Marvin E. Wolfgang

The death penalty does not provide a rational form of retribution for the crime of murder, Marvin E. Wolfgang contends in the following viewpoint. For one thing, true retribution would be restorative, but a murder victim’s life is not restored by executing the murderer. Moreover, Wolfgang argues, criminal justice does not require the offender to suffer the exact effects of the crime he committed—rapists are not punished by being raped, for example. Instead, criminals are generally punished by being deprived of liberty, and the length of their deprivation corresponds to the severity of their crime. Capital punishment, therefore, is out of step with the logic of criminal justice system, the author maintains. Wolfgang is a professor of law and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.

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