To say it has to be painless is to lose sight of what it is...which punishment…in its very meaning is. The word punishment comes from the same root as pain. It is and is essential conception…painful. If it is not painful, it is not punishment. When killers intentionally over depraved indifference inflict intense pain and suffering on their victims. In my view, they should die a quick but painful death. Not torture, not drawn out but quick and painful. [The story of Capital Punishment BBC Documentary 2011]

For (Immanuel) Kant, the only pure evil thing is an evil will. So you measure the seriousness of the crime by the attitude of the criminal. For Kant, the death penalty was a moral imperative, it was a duty. But it was to be done without any emotion. We did it as a matter of duty and in fact we celebrate human dignity by executing, by saying, “You are at a responsible age, you chose to do what you did and you deserve to die for it. We will not look at you as a means to deter others from committing crimes.” [The story of Capital Punishment BBC Documentary 2011]

Not that criminals' eyes should be our only guiding lights, but by understanding their attitudes, I believe we can better punish their acts proportionately to their evil. [Among Killers, Searching For the Worst of the Worst December 3, 2000 Sunday, Final Edition Posted in The Washington Post]

I am a "retributivist" supporter of the death penalty. That is, I believe that some people kill so viciously, with an attitude so callous or cruel, that they deserve to die--and society has an obligation to execute them. But the obligation extends only to the most wicked: We need fewer death sentences, more justly applied. I would argue that the vast majority of the 3,700 murderers on death row today should, instead, spend the rest of their lives in prison. Our responsibility is to figure out who should be included in that small minority--the very worst of the worst--who deserve to die. [Among Killers, Searching For the Worst of the Worst December 3, 2000 Sunday, Final Edition Posted in The Washington Post]

Execution is society's ultimate sanction, to be threatened rarely and applied even more rarely. We must rethink the death penalty, revise and refine our statutes. If we consult the experts--including killers--and rethink it right, I am convinced we will end up converting the sentences of thousands of murderers presently on death row to life imprisonment.

The remaining few hundred monsters we should execute. [Among Killers, Searching For the Worst of the Worst December 3, 2000 Sunday, Final Edition Posted in The Washington Post]

7 January 2003 - Robert Blecker sat quietly as other professors ticked off their reasons for opposing the death penalty: It's unfair to blacks. It doesn't really deter crime. Innocent people could be executed.

But Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, was having none of it. When it was his turn to speak at the recent death-penalty forum at John Jay College, he summed up his support for executions in three words: "Barbara Jo Brown."

Blecker then launched into a staccato description of the 11-year-old Louisiana girl's slaying in 1981, how she was abducted, raped and tortured by a man who later was executed. The story drew gasps from a crowd accustomed to dealing in legal theories and academic formulas. "We know evil when we see it, and it's past time that we start saying so," Blecker said later. "When it comes to the death penalty, too many in academia can't face that."

7 January 2003 – But fellow death-penalty supporter Blecker says that the death penalty should be reserved for the "worst of the worst, the ones almost everyone can agree are worthy."

7 January 2003 - Death-penalty supporters also say there is plenty of evidence that executions deter homicides.

A study last year by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta examined the nearly 6,000 death sentences imposed in the USA from 1977 through 1996. The authors compared changes in murder rates in 3,000 U.S. counties to the likelihood of being executed for murder in that county. They found that murder rates declined in counties where capital punishment was imposed. The researchers said a statistical formula suggested that each execution saved the lives of 18 potential victims.

Recent studies at the University of Houston and at the University of Colorado at Denver had similar findings. Blecker, who is researching deterrence, says they square with what he found in interviews with 60 killers. "They are cognizant of whether they are operating in a death-penalty state before they pull the trigger," he says. "They're operating in the real world, not the realm of political theory."

7 January 2003 - Academics who back executions are gaining some acceptance. Senate Republicans countered Leahy's bill by citing research from pro-death penalty academics. The bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee but is stalled in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Blecker says he's getting asked to more academic conferences on the death penalty — usually as the only voice in favor. “‘A lion in a den of Daniels' is one way I've been introduced," he says.

Michael Ross was a monster prepared to die, and the good people of Connecticut were about to kill him. Ross had murdered eight young women, including two teenagers, raping all but one. The prosecutors who sought his death felt certain; the jurors who unanimously sentenced him to die felt certain he deserved it. The courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, concurred that this mass-murdering rapist could constitutionally receive society's ultimate sanction. [`God Love Him'? 6 February 2005]

If the sadist is distressed by these fantasies, even if he doesn't act upon them, he is officially labeled a sexual sadist and deserves help. If he acts upon them and rapes, he is a sexually sadistic rapist and deserves to be punished severely. If he rapes, tortures and kills, he deserves to die. He may be sick; but he is definitely evil. I am as certain of this as I am that my hand has five fingers; most of us are morally certain he deserves to die. [`God Love Him'? 6 February 2005]

What compassion toward the man who made the women he raped lie on their stomachs before he strangled them. How unjust it would be if that man who put eight women in coffins should himself feel "boxed in." But why should the other killers on Connecticut's death row - whose own odds of being executed leap exponentially once Ross leads the way - condemn rather than cheer him for refusing to die at the hands of the state? And why should we care? [`God Love Him'? 6 February 2005]

Remember. Remember Dzung Ngoc Tu, 25; Tammy Williams, 17; Paula Perrera, 16. Debra Smith Taylor, 23. Remember Robin Stavinsky, 19, April Brunais and Leslie Shelley, 14, and Wendy Baribeault, 17. Imagine the lives they never led; remember how they died. We cannot fully feel the suffering of these victims unless we fully loathe the motives of their killer. As Adam Smith pointed out, "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."

Unquestionably, the world would be a better place without Michael Ross in it. Then, too, the federal bench would probably be a better place without Judge Chatigny on it. [`God Love Him'? 6 February 2005]

He agrees that the death penalty should be rare for youth offenders who commit capital offences under the age of 18, but he still believes it should be an option for the worst of the worst.

"It's about dignity, humanity. It's about loving and celebrating goodness and punishing evil," he said. [Thursday 3 March 2005]

And in arguing for the death penalty as a form of retribution, he draws a distinction between retribution and revenge.

"Revenge is limitless. Retribution is limited and proportionate to the crime," he said. [Thursday 3 March 2005]

He worries that death penalty opponents will next try to exempt the mentally ill from the death penalty.

"If you sign onto that, most evil will become exempt," he said. [Thursday 3 March 2005]

Death is only justice By ROBERT BLECKER Last Updated: 3:11 AM, March 30, 2011 - Thousands of hours in prisons and over 25 years interviewing more than 100 convicted killers (along with dozens of correctional officers) has taught me: Life without parole can't substitute for the death penalty.

Thursday 21 April 2011 - New York Law School professor Robert Blecker said lethal injection should be abandoned -- not for practical reasons, but because it sanitised a process that should hurt. "It conflates medicine with punishment," he said. "How we kill those we detest should in no way resemble how we kill those we love. Firing squad is my preferred method," he said.

But the past counts. Justice matters. We make and should keep covenants with the dead. Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes must die. [Why Joshua Komisarjevsky Must Die Tuesday 25 October 2011 Posted: The Courant]

We should shorten the time it takes to execute these monsters.

Some people deserve to die. We have an obligation to kill them.

Sometimes innocent persons must get hurt for the public good.

The “lifer” aggravator rests on one or two assumptions: Unless you threaten him with death, a lifer has nothing else to lose.

If the legislature abolishes the death penalty, it will be a great day in Connecticut for the worst of the worst. Condemned killers on death row, no less than experts on both sides, all understand "prospective only" abolition as a fraud. [When We Can't Kill Those Who Deserve To Die. Can We Abolish Death Penalty And Do Justice To Their Victims? By ROBERT BLECKER The Hartford Courant April 1, 2012]

Can we abolish the death penalty and still keep our covenant with the victim we never knew? Never to forgive; never to forget. Can we keep the fire burning until justice at last is done? We, fellow citizens of the slain, declare to the survivors: The voice of your brother's blood, your parent's blood, our children's blood, the blood of your beloved, cries out to us from the ground. It remains our responsibility and we accept it: to continue to hate sadistic viciousness, and callous predators. We will not allow politicians' anguished deliberation to diminish our felt need for justice. [When We Can't Kill Those Who Deserve To Die. Can We Abolish Death Penalty And Do Justice To Their Victims? By ROBERT BLECKER The Hartford Courant April 1, 2012]

The past counts. The Earth does not belong only to the living. Bloodshed cries out to be avenged. Emotively, and not merely rationally, the blood of the dead victim compels us to act. Today, too, the victim’s lingering cry moves us retributivist advocates of the death penalty. [The Death Penalty Delineated By the Old Testament by Robert Blecker, USA Today on November 2004] 

Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University said: "While some [death penalty] abolitionists try to face down the results of their disastrous experiment and still argue to the contrary, the... [data] concludes that a substantial deterrent effect has been observed...In six months, more Americans are murdered than have killed by execution in this entire century...Until we begin to fight crime in earnest [by using the death penalty], every person who dies at a criminal's hands is a victim of our inaction."

In sum, the heart has its reasons, but also its value. The heart not only explains the death penalty's persistence, but also justifies it. A complete human, and a humane criminal justice system, need both head and heart. Such a system may well praise the death penalty, rather than burying it. We should certainly educate and critique emotions and their excesses, such as lynchings. Momentary eruptions of anger may cloud reflective emotional judgments. The job of the justice system is to not to stifle or skew emotions, however, but to promote reflective emotional deliberation. We can neither ignore punitive emotions nor assume that enlightened emotional progress will make the death penalty fade into the obscure mists of the past. [Co-written with Stephanos Bibas, "The Heart Has Its Value: The Death Penalty's Justifiable Persistence," University of Pennsylvania Law School, Scholarship at Penn Law, 2008]

The great thinker Ernest van den Haag brilliantly made the case for execution as deterrence: “Imagine if a state announced that murders committed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays would be punishable by execution and murders committed the other days of the week would be punishable by imprisonment. Would murder rates remain the same as they are now on all the days of the week? I doubt it.”

If and when discrimination occurs it should be corrected. Not, however, by letting the guilty blacks escape the death penalty because guilty whites do, but by making sure that the guilty white offenders suffer it as the guilty blacks do. Discrimination must be abolished by abolishing discrimination - not by abolishing penalties. However, even if...this cannot be done, I do not see any good reason to let any guilty murderer escape his penalty. It does happen in the administration of criminal justice that one person gets away with murder and another is executed. Yet the fact that one gets away with it is no reason to let another one escape.

"Trials are more likely to be fair when life is at stake - the death penalty is probably less often unjustly inflicted than others."

This shows that judicial system itself is very careful with death sentences. Even if we assume that there are chances that an innocent person is executed, it is the problem with the trial, not the punishment. "It is not the penalty - whether death or prison - which is unjust when inflicted on the innocent, but its imposition on the innocent."

Any penalty, a fine, imprisonment or the death penalty could be unfairly or unjustly applied. The vice in this case is not in the penalty but in the process by which it is inflicted. It is unfair to inflict unequal penalties on equally guilty parties, or on any innocent parties, regardless of what the penalty is.

Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks.

As Ernest van den Haag states in his book (co-authored with John P. Conrad), The Death Penalty: A Debate: "Innocent life is best secured by telling those who would take it that they will forfeit their own lives."