Proponents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have long argued for the death penal­ty on the grounds that it brings clo­sure to fam­i­ly mem­bers of homi­cide vic­tims. But sci­ence sug­gests that achiev­ing clo­sure through exe­cu­tion may be a myth, says fam­i­ly and child ther­a­pist Linda Lewis Griffith (pic­tured) in a May 6, 2019 col­umn in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment may actu­al­ly make matters worse.

To under­score that point, Griffith cites stud­ies in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found ​“sub­jects who were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vent their hos­til­i­ties had high­er lev­els of aggres­sion and anger than those par­tic­i­pants who did noth­ing at all” and ​“peo­ple who pun­ish oth­ers in the hopes of mak­ing them­selves feel bet­ter actu­al­ly feel worse.” The death penal­ty, she says, ​“keeps vic­tims involved in the tragedy for years, even decades, as mul­ti­ple hear­ings, appeals and tri­als drag on.” As a result, fam­i­ly mem­bers ​“feel stuck in a time warp, being repeat­ed­ly re-trau­ma­tized by the legal sys­tem and accom­pa­ny­ing media cov­er­age.” In cas­es in which the death penal­ty is even­tu­al­ly car­ried out, “[e]xecutions do not offer emo­tion­al cathar­sis as many would sug­gest.” Instead, Griffith says, ​“exe­cut­ing per­pe­tra­tors actu­al­ly increased fam­i­ly mem­bers’ feel­ings of empti­ness because it didn’t bring back their loved ones.”

A University of Minnesota study pub­lished in 2007 attempt­ed to quan­ti­fy the extent to which vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers achieved clo­sure as a result of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The study found that only 2.5% of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers — rough­ly one in 40 — report­ed achiev­ing clo­sure, while 20.1% said the exe­cu­tion did not help them heal. A 2012 study pub­lished in the Marquette Law Review com­pared the emo­tion­al well-being of sur­vivors in Texas, a death penal­ty state, and Minnesota, a life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole state. The study found that ​“vic­tims in Minnesota expe­ri­enced greater con­trol over the sen­tenc­ing process,” while the ​“drawn out, elu­sive, delayed, and unpre­dictable” cap­i­tal appeals process in Texas ​“cre­at­ed ​‘lay­ers of injus­tice, pow­er­less­ness, and in some instances, despair’” for family members.

Given these stud­ies, Griffin believes that life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole offers “[a] more emo­tion­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing solu­tion” for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies than does the death penal­ty. ​“Instead of pro­ceed­ing with archa­ic and inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion, let’s con­sid­er the data and do what real­ly works best” for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, she says.

(Linda Lewis Griffith, Does the death penal­ty give vic­tims clo­sure? Science says no, San Luis Obispo Tribune, May 6, 2019.) See Victims and Studies.

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