Hugo Adam Bedau

The following viewpoint is excerpted from a 1997 pamphlet authored by Hugo Adam Bedau for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a private civil liberties organization that opposes the death penalty as an unconstitutional practice of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Bedau rebuts the claim that the death penalty prevents crime, arguing that to be an effective deterrent to criminals, the death penalty must be used in much greater frequency and with less delay between crime and execution than is currently the case. Such a state of affairs can only be attained by jettisoning procedural safeguards and constitutional rights of defendants, Bedau contends, risking the execution of innocent people. He concludes that long-term imprisonment without parole is a sufficiently punitive and less inhumane alternative to the death penalty. Bedau...