Hugo Badau Against The Death Penalty Summary

Hugo Bedau supports 5 arguments against death penalty in his writing, The Case Against the Death Penalty. He has been a leading philosophical critic of capital punishment, making him a good source for this topic. Badau starts with his first argument: Capital Punishment is not a deterrent to capital crimes. Capital punishment is being used as a deterrent for crime because if people know that certain actions result to death by punishment, they are less likely to commit the crime. Badau argues, "A punishment can be an effective deterrent only if it is consistently and promptly employed. Capital punishment cannot be administered to meet these conditions" (Badau, 232). Badau's next argument is the fairness of capital punishment. Throughout this …show more content…
In this case, the janitor is convicted and sentenced to death. "The circumstantial evidence against him was thin, other leads were ignored by the police, and the courtroom atmosphere reeked of racism... Evidence had meanwhile emerged that another man had committed the murder, and was not released until 1990" (Badau, 237). This is interesting to me because I can take information I learned in another class relating racism and connect it to this case, as it has been said by Badau. In Badau's next a statement, he argues that capital punishment is unjustified retribution. A confusing point he makes is that the the severity of the punishment should be equal to the their "culpability and the harm they have caused the innocent" (Badau, 239). In my opinion, I believe that he was trying to defend innocent people, rather than people that have induced the murder. Last but not least, Badau argues that capital punishment is widely viewed as inhumane and anachronistic. By bringing in international perspectives, he shows how many countries have abolished the death penalty. "In the United States, opposition to the death penalty is widespread and