Reiman on Death Penalty

Reiman grants that if the death penalty were "a substantially better deterrent to murder than life imprisonment," then we would be justified in imposing the death penalty (119). But he does not believe that the death penalty is a substantially better deterrent than life imprisonment. (And we'll simply assume he's right about that.)

II. Inadequate Arguments Against the Death Penalty

III. Why the Death Penalty is a Just Punishment for Murder

Some definitions: "Retributivism . . . is the doctrine that the offender should be paid back with suffering he deserves because of the evil he has done, and the lex talionis asserts that injury equivalent to that he imposed is what the offender deserves" (119).

What basis do we have for adopting retributivism and the Lex Talionis?

It might seem that our real reason for adopting them would be to give the victim (or, say, the victim's family) pleasure at experiencing the suffering of the perpetrator.

But there is a different basis: In committing a crime against you, a perpetrator gives himself a higher status than you have. He does things to you that it would not be legitimate for you to do to him. But in paying back the perpetrator with an injury equivalent to the one you suffered, the state would be bringing the perpetrator back down. It would be reestablishing equality between the two of you. The point of the punishment would be to force the perpetrator to see that he in fact does not have a status higher than you do (e.g., to see that he too is vulnerable to suffering) and to express a message to society that persons have equal status. (See 122-125.)

IV. Reiman's "Proportional Retributivism" and the Death Penalty

Proportional retributivism requires that punishments be proportional to crimes, so, for example, that society give its worst crimes its worst punishments. Moreover, proportional retributivism either gives offenders their just desert (in accordance with what the lex talionis would demand) or it gives offenders an alternative punishment--the closest thing to their just desert that it is morally acceptable to give them. (128-129) According to proportional retributivism, this alternative punishment must meet a condition. It must "in some convincing way" be comparable in gravity to the crime and be "compatible with sincerely believing that the offender deserves to have done to him what he has done to his victim" (129).

Torture example.

Reiman insists that punishing a murderer with life in prison without the chance of parole (instead of with death as the lex talionis would demand) would meet the necessary condition he specifies for an acceptable alternative punishment (130-131).

V. Why the Death Penalty is Wrong Even if It Is Murderers' Just Deserts

Much as it is horrible for a society to torture criminals, so it is horrible for it to execute them.

Execution involves intense psychological pain. The condemned prisoner foresees his death and knows that it will be brought about by other human beings (140).

Execution demonstrates a hardheartedness that society should avoid.

The death penalty is not consistent with the "civilizing mission of modern states" (142).

". . . the progress in civilization is characterized by a lower tolerance for one's own pain and that suffered by others" (135).

". . . we can say that growth in civilization generally marks human history, that a reduction in the horrible things we tolerate doing to our fellows (even when they deserve them) is part of this growth, and that once the work of civilization is taken on consciously, it includes carrying forward and expanding this reduction" (136).

"Justice, Civilization, and the Death Penalty"

I. Reiman's Main Aim

To show that even "though the death penalty is a just punishment for murder, abolition of the death penalty is part of the civilizing mission of modern states" (115).