Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts from Both Sides Make Their Case.

• Author: Ferrall, Bard R.
• Position: Book Review

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

HUGO BEDAU & PAUL CASSELL EDS., DEBATING THE DEATH PENALTY: SHOULD AMERICA HAVE CAPITAL PUNISHMENT? THE EXPERTS FROM BOTH SIDES MAKE THEIR CASE (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004). 242 pp.

This book contains contributions from judges, attorneys, and academicians on both sides of the death penalty question. The grounds advanced for justification of capital punishment--including deterrence, retribution, and closure for victims' families--are considered. Whether life imprisonment is adequate to address these concerns is also debated. Other issues include whether racial minorities or indigent defendants are disproportionately executed, whether the penalty is otherwise arbitrarily applied, and what risks exist regarding the execution of an innocent person. How reliable is the evidence presented to support the answers to these questions? One opponent of the death penalty reviews the history of capital punishment in America and notes that it has recently been applied in very few cases. In response to the view that the penalty is now reserved only for--and should be retained for--the worst crimes, this contributor argues that retribution does not provide a coherent and consistent basis for imposing death, since the criteria for application are so vague that juries decide on non-statutory and arbitrary grounds. In some cases there is also doubt whether the offender should bear full responsibility for purposes of retribution. Incapacitation and deterrence also fail to provide consistent grounds for the death penalty, both because methods of predicting future dangerousness are not sufficiently reliable to justify execution, and because the data has not unequivocally established the deterrent effect of capital punishment over that of life imprisonment. Other opponents present statistical and individual case evidence that the death penalty is discriminatorily applied against racial minorities in two respects: 1) the population of those sentenced to death includes a significantly greater percentage of blacks than the general population; and, 2) regardless of the race of the defendant, the death penalty is more likely to be imposed when the victim is white. Other problems include the under-representation of blacks in the venire jury pool, peremptory challenges by prosecutors during jury selection, and the confluence of race and poverty. Contributions also include stories of both indigent capital defendants receiving egregiously...