Murder and capital punishment in the nation's capital

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Abstract
In this investigation we examine the relationship between the certainty of execution and murder in the District of Columbia, 1890–1970. By examining a small political/geographic unit like the District, we avoid the aggregation problems of previous time-series analyses at the national level, and time-series and cross-sectional investigations of states as the unit of analysis. At odds with the deterrence argument, we find no evidence of a substantial and/or statistically significant inverse relationship between the certainty of execution and murder rates when multiple execution and murder rate variables are considered, when various time lags are examined, and when five time periods are examined between 1890 and 1970. In contrast, there is some suggestion that the immediate effect of executions may be to increase, not decrease, murders. This possible effect is extremely slight and short-term, however, with murder and executions being largely independent factors in the District.