A Retributivist Argument against Capital Punishment
![handle is hein.journals/hoflr9 and id is 1513 raw text is: A RETRIBUTIVIST ARGUMENT AGAINST
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Robert A. Pugsley*
The issue of capital punishment is with us still, indeed more
than at any other time in the past decade. During the past four
years, no one has abstracted the arguments surrounding this ulti-
mate sanction from the reality that gives rise to them. Since Janu-
ary 17, 1977,1 death has been a fact of life for the men and women
on death rows across this nation, 2 as well as for their families,
friends, keepers, and ultimately their executioners. The full range
of passions, rhetoric, and reasoned arguments are renewed each
time an execution is carried out. That is welcome, because death
should never become routine. The real threat lies in ennui, some
hint of which is already reflected in the mass media: News con-
cerning impending and completed executions is beginning to move
to the inside pages of the national dailies and into brief filler mate-
rial on the networks' nightly news.3 These events serve to remind
* Associate Professor of Law, SCALE (Southwestern's Conceptual Approach to
Legal Education) Program, Southwestern University School of Law. B.A., 1968, State
University of New York at Stony Brook; J.D., 1975, LL.M., 1977, New York Univer-
sity School of Law. I wish to thank Dr. Cathleen R. Cox, John Danisi, Professor Joel
Feinberg of the University of Arizona, and Professor David McKenzie of Berry
College (Mount Berry, Georgia) for their insightful and encouraging comments on
earlier drafts of the manuscript. An earlier draft of this Article was delivered to the
Interdisciplinary Conference on Capital Punishment, Georgia State University, At-
lanta, Georgia, on April 19, 1980.
1. The execution of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore by a firing squad in Utah
on that date was the first use of capital punishment in the United States in almost a
decade. Since then, the ultimate sanction has been visited upon three other death
row inmates: John A. Spenkelink, in Florida, May 25, 1979; Jesse Bishop, in Nevada,
October 22, 1979; and Steven T. Judy, in Indiana, March 9, 1981. [1981] 1 DEATH
PENALTY REP. (NCCD) 26.
2. The prisoner count on death row is 750, spread over 30 states and the U.S.
military. Of this total, 742 are male, 8 are female; 290 are black, 396 are white. Id. at
27.
3. I predicted as much in an essay written on the occasion of Gilmore's execu-
tion. Pugsley, Reflections on January 17, 1977, 37 CHRISTIANrrY & CRIsIS 15-16
(1977). It should be noted, however, that if the death penalty continues to be em-
ployed with the relative infrequency that has characterized the past four years, indif-](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hoflr9&div=52&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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A Retributivist Argument against Capital Punishment
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