The ethics of the death penalty

Abstract

Clearly among the criminal justice faculty teaching about the death penalty, many find the use of capital punishment highly objectionable, and some of them will use their classrooms to convey their arguments against it. At academic conferences vocal advocates have passed resolutions against the death penalty, and held panels to criticize its continued use. Among the more important books in criminal justice ethics it is customary to give the arguments both for and against capital punishment, but the full range of pro‐execution arguments rarely appears, and the selected defenses often are the easiest “straw men” to bat down. Rarely are the social contract or religious bases adequately argued. As a supporter of limited use of capital punishment, the author presents some pro‐execution arguments either absent from or seriously understated in the prevailing literature. Support for executions as an ethical exercise of state power can be found in the moral and religious doctrines of the leading western religions and in acceptance and interpretation of the social contract. The author finds no necessity in showing that executions deter for them to be ethical. He shares the suspicion of many death penalty critics that executions are not economical in any utilitarian cost‐benefit analysis approach. Yet he denies that they must therefore be viewed as narrowly retributive. In doing so, he finds executions defensible within established ethical frameworks. While not supposing to convince others of his views, the author does hope to provide his peers with knowledge of a wider range of pro‐execution arguments, and thus open up their classrooms to a wider range of perspectives, pro and con, on the death penalty controversy.