50 Pro Death Penalty Quotes by University Lecturers



"Capital punishment ought not to be abolished solely because it is...repulsive, if infinitely less repulsive than the acts which invoke it...If we are to preserve a humane society we will have to retain sufficient strength of character and will to do the unpleasant in order that tranquillity and civility may rule comprehensively. It seems very likely that capital punishment is a...necessary, if limited, factor in that maintenance of social tranquillity and ought to be retained on this ground. To do otherwise is to indulge in the luxury of permitting a sense of false delicacy to reign over the necessity of social survival."

Donald Atwell Zoll taught philosophy and political science at the University of Saskatchewan. Between 1972 and 1989, he taught political science at Arizona State University. Prof. Zoll is the author of Reason and Rebellion; The Twentieth Century Mind; and Ethics and Hierarchy: An Inquiry into the Roots of Justice. He also published frequently in Modern Age, National Review, and other conservative periodicals during the 1970's. A political science professor—and self-described “sentimental monarchist” and Tory—Donald Atwell Zoll was a significant, provocative, and productive conservative writer until scandal cut short his career. From 1966 to 1970 Zoll taught philosophy and political science at the University of Saskatchewan, and beginning about 1972 he taught at Arizona State University. Zoll’s volume of essays, The Twentieth-Century Mind (1967), maintained that the social underpinnings of American democracy, such as the idea of personal responsibility, were ominously weakening, and that the sixties’ widespread “civil disobedience” revealed a rising extremism and rejection of reasoned discourse and accommodation. From 1969 to 1976 Zoll published frequently in Modern Age, National Review, and other conservative periodicals. In a famous exchange with Frank Meyer, Zoll’s National Review essay “Shall We Let America Die?” (1969) argued that liberal paralysis in the face of New Left radicalism threatened society’s existence and that conservatives should assign priority to the preservation of order and resist, “uninhibited by . . . liberal proprieties as to method.” Zoll, Meyer retorted, wanted an authoritarian regime and was hostile to America’s “tradition of freedom under law and ordered civility.” Zoll later attacked Meyer’s fusionism as “expedient eclecticism.”

People are governed in their daily lives by rewards and penalties of every sort. We shop for bargain prices; praise our children for good behavior and scold them for bad; expect lower interest rates to stimulate home building and fear that higher ones will depress it; and conduct ourselves in public in ways that lead our friends and neighbors to form good opinions of us. To assert that “deterrence doesn’t work” is tantamount to either denying the plainest facts of everyday life or claiming that would-be criminals are utterly different from the rest of us.

James Q. Wilson (born May 27, 1931, in Denver, Colorado) is an American academic political scientist and an authority on public administration. He is a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College.

The evidence of a variety of types—not simply the quantitative evidence—has been enough to convince me that capital punishment does deter and is worth using for the worst sorts of offenses.

Of course, public policy on punishments cannot wait until the evidence is perfect. Even with the limited quantitative evidence available, there are good reasons to believe that capital punishment deters murders. Most people, and murderers in particular, fear death, especially when it follows swiftly and with considerable certainty following the commission of a murder. As Posner indicates, the deterrent effect of capital punishment would be greater if the delays in its implementation were much shortened, and if this punishment was more certain to be used in the appropriate cases. But I agree with Posner that capital punishment has an important deterrent effect even with the way the present system actually operates. [More on the Economics of Capital Punishment-BECKER 2/18/2005]    

I stated that the evidence from quantitative studies is decidedly mixed, yet I concluded that "the preponderance of evidence does indicate that capital punishment deters." Although the weight of the positive evidence should not be overstated, the frequently stated claim that these studies prove that capital punishment does not deter is clearly false. [Further Comments on Capital Punishment-BECKER 12/25/2005]

Gary Stanley Becker (born December 2, 1930) is an American economist . He is a professor of economics, sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992, and received the United States' Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. Becker was one of the first economists to branch into what were traditionally considered topics belonging to sociology, including racial discrimination, crime, family organization, and drug addiction (see Rational addiction). He is known for arguing that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility maximizing. His approach can include altruistic behavior by defining individuals' utility appropriately. He is also among the foremost exponents of the study of human capital. Becker is also credited with the "rotten kid theorem". He is married to Guity Nashat, a historian of the Middle East whose research interests overlap his own.

