The Collateral Anti-Therapeutic Effects of the Death Penalty
The death penalty debate in the United States typically pits the offensiveness of the crime and offender and the societal need for this extreme punishment as an expression of moral outrage against evidence of arbitrariness, the risk of executing an innocent person and other systemic injustices. Most recently, in these tough economic times, the extraordinary financial cost of the death penalty has been thrown into the balance.
There are additional costs, however, that are rarely acknowledged in the death penalty debate - the human costs. Tens of thousands of people in the United States who are not on death row are intimately affected by current death sentences and past executions. This essay provides evidence - some of it first hand - of these human costs as measured by the anti-therapeutic effects of traumatic stress. Its focus is on the four groups: death row lawyers, family members of the condemned, murder victim family members, and the execution team.
Therapeutic jurisprudence calls upon law-makers and law-advocates to understand and to consider both the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic effects a law has on individuals and on communities. This essay makes the case that in assessing the value of the death penalty, legislators must consider its collateral emotional and psychological damage.
BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE, MURDER VICTIMS’ FAMILIES FOR RECONCILIATION OF NORTH CAROLINA IN FOUR RACIAL JUSTICE ACT CASES
The North Carolina Chapter of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (MVFR of NC) filed this brief to provide the North Carolina Supreme Court with the perspective of murder victims' families which is often drowned out by the natural retributive emotions evoked in a capital murder case. We strongly believe that all lives matter, regardless of race, and that we deserve a judicial system that treats fairly all persons, including prospective black jurors, regardless of race. There are substantial reasons to question whether the concern with finality that has permeated the discussion of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act (RJA) is appropriate. We believe that racially-biased justice is not justice at all and is a disservice to victims. The need to secure a fair and just outcome takes on a marked urgency where life hangs in the balance. Therefore, as discussed further within, we support the findings and conclusions of the court below.
Forgiveness for Our Killing
Article published in The Journal of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, July-Sept 2014.
Why I am Thankful
Remarks given upon receipt of the 2006-2007 Distinguished Alumnus Award by Carson Newman College and published in Carson Newman Studies.
