European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 24, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 4 the stars and stripes monday october 24, 1977 death penalty contrary to general belief stud indicates it rarely deters murder by Margaret Gentry Washington a the death pen Alty rarely if Ever deters murder Accord into a new statistical report in the University of Minnesota Law review disputes the widespread belief that some potential criminals will change their minds about committing murder because they fear execution. Washington researcher Brian Forst. Concluded in the latest statistical analysis of the Issue that capital punishment does not on balance deter however the report said there was some evidence that a High murder conviction rate and prison sentences for murders have a deterrent , a senior research analyst at the Institute for Law and social research studied murder statistics for 32 states be tween 1960 and 1970, a decade when the murder rate was rising nationally and the number of executions was declining. His study was published last summer. Top level visit underground president Carter is flanked by his National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski left and Gen. Richard h. Ellis commander in chief of the strategic air come As Carter visits the Sac command Post 46 feet beneath the Prai Rie near Omaha. Carter said he is favourably impressed by the . Strategic forces. A photo drug related death autopsy said Elvis findings allegedly conflict Memphis up a county medical examiner s findings that drugs played no role in the death of Elvis Presley do not correspond with extensive Laboratory work ordered by Baptist Hospital pathologists who actually conducted the Presley autopsy it was reported sunday. Medical examiner or. Jerry Francisco told reporters Friday Presley died of hypertensive heart disease with coronary artery heart disease As a contributing Factor. He said none of the 10 drugs found in lab tests played any role in Presley s a Memphis newspaper the com Mercial Appeal said sunday the chief of Baptist Hospital s pathology department did not consider it possible that heart Dis ease alone killed Presley. Or. E. Eric Muirhead an internationally recognized authority on hypertension conducted the autopsy after Presley died aug. 16. The report was turned Over to Francisco who made his ruling on cause of death based on the findings. Muirhead who could not be reached for comment took no part in Francisco s news conference Friday and did not sign the medical examiner s written statement to reporters. The newspaper said the Hospital s autopsy report lists Presley s death As a drug related one commonly known As poly the autopsy report is being kept confidential by Hospital officials. Baptist Hospital vice president Maurice Elliott said sunday he could not comment on the autopsy results because any state ment Woula violate medical confidentiality. He called the position on it is a really difficult position to be in to say you cannot comment on the accuracy of or. Francisco s findings said feel comfortable with our autopsy report. It was not done haphazardly an the conclusions were reached Only after a great Deal of study and he said the report was Given the Presley family. We have Given the family our word that we would give the report to the family and no one else he said. Francisco has adamantly denied there was any evidence Presley died of a drug related cause. He said Friday Presley would have died of heart problems aug. 16even if there had been no drugs in his body. The medical examiner named eight of the 10 drugs found by toxicologists in blood and tissue samples from Presley s body. Of those eight he said Only four were in Levels he considered significant to affect the Singer s body. He said All the drugs had been prescribed by Presley s would not identify the ninth and 10th drugs which he said were found by a toxicology Laboratory because he did not consider the testing procedures used by that lab to be sufficient. He said four of five toxicology labs agreed that the drugs found were within therapeutic Levels and did not contribute to the Singer s death. The newspaper said Bio science Labora tories in Van Guys calif., reported finding near toxic Levels of three depressants in the Singer s blood including two that could be lethal if combined. One of the drugs found by Bio science and not mentioned by Francisco placidly was discovered in Presley s urine by a lab oratory at methodist Hospital in Memphis Only hours after the Singer died the news paper said. Francisco has said he doubts whether either of the was present in Presley s system. The newspaper said the autopsy per formed shortly after Presley s death turned up no evidence that any disease killed Presley instead Francisco said Presley died of cardiac arrhythmia from unknown causes probably hypertension and arteriosclerosis. Best Sellers up publishers weekly fiction the Silaya Zillioh the Thorn Birds Colleen Mccullough the honorable Schoolboy John be Carre Daniel Martin John Fowles Delta of Venus Anais Nin illusions the adventures of a reluctant Messiah Richard Bac dynasty Robert s. Elegant the second deadly sin Lawrence Sanders beggar Man thief Irwin Shaw coma Robin Cook nonfiction All things Wise and wonderful James Herri Obook of lists David Wal Lechinsky looking out for no. 1 Robert ringer the dragons of Eden car Sagan the camera never blinks Dan rather six men Alistair Cooke Vivien Leigh Anne Edward Amityville horror Jay Anson essays of . White . White it did t Start with watergate Victor Lasky Between 1967 and last january there were no executions in the . Because of court challenges to the constitutionality of capital punishment. But after the supreme court ruled in 1976 that the death penalty for murder is constitutional under certain circumstances Many states passed new death penalty Laws. Utah became the first state in the new Era to carry out an execution when Gary Mark Gilmore was shot by a firing squad Jan. 17. Forst wrote that if capital punishment deters murder the. Murder rate should have increased the most in states where the risk of execution went Down the most. Instead Forst said in an interview the states that ended the death penalty had smaller increases in the homicide rates. The homicide rate went up More in states which did hot have the death penalty in 1960." As he described the findings in the report it is apparent that those states in which the actual use of capital punishment ceased during the 1960s experienced no greater increase in the murder rate than did the states that did not use capital punishment in the first place. Under the theory that capital punish ment deters murder one would have predicted the in its opinion affirming the constitutionality of capital punishment the supreme court speculated that for Many murder ers the death penalty undoubtedly is a significant pollsters have found a widespread Public belief in the deterrent value of Capi Tal punishment Forst noted. He measured what happened to murder rates in states that abolished the death penalty before 1960, those that still had a death penalty Law but carried out few if any executions and those that used the Law More frequently until court decisions forced an end to capital punishment. Link with convictions though he found no connection Between capital punishment and the murder rate Forst did find a link Between the murder rate and convictions and prison terms. This finding of a deterrent effect of imprisonments of persons convicted of murder is More real than spurious Forst wrote. The largest murder rate increases tended to occur in states with a poor record of capturing and convicting killers he said. Legal scholar Hans Zeisel called Forst analysis the final blow to the theory that capital punishment deters , professor emeritus of Law at the University of Chicago and a senior Consul Tant to the american bar foundation wrote in a recent article that Forst s analysis is Superior to other statistical studies which concluded that capital punishment deters murder. None Able to find it tracing the history of those studies Zeisel wrote this then is the proper sum Mary of the evidence on the deterrent effect of the death penalty if there is one it can Only be minute since not one of the Many research approaches from the simplest to the most sophisticated was Able to find it. The proper question there fore is whether an effect that is at Best so Small that nobody has been Able to detect it justifies the awesome moral costs of the Deathy he noted however that the resumption of executions in some states will provide another Opportunity to see whether the capital crime rate in these states will de Cline compared to the states that still have no so far there s Little evidence on which to base a judgment. There has been Only on execution Gilmore and few statistics available about Utah s crime rate in the nine months since. Fri statistics show that Salt Lake City had five murders in the first six months of 1977, compared with six for the same period in 1976. No statistics were available for the entire state nor were there figures on other factors that May have influenced the crime rate
