When Oklahoma recently botched the lethal injection of a condemned man, death penalty opponents decried the execution as inhumane. While many death penalty advocates also criticized the procedural mistakes, some people argued that the man’s horrible crime justified his agony. Throughout history, humans have debated how much suffering governments should inflict on criminals, and in his new book, “The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst,” New York Law School Professor Robert Blecker explores the role of retribution in the criminal justice system.
While arguing that our system should be more grounded in retributive theories, he concludes that the United States both under-punishes some crimes and over-punishes others.
