Science has killed myth of death sentence as deterrent  

John L Sheppard completely missed the thrust of my argument decrying capital punishment as a form of “justice”, and obviously misinterpreted what I actually wrote.
Retreating into statistics is a well-known form of obfuscation exploited by people either unable or unwilling to articulate the hard realities of the topic at hand. If Mr Sheppard and others persist with presenting data, they might wish to examine the numbers of people who were judicially murdered and then found to be innocent of any crime. One is too many.
I have given my reasons why I will not contemplate the taking of life as a form of state revenge, which it unquestionably is. This is all the more pertinent when such barbarism is the default punishment used by tin-pot dictators and their odious regimes. It is equally true that most democracies recognise this disgusting practice for what it is, and have removed it from their menu of criminal punishments. 
Giving in to primitive emotions is never a wise move, and creating more victims does not make for a just solution. 
Mr Sheppard inquires whether “Perhaps ... Dr Frank could explain in simple, concise English the concept and practice of deterrence ... a concept which doesn’t seem to be working particularly well right now.” I humbly offer my “concise” English, thus: The unimpeachable fact that state-sponsored murder does not prevent further murders is obvious, and widely documented. Ergo: this so-called “deterrent” doesn’t work, because it fails to deter. 
As I wrote earlier, I am happy to debate workable, civilised alternatives to several states’ failure of moral principle.
Dr Frank
Bangkok