Against Capital Punishment received an Essential rating from Choice.

“Yost…has written a brilliant analysis of philosophical arguments for and against the death penalty. Surveying hundreds of scholarly articles and works about capital punishment, the author carefully documents the inadequacies of pro–death penalty reasoning used by philosophers from Immanuel Kant to the present. Yost covers political theories, philosophical arguments, and legal justifications, surveying issues such as deterrence, irrevocability, cost/benefit balance, inadequacy of attorneys, and the inherent fallibility of the American criminal justice system. Most important, he identifies a serious paradigm shift toward abolition of the death penalty based on three notions: the justice system inevitably makes mistakes; William Blackstone’s axiom (discussed in chapter 4) that it is better that ten guilty defendants escape rather than one innocent person suffer; and over-punishing those charged with criminal acts is worse than under-punishing them. The modern movement to abolish capital punishment seems destined to prevail as represented by the 2020 Colorado vote to abolish it, leaving fewer than 30 states still authorizing this rarely used punishment. This is a seminal, comprehensive treatment of the capital punishment.”

Jeffrey Howard’s review of Against Capital Punishment at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews can be found here.

I’m giving a paper at the APA central on Wednesdays at 3:00.

Abstract

The racial disparities that plague the American criminal justice system seem to call for the suspension of criminal penalties, at least for black offenders. But refusing to punish violent offenses leaves unprotected those most vulnerable to crime, and outright abolition thus appears to undermine the rights and liberties of black Americans. I call this the decarceration dilemma. After analyzing and evaluating Christopher Lewis’s admirable attempt to resolve the dilemma, I offer my own, which employs a procedural rather than a substantive solution. I lean on the principle of expanded asymmetry (EA), which holds that it is better to underpunish than overpunish. After defending the principle, I note that EA obtains only under conditions of uncertainty. I then show that because virtually all trials of black offenders meet the uncertainty condition, sentencing authorities are obliged to treat black offenders leniently. I conclude by noting the advantages of my proceduralist approach.

For a super short, super accessible survey of the death penalty debate, see my entry at 1000 Word Philosophy.

The U.S. government has not executed anyone since 2003. That will soon change. AG Barr announced that the government will resume executing federal death row inmates. Five prisoners are schedule for execution in December and January. More here.

See the flyer at this link for a 30% discount on my book. If you can’t read the fine print, the code is AAFLYG6.

 

On May 30, the legislature overrode the Governor’s veto to abolish the death penalty. New Hampshire currently has one inmate on death row, though repeal makes it likely he will not be executed.

For more, see NPR.

Governor Gavin Newsom has issued executive orders that effectively place a moratorium on capital punishment in the state. All death row inmates will be granted a reprieve, and Newsom will annul California’s lethal injection protocol. California has over 700 inmates on death row, but hasn’t executed any of them for over a decade.

For more details, see the NYT.

 

The Washington State Supreme court has ruled that the death penalty, under current state statute, is impermissible owing to racial bias. The Court cited a study showing that black capital defendants are 4.5 times more likely to be sentenced to death than their white counterparts.

More here.

At OUP.

The Pope’s opposition to the death penalty has now been enshrined in the Catechism. The Catholic Church officially holds that the death penalty attacks the dignity of all human beings.

Catechism No. 2267 now reads: “The church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

Details here.

Thanks to Mitch McConnell. And Obama’s odd reticence to do more than say he’s disappointed in McConnell’s decision. And Trump voters.

Story here.

Call for abstracts: Philosophers on the Movement for Black Lives

Black Lives Matter and other grassroots organizations constituting the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) have quickly gained worldwide visibility as a broad social justice movement. MBL rose to prominence in no small part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at Black Americans. However, its concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measure to address not only what it terms a “war against Black people” but also as part of a “shared struggle with all oppressed people.” MBL is also distinguished by its decentralized, non-hierarchal modes of organization.

 

We welcome abstracts that engage philosophically with MBL’s aims, concerns, or strategies. Abstracts may address questions such as the following:

– What are the philosophical underpinnings of MBL, and how do these compare or contrast with the underpinnings of other social justice, anti-racist, or Black liberation movements?

– How is MBL situated in relation to thinkers or traditions (philosophical, religious, etc.) important in the history of such movements?

– What distinguishes the MBL positions and arguments

regarding criminal justice, including policing, mass incarceration, privatization, surveillance, bail, capital punishment, decriminalization, etc.;

regarding reparative economic justice, including education, community investment, reparations, and guaranteed income;

regarding economic policy, including health care, climate change, taxation, employment, unionization, trade, and the environment;

and regarding political and civic participation, including voting rights, election financing, free speech, etc.?

– How has MBL influenced or shaped wider sociopolitical culture, including other social justice movements, both in the US and elsewhere?

– Can the meaning and importance of MBL’s political speech acts (e.g., the slogan “Black Lives Matter”) or the discursive responses to those speech acts be illuminated by philosophical investigation into semantics, pragmatics, and interpretation?

be illuminated by philosophical investigation into semantics, pragmatics, and interpretation?

