The Death Penalty at the Intersection of Reality and Justice
![handle is hein.journals/text41 and id is 23 raw text is: THE DEATH PENALTY AT THE INTERSECTION
OF REALITY AND JUSTICE
Richard B. Roper*
I. THE PROSECUTORS' RESPONSIBILITIES AND THE CRIMINALS WE
CONFRONT ...................................................................................... 15
11. DETERRENCE AND THE DEATH PENALTY ......................................... 18
A. Executions as an Effective Deterrent ...................................... 18
B. Rebutting Anti-deterrence Arguments and Assumptions ..... 20
C. Life Without Parole: An Ineffective Deterrent and a Less
Attractive Option ................................................................... 23
Ill. JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS AND UTILITARIAN GOALS ............................ 25
IV. RELIABILITY AND THE MYTH OF THE INNOCENT DEFENDANT ...... 26
V. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE
SYSTEM ............................................................................................ 28
V I. CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 31
I. THE PROSECUTORS' RESPONSIBILITIES AND THE CRIMINALS WE
CONFRONT
Despite a quarter-century of work as a prosecutor occasionally involved in
death penalty litigation, my entry in the academic debate on the death penalty
placed me in unfamiliar, turbulent waters. I struggled to breathe through a
foamy spray of thick, self-righteous rhetoric, battered by gigantic waves of
confusing statistics and deafened by a shrill chorus howling that our criminal
justice system routinely convicts the innocent. Pulling to shore, I lodged myself
in a familiar fulcrum where the death penalty should either survive or fall. This
debate concerns the difficult decision a prosecutor must wrestle daily by action
or inaction-will lives be protected or destroyed and will justice be achieved?
These questions are the crossroad of reality and justice, where the death penalty
may sometimes be the most reasonable route to take.
Prosecutors confront the depraved acts of those who brutally extinguish
the lives of the innocent and who leave throngs of devastated, surviving family
members and friends to endure a lifetime of sorrow and emptiness. Perhaps a
prosecutor confronts a murderer of a child, like Alfred Bourgeois, who
systematically tortured and sexually and physically abused his two-year-old
daughter, culminating in her murder by grabb[ing] her by her shoulders and
* United States Attorney, Northern District of Texas; J.D., Texas Tech University School of Law,
1982; B.A., University of Texas-Arlington, 1979.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/text41&div=5&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Death Penalty at the Intersection of Reality and Justice
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