The Death Penalty

Abstract

The focus of this paper is upon the particular problems, as conceived by Professor James Q. Wilson, that capital punishment is said to present. It is one of determining whether the death penalty can be justified on grounds of justice rather than utility. I share Wilson's conviction that debates about capital punishment are too often controversies about its capacity to deter, thus neglecting the most serious moral issue, namely, whether death is a just punishment for certain sorts of crimes. The profound question is, "Can execution be justified independently of considerations of utility, on the basis of its being the morally fitting penalty?" But, as my discussion indicates, it is not immediately clear how to interpret this question. Professor Wilson seems to think that an argument from justice, as distinguished from utility, for capital punishment is the claim that we cheapen the value of human life if an innocent victim dies while his killer lives. Since I do not understand how we could argue that claim without appeal to utility, I look elsewhere to join the issue. The paper concludes with two brief arguments, both deserving considerable expansion, on behalf of the judgment that certain prima facie inconsistencies make the death penalty unjust. Both arguments exploit the point that their logic is such that it is difficult to envisage what the proponent of the death penalty can offer in rebuttal beyond simple declaring disagreement and therefore an impasse.