BOOKS: ​“The Death Penalty As Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition”

In his newest book, The Death Penalty As Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition, John Bessler chron­i­cles the his­tor­i­cal link between tor­ture and the death penal­ty from the Middle Ages to the present day and argues that both are medieval relics. The book, released on February 17, 2017, asserts that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is itself a form of tor­ture, despite mod­ern legal dis­tinc­tions that out­law tor­ture while per­mit­ting death sen­tences and executions. 

Bessler draws on the writ­ings of philoso­phers such as Cesare Beccaria and Montesquieu, who con­demned both prac­tices and con­clud­ed that any pun­ish­ment that was harsh­er than absolute­ly nec­es­sary was unjus­ti­fi­able. Bringing these his­tor­i­cal threads to the mod­ern day, Bessler writes that the avail­abil­i­ty of high­ly-secure pen­i­ten­tiaries has made the death penal­ty unnec­es­sary as an instru­ment of pub­lic safe­ty. He argues that with more than 80% of the world’s nations either not con­duct­ing exe­cu­tions or bar­ring the death penal­ty out­right, it is time for inter­na­tion­al law to rec­og­nize a norm against the use of the death penalty. 

Bessler is a pro­fes­sor at the University of Baltimore School of Law whose pre­vi­ous books on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment include Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment, The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution, and Against the Death Penalty.