Retributivist arguments against capital punishment

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 188-197

  Brooks, Thom ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 62449224132     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2004.00224.x     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. See William J. Bowers, "The Effect of Execution Is Brutalization, Not Deterrence", in Challenging Capital Punishment: Legal and Social Science Approaches, ed. K. C. Haas and J. A. Inciardi (London: Sage, 1988), 49-89;
2. Mark Constanzo and Sally Constanzo, "The Death Penalty: Public Opinions, Legal Decisions, and Juror Perspectives", in Violence and the Law, ed. M. Constanzo and S. Oskamp (London: Sage, 1994), 246-72;
3. David A. Conway, "Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Considerations in Dialogue Form", Philosophy and Public Affairs 3(Summer 1974):431-43;
4. Samuel R. Gross, "Update: American Public Opinion on the Death Penalty-It's Getting Personal", Cornell Law Review 83(September 1998):1448-75;
5. and Dan M. Kahan, "The Secret Ambition of Deterrence", Harvard Law Review 113(December 1999):413-500.
6. Also see a widely criticized study claiming a deterrence effect: Isaac Ehrlich, "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life or Death", American Economic Review 65(June 1975):397-417.
7. Kahan, "Secret Ambition of Deterrence", 414, 437.
8. Daniel McDermott, "A Retributivist Argument against Capital Punishment", Journal of Social Philosophy 32(2001):317-33.
9. United States of America v. Alan Quinones, et al., 205 F. Supp. 2d. 256
10. 2002 WL 1415648 (S. D. N. Y.). This case was decided on July 1, 2002.
11. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 184 (1976).
12. See also Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 308, 342, 394 (1972).
13. James Baker, "Cruel and Unusual", New York Review of Books 47(January 20, 2000):12.
14. See Constanzo and Constanzo, "Death Penalty", 246-72;
15. Gross, "Update", 1448-75;
16. Also see Edmund F. McGarrell and Marla Sandys, "The Misperception of Public Opinion toward Capital Punishment", American Behavioral Scientist 39(February 1996):500-13.
17. Mark A. Michael, "Utilitarianism and Retributivism: What's the Difference?" American Philosophical Quarterly 29(1992):174.
18. For example, see Igor Primoratz, Justifying Legal Punishment (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1989), 155-72
19. and Igor Primorac [sic], "On Capital Punishment", Israel Law Review 17(1982):133-50.
20. McDermott, "Retributivist Argument against Capital Punishment", 318.
21. See Stephen Nathanson, "Does It Matter if the Death Penalty Is Arbitrarily Administered?" Philosophy and Public Affairs 14(1985):149-64, esp. 157.
22. Also see Jeffrey Reiman, "The Justice of the Death Penalty in an Unjust World", in Challenging Capital Punishment: Legal and Social Science Approaches, ed. K. C. Haas and J. A. Inciardi (London: Sage, 1988), 29-48.
23. Nathanson, "Does It Matter if the Death Penalty Is Arbitrarily Administered?" 158.
24. McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U. S. 279 (1987).
25. Baldrus later coauthored another study examining murder convictions in Philadelphia and New Jersey, concluding that "the problem of arbitrariness and discrimination in the administration of the death penalty is a matter of continuing concern and is not confined to southern jurisdictions" (David C. Baldrus, George Woodworth, David Zuckerman, Neil Alan Weiner, and Barbara Broffitt, "Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview, with Recent Findings from Philadelphia", Cornell Law Review 83 [September 1998]: 1738).
26. Also see John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenburg, and Sheri Lynn Johnson, "Post-McCleskey Racial Discrimination Claims in Capital Cases", Cornell Law Review 83(September 1998):1771-1810.
27. Other sources claim that "killers of whites were eleven times more likely to be condemned to death than killers of African-Americans" (Steven R. Donziger, ed., The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission [New York: Harper-Perennial, 1996], 114).
28. McDermott concedes: "If the Baldrus study were to turn out to be fatally flawed, this would undercut [my] specific argument against the capital sentencing process in Georgia" ("Retributivist Argument against Capital Punishment", 332 n. 9).
29. Racial discrimination is not the only dilemma facing penal distribution. Perhaps a more widespread problem is income inequality: Those on death row are more often from lower income than of any particular ethnicity. A second, more subtle dilemma with capital punishment is the fact that so few persons given death sentences are executed. For example, between 1973 and 1995 there were 5, 580 persons given death sentences: 3, 054 continue to sit on death row, while only 313 have been executed (Barry Latzer, Death Penalty Cases: Leading U. S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment [Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998], 256).
30. Ernest van den Haag says: "[T]he abolitionist argument from capriciousness, or discretion, or discrimination, would be more persuasive if it were alleged that those selectively executed are not guilty. But the argument merely maintains that some other guilty but more favored persons, or groups, escape the death penalty. This is hardly sufficient for letting anyone else found guilty escape the penalty. On the contrary, that some guilty persons or groups elude it argues for extending the death penalty to them" ("The Collapse of the Case against Capital Punishment", National Review [March 31, 1978]: 397
31. Reiman, "Justice of the Death Penalty in an Unjust World", 36.
32. See Primoratz, Justifying Legal Punishment, 161, 165.
33. See Ernest Van Den Haag, "The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense", Harvard Law Review 99(1986):1662-69
34. and "Refuting Reiman and Nathanson", Philosophy and Public Affairs 14(1985):174-75.
35. See my "Gilligan on Deterrence and Capital Punishment: Has Legal Punishment Failed Us?" Ethics and Justice 3-4(2001-2002):1-10
36. and, for a not dissimilar view, Hugo Adam Bedau, "Abolishing the Death Penalty Even for the Worst Murderers", in The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture, ed. A. Sarat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 40-59.
37. The protection against cruel and unusual punishments is found in the Eighth Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Interestingly, there was little discussion at the U. S. Constitutional Convention of what exactly "cruel and unusual punishments" were, and certainly not anything very specific (Ralph Ketcham, ed., The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates [New York: Penguin, 1986], 173, 221, 239.)
38. (See Bell v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 637, 1338 [1977].)
39. Daniel D. Polsby, "The Death of Capital Punishment? Furman v. Georgia", in 1972: The Supreme Court Review, ed. P. B. Kurland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 14.
40. See William J. Bowers, Marla Sandys, and Benjamin D. Steiner, "Foreclosed Impartiality in Capital Sentencing: Jurors' Predispositions, Guilt-Trial Experience, and Premature Decision Making", Cornell Law Review 83(September 1998):1476-1547, esp. 1546.
41. In addition, there have been numerous decisions holding that potential jurors for a capital trial who are opposed to capital punishment are to be removed, perhaps making more likely a jury more favorable to execution than the general public. (See Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510 [1968];
42. Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U. S. 412, 424, n. 5
43. 105 S. Ct. 844 [1985];
44. Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U. S. 162, 170, n. 7
45. 106 S. Ct. 1758 [1986];
46. and Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U. S. 719, 731-34 [1992].)
47. Theodore Eisenburg, Stephen P. Garvey, and Martin T. Wells, "But Was He Sorry? The Role of Remorse in Capital Sentencing", Cornell Law Review 83(September 1998):1599-1637;
48. and Scott E. Sundby, "The Capital Jury and Absolution: The Intersection of Trial Strategy, Remorse, and the Death Penalty", Cornell Law Review 83(September 1998):1557-98.
49. Robert W. Shuy, "How a Judge's Voir Dire Can Teach a Jury What to Say", Discourse and Society 6(April 1995):207-22.
50. Also see my "The Right to Trial by Jury", forthcoming in Journal of Applied Philosophy.
51. Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390, 417 (1993s).