Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. The modern practice of capital punishment presupposes a state which has the authority to make, administer, and enforce criminal law and procedures and then, if merited, impose the death penalty to address serious misconduct. For classic utilitarian thinking, another important consequence of punishment is its effect on the offender. And in as much as any deterrent effects are linked to certainty of punishment, any degree of arbitrariness in administering capital punishment does affect a central utilitarian consideration in determining whether the institution is morally justified. Pojman, Louis, and Jeffrey Reiman. The idea must be that incarceration, if found to be mistaken, can be ceased: by executive or judicial action the imprisoned can be released and receive remedies, even if only gestures. Cases do occur where the condemned endure an extended process of dying that sometimes suggests lingering sentience, discomfort, or suffering. On these approaches to capital punishment, the reasons against executing serious offenders are essentially empirical ones about the communicative effects on the public of executions or the limits of diagnostic capabilities in identifying the truly incorrigible. The central question, then, is not often whether punishing murderers is morally justifiable (rather than rehabilitation or release, for example), but whether it is morally justifiable to punish by death (rather than by imprisonment, for example) those found to have committed a grave offense, such as murder. The Collected Dialogues. Thus, capital punishment is not a violation of an offender’s right to life, as the offender has forfeited that right, and the death penalty is then justifiable as a morally permissible way to treat murderers in order to effect some good for society. Analogies with selective ticketing for excessive speed support this kind of reasoning: justice is a matter of each individual being treated as they merit, without regard to how other, similar cases are treated. These crimes, of course, would not have occurred were capital punishment imposed, and, so, the death penalty does prevent commission of some serious crimes. Section One provides some historical context and basic concepts for locating the central philosophic question about capital punishment:  Is death the amount or kind of penalty that is morally justified for the most serious of crimes, such as murder? Punishments deter and “control action” by example, by the demonstration to others that they, too, will suffer similarly should they similarly misbehave. 615-634. 3 This data highlights the shortcomings of traditional “retributive justice,” which has led to not only victims’ dissatisfaction with outcomes but a serious problem with jail overcrowding. Following a framework famously offered by H.L.A. (“Justice, Civilization,…,” note 10). In comparison to other methods of execution, such participation is more essential, more direct, and ethically more problematic. “Noncomparative Justice.” Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays in Social Philosophy. “Punishment and the Elimination of Responsibility.” Punishment and Responsibility: Essays in the Philosophy of Law. Consequentialist or utilitarian approaches to the death penalty are distinguished from retributivist approaches because the former rely only on assessing the future effects or consequences of capital punishment, such as crime prevention through deterrence and incapacitation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. The avenger typically takes pleasure in the suffering of the offender, whereas “we may all deeply regret having to carry out the punishment” (Pojman, 23) or only take “pleasure at justice being done” (Nozick, 367) as a retributivist moral principle requires. 1). The deterrence justification of capital punishment presupposes a model of calculating, deliberative rationality for potential murderers. Jeffrey Reiman, for example, argues, on retributivist grounds, that capital punishment is justified in principle; however, “the death penalty in… America is unjust in practice,” and he therefore favors abolition (see 5b). If there were to be a real equivalence, the death penalty would have to be pronounced upon a criminal who had forewarned his victim of the very moment he would put him to a horrible death, and who, from that time on, had kept him confined at his own discretion for a period of months. Quotations and references are by page number and chapter number to this translation and edition. Nozick, Robert. Given that the cost of life imprisonment would be a function of a convicted murderer’s health and age, younger, healthier persons would be selected for the death penalty, while older, or more feeble, unhealthy killers would be sentenced to life in prison as the cheaper alternative. The text includes a response by each to the other’s arguments. 333). U.S.A. Classic Retributivism: Kant and lex talionis, Lex talionis as a Principle of Proportionality, Classic Utilitarian Approaches: Bentham, Beccaria, Mill, Empirical Considerations: Incapacitation, Deterrence, Utilitarian Defenses: “Common Sense” and “Best Bet”, Aquinas, Thomas. Given unavoidably imperfect criminal justice procedures, at issue, then, is the moral import of any arbitrariness, caprice, mistake, or discrimination in the institution of capital punishment.

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