In a country whose principles forbid it to preach, the criminal law is one of the few available institutions through which it can make a moral statement …. To be successful, what it says—and it makes this moral statement when it punishes—must be appropriate to the offense and, therefore, to what has been offended. If human life is to be held in awe, the law forbidding the taking of it must be held in awe; and the only way it can be made awful or awe inspiring is to entitle it to inflict the penalty of death. (Berns, Defending the Death Penalty (1980) 26 Crime & Delinquency 503, 509.)

Where Are the Death Penalty Critics Today? (By Walter Berns | Wall Street Journal on Monday, June 11, 2001) - The death penalty was imposed on McVeigh not for utilitarian reasons but because justice required it, in fact, cried out for it: In cold blood and with malice aforethought, McVeigh had killed 168 innocent men, women and children.

Where Are the Death Penalty Critics Today? (By Walter Berns | Wall Street Journal on Monday, June 11, 2001) - We want to punish them, McVeigh as well as the likes of Eichmann, in order to pay them back, and the only appropriate way to pay them back is to take their lives, publicly and with all the solemnity of the law, for they have violated the most solemn of the laws.

Where Are the Death Penalty Critics Today? (By Walter Berns | Wall Street Journal on Monday, June 11, 2001) - Timothy McVeigh, like Adolf Eichmann, was a murderer, and I can think of no reason why he should not have been made to pay for his crimes with his life.

A world so lacking in passion lacks the necessary components of punishment. Punishment has its origins in the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men, men who are angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered, men utterly unlike Camus's Meursault. This anger is an expression of their caring, and the just society needs citizens who care for each other, and for the community of which they are parts. One of the purposes of punishment, particularly capital punishment, is to recognize the legitimacy of that righteous anger and to satisfy and thereby to reward it. In this way, the death penalty, when duly or deliberately imposed, serves to strengthen the moral sentiments required by a self-governing community. [Religion and the Death Penalty: Can't have one without the other? by Walter Berns February 4, 2008, Vol. 13, No. 20]

Walter Berns (born May 3, 1919) is an American constitutional law and political philosophy professor. He is currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor emeritus at Georgetown University.
“If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.”
Thomas Szasz (born 1920-04-14 in Budapest, Hungary) is a Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York, and a noted critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry.

Think of a criminal pointing a gun at a potential victim with the policeman standing behind the criminal. The policeman says, “You can shoot him, but if you do then I’ll shoot you.” In this circumstance, the threat of death certainly would deter most or all potential murderers. We than can think of actual system as reducing the probability and speed of execution. With each reduction, the level of deterrence also is reduced because fewer potential murderers will be deterred as the probability and speed of execution is reduced.

Gordon Tullock (born February 13, 1922) is a retired Professor of Law and Economics at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.

Since the restoration of the death penalty in 1976, further evidence confirms the deterrent effect of the death penalty. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, a strong opponent of the death penalty, has conceded as much. “Of course, the death penalty deters some crimes, that’s why you have to pay more for a hit man in a death penalty state than a non-death penalty state.” [Debate among Paul Cassell, Alan Dershowitz, and Wendy Kamenar on the death penalty (Harvard Law School, Mar. 22, 1995)]

Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He has held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there since 1993. Dershowitz is known for his involvement in several high-profile legal cases and as a commentator on the Arab–Israeli conflict. As a criminal appellate lawyer, he has won 13 of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases he has handled, and has represented a series of celebrity clients, including Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, and Jim Bakker. His most notable cases include his role in 1984 in overturning the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny, and as the appellate adviser for the defense in the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. He is the author of a number of books about politics and law, including Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case (1985), the basis of the 1990 film; Chutzpah (1991); Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case (1996); The Case for Israel (2003); and Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights (2004).

If a criminal faces a life term for a given crime, and if there is no effective threat of a death sentence, why not get rid of the witnesses? Stiff penalties deter crimes – the scholarly literature is quite clear that most criminals respond rationally to incentives – but if the structure of the penalty system makes even stiffer penalties difficult to impose, that structure actually can encourage crimes even more egregious. [Benjamin Zycher: Capital punishment is necessary; No on Prop. 34 Prop. 34’s repeal of death penalty would give criminals for a third ‘strike’ incentive for killing witnesses. Published: Oct. 23, 2012 Updated: 5:15 p.m.]