– What is distinctive about MBL’s approaches to political mobilization, activism, and organization?

 

The volume’s editors are Michael Cholbi, Brandon Hogan, Alex Madva, and Benjamin Yost. We currently have commitments from philosophers including Myisha Cherry, Tommy Curry, Mark Lance, Colleen Murphy, Olufemi Taiwo, and Vanessa Wills.

 

Abstracts should be no more than 750 words in length and should indicate perspicuously the scope, methodology, and primary conclusions of the research. Abstracts should be submitted by July 1.

 

Please submit two versions of the abstract, one anonymized (and with “anonymous” in the filename), and one with author information. Email submissions to byost1 [at] providence.edu.

To predict whether a jurisidiction will execute, look at how many people have been executed in the past. As the author of the piece notes, it is arbitrary in the extreme for the death-eligible to be executed just because the county they’re tried in has a taste for executing people.

More here.

I’m really happy to report that my book, Against Capital Punishment, is under contract with Oxford University Press. It should be out late 2018.

Super short description:

Against Capital Punishment offers a comprehensive, innovative proceduralist argument against the death penalty. Worries about procedural injustice have recently taken center stage in the abolitionist movement, and are frequently invoked in Supreme Court cases, newspaper editorials, opinion pieces, and philosophy and law review articles. Philosophers and legal theorists are attracted to procedural abolitionism because it sidesteps the controversial question of whether murderers morally deserve death. Following in this path, my contention is not that the act of execution is immoral; in fact, I grant the appropriateness of execution for some first-degree murderers. Rather, I argue that, due to the possibility of irrevocable mistakes, the death penalty cannot be administered in a morally permissible fashion.

Pope Francis declared the death penalty morally impermissible on the grounds that it attacks the inviolable dignity of the human person. His predecessors had been moving toward this view, but Pope Francis’ statement indicates that there has been an official shift in the stance of the Catholic Church.

More here

It is fairly obvious that a punishment is unjust if it falls more heavily on one racial group than another. It is less clear what ought to be done in such situations. Many philosophers advocate for “leveling down,” i.e., imposing lesser penalties on the marginalized group for a given crime (especially in capital contexts) to level things out. But some argue that this response is unmotivated, and that “leveling up” is an equally legitimate strategy. I always thought this debate was more or less academic, but a judge recently overruled a jury, sentencing a white man to death just so that he could not be accused of sentencing only black men to death.

Read more here

“Kant’s Theory of Motivation: A Hybrid Approach” is forthcoming in Review of Metaphysics.

To vindicate morality against skeptical doubts, Kant must show how that thought ‘I ought to act morally’ can move one to act morally. ‘Affectivist’ interpretations of Kant hold that agents are moved to act by feelings, while ‘intellectualists’ appeal to cognition alone. To overcome the significant objections besetting each view, I develop a hybrid theory of motivation. My central claim is that Kant is a special kind of motivational internalist: agents, he believes, are moved to act by a feeling of intellectual pleasure that originates in acts of free choice. This account improves the prospects of Kant’s justification of morality.

The Arkansas Supreme Court rejected McKesson’s arguments, and Ledell Lee was executed.

via NYT

Arkansas is attempting to carry out seven executions this month, a pace that has no precedent in the post-Gregg era. That would be noteworthy enough, but the McKesson Corporation, 5th on the list of Fortune 500 companies, has convinced a judge to issue a restraining order barring the state from using the drugs it procured from McKesson in those executions. This effectively puts the death penalty on hiatus in Arkansas, because its drugs are expiring this month — hence the hurried pace — and because the vecuronium bromide it bought from McKesson is an essential part of Arkansas’ execution cocktail. McKesson explicitly asserts that Arkansas bought the drugs under false pretenses, and that it tried to buy them back. Arkansas refused. McKesson argued for the restraining order on the basis of concerns for its reputation and its fiscal well-being.

via the NYT

A new report by the National Registry of Exonerations confirms that wrongful conviction rates are higher for blacks than whites. 40 percent of those convicted of murder, but 50 percent of those wrongfully convicted are black. More tellingly, while only 15 percent of murders committed by blacks target whites, 31 percent of the wrongful convictions of blacks were for murders of whites. In addition, wrongfully convicted blacks spend an average of three more years in prison than wrongfully convicted whites.

via the NYT

 

Not a huge surprise. I suspect that Roof will join the pantheon of murderers (along with Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, etc.) who are trotted out in a particular kind of argument favoring the retention of the death penalty. According to this argument, we should retain execution as a tool for punishing the very worst of the worst, who Matthew Kramer calls “defilingly evil offenders.” Advocates of this view can remain quite skeptical about the imposition of capital punishment in the vast majority of cases. They can also insist that it is permissible to execute defilingly evil offenders only when there is overwhelming evidence of their guilt. As such, this vindication of capital punishment poses a strong challenge to the abolitionist. A challenge that I eagerly take up in my book 🙂

Update: it’s already happening.

The Assembly voted in favor of a resolution urging an international moratorium on the death penalty. 117 nations voted in support; the US and 40 other countries rejected the measure. There were 31 abstentions.

via the the UN