“Was sentence of death ever pronounced except at midnight, by the light of torches, in a dark, gloomy hall, and on a cold, stormy winter's night? Why, in the month of August, at eight o'clock of such a lovely morning and with such kind-hearted jurors, it’s impossible!” These are the thoughts of Victor Hugo’s capital defendant in The Last Day of a Condemned Man, as he sits awaiting his sentencing, which will return to him a verdict of death. 

Although this reads as absurd — because of course one may receive a sentence of death even on the most beach-worthy day of the year (just ask California, who holds the record for the nation’s largest death row despite boasting Malibu) — it might have some larger implications about how we, still today, visualize and expect the death penalty to be carried out. It must be imposed under the ‘right’ circumstances, right? Just as a sunny day seems wrong, a prosecutor in a particularly bad mood when deciding to seek the death penalty should be wrong. For neither the weather nor the mood have any relation with a defendant’s culpability.

For one, we expect such an “awesome punishment” to carry out the principle objectives of our judicial system: retribution and deterrence. In order to accomplish this, we have historically acknowledged retribution’s law of retaliation — biblically “lex talionis,” or an “eye for an eye” — therefore legitimizing that to kill is to forfeit one’s right to live. However, social and judicial limits have been imposed on this right to retaliation. Much to my dismay, it is not considered acceptable for me to shove people out of my way in the Collegetown Bagels line just because they did it first. Even more abysmal, it is not legal for me to shoot someone in the foot because they once shot me in the foot. If we consider these reactions to be excessive, despite the lighter........

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