al punishment, and that a legislature is not required to select a less severe punishment, the dignity of man was not compromised when a severe punishment was selected for a severe crime.In building their opinion, the Gregg court assigned greater importance to the goals of retribution and possible deterrence than did the Furman court. The Gregg court indicated that an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs is an essential function of society, and can be factored into the decision-making process regarding punishment. That deterrence could not be statistically assessed did not make it less important a goal.In The Death Penalty Debate, Ernest Van Den Haag agrees with the Supreme Court in the Gregg case: Deterrence is an important goal in considering capital punishment. Van Den Haag tries to draw an analogy between deterrence and scientific endeavors in order to substantiate that statistical proof is not always necessary - just because it cannot be proven does not make it so. He indicates empirical evidence is available to determine that the death penalty is more of a deterrent than life imprisonment. Unfortunately, he tends towards gross generalization instead, such as a harsher penalty is always a greater deterrent than milder ones.Van Den Haag reasons that the elimination of one murderer by capital punishment will decrease the potential homicide rate. He also ascribes a higher importance to the safety of potential victims to that of rights of convicted murderers when he indicates that the remote possibility that the death penalty would deter a few men from committing murder makes the process a worthy one. In this light, according to Van Den Haag, no other threat can deter certain crimes, ones which are special because of their very nature - war crimes, international spies, and murders which occur in prison.For the most part, these points rely on a different...
