if they’re merely warehoused at taxpayer expense for the next several decades.