Therefore, a society serious about deterring egregious crimes generally and murders in particular, and anxious to use punishment as a moral expression of the value of innocent life, must have an effective system of capital punishment. [Benjamin Zycher: Capital punishment is necessary; No on Prop. 34 Prop. 34’s repeal of death penalty would give criminals for a third ‘strike’ incentive for killing witnesses. Published: Oct. 23, 2012 Updated: 5:15 p.m.]

The common argument that a humane society cannot risk even one execution of an innocent is misguided: Just as most of us risk death daily in order to drive automobiles, participate in extreme sports, or watch the Lifetime channel, it is axiomatic that virtually anyone would be willing to bear the infinitesimal risk of wrongful execution in order to obtain the far more important reductions in serious crime that an effective system of capital punishment makes possible. [Benjamin Zycher: Capital punishment is necessary; No on Prop. 34 Prop. 34’s repeal of death penalty would give criminals for a third ‘strike’ incentive for killing witnesses. Published: Oct. 23, 2012 Updated: 5:15 p.m.] 

Benjamin Zycher is the president of Benjamin Zycher Economics Associates Inc., a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, and an adjunct professor of Economics and Business at the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics, California State University, Channel Islands. He is an associate in the Intelligence Community Associate Program of the Office of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Department of State. He served as a senior staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers from July 1981 to July 1983. While at AEI, he is working on a monograph that will describe the economic viability of renewable energy.

Concern: Capital punishment is murder, and committing a murder in order to demonstrate that murder is a terrible thing makes no sense

Words have specific meanings. Imprisonment in jail is not kidnapping. Paying a traffic ticket is not extortion. And capital punishment is not murder. All of these actions would certainly be crimes if taken by individuals, and those crimes are given very specific names. These same actions are not crimes, and are given very specific other names, when they are punishments sanctioned by government.

In fact, every single punishment meted out by a governmental authority would be a crime if done by an individual. If the “capital punishment is murder” argument lumps together individual and governmental actions as if they were the same, is it not essentially an argument to eliminate all punishment in a society? Does that not seem to be a recipe for chaos?

Concern: How can society allow capital punishment, when an innocent person might be executed?

No human social invention is flawless, not even the jury system. At some time, an innocent person may, indeed, be executed. The tragic implication of killing an innocent person is obvious, in that they are being punished for something that they did not do. Not so obvious is the greater tragedy.

If one does not punish any murderers because the fear of punishing someone by mistake, then the evidence suggests that one is condoning the murder of a very large number of innocent people. The question must then be asked: Is it worse to suffer the possible loss of one innocent person or the statistically certain mass-murder of dozens of innocent persons?

Roy Adler was a Fulbright professor and the area coordinator of marketing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Educated at Bucknell University, he received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Alabama and is a licensed psychologist. He had been an Army officer, a marketing executive at Procter & Gamble, a coach of seven Olympic athletes, a participant in the Cannonball Run and the chief researcher for Jerry Springer. He was also the author of four books and dozens of articles. Adler was a distinguished fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science, one of only 40 in the world. He passed away on 8 March 2009.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – This is all very interesting. There’s just one little problem, though. The Bible makes it crystal clear that the way one acknowledges that human souls are created in God`s image and deserving of respect and dignity is through capital punishment. Just read Genesis 9:6: "A man who spills human blood, his own blood shall be spilled by man because God made man in His own Image." Not just among Jews, by the way, but among all sons of Noah.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – In other words, the preservation of human dignity requires capital punishment of convicted murderers. The position of Judaism is the opposite of the position espoused by liberals. It is precisely because of man`s creation in God`s image that capital punishment is declared justified and necessary. Human dignity requires execution of murderers, not compassion for their souls.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – Moreover, capital punishment is regarded by Judaism as a favor for the capital sinner, a form of atonement and redemption. Ordinary murderers are allowed to achieve atonement for their souls in their execution. Only especially vile murderers — such as a false witness whose lies are discovered after the person who was framed has been executed, or a man who sacrifices both his son and his daughter to the pagan god Molokh — are denied execution because they are regarded as beyond redemption through capital punishment. Again, execution preserves human dignity, it does not defile it.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – Opponents of the death penalty say it does not deter terrorism or violence. But how do they know? How do they know the level of violent crime the United States would experience if it did not have a death penalty — or if it had a more widely applied one? How do they know whether the level of terrorism would decrease in an Israel with a death penalty compared to an Israel without one?

