Should the U.S. Abolish the Death Penalty?

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Where would you feel safer?  Somewhere in Maine or Vermont, or somewhere in downtown Houston, Texas?    Because, while Maine and Vermont do not have the death penalty (and have two of the lowest murder rates in America), Harris County, Texas (where Houston is located) is the single highest executing jurisdiction in the Western Hemisphere (aside from Texas itself); 102 inmates have been put to death out of Harris Country since 1982. Nonetheless, no deterrent effect from all these executions can be detected on Houston’s consistently high murder rate. This is because no such deterrent effect exists.
  
In fact, since 1990 at least, the murder rate in non-death penalty states has always been lower than the rate in death penalty states. And, as executions have been piling up, the gap has actually widened. In 2006, the murder rate in non-death penalty states was 40% lower than in death penalty states.
  
In 1976, the year the death penalty was reinstated in the US by the Supreme Court, Canada formally abolished the death penalty. Yet the rises and falls in murder rates in Canada and the US since then have been nearly identical, indicating that whether or not there is a death penalty is completely irrelevant.
 
Recent studies that have purported to show a deterrent effect have been debunked as “simply not credible” (Donnohue and Wolfers), and as work that "fall apart under close scrutiny” and “fails the tests of rigorous replication and robustness analysis that are the hallmarks of good science.” (Fagan)
The reality is that the death penalty is not a solution to the problem of violent crime in our society, and decision makers should devote their attention and resources to policies (like better mental health care, drug treatment and more effective policing strategies) that can make a real difference in preventing crime.

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Do you feel safe in downtown Detroit? You shouldn't be.

Beyond the obvious specific deterrent of executing a killer so he can't kill again, the most recent studies (since 2000) come from a broad base of economists and non-idealogical scientists. Their studies http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DPDeterrence.htm  include authors who personally oppose capital punishment but cannot deny the findings of their research.

Citing a high mirder rate in Texas makes as little sense as citing Michigan or the District of Columbia - both places with much higher than average murder rate - as examples of how.

Comparing the United States with otther countries is equally pointless. There are very stable countries like Switzerland or Japan with low murder rates (one has the death penalty, the other not) or point to countries like Brazil with murder rates much worse than the United States.