ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the critical contribution of the pathological approach both in framing how the feelings of the capital offender are to be interpreted and in supplying a rationale for death as the appropriate punishment. The pathological approach to remorse widens even further the difference between those who show remorse and those who do not even as it enlarges the population to whom the designation of remorselessness can be applied. The absence of remorse after a grievous crime becomes a symptom of a deep characterological flaw that portends continuing danger. But the enactment or demonstration of remorse is equally problematic. The silence of the defendant then becomes the blank slate on which the prosecutor can map the identity of the remorseless offender. The final piece in the modern representation of the psychopath is perhaps the most significant in terms of the role of remorse.
