DETERRENCE OR BRUTALIZATION - AN IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF OKLAHOMA RETURN TO CAPITAL-PUNISHMENT

On September 10, 1990 Charles Troy Coleman was put to death by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Coleman's execution was the first in the state in more than 25 years, generating significant media coverage and providing a unique opportunity to assess the impact of the state's return to executing capital offenders. Interrupted time-series analyses are performed with weekly data from the UCR Supplemental Homicide Reports for the state for the period January 1989 through December 1991. Analyses are performed for the total level of criminal homicides and homicides disaggregated into two types of murder-felony murder and stranger homicides-testing hypotheses that predict opposing impacts for each type of homicide. As predicted, no evidence of a deterrent or a brutalization effect is found for criminal homicides in general. Similarly, the predicted deterrent effect of the execution on the level of felony murders is not observed Evidence of the predicted brutalization effect on the level of stranger homicides is observed, however. Supplementary analyses on further offense disaggregations continue to support these initial findings and permit a more coherent interpretation of the results.