nishment would not have affected the murderer's plans.
             It might be argued that many murders are planned, but not carried out, because of the threat of capital punishment – as Lawrence Hinman writes, "some researchers claim that the death penalty saves seven to eight innocent lives each year." However, such research is at best equivocal and at worst misleading. There is no reliable method of ascertaining who has been prevented from committing murder by the idea of their own future imprisonment and death. Statistics are only available on murders actually committed – to quote Mill, "we partly know who those are whom [the death penalty] has not deterred; but who is there who knows whom it has deterred?" Nonetheless, it would seem reasonable that, if capital punishment has a deterrent effect on potential murderers, then those states which retain the death penalty will have lower murder rates than those which have abolished it. This is not so. In his article, The Case Against the Death Penalty, Hugo Bedau sets forth statistics which r!
             eveal that USA "death penalty states" show no lower rate of homicide than their pro-abolition neighbours – in fact, the former show a slightly higher rate ("7.5 criminal homicides per 100,000" citizens, compared with 7.4 per 100,00
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