This article in the New York Times (gift article), reminded me of a conversation I had with a lawyer-turned-river-guide a few years ago. In his opinion piece, Robert Blecker, who is a professor emeritus at New York Law School, the author of The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst and of the stage play “Voices From the Inside,” argues that it was morally wrong for the jury to sentence Nikolas Cruz to life in prison rather than death.
Blecker noted that the sentencing “produced great anguish and anger in many of the victims’ families.” He quotes a despondent father of a 14 year-old victim, asking “What do we have the death penalty for?”
Good question.
Blecker claims that “society embraces four major justifications for punishment: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution.” He rejects deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation, claiming that “retribution … provides capital punishment with its only truly moral foundation,” and that it can “help restore a moral balance.”
Blecker doesn’t explain what a moral balance looks like, or how to tell when it gets out of balance (or restored to balance), which is a shame, since his whole argument rests upon the assumption that such a thing exists and that we (or some of us) are qualified to make adjustments to it.
Blecker defends his philosophical defense of revenge-justice by noting that he endorses execution “only for the worst of the worst criminals,” and that in fact, the “human dignity” of these criminals “requires … just punishment as an end in itself.”
It’s kind of a we-have-to-kill-them-to-save-them situation, apparently. By executing these people “we acknowledge [them] as fully human, condemning the free will that produced [their] monstrous crimes.”
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