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Some sober reflections on emotions and the death penalty

By Douglas A. Berman

Inspired in part by the Kennedy capital child rape case and other notable recent death penalty debate, Stephanos Bibas and I put together a new commentary (now available here at SSRN) titled "Engaging Capital Emotions."  Here is the abstract:The Supreme Court, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, is about to decide whether the Eighth Amendment forbids capital punishment for child rape. Commentators are aghast, viewing this as a vengeful recrudescence of emotion clouding sober, rational criminal justice policy.  To their minds, emotion is distracting.  To ours, however, emotion is central to understand the death penalty.  Descriptively, emotions help to explain many features of our death-penalty jurisprudence.  Normatively, emotions are central to why we punish, and denying or squelching them risks prompting vigilantism and other unhealthy outlets for this normal human reaction...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 01, 2008 (boomark / email).