› Death penalty questionable as deterrent to mass killing,
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is calling for new death penalty legislation as an answer to hate crimes and mass killings. But whether that would deter shooters is questionable — especially since most don’t live to face trial.
More than half the perpetrators of mass shootings since 2006 have ended up dead at the scene of their crimes, either killed by others or dying by suicide, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
Death penalty scholars and psychologists say killers motivated by ideology are unlikely to be deterred by punishment. Most of them are willing to die or understand the risk and prepare for it. Some want the fame that an execution could potentially bring to their cause.
“In fact, in the case of terrorism, it might be worse than that because you have the very real possibility of creating martyrs,” said Gary LaFree, head of the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, and co-founder of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
Trump’s remarks Monday on the death penalty followed weekend attacks that killed a total of 31 people in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. The shooting suspect in El Paso is believed to have posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed on the internet before the shooting. The motive in Dayton remains unknown.
Trump said he was ordering the Justice Department to propose legislation ensuring that “those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty, and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.”
The death penalty was one of several steps Trump outlined that embrace conservative responses to mass shootings — such as denouncing video games and calling for changes in mental health laws — while brushing aside Democratic calls for stricter gun regulations and demands that he back off his virulent antiimmigrant rhetoric.