Jonathan Glover Execution

Glover discusses three theoretical approaches arguments about the death penalty:

1. Retributive view: which holds that the death penalty is appropriate.
2. Absolutism: which holds that killing, including execution, is wrong.
3. Utilitarianism: which holds a “Maximizing policy” à the number of lives saved must greater than the number of lives taken.

Retributivism:

To inflict the suffering of capital punishment there must be huge benefits such as:

1. It is OK to harm someone for justice’s sake
2. There are metaphysical benefits “blood guiltiness”

Benefits of Retributivism only those who deserve punishment get punished and they only get punished as much as they deserve.

Other way to defend capital punishment: society is denouncing the crime à Retributivism in disguise.

Glover rejects Retributivism because he feels that this is not a position that one can engage in an argument with.

NOTE: when you are studying Retributivism, you should focus on the reading from Rachels and not the Glover article.

If we reject retribution we are left with:

• Orwellian absolutism, or
• Utilitarian approach, “weighing up likely social costs and benefits.”

Absolutist rejection of capital punishment as “judicial murder”

1. Test à if you can prove deterrence do you still oppose the DP?
1. Acts and omissions doctrine à there is a moral difference between an act and an omission
2. If we reject this doctrine, then failing to deter murder (an omission) is just as bad as execution someone (an act).
3. If you reject this doctrine, you cannot hold an absolutist rejection of capital punishment.
2. Execution can be seen as worse than murder because of the cruelty of waiting for, and undergoing the execution.
1. This appearance is misleading because there is not a one to one correlation between executions and murder, one execution will likely deter many murders.

A Utilitarian approach:

Maximizing policy à the number of lives saved must greater than the number of lives taken.

Qualifications of the maximizing policy

Pain caused by execution:

• Horror of waiting to be executed
• Pain of the criminal’s relatives and loved ones as they wait for the execution
• Mistaken executions of innocent people
• There is pain involved for the people who work in the process of an execution.
• Fosters bad psychological traits in a society.
• DP is cruel and unusual because it is erratically applied.

Furthermore, if execution is a good deterrent then why not draw and quarter people i.e. wouldn’t a more horrible punishment be a better deterrent?

Glover points out that capital punishment has its own special cruelties and horrors, which change the whole position. In order to be justified, “it must be shown, with good evidence, that it has a deterrent effect not obtainable by less awful means.”

Deterrence and Murder

There are two kinds of arguments involved:

1. Statistical:

1. There is not a correlation between the absence of capital punishment and murder rate.

i. captital punishment is not a deterrent to murder, or

ii. we do not know that capital punishment is a deterrent.

2. Neither a. nor b. lives up to the criteria developed in the last section which states that in order for the DP to be justified, “it must be shown, with good evidence, that it has a deterrent effect not obtainable by less awful means.”
3. Therefore the death penalty is not justified.

2. Intuitive arguments:

1. Read the quote on p. 443.
2. There are questionable assumptions made in the quoted argument:

i. Even if there is capital punishment, there is not “certain death” in countries where there is the DP only 1 in 12 to 1 in 25 murders are executed.

ii. Death is not instant but far in the future. People engage in activities that could kill them at at later date, all the time i.e. compare to cigarette smoking.

iii. Life in prison may be just as big a deterrent.

Glover concludes “that the case for capital punishment as a substantial deterrent fails.”