ABSTRACT
Capital punishment is one of a number of controversial issues on which the Supreme Court of the United States may hand down a ruling during its present term. The time has come for this relic of barbarism to be banished from the United States courts. Nobody should take seriously the contention that the death penalty is necessary for the sake of its deterrent effect on other persons who may be tempted to commit crime. Centuries of history leave any deterrence at all a matter of doubt, and psychology confirms that persons contemplating commission of crime are either not thinking of punishment or are confident that it will not happen to them. A murderer who is hanged is not going to commit any more murders, true enough, but there are better ways of obtaining that assurance than by committing another homicide. Any homicide, however committed or under whatever auspices, is an act of violence.
