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Of all the contentious issues surrounding crime and punishment, perhaps the most vexing is the death penalty. Virtually everything people say and think about capital punishment raises unsettling questions that range from moral, to social, to technical in nature. This seminar proposes to explore some of these questions. Is the death penalty morally justified? Does the use of capital punishment actually deter crime? If a death penalty case takes years to work through the appeals process, is justice appropriate, indeed, served? To what degree and in what ways should we be concerned that the majority of defendants who are executed are black, while the murder victims in death penalty cases tend overwhelmingly to be white? The use of DNA evidence in criminal prosecutions has raised new questions. Since 1973, 124 people in 25 states have been released from death row because of evidence that supports their innocence. Accordingly, we must ponder mistakes that have occurred and steps to correct them. More recently, death penalty defendants and their lawyers have charged that, apart from moral and technical questions, execution itself inflicts unnecessary suffering. In present-day North Carolina, for example, medical monitoring of executions is deeply controversial. The law requires medical monitoring of the death penalty, yet members of the medical community maintain that participation in an execution violates time-honored, indeed some observers say sacred, professional oaths.

 

http://www.unc.edu/depts/human/level_3/2007_fall/Crime&Punishment.htm

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