The American Death Penalty From a Conseqentialist Perspective

Attempts to answer to two foundational moral questions dominate capital-punishment discourse: whether retributive considerations permit or require the punishment of death, and whether some conception of human dignity or limit on state power precludes its imposition. Comes to the conclusion that given the unattractiveness of the death penalty from a consequentialist perspective, judicial abolition should be welcomed in favor of the slow, seemingly inexorable decline of this unnecessary and costly anachronistic punishment.