Jack Greenburg On The Death Penalty

Death to the Death Penalty The Death penalty has been in practice since the ancient times. In the Code of Hammurabi, twenty-five different crimes are punishable by death. In society today, the debate of whether this archaic tradition should continue is a controversial topic. In the 1980’s Jack Greenburg, an American lawyer and legal scholar, discussed the idea capital punishment in, “Against the American System of Capital Punishment.” Greenburg poses ideas that question the idea of deterrence for the death penalty. Conversely, Ernest Van den Haag, a sociologist, defends the punishment in his article, “the Ultimate Punishment: A Defense.” He debates the seemingly “cruel and unconstitutional” perspective on the death penalty are false, because

The theory is that the murders who meditate their crime will be deterred due to the effective system of capital punishment. Greenburg begins with the notion of how the deterrence theory initially presents the failings of the American Justice system. As he deciphers a killers mind, Greenburg reaches the conclusion of murder: those who made the decision to take a life, are disturbed to some level. Murder is a rash choice. Those who kill to a degree have impulsively made that choice. “But most killers do not engage in anything like a cost-benefit analysis. They are impulsive, and they kill impulsively. If capital punishment is to deter them, it can do so only indirectly: by impression on potential killers a standard of right and wrong, a moral authority, and influence on their superegos that, notwithstanding mental disorder, would inhibit homicide,” (Greenburg). This deterrence theory assumes killers have considered every option and been discouraged by their possible execution. However, in the event there was a deterred murder; it is impossible to discover. A murder that has not occurred is not a statistic. To the theory there is a layer of retribution. This layer reprimands the supportive nature of deterrence. If retribution were a strong theory more executions would occur; consequently, deterrence would finally be a strong case for the death penalty. Ergo, if a killer were to engage in “cost benefit-analysis,” the miniscule chance of them receiving the death penalty is not enough to prevent a would-be killer. The death penalty is too ineffective to become an adequate