Actually, the death penalty should be implemented against terrorists even if it doesn’t deter terrorism. It should be implemented because it represents a great moral statement. It is the moral and ethical thing to do. Executing terrorists makes a statement that they are scum with no claim a right to life. Capital punishment represents a moral and just vengeance. It represents a declaration of good and evil. We do not build statues of heroes and otherwise honor them because we necessarily believe these are utilitarian and will lead to the emergence of new heroes, but rather because we are making a statement as a society regarding our values and what we honor. Executing terrorists is precisely the same sort of societal statement, in the opposite direction.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – It is for this moral reason that traditional Judaism unambiguously endorses the death penalty for premeditated murder .It does not do so because of any sociological speculation about the powers of deterrence, and it is clear that the death penalty is viewed as a just punishment even if it deters nothing at all.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – Opponents of the death penalty in Israel and elsewhere argue that errors in judgment might be made and innocent people might be executed. This is a fallacious argument even when discussing execution of criminals, but even more so when discussing terrorists. There is no serious evidence I know of that any innocent person has ever been executed in the United States. But more generally, everything we do (and everything government does) carries some risk that an innocent person might be killed as a result of those actions and policies. Should we shut down the post office because postal trucks sometimes run over innocent people? Should we ground all planes because sometimes innocent people are killed in accidents? Even if there were a non-negligible risk of such errors, that is certainly no reason not to have a death penalty.

Judaism's Pro-Death Penalty Tradition By: Steven Plaut / JewishPress.com Thursday, April 22, 2004 – Opponents of the death penalty in Israel argue that terrorists might resist capture by fighting to the death and so harm police and soldiers. I say let`s take our chances. Better the soldiers than the children on the school buses or the women in the cafes. That is why we have soldiers. I am sure they will cope. And suicide bombers are not exactly likely to turn more deadly because they face the death penalty if captured.

 

Steven Plaut (born in 1951) is an Associate Professor on the faculty of the Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Haifa and a writer. His editorials are often published in The Jewish Press, Front Page Magazine and other periodicals. In 2002 he authored the book The Scout. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank.

The Christian Perspective on Capital Punishment: An Evaluation of Rehabilitation Author: Andrew Uduigwomen wrote in the Quodlibet Journal: Volume 6 Number 3, July - September 2004 ISSN: 1526-6575 -Personally, I think that capital punishment is God’s order for mankind. The argument that capital punishment rules out the possibility of repentance for crimes does not hold water. It is doubtful that a person who does not repent with a death sentence hanging on his neck will ever do so under a life sentence. No one can deny that the execution of a murderer is horrible, but it should not be forgotten that murder is far more horrible. The modern concepts of naturalistic ideas of sociology and penology notwithstanding, the scriptures make it abundantly clear that capital punishment makes for an orderly, peaceful and safe society. Punishing a person for a crime should be considered a compliment to his dignity and freedom, not an insult. C. S. Lewis is quoted as saying that “To be punished, however severely, because we deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image” (Geisler, 198). In other words, to be punished severely for a wrongdoing is to be respected as a person created in God’s image who should know better and hence deserves to be punished for his wrongdoing. The very fact that God places a high premium on taking another’s life is enough evidence that God places a great value on human life. Capital punishment, therefore, “is the ultimate compliment of human dignity; it implies the most affirmative stance possible” (Geisler, 198 – 199).

In conclusion, contrary to the view of rehabilitationists that criminals are patients who need treatment, it is my belief that criminals are responsible human beings who know better and therefore deserve to be punished for their wrongdoing. And the fitting punishment for capital crimes is capital punishment.

Dr. Andrew F. Uduigwomen is the Senior Lecturer of the Dept. of Philosophy in the University of Calabar in Calabar, Nigeria, Africa.

