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How to Argue about the Death Penalty*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Hugo Adam Bedau
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Extract

Argument over the death penalty — especially in the United States during the past generation — has been concentrated in large part on trying to answer various disputed questions of fact. Among them two have been salient: is the death penalty a better deterrent to crime (especially murder) than the alternative of imprisonment? Is the death penalty administered in a discriminatory way — in particular, are black or other nonwhite offenders (or offenders whose victims are white) more likely to be tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed than whites (or than offenders whose victims are nonwhite)? Other questions of fact have also been explored, including these two: what is the risk that an innocent person could actually be executed for a crime he did not commit? What is the risk that a person convicted of a capital felony but not executed will commit another capital felony?

Type
Capital Punishment
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3-4 , Summer–Autumn 1991 , pp. 466 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1991

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References

1 Klein, Lawrence R. et al. , “The Deterrent Effects of Capital Punishment: An Assessment of the Estimates”, in Blumstein, Alfred et al. , eds., Deterrence and Incapacitation: Estimating the Effects of Criminal Sanctions on Crime Rates (Washington, D.C., National Academy of Sciences, 1978) 336–60Google Scholar.

2 Baldus, David C., Woodworth, George C., and Pulaski, Charles A. Jr., Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis (Boston, Northeastern U. P., 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Bedau, H. A. and Radelet, Michael L., “Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases” (1987) 40 Stan. L. R. 21–180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Bedau, H. A., ed., The Death Penalty in America (New York, Oxford U. P., 3rd ed., 1982) 173–80Google Scholar.

5 Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242 (1976); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262 (1976).

6 Wolfgang, Marvin E. and Riedel, Marc, “Rape, Racial Discrimination, and the Death Penalty”, in Bedau, H. A. and Pierce, Chester M., eds., Capital Punishment in the United States (New York, AMS Press, 1976) 99–121Google Scholar.

7 See, e.g., Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. P., 1971)Google Scholar and Hart, H. L. A., Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law (New York, Oxford U. P., 1968)Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard U. P., 1977) 22-23, 169–71Google Scholar.

9 Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).

10 See Bedau, H. A., “Bentham's Utilitarian Critique of the Death Penalty” (1983) 74 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1033–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Bedau, H. A., Death is Different: Studies in the Morality, Law, and Politics of Capital Punishment (Boston, Northeastern U. P., 1987) 64–91Google Scholar.

11 Berns, Walter, For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death Penalty (New York, Basic Books, 1979)Google Scholar.

12 Bedau, H. A., “Capital Punishment”, in Regan, Tom, ed., Matters of Life and Death (New York, Random House, 1980) 159–60Google Scholar; reprinted in Bedau, Death is Different, supra n. 10, at 24.

13 van den Haag, Ernest, “The Ultimate Punishment: A Defense” (1986) 99 Harv. I R. 1662–69, at 1665 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Bedau and Radelet, supra n. 3, at 78-81, 83-85.

15 Berger, Vivian, “Justice Delayed or Justice Denied? — A Comment on Recent Proposals to Reform Habeas Corpus” (1990) 90 Colum. L. R. 1665–1714CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amsterdam, Anthony G., “The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment” (1987) 14 Human Rights 1, at 14–18Google Scholar; Tabak, Ronald J., “The Death of Fairness: The Arbitrary and Capricious Imposition of the Death Penalty in the 1980s” (1986) 14 N.Y.U.R.L. & Soc. Change 797–848Google Scholar; Bedau, H. A., “Gregg v. Georgia and the ‘New’ Death Penalty” (1985) 4 Crim. Justice Ethics 2, at 3–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weisberg, Robert, “Deregulating Death” in S. Ct. R. 1983 (1984) 305–95Google Scholar; and Baldus et al., supra n. 2.

16 Bedau, Death is Different, supra n. 10, at 45.

17 Marx, Karl, “Capital Punishment” (1853), reprinted in Feuer, Lewis, ed., Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (New York, Doubleday Anchor, 1959) 485–86Google Scholar.

18 Bedau, Death is Different, supra n. 10, at 123-28.