Dilemmas in Administering the Death Penalty: Conscientious Abstention, Professional Ethics, and the Needs of the Legal System

• NCJ Number: 123107
• Journal: Law and Human Behavior Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Dated: (February 1990) Pages: 67-90
• Author(s): R J Bonnie
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 24 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This article is based on a paper presented as the Keynote Address to the Annual Meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, Miami, Florida, March 11, 1988.

Annotation

This article critiques ethical arguments against conducting forensic evaluations of capital defendants or condemned prisoners and against treating prisoners found incompetent for execution, and considers the impact of widespread professional abstention on the legal system.

Abstract

It concludes that arguments for abstention by forensic evaluators are grounded mainly in personal moral scruples against capital punishment, rather than in tenets of professional ethics, but that abstention would be ethically required if the evaluator's scruples preclude objectivity. It also concludes that treatment of incompetent prisoners known to want treatment is ethically permissible but that treatment for the sole purpose of readying the prisoner for execution is not. 64 references. (Author abstract)