Death penalty works

A series of recent studies claims to settle a hotly debated argument -- whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder.

The analyses say yes. They count between three and 18 lives that would be saved by the execution of each convicted killer.

"I oppose the death penalty," said Naci Mocan, an economics professor. "But my results show that the death penalty [deters] -- what am I going to do, hide them?''