“Wednesday's ruling shows that defendants can be handed the death penalty even if there was only one victim, if the crime is deemed to have had a huge social impact. It could be a new criteria under the lay judge system to be introduced in May 2009.” He said.

Hiroshi Itakura 板倉 宏 is a professor emeritus of law at Nihon University.
Dougherty said that his interest in the question of capital punishment began when a college professor gave him a book defending capital punishment. Later, Dougherty's interest was piqued when he participated in a panel discussion in which he was the only participant arguing in favor of the death penalty. "There is something in the nature of the discussion of capital punishment which is a matter of great importance, if only for its role in teaching us about the value of human life and the proper understanding of human dignity," said Dougherty.

Dougherty first cited Catholic tradition as being supportive of the death penalty. "Virtually every Church Father was in agreement that capital punishment is a legitimate exercise of state power," said Dougherty. "The Old Testament, the New Testament, the Catechism of the Council of Trent and various papal encyclicals all agree with this view."

Dougherty then asked his audience to consider why capital punishment had become a topic of heated discussion in recent years, proposing that the publication of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1997 was a catalyst for the controversy. "The issue of capital punishment ought to be considered in light of the larger consideration, in the Catechism itself, of the proper goal of the state in responding to civil injustice," he argued.

Citing a work by Avery Cardinal Dulles, Dougherty said that the essential position of the Catholic Church on capital punishment has not changed, except for the addition of a "prudential judgment" by which political rulers choose to apply the death penalty in certain cases based on circumstances and the state of their society. "This view upholds the traditional ends of punishment-retribution - defense of society, deterrence and rehabilitation - rather than rejecting these ends or focusing on one of the ends to the exclusion of the others," said Dougherty.

Dougherty agreed with the idea that capital punishment would not be necessary in a state that could guarantee the sentences of criminals imprisoned for life, but he questioned whether the modern American justice system is capable of achieving this goal. "Today, the risk is not so much that justly judged criminals will escape from prison," argued Dougherty. "The risk is that we will let them out." Dougherty mentioned several cases in which violent offenders were able to strike again due to the complex dictates of modern U.S. law. In light of this, Dougherty concluded that capital punishment might actually contribute to the "culture of life" in America by protecting the innocent and justly punishing the guilty.

Dr. Richard Dougherty is the Associate Professor, Legal Studies & International Studies Advisor of the University of Dallas.

wrote in 1982 - The execution of the innocent believed guilty is a miscarriage of justice that must be opposed whenever detected. But such miscarriage of justice do not warrant abolition at the death penalty. Unless the moral drawbacks of an activity practice, which include the possible death of innocent lives that might be saved by it, the activity is warranted. Most human activities like medicine, manufacturing, automobile, and air traffic, sports, not to mention wars and revolutions, cause death of innocent bystanders. Nevertheless, advantages outweigh the disadvantages, human activities including the penal system with all its punishments are morally justified.

Most people have a natural fear of death- it’s a trait man have to think about what will happen before we act. If we don’t think about it consciously, we will think about it unconsciously. Think- if every murderer who killed someone died instantly, the homicide rate would be very low because no one likes to die. We cannot do this, but if the Justice system can make it more swift and severe, we could change the laws to make capital punishment faster and make appeals a shorter process. The death penalty is important because it could save the lives of thousands of potential victims who are at stake.

"Prevention by means of incapacitation occurs only if the executed criminal would have committed other crimes if he or she had not been executed and had been punished only in some less incapacitative way (e.g., by imprisonment)" (Capital Punishment and Social Defense, 301)

In "The Death Penalty in America", Adam Bedau wrote, "even in the tragedy of human death there are degrees, and that it is much more tragic for the innocent to lose his life than for the State to take the life of a criminal convicted of a capital offense" (308).

Hugo Adam Bedau (born September 23, 1926) is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Tufts University.

Peter Hodgkinson OBE, Director of the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies at the University of Westminster offers a critique of abolitionist strategies on the 8th anniversary of the World Day Against the Death Penalty Sunday 10 October 2010'. – “Very soon, Life without Parole will itself be a target for abolitionist.”

Peter Hodgkinson OBE is the Director of Centre for Capital Punishment Studies. He is the Senior Research Fellow. Peter Hodgkinson entered the university world [1989] via employment as a Probation Officer in Inner London where he developed an interest and expertise in working with life sentenced and mentally disordered offenders. He has an honours degree in Psychology [1973] and a Certificate of Qualification in Social Work [1974] and these together with his experience of working with offenders and a stint as Forensic Social Work Adviser [Denis Hill Secure Unit, 1989-92] have informed both his teaching and the establishment of the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies [CCPS] of which he is Founder and Director in 1992. In H. M. Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2004 he was appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire [OBE] for his work promoting human rights. He was Honorary Secretary, British Society of Criminology [1978 – 1983]; Newsletter Editor, Division of Criminological and Legal Psychology, British Psychological Society [1980- 1984]; Cropwood Fellow, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge [1983]; Member of the Policy Co-ordinating Group and Council of the Howard League for Penal Reform [1982 – 1999]; Editorial Board- Journal of Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health [1989-1993]; Written Evidence to the House of Commons, Home Affairs Select Committee on The Year and a day Rule & the Mandatory Life Sentence [Howard League 1983]; Judge for the Observer Mace Schools Debating Competition [1993]; Member of the Steering Committee to the Death Penalty in Commonwealth Africa Project, British Institute of International and Comparative Law [2004 -2006]. Since 1996 he has been Expert and Adviser on capital punishment to the Council of Europe and since 1997 a founding member of the Foreign Secretary’s Death Penalty Panel. In these roles he has worked closely with governments and NGOs in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine and Vietnam. The majority of his research and writing is based on the diversity of issues that comprise capital punishment scholarship and its applied relationship to penal policy and practice. To this end he has authored numerous policy papers, which are embedded in the literature of the countries to which he has consulted. The CCPS in addition to its research and consultancy activities stages a number of humane advocacy projects in its target countries covering such topics as crime victims, alternatives to capital punishment and public information. Funds secured since 1995 £1.265 million from the European Commission, £68,000 from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office 2006 Trinidad & Tobago, £68,000 to establish the Caribbean Centre for Human Rights; 2008 Vietnam project £265,000; 2008 Morocco project £197,300.

Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a criminal law scholar at Hakuoh University and former prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office, expected that the recent trend toward stricter punishments, backed by the growing public support for capital punishment, would encourage the court to sentence Kanda and Hori to death.

"In the past, we see the significance of the results, especially the number of victims because it was mentioned in the Supreme Court, that there seems to have been a misunderstanding of the lower court judge. However, recently, a comprehensive consideration of the circumstances to become to be sentenced to death was one victim. There is the case of Aum Shinrikyo, I tend to increase the punishment."

Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a professor of criminal procedure law at Hakuoh University Law School in Tochigi Prefecture and a former prosecutor, said the increase of death penalty cases reflects the public's desire for stricter punishment of criminals.

"The sentences that judges deliver reflect the public's sense of justice of the age," said Tsuchimoto, who as a prosecutor witnessed executions.

He believes the sarin attack was a turning point on the path to heavier punishments.

Tsuchimoto backed the justice minister in issuing 10 execution orders, noting the high number of inmates currently on death row in Japan.

"Ordering executions is one of the justice minister's responsibilities as stipulated by law. So his decision should not be criticized," he said.

Takeshi Tsuchimoto a criminal law scholar at Hakuoh University and former prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office.

"Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Further Thoughts and Additional Evidence", the Journal of Political Economy, 1977 - "Investigation of the deterrent effect of capital punishment has implications far beyond the propriety of execution as punishment since it concerns the general question of offenders' responsiveness to incentives. This study challenges popular allegations by earlier researchers denying the deterrence hypothesis. The empirical analysis based on cross-sectional data from the U.S. corroborates my earlier analysis of the time series. Findings indicate a substantial deterrent effect of punishment on murder and related violent crimes and support the economic and econometric models used in investigations of other crimes."

Friday 20 April 2012 - Isaac Ehrlich, the University of Buffalo's Department of Economics chairman, stands by his research that supports capital punishment as a deterrent to homicide.

"This is not the first time people have raised questions (about the research)," Ehrlich said, rejecting the council's claim that prior research did not account for murderers' considerations of the possible risks.

"A lot of murder is calculated and people do take into account what might happen to them as a result," he said.

Professor Isaac Ehrlich is the chairman of the department of Economics in the University at Buffalo. Professor Ehrlich's research focuses on the role of human capital and social institutions in the economy. It includes a wide range of applications of economic theory to the economics of crime and justice, uncertainty and insurance, health and longevity, law and economics, advertising and information, social security, asset management and financial markets, and economic growth and development. He is the author of 80 original and reprinted articles in major refereed journals and collections, including two books and a special journal issue, and his widely cited work – he is listed among the 100 most cited economists on several published surveys – has been supported by numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and other Federal agencies, including a major USAID grant to study economic development and the role of free enterprise. In 2006, Dr. Ehrlich was awarded the prestigious faculty development grant from the New York Office of Science, Technology, and Academic research (NYSTAR), which he has used to establish a “Signature Center of Excellence on Human Capital, Technology Transfer, and Economic Growth and Development”. In April 2004 he was appointed Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic research to serve in the Health Economics program. In December 2006 he was appointed by the Board of University of Chicago Publications Founding Editor-in-Chief of the new Journal of Human Capital, published by the University of Chicago Press (UCP), which publishes some of the top journals in economics. See web page for the JHC at: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/loi/jhc/ Professor Ehrlich holds a Ph.D. degree from Columbia University. In recognition of his scholarly contributions Professor Ehrlich was promoted in March 2006 to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor, the highest academic rank in the SUNY system (see Press releases at http://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.cgi/article-page.html?article=78280009, and an article in the UB Reporter at http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archives/vol37/vol37n25/articles/Ehrlich.html. He was previously promoted to the University at Buffalo’s rank of UB Distinguished Professor in 2002. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Docteur Honoris Causa) from the University of Orleans, France, in Fall 2002. At UB, Professor Ehrlich currently serves as Chairman of the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, Melvin H. Baker Professor of American Enterprise in the School of Management, and Director of the Center of Excellence on Human capital, technology transfer, and Economic growth and Development. His professional affiliations include appointments as Research Associate (a senior title) at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Honorary Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, Research Associate of the Institute of Policy Analysis of the University of Toronto, and member of the prestigious Mont Pellerin Society. He was recently awarded a contract by the Comptroller of New York State, Mr. Thomas P. DiNapoli as Principal Investigator to develop a forecasting model of tax revenues and provide forecasts of State tax revenues along with a team of research associates at the Center of Excellence on Human Capital. See Press release at http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archives/vol39/vol39n29/articles/EhrlichBudget.html. In July 2008 he was appointed to serve on the Panel of Economic Advisors of New York Governor, David A. Patterson, see Press Releases at http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9628, http://www.cas.buffalo.edu/, and http://mgt.buffalo.edu/home/about/News/erlichcouncil. His previous academic affiliations include appointments as a lecturer at the Tel-Aviv University, an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, and a Senior Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he was one of the founders of the Law and Economics Project. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and a Visiting Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has given numerous public lectures and seminars in Austria , Canada , China , Colombia , France , Hong Kong , Israel , Japan , Singapore , Switzerland , Taiwan , and Uruguay . Who's Who in Economics: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Economists 1700-1980, and all of its later updates, and has contributed entries on Crime and Punishment and the Economics of Criminal Justice in all editions of The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, and The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law. His previous public service activities include membership on President Ronald Reagan’s Health Policy Advisory Group and the Transition Team on Health Policy, and the Hong Kong Government's Health Services Committee and its Expert Subcommittee on Grant Applications and Awards, headed by Hon. Elizabeth Wong, Secretary of Health and Welfare in Governor Chris Patton’s Administration. http://www.economics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/ehrlich/

Racial bias, often cited as an anti-death-penalty argument, is a complicated matter. Most reasonable people do not want a perpetrator's race deciding his penalty. But a Rand study and even the well-respected Paternoster study in Maryland found that the race of the murderer had no significant effect on the use of the death penalty (from Paternoster: "there is no evidence that the race of the defendant matters at any stage once case characteristics are controlled for") but that the race of the victim systematically affected handling of cases. Racial biases in use of the death penalty, wherein demonstrated, should be eliminated. But this does not argue for eliminating the penalty; it argues for eliminating the bias, if and when it exists. [Death penalty opponents are disingenuous Arguments regarding cost, effect on victim's families twist the truth By Richard E. Vatz 6:00 AM EDT, October 10, 2011]

Let us concede that, historically, there have surely been cases wherein people have been executed who simply didn't do the crime for which they were put to death. That is a daunting realization — but so is the realization that convicted lifers have killed again while serving their sentences. While it is ethically difficult to trade the life of even one improperly convicted person for the lives of others yet unknown who might someday be killed (or ordered killed) by an incarcerated murderer, certainly there is an argument for the death penalty in the case of murders committed by prisoners already serving life sentences. If not, what deterrence against murder is there for a lifer? [Death penalty opponents are disingenuous Arguments regarding cost, effect on victim's families twist the truth By Richard E. Vatz 6:00 AM EDT, October 10, 2011]

It's not an easy decision to make — contrary to death penalty opponents' claims — but three of the classic purposes of punishment are incapacitation, retribution and deterrence of criminals and criminal behaviour. Rehabilitation, the other oft-stated purpose, should take a back seat in capital crime.

Let's continue to improve, but judiciously use, the death penalty. [Death penalty opponents are disingenuous Arguments regarding cost, effect on victim's families twist the truth By Richard E. Vatz 6:00 AM EDT, October 10, 2011]

Richard Eugene Vatz (b. December 21, 1946) is a professor in the Department of Mass Communication and Communication Studies at Towson University. Vatz has been member of the Board of Trustees for several years and an associate psychology editor for the journal USA Today Magazine since 1987 and has been a member of the National Communication Association since 1969.

For Litton, the lack of response from Missouri prosecutors means the state is missing a chance to weigh in on ways it can further improve its death penalty system.

"There's a lot of common ground," he said. "No one wants to see the innocent punished. No one wants to see the guilty go unpunished. We all have a concern for fairness, whether you're anti-death penalty or pro-death penalty." [Thursday 12 July 2012 - When the American Bar Association sought to review Missouri's death penalty laws as part of a nationwide study of capital punishment, it turned to a collection of the state's most esteemed lawyers, judges and law professors for help.]

Panel member Paul Litton, an MU law professor, said some of the prosecutors' concerns are reasonable, especially considering that the ABA office in charge of the review is called the Death Penalty Moratorium Project.

"We did not set out and say, 'Let's go find reasons to implement a moratorium,' " Litton said. "We went into it with an open mind about everything. We didn't go into this with some sort of anti-death penalty agenda."

Paul J. Litton is the Associate Professor of Law in the University of Missouri School of Law. He teaches Criminal Law, Death Penalty Law, Jurisprudence and Bioethics.

(2001) SUNY (Buffalo) Professor Liu finds that legalizing the death penalty not only adds capital punishment as a deterrent but also increases the marginal productivity of other deterrence measures in reducing murder rates. "Abolishing the death penalty not only gets rid of a valuable deterrent, it also decreases the deterrent effect of other punishments." "The deterrent effects of the certainty and severity of punishments on murder are greater in retentionist (death penalty) states than in abolition (non death penalty) states."

Liu Zhiqiang is the Associate Professor of Economics in the University at Buffalo.

We affirm that killing another human being is immoral yet justify the death penalty on the basis that the person convicted of murder has committed the immoral act of killing another human being. [Death penalty Part I By John Spence January 25, 2012 Posted: Trinidad Express]

John Spence is the Professor Emeritus in The University of The West Indies. He expertise in Botany and Plant Physiology.

Monday 16 May 2011 – "The State Supreme Court says the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst among killers, and certainly the killer of a police officer would fall into that category."

Professor Robert Batey teaches criminal law at Stetson University. Robert Batey holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University and law degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Illinois. After one year as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois College of Law and two years as an assistant professor at West Virginia University College of Law, Batey joined the law faculty at Stetson University in 1977. During his tenure at Stetson, Professor Batey visited for one semester at the University of Virginia School of Law and served for four years as Stetson's associate dean. He has written extensively on criminal justice, law and literature, and related topics. Since 1995, he has been a local coordinator for Families Against Mandatory Minimums.