Is Right In the Victim Impact Evidence Debate that Divided the Court?
There is merit to both sides of this argument, at least for anyone who is not a death penalty abolitionist. The death penalty is, to me, most persuasively justified as a moral statement of communal outrage – a punishment that reaffirms the social contract by declaring some conduct so reprehensible, so “inhuman,” that its perpetrator no longer deserves to live. In the context of such a communal condemnation, it seems perfectly fitting and appropriate to permit members of the community to describe for their peers on the jury the full measure of what the defendant has, in some sense, cost them all. It is hardly unusual in the law for consequences to matter. For instance, a murder is punished more harshly than an attempted murder, even if the difference between the two was merely bad aim. And it is hard to see why the consequences to friends, family, and society as a whole should not matter. The law typically does not judge conduct in a vacuum; it puts it in context for jurors to consider.
