A great article by John Lott about the effectiveness of the death penalty is here at Investors Business Daily.

He talks about New Jersey dropping the death penalty when a Quinnipiac University poll found that by an overwhelming majority, 78% to 18% of New Jerseyans want the death penalty for -at the very least-cases involving serial and child killers.

The most recent Gallup poll shows that 69% of Americans favor the death penalty. Yet opponents continue to force a widespread public debate over its effectiveness using these arguments:

They say it’s ‘not a deterrent’, yet the numbers tell a different story.

states that reinstituted the death penalty after 1976 collectively saw a significantly bigger drop in murder rates (about 38% larger than in the 12 no-execution states) by 1998. Without executions, murder rates skyrocketed from 1968 to 1976.

That an innocent person might die.

They still can’t point to a single case in which an innocent person was executed. This is ultimate proof that our justice system works well — making due account, for example, for the fact that witnesses sometimes make misidentifications.

They claim the death penalty is racist.

Others, such as the American Bar Association, claim racial biases in how the death penalty is applied. In fact, while African-Americans have committed 53% of all murders since 1980 in which the killer’s race is known, they have accounted for only 38% of the executions.