In Defense of the Death Penalty‪.‬

This article originally appeared in the IACJ JOURNAL, Summer 2008 issue. Reprinted with permission of the Institute for the Advancement of Criminal Justice. ABOLITIONIST ARGUMENTS concerning the death penalty always seem a bit unsatisfying. Concepts of retribution, deterrence, and just punishment are discussed in the most thoughtful terms, but nowhere do we find a clear discussion of the crimes at issue. In some ways, these discussions are a bit like playing Hamlet without the ghost--reviewing the merits of capital punishment without revealing just what a capital crime is really like and how the victims have been brutalized